§ 28. The Synoptic Problem

1. In most cases the existence of several accounts of the same period of history is a pure gain, and raises no difficulties: it is almost always easy, for instance, to reconcile two or three different biographies of a saint and to extract the true story from them. If we possessed, say, only Matthew, John and one or two apocryphal Gospels as the sources of the Gospel story, the corresponding questions might probably be settled in very few words. The Synoptic problem consists in the unique commingling of agreement and disagreement—both in every conceivable degree—which a comparison between Matthew, Mark and Luke brings to light, and which at first sight makes it seem a hopeless undertaking to attempt to describe the origin of the three Gospels in such a way as to avoid doing any violence to the facts, while yet unravelling the tangle of peculiarities and agreements which those three sources present.

How far-reaching is the unanimity between the Synoptic Gospels is felt as soon as we place John beside them. Their whole outline of the life of Jesus is the same; before his first appearance in public come the baptism in the Jordan and the sojourn in the wilderness, and then follows a period of great activity in Galilee, with Capernaum as the base of operations; the journey to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover (which is moreover the first he makes as Prophet, so that we are obliged to limit the period of his Messianic activity to a year at most) ushers in the days of his Passion, which end with his seizure, crucifixion and resurrection on the third day. The last three chapters run side by side in all three Gospels, and even from the entry into Jerusalem¹ the sequence of the important events and sayings is the same, while as in the case of the Baptism, Temptation and return of Jesus to Galilee, so the preceding account of the Baptist and his preaching is given by all the Synoptists in the same place and in the same manner. The three narratives consisting, first, of the healing of the man sick of the palsy, next of the calling of the publican, and lastly of the discourse concerning fasting, which are entirely unconnected internally, are given in the same order by all the Synoptists,² and the same may be said of the stories of the calming of the storm and of the Gerasene demoniac.³ Reckoned by the natural boundaries of the paragraphs, and apart from the story of the Passion, 50 to 70 sections common to all three Synoptics have been enumerated, and this is about half the total number which it is possible to distinguish. Nor is this unanimity ever confined merely to the sense— although there it extends to the very finest gradations—but in form and expression it reaches so far that whole sentences in Matthew, Mark and Luke are almost word for word the same.⁴ And the same degree of unanimity is to be observed between any two of the Synoptics in those passages which are absent in the third, of which 30 to 50 have been distinguished as common to Matthew and Luke without Mark, 10 to 15 to Mark and Matthew without Luke, and perhaps 5 to Mark and Luke without Matthew—always apart from the last three chapters in each. In the first case, for instance, the preaching of John⁵� is rendered in exactly the same words. by Matthew and Luke, the story of the centurion at Capernaum⁶ almost as literally, and the message of Jesus to John in captivity,⁷ practically without variation; in the second, the answer to the question of the sons of Zebedee,⁸ and the account of the healing power of Jesusʼ garment,⁹ are identical in Matthew and Mark, while in the third, Luke and Mark agree in the story of Jesus and the demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum,¹⁰ and in that of the widowʼs mite.¹¹

This similarity, however, is in no case to be explained by the assumption that the accounts we have before us are absolutely accurate and authentic narratives. Two or three eye-witnesses would never agree so closely in their account of the same event as those that we have here. Nor must we forget that they give us only a very small selection of the great mass of Jesusʼ deeds and sayings. If, then, this selection was made with such striking coincidence by all three—the same order being maintained even with events and sayings whose precise date was by no means determinable—such coincidence cannot have been the work of chance. But the most marvellous thing of all would be the similarity of expression. which meets us just as much in the reports of Jesusʼ sayings as in the narration of his miracles; those sayings must, after all, have been translated from Aramaic into Greek, and then we are to suppose that two or three independent translators would have hit upon the same expressions for whole passages together,¹² no matter whether it were a question of common or uncommon words?

