204 LIEUT.-COL. G. MACKINLAY^ ON SOME LUCAN PROBLEMS. 



Mr. Rouse thought that the words " Get thee out, and go hence, 

 for Herod would fain kill Thee " (Luke xiii, 31), pointed to the fact 

 that Christ was far from Jerusalem, and so he considered that the days 

 in the passage " I must go on My way to-day, and to-morrow, and the 

 day following " (Luke xiii, 33) could not mean literal days, as Jeru- 

 salem could not be reached so quickly, especially as one of the days 

 just before the entry on the colt was a Sabbath. Mr. Eouse 

 therefore concluded that the days mean years^ as in Ez. iv, 4-6, and 

 therefore the lament recorded by Luke was spoken two years before 

 the Crucifixion, at the time of the Sermon on the Mount. He said of 

 the lament, "the words are prophetic, not beginning to be fulfilled 

 until after the Crucifixion; so they may have been uttered upon an 

 occasion noticed by Luke and have been repeated upon the Lord's 

 last visit to Jerusalem, as told by Matthew.'' He also thought that 

 the Lucan lament could not have been spoken near the very 

 end of the Ministry, because in a later chapter (Luke xvii, 11) our 

 Lord is spoken of as travelling between Samaria and Galilee ; he 

 therefore did not see any reason for supposing that Luke made a 

 third beginning just after the parable of the great Supper at 

 chapter xiv, 25. 



Mr. Sidney Collett said : I am sure we all recognize that 

 Colonel Mackinlay must have spent an immense amount of time and 

 pains on the preparation of this subject, but is there really after all 

 such a " Lucan Problem " with its " Insertions " and " Omission " as 

 he has submitted to us this afternoon 1 



I notice that the whole argument of his lecture is based upon a 

 pure supposition^ as stated by himself (p. 188), that "the Gospel of 

 Mark is generally believed to be the oldest of the synoptics." But we 

 do not really know for certain in what order those gospels were 

 written. And if it is some day discovered that St. Mark did not 

 write his gospel first, then the whole structure of this elaborate argu- 

 ment falls to the ground. 



St. Luke tells us himself his source : in his opening sentences in 

 chapter i, 3, he makes the remarkable statement that he had 

 ^^pterfed understanding of all things from the very first." Therefore, 

 as his understanding, according to his own testimony was both perfect 

 and complete, how could there be any necessity for him to borrow 

 any of his matter from Matthew or from Mark 1 



After describing the purpose of each Gospel, Mr. Collett drew 



