212 LIEUT.-COL. G. MACKINLAT, ON SOME LUCAX PROBLEMS. 



of Christ's ministry, while all the other evangelists give some 

 account of that period 1 Professor Orr demurs to the aesthetic or 

 artistic reason suggested for the employment of the great Omission 

 (the cloud or shadow, p. 198), but surely sound criticism should take 

 account of the purport of a document. When a picture is painted 

 or a history is written for a purpose, stress is always laid by various 

 means on important features, while details, which might divert atten- 

 tion from the main object, are either omitted altogether or lightly 

 indicated. The purpose of this Gospel is given in Luke xxiv, 46. 



Mr. Vernon Bartlet objects that, if the reason for the use of the 

 great Omission is to draw decided attention to that which came 

 afterwards, it does not argue skill on the part of the evangelist, 

 as this reason has hitherto escaped observation. Mr. Bartlet adds 

 that the skilful use should be perceived from the beginning and all 

 along. We must remember that authors ^^Tite for people of their 

 own times, though the sacred ones also wrote for posterity, among 

 whom they have had the majority of their readers. But even the 

 sacred authors employed the literary methods of their day and they 

 referred at times, incidentally, without explanation, to facts well 

 known to their first readers, which became more or less hidden from 

 succeeding generations. 



Let us try to imagine the conditions of St. Luke's first readers. 

 The ancient Greek was perceptive, and doubtless the Greek 

 speaking peoples of other lands had imbibed something of his 

 character in this respect, as well as his language. Those 

 interested in the Christian religion, when Luke's Gospel was 

 written, had probably access to some who had actually seen our 

 Lord, and to many written accounts of His life ; thus the order of 

 the main events in His Ministry must have been well known to them 

 by word of mouth, and also from writings. They were also familiar 

 with the Scriptural employment of triple repetition to denote 

 intensity or emphasis, as at the Temptation, by the denials of Peter, 

 and by the three questions afterwards put to that Apostle by the 

 Lord. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to suppose that a contempor- 

 aneous intelligent Greek speaking convert under these circumstances 

 should readily recognize the threefold narrative in the Gospel of 

 Luke ? 



But as time went on the intimate oral knowledge of the events of 

 Christ's ministry passed away with the passing away of the first few 



