PROBLEMS OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDY 601 



Matthew, and of Mark and Matthew against Luke, over those of 

 Matthew and Luke against Mark, has long been recognized, and its 

 cardinal importance for the synoptic problem has been perceived. 

 But this preponderance of the two kinds of agreement over the third 

 does not annihilate the third class of agreements, or justify the 

 ignoring of them. This has, indeed, been clearly recognized, espe- 

 cially of late years, nor have there been lacking proposals by which 

 this third class might be accounted for. Yet it must be confessed 

 that this unexplained remainder still awaits a satisfactory solution, 

 and that in it lurks the possibility of a discovery which may yet 

 greatly modify the now generally accepted theories. 



That this problem probably lies, as has already been suggested, 

 partly in the realm of textual criticism, and that its solution will 

 perhaps come through a clearer recognition than has been usual 

 of the existence, in respect to the synoptic gospels at least, of a 

 frontier where textual and documentary criticism meet and merge, 

 points to the necessity that the study of the details of the synoptic 

 problem be supplemented by an investigation of the principles in 

 accordance with which such problems are to be solved. It is a fair 

 question whether further progress in this field of inquiry would not 

 be most facilit ited by a clear exposition of the canons in accordance 

 with which it i> necessary to proceed in the process of discovering 

 the nature of the relation between documents, between which there 

 is evidently a relation of some kind. 



Of the problems pertaining to the synoptic gospels, other than 

 that of their origin and relation to one another, such as their date 

 and the specific purpose of each, it is not needful to speak at length. 

 In so far as fairly definite results have not already been reached, 

 the solution of them is likely to be involved in that of the main ques- 

 tion of the origin and mutual relation of these gospels. 



The book of Acts. Peculiar interest must always attach to the 

 book of Acts as the one work, dating from the early age of the church 

 and having any plausible claim to trustworthiness, that gives a con- 

 nected narrative of events in the apostolic age. Inferior as an author- 

 ity to the strictly first-hand testimony of the Pauline letters, it 

 possesses, by virtue of the systematic scheme of events which it 

 furnishes, a value which even the Pauline letters lack. This unique 

 position of the book among the sources for the rise of Christianity 

 gives a peculiar importance to the problem of its authorship, sources, 

 and date. That it employed sources, that these were of unequal 

 value, and that among these the " we-document" is of first-class 

 authority, quite equal in its way to the Pauline letters, are among the 

 assured results of criticism. But how much the we-document included , 

 whether the author of the we-source is also the compiler of the whole 

 work, what the other sources were, of what value they are, when the 