If we felt tempted to explain-the whole array of facts by the supposition that the writers were inspired, such a theory would at once be excluded by the equally numerous instances of divergency, which also extend from the merest matters of form to the most important differences of fact. In the story of the healing on the Sabbath, which all three Synoptists tell in practically the same way,¹³ Mark describes the situation thus: καὶ ἦν ἐκεῖ ἅνθρωπος ἐξηραμμένην ἔχων τὴν χεῖρα; Luke thus: καὶ ἦν ἅνθρωπος ἐκεῖ καὶ ἡ χεὶρ αὐτοῦ ἡ δεξιὰ ἦν ξηρά; and Matthew thus: καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνθρωπος χεῖρα ἔχων ξηράν. This sounds as though each writer had chosen the expression independently to describe the same thing, but we might notice even here that Mark agrees half with Luke and half with Matthew, while the partial divergence between the three witnesses becomes still more striking in the succeeding sentences. According to Mark and Luke ʽthey watched himʼ in the synagogue—though Luke names a subject, namely, the Scribes and Pharisees—upon which Jesus himself propounds the question, whereas in Matthew, Jesus is asked whether healing on the Sabbath be lawful. The question which Jesus sets his adversaries is given almost in the same words by Mark and Luke, but quite differently, even in substance, by Matthew, whereas then again Mark and Matthew agree in representing the effect of this challenge on the Pharisees in a much stronger light than Luke. Matthew adds the parable of the leaven¹⁴ to that of the grain of mustard-seed,¹⁵ which he had told in the same connection and often in the same words as Mark,¹⁶ and Luke also gives both together,¹⁷ agreeing far more closely as to form with Matthew than with Mark, but tells them in an entirely different connection. And why does Matthew bring in the two breaches of the Sabbath¹⁸ much later than Mark and Luke? How is it that the Sermon on the Mount of Matt. v.-vii., which is entirely absent in Mark, does indeed reappear for the most part in Luke, much of it even in the very same words, but scattered over ten chapters, from vi. to xvi., in small and separate sections? The birth-story of Matthew contradicts that of Luke, nor do the genealogies in the two Gospels agree any better, while Mark contains not a word of either. Luke and Matthew tell the parable of the lost sheep¹⁹ in much the same way, but those of the lost piece of silver and of the prodigal son, which Luke brings in immediately afterwards, and which maintain the same tone and belong to. the same connection, are entirely without parallel in Matthew.: Matthew and Mark have practically nothing to correspond with the contents of Luke xvi.—the parable of the unjust steward, Dives and Lazarus, and certain sayings on the pride of the Jews and the validity of the Law—and the same may be said of the two stories of Sabbath healing in Luke xiii. and xiv.. Matthew in his turn is the sole reporter of various long sayings: like the parables of xiii. 86-52, or that of the labourersʼ hire,²⁰� or the description of the Day of Judgment.²¹ The peculiarities of Mark, on the other hand, cover only a very few verses, and include but one complete section—that of the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida.²² How marked are the differences which occur, too, in the material common to all three is best. shown in the story of the Resurrection—that is, in Mark xvi. 1-8 and its parallels in the other two Synoptics. The women who go to the sepulchre with spices early on the Easter morning are in Mark the two Marys and Salome, in Matthew the two former only, and in Luke they two and Joanna and ʽother women that were with them.ʼ In the sepulchre they see, according to Mark and Matthew, a young man (an angel of the Lord), and according to Luke two men in shining garments; the two former tell us that the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples first in Galilee, and therefore not on Easter-day at. all, while Luke relates appearances on this very day to (Peter?), to the disciples at Emmaus and to the Eleven, all in or around Jerusalem. Such discrepancies and contradictions are so frequent with the Synoptics, even among otherwise identical phrases, that if we ascribed an equal value to all three reports, one of them would continually be cancelled and destroyed by the other two, so that we should be obliged to dispute the existence of any trustworthy tradition concerning Jesus. The Church has therefore just as strong an interest as historical science, in determining what relationship our three authorities actually bear to one another, and what well-attested kernel of truth can be extracted from this medley of contradiction and agreement.

2. The earlier ecclesiastical learning, as well as that of the older Protestantism, refused to recognise this state of things, and avoided the necessity of admitting variations in the tradition concerning the words and deeds of Jesus, by making ʽHarmonies of the Gospelsʼ in which the parallelism of any two accounts which differed in the slightest degree was denied; so that a threefold feeding of the five thousand and a twofold of the four thousand had perforce to be admitted, merely in order to avoid the necessity of saying that the Evangelists differed in certain respects in their accounts of the same incident. Nevertheless, the Risen Lord cannot have appeared for the first time both in Galilee and Judea, and are we to suppose, too, that immediately after his baptism Jesus was tempted of the devil twice, according to the same plan, only with the means arranged in a somewhat different order? Even the early Church showed more courage and common sense than this; men pointed to the natural differences of memory, nor was any objection raised—even by Augustine —to the theory that the later Gospels drew from the earlier, i.e. Luke from Mark and Mark from Matthew. No serious attempt, however, to master these difficulties by scientific methods was made till the latter half of the 18th century, and now the countless schemes for a solution of the Synoptic Problem may, in spite of all their differences of detail, be divided into four main hypotheses: (a) that of Tradition; (b) that of the employment of one Gospel by the other; (c) that of the existence of an original Gospel; and (d) that of the employment by the Evangelists of numerous scattered fragments. The two latter may also be regarded as variations of a general hypothesis of the dependence of our Gospels upon earlier authorities.

The first hypothesis (as maintained, among others, by Gieseler and Godet) will not admit the dependence of any of the Gospels upon earlier written materials. All three Synoptists, it declares, drew from the rich stream of oral tradition which continued down to their time, and which had very early assumed a definite form, like the ʽsagasʼ of pre-literary times. This fundamental type might be recognised in the element common to all the Synoptics, while the variations were to be ascribed partly to the tradition itself, which was never fixed and immutable, and partly to the memory, the taste and the individuality of each Evangelist. A grain of truth lies in this conception—though indeed but a minute one:—it was certainly not till comparatively late, and not till the Gospel material had gone through considerable changes and become fixed in a number of points, that the oral tradition became converted into a stationary, written tradition. But it would always have been incredible that the ʽmanyʼ who according to Lukeʼs preface had written Gospels, should all have worked away quite regardless of one another, and that Luke himself should merely have glanced at his predecessorsʼ writings, without using them as materials. And how are we to explain the fact that this stamp of uniformity extends to the very finest shades of the Greek idiom, whereas the tradition grew and took final shape only on Palestinian soil, and had no common meeting ground in the Greek world? Moreover, when we remember, first, the remarkable differences which appear in the tradition itself on comparing Paulʼs account²³ of the institution of the Last Supper and of the appearances of the Risen Christ with those given in Matthew, Mark and even in Luke, or, secondly, the fact that, scattered through Matthew and Luke, we may discover certain obvious literary peculiarities of Mark, our confidence in the ʽfixed traditionʼ as the sole common foundation of the three Synoptics completely disappears; the problem is far too complex to admit of a solution by so simple a formula.

The advocates of the theory of dependence, on the other hand—e.g. Griesbach and the Tübingen school—approach the matter from a diametrically opposite point of view; they seek to ascertain the relations between the three Synoptics, making the later dependent on the earlier, and declare that, since this dependence never becomes servile, the common matter must have been taken from the older Gospel and the variations have been added by the borrowers. The Tübingen school have the advantage here, inasmuch as their assumption that the Synoptics were party documents enables them to find a reasonable motive for the great majority of variations in the supposed dogmatic or ecclesiastical ʽtendencyʼ of the Evangelists. Unfortunately, however, the variations very seldom present any trace of such a tendency, and if the theory of dependence be not already ruled out by the fact that in the question of succession every possible grouping of the three Synoptists has been declared the only true one—for Mark has been placed now first, now second, as the adapter of Matthew, and again last of all, as the colourless abbreviator of both Matthew and Luke—we should yet be obliged to give it up on the ground that it has never explained the fact that in the parallels between Matthew and Luke, where Mark is not involved, Matthew appears to have been dependent on Luke and to have inspired him in an almost equal degree.

The hypothesis of an original Gospel—supported by Lessing, J. G. Eichhorn and others—is intermediate between the two former; it agrees with the first in denying the dependence of one Gospel upon another, and with the second in declaring it impossible to explain the relationship between the three Synoptics without presupposing the existence of an earlier written document, and not merely that of an oral tradition. It makes all three Synoptics dependent on a written source of this kind, and does not seek to identify it with any existing book of the New Testament—certainly an impossible point of view for the orthodox believers in Inspiration! This document is assumed to have been an original Gospel of great richness and antiquity, embracing the whole of the life of Jesus, and is identified by some with the Gospel to the Hebrews, or is at any rate considered to have been originally written in Hebrew. From this the three Synoptists are supposed to have drawn, and hence their similar construction and their countless points of agreement in details and in expression. But in order to explain the striking differences between the three, we are obliged to admit the existence of several successive editions of this original Gospel, and to assume that each Synoptist possessed a different one—a theory which in reality only shifts the difficulties out of the clear domain of the Canonical Gospels into the darkness of a vanished literature, a literature over which the imagination alone holds sway, and whose early and complete disappearance would not be far short of a miracle.

An improvement on this view is offered by the Fragment hypothesis of Schleiermacher, which affords a far more adequate recognition of the idea that a variety of sources lie at the bottom of the Synoptics, as well as of Lukeʼs reference to his many predecessors and of his criticism of them. He contends that not one Gospel only should be assumed as the fountainhead, but that in the earliest times there were a considerable number of scattered leaflets of very diverse bulk, upon which various persons had written down recollections of their intercourse with Jesus, or whatever they had heard from others in the way of sayings or unusually impressive deeds of the Lord. Such leaflets would naturally not have been preserved very long, and moreover whoever collected them must sometimes have lit upon duplicates which he did not recognise as such, because the accounts did not agree in every point, or perhaps even the occasion and the time were differently reported. If the Synoptists made use of as much of this floating literature as was accessible to them, it would certainly be conceivable that their reports would at times be word for word alike and at times entirely different, while the variations in the order would be especially easy to explain. But the existence of these fragments is more than doubtful; in the earliest times such aids to the memory would not have been required, and in the later men did not write down this or that particular saying, but made relatively complete collections of them. The verbal agreement between the Synoptics is altogether too far-reaching, each one of the Gospels too much of a whole, to warrant us in thinking that they were put. together out of a shifting mass of original fragments.

3. If, then, the older hypotheses are all found wanting, and if all of them, nevertheless, contain a grain of truth, we must obviously try combining them in order to get nearer to the whole truth. In the first place, the Synoptists would scarcely have made use of written sources only, but would all have had some connection with the oral tradition (which their younger contemporary Papias actually considered of more importance than the written); but it is still more certain that their Gospels were not written independently of one another—that one at least of them must have been known to the other two; certain also that they made use of a noncanonical written source as well—most probably, indeed, of several—so that the only question that remains is whether these sources should be regarded rather as fragments or as original Gospels. An improvement in the direction of the desire to avoid the one-sidedness of the older hypotheses has undoubtedly taken place in the Synoptic criticism of nearly all schools of theology; the only point of importance now is to distinguish accurately between those questions of the literary relationship of the Synoptics which can be answered by the modern school—brilliantly inaugurated as it was by C. H. Weisse and C. G. Wilke²⁴—and those which are not yet ripe for decision, i.e. which with the means at our command it is as yet impossible to answer definitely.

In this connection we must warn our readers against the superstition that everything in the Gospels can be unriddled and made logically clear by critical hypotheses. The Synoptists wrote as men, and every personality is a mystery beyond a certain point. It would be mere folly, for instance, to try and lay down beforehand the method which Luke must follow in dealing with his materials—that is, to throw over all the results of previous observation if once we met with something unexpected. Least of all in the case of the Synoptists ought we to hope for exact results, because their text has been modified to such an appalling extent in the way of emendations, harmonisations and additions— most of all, of course, that of Mark; in fact it is impossible to attempt any critical work with Lutherʼs text, and even the newest and best editions of the Synoptics contain perhaps hundreds of readings which have supplanted the original version—very early, it is true, but all the more thoroughly for that. If the original reading has been accidentally preserved in individual cases by one or two out of a hundred witnesses in the first ten centuries—by a Latin or a Syrian copyist, or by the Codex D—in other cases it must surely have disappeared without a trace; this is, on the one hand, a warning to us to be careful in drawing conclusions from isolated observations, and, on the other, it encourages us to set aside the timidity which only ventures to accept an hypothesis if it explains everything, and explains it in the most plausible manner possible.

4. Our first assertion is, that Mark was used as a primary source both by Matthew and Luke. The order of the individual sections in Mark corresponds best with the actual course of history, and it would certainly be strange if the simpler narrative should have come after the far more artificial grouping of Matthew or Luke. Besides, Matthew and Luke keep to the outline of Mark in all essential points, except that they make large insertions of their own²⁵—though at different stages—and occasionally make alterations in the order to suit their own arrangement. Thus Matthew in vv. iii. 11—iv. 22 follows Mark i. 7-20 very closely, but then leaves out all but i. 89 of Mark, in order to bring in the great Sermon on the Mount as an example of the preaching of Jesus, before returning again to Mark i. 29-ii. 22 in his eighth and ninth chapters. In this way the scene described in Mark i. 21-28, in which Jesus is recognised by the demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum, is cast aside, not, we may be sure, because Matthew had any objections to it, but because before the Sermon on the Mount he could find no room for it, in the miracle-stories of chap. viii. it was equally out of place, and afterwards he forgot it. The order of the separate sections in the collection of parables of Mark iv.²⁶ and Matthew xiii.²⁷ is also very instructive; Matthew brings in the whole of Mark except vv. 21-24, the essential points of which he had already introduced into chaps. v., vii. and x., while he replaces vv. 26-29 by what he considers a. truer version of the same parable, and enlarges Markʼs: parable of the grain of mustard-seed by that of the leaven. That Luke, too, is directly dependent upon Mark, and not merely through the medium of Matthew, is shown, for instance, as early as iv. 81-44, where Luke brings in four sections in exactly the same order as Mark i. 21-39, whereas Matthew omits two of them altogether and inserts the other two considerably later, in chap. viii. Another instance is afforded by Luke ix. 18-50, where the writer, after borrowing nothing from Mark since verse vi. 45, returns to him quite suddenly in order to reproduce the passage from viii. 27 to ix. 40,. regardless of the additions²⁸ and omissions²⁹ made by Matthew. Luke, on his side, only omits ix. 10-13—which Matthew had inserted at the same place as Mark—and this merely because the contentious questions of Pharisaic theology did not interest him.

But an exact study of the relationship of the Synoptics in the sections common to them all is far more convincing still. Let us take, for instance, the story of the man sick of the palsy.³⁰ Here each of the three has made a separate introduction for himself, but in Lukeʼs case some dependence on the ideas of Mark seems probable. After this, however, the similarity of the three accounts is so close that only dependence on a written source can explain it. Mark has three phrases—καὶ ἰδὼν τὴν πίστιν αὐτῶν,³¹ τι’ ἐστιν εὐκοπώτερον, εἰπεῖν . . . ἢ εἰπεῖν,³² and especially verse 10, ἵνα δὲ εἰδῆτε etc.—which are reproduced word for word in Matthew and Luke, while verse 5 corresponds equally closely with verse 2^b� of Matthew, and vv. 4, 7^b and 12^b� with vv. 19, 21^b� and 26 of Luke. Mark³³ and Luke³⁴ have the words ἐπιγνούς and διαλογίζεσθαι in common as against the ἰδών and ἐνθυμεῖσθαι of Matthew, and Lukeʼs ἐφ̓ὃκατέκειτο³⁵ is surely a reminiscence of Markʼs ὅπου ὁ παραλυτικὸς κατέκειτο.³⁶ What Matthew and Luke have in common as opposed to Mark, on the other hand, are the words ἐπὶ κλίνης,³⁷ where Mark uses the vulgar κράβαττος, εἶπεν³⁸ where Mark has λέγει, περιπάτει³⁹ for Markʼs ὕπαγε, and the repetition of the words εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ in the carrying out of Jesusʼ command. The effect upon the spectators is spoken of by Mark as an ἐξίστασθαι⁴⁰ and by Matthew as φοβεῖσθαι,⁴¹ while Luke calls it ἔκστασις and φόβου πλησθῆναι. That Markʼs account is here the earliest may be assumed from the very vividness of his description; he tells us of the lack of space, of the uncovering of the roof, and that the paralytic was ʽborne of four,ʼ while Luke only speaks of ʽmenʼ as bringing him in, and Matthew makes no mention of any agent at all. Can we suppose that Mark derived his report from the descriptions of both Matthew and Luke, and yet succeeded in producing the freshest and most living picture? If, moreover, we take the peculiarities of the wording into account as well, and compare the extent and nature of the material shared by Mark partly with Matthew and Luke, partly with Luke alone and partly with Matthew alone, his priority is established beyond a doubt; and the only question it is still impossible to decide from an examination of this passage is that of the relationship between Matthew and Luke.

Again, let us compare Mark ii. 18-22 (the calling of Levi [or Matthew], the visit of Johnʼs disciples, the twofold parable of the new piece of cloth and the new wine) with its equivalents in the other two⁴²; nearly half this passage is told in the same words by all three writers, save that Mark has a much fuller introduction, and repeats the idea of verse 19^a in a slightly different form in 19^b—a pleonasm which Matthew and Luke naturally have not imitated. Of the remaining part Mark shares about half with Matthew as against Luke: e.g. verse 15, ʽmany publicans and sinners sat down [to meat] with Jesus and his disciples,ʼ where Luke has ʽthere was a great multitude of publicans and of others,ʼ⁴³ though in the next verse he tells us, in conjunction with Mark and Matthew,⁴⁴ that both publicans and sinners were sitting at table with Jesus. The word ἰσχυόντες a little further down⁴⁵ is common to Mark and Matthew as against the ὑγιαίνοντες of Luke, while Mark 21 and Matthew 16 agree in such very unusual phrases —ῥάκους ἀγνάφου, αἴρει ἢ’τὸ πλήρωμα ἀπό, καὶ χεῖρον σχίσμα γίνεται—that all idea of chance is set aside. But Mark and Luke also agree in some points as opposed to Matthew: e.g. in the name Levi instead of Matthew, in the word νηστεύειν⁴⁶ instead of πενθεῖν,⁴⁷ in the antithesis between the new and the old,⁴⁸ and in the words ʽthe wine will burst the skins.ʼ On the other hand, Matthew and Luke keep together as against Mark only in the words διὰ τί⁴⁹ for Markʼs ὅτι, εἷπεν⁵⁰ for Markʼs λέγει, ἐπιβάλλει⁵¹ for ἐπιράπτει, and ἐκχεῖται καὶ ἀπόλλυνται�⁵² for the simple ἀπόλλυται of Mark. Such alterations, consisting almost entirely of the most obvious polishings and simplifications, Luke need not have copied from Matthew nor Matthew from Luke, while the agreement between Matthew and Mark more especially, even apart from the sentences common to all three, is far too minute to admit of any explanation but that of literary dependence.

In Markʼs version of the third prophecy of the Passion⁵³ there is much that agrees in every word with the reports of Matthew⁵⁴ and Luke,⁵⁵ but we are struck by the still greater amount of material common to Matthew and Mark only, while, on the other hand, the words ἐμπτύειν, ἀποκτενοῦσιν, ἀναστήσεται⁵⁶ of Mark are only to be found reproduced in Luke.⁵⁷� The only thing common to Matthew and Luke without Mark is the word εἶπεν, where Mark has ἤρξατο λέγειν.⁵⁸ In fact, an exact statistical examination of the points of agreement and disagreement between the three Synoptics in the passages common to them all—most convincingly so, for instance, in the story of the entry into Jerusalem and in the parable of the husbandmen—almost invariably yields the following results: Mark coincides with Matthew and Luke to an astonishing degree, while the two latter without Mark only agree in such things as the insertion of a δέ, the pleonastic repetition of a λέγοντες or an ἰδόντες, or the substitution of ἄγειν for φέρειν, ἐρεῖτε for εἴπατε, εἷπε for λέγει. for Neyer. This holds good for the last three chapters too, at least for those parts of them into which Matthew and Luke have inserted no fresh episodes; and hence we may conclude that Mark did not skilfully weave his stories together out of both Matthew and Luke—for then we should be forced to assume that with an extraordinary partiality he always chose out those portions which were common to both his predecessors, while to explain the origin of those portions we should have to resort to some entirely new hypothesis,—nor that he drew, together with Matthew and Luke, from some original source now lost to us, for in that case it would be equally extraordinary that he should, practically without exception, have appropriated to his own use precisely those portions which had also been selected thence by the other two. Mark, then, served as the source both for Matthew and Luke. On the whole, Matthew has borrowed more from Mark word for word than Luke has done, but we may best see how closely Luke clings to him too, in examining those sections which are only to be found in Mark and Luke.⁵⁹ Whether in the passages shared by Mark with Matthew and Luke or with only one of the two, it is almost always easier to understand the divergencies of Luke and Matthew from Mark on the supposition that the two former had Mark before them, than vice versa.

It is also for the most part superfluous to assume the existence of an additional authority for the alterations made by Matthew and Luke in the text of Mark. It is quite natural that they should have moulded his reports into a form better suited to their own interests and tastes, and thus they simply omitted anything which seemed to them questionable⁶⁰ or superfluously detailed.⁶¹ If, on the other hand, Matthew names the toll-gatherer summoned by Jesus, Matthew,⁶² while Mark and Luke speak of him as Levi; if Matthew introduces⁶³ into the discussion on the Sabbath an argument about the sheep falling into a well, which Mark does not know, and Luke brings in elsewhere,⁶⁴ or if Luke inserts at the end of a passage otherwise entirely dependent on Mark a verse peculiar to his Gospel alone—ʽAnd no man having drunk old wine desireth new, for he saith, “The old is good”’⁶⁵—these corrections and additions are certainly not due to the imagination of the writers, but still less do they prove that they had made use of another account besides that of Mark. They wove them in, either from some piece of oral tradition which seemed to them more trustworthy, or else because, having read them in some other written source, though in a different connection, they happened to call them to mind by a natural chain of thought just at these points.

This fact, then, that Matthew and Luke drew about half their material exclusively from Mark, can only be denied by those who neither can nor will form a true idea of the way in which these Evangelists went to work. In their eyes Mark was no sacred author whom they felt bound to copy down letter for letter—to quote, as it were. He belonged for them to the ʽmanyʼ predecessors to whom Luke was consciously superior, and if Matthew knew of fewer such, he yet believed that he had something more perfect to offer than they— including Mark—had produced. They gladly kept to the report of Mark, whom they valued as a well-informed Evangelist. They followed him in many very essential points, even down to his wording, and it never occurred to them to procure as many other narratives as possible for the verification or correction of his reports, and perhaps to adopt only such passages as did not contradict such other sources. They related quite freely and naïvely in their own tone things which they had often read in Mark, and they had no more fear of following him too closely than they had of differing from him in certain matters of fact. But besides the narrative of Mark, which held the first place in their affections, they were secretly influenced not only by their own personal interests, affections and literary peculiarities, but also by their education and training, especially by the Christian element therein. They must have heard tales and sayings of the Lord in other ways as well—in the church and in their private social intercourse—and much of this would remain firmly fixed in their memories. It would exert its influence on the way in which they reported this or that parallel passage of Mark, and sometimes, since these additional authorities can scarcely all have been bad, they may have preserved for us in their rendering of Mark, touches more primitive and more original than his.

5. But Matthew and Luke cannot be reconstructed only from Mark and a few scattered reminiscences from the preaching of the Gospel in the church. They have far too extensive a body of material in common which is unknown to Mark, and the literal agreement between them here is perhaps still greater than it was in those passages which they had deduced from Mark. In the extract from the preaching of the Baptist⁶⁶ there is scarcely a divergency between them. In the story of the temptation about half is identical in each, down to the very ʽκαὶ ἔστησεν ἐπὶ τὸ πτερύγιον τοῦ ἱεροῦ.’⁶⁷ The differences in the two reports of the parable of the talents⁶⁸ are much greater, but even here there is no lack of remarkable coincidences, as in the final judgment, ʽunto every one that hath shall be given,ʼ and in the antithesis between θερίζειν and σπείρειν, further back. In the parables of the thief and of the faithful and unfaithful stewards,⁶⁹ the differences in expression are again scarcely worth mentioning, and still more astonishing is the agreement between Matthew and Luke in the saying about the ʽsign of the prophet Jonah.ʼ⁷⁰ The short sayings of Jesus, too, most of which Matthew sweeps together into the Sermon on the Mount, while Luke has them scattered throughout his Gospel, are particularly interesting. Their literary relationship is obvious in nearly every case.⁷¹ Moreover, Matthew cannot here be regarded as the authority of Luke, or Luke as the authority of Matthew, but, as we might have concluded from the observations made at the time of our comparison of them with Mark, both are drawing from an older source. In a large number of instances Luke appears as the later amplifier and interpreter: e.g. in ix. 60, where he adds the words ʽbut go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of Godʼ to the saying of Matthew,⁷² ʽLeave the dead to bury their own dead,ʼ or in vii. 25, where he has ʽthey which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately,⁷³ instead of Matthewʼs mere repetition of the preceding phrase, “they that wear soft raimentʼ⁷⁴; or, again, in the explanation of the parable of the son who asked a loaf of his father,⁷⁵ where he promises the Holy Spirit as the gift of God, instead of the “good thingsʼ (ἀγαθά) of Matthew.⁷⁶ But, on the other hand, Lukeʼs authority cannot have been Matthew, for what should have induced him to break up the beautiful grouping of the latterʼs Sermon on the Mount and to insert the fragments at haphazard here and there? And the Lordʼs Prayer as given in Matthew⁷⁷ is to all appearances an amplification of Lukeʼs version⁷⁸—for who could credit Luke with an arbitrary curtailment of it? The ʽquadrans,ʼ too, of Matthew v. 26, is surely a later touch compared to the ʽmiteʼ (λεπτόν) of Luke xii. 59, and in Matt. vii. 22 the Logion of Luke xiii. 26 is simply taken and modified to suit the condition of a later generation. In a vast number of points, in short, we are strongly impressed with the belief that an old groundwork has been added to now by Matthew and now by Luke: e.g. in the saying ʽFor after all these things do the Gentiles seekʼ etc.⁷⁹ the words τοῦ κόσμου beside τὰ ἔθνη are certainly an addition of Lukeʼs, while Matthew must have inserted ὁ οὐράνιος beside ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν, ἁπάντων beside τούτων. and καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην beside τὴν βασιλείαν. Or, again, in the saying of Matt. xxiii. 23 and Luke xi. 42, the ʽmint, dill, and cumminʼ of Matthew looks older than the ʽmint and rueand every herbʼ of Luke, but, on the other hand, Lukeʼs ʽye pass over judgment and the love of Godʼ seems to deserve the preference over Matthewʼs modification, ʽye have left undone the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and faith (πίστις).ʼ

The abundant use by Matthew and Luke of a second written authority besides Mark can scarcely now be denied, but what sort of authority was it? Its name is of no importance (some call it a Logia document, others an Apostolic source), but the main question is, was it a complete Gospel like that of Mark? ʽThe answer to this question is undoubtedly in the negative, for there appears no trace of it in the stories of the Passion and the Resurrection; what Matthew and Luke tell us there apart from Mark⁸⁰ they certainly did not draw from a common document. Sayings of the Lord, sometimes loosely attached to an historical fact, are what Matthew and Luke derive thence, and their introductions of them generally differ so widely that one is tempted to believe that this document contained as a rule no introductions at all. In that case it would have been a collection of the sayings of Jesus, composed without any exercise of conscious art, though doubtless not without some regard to the internal connection between them —in fact, very much what we are led by Papias to imagine that the work of the Apostle Matthew was. As far as we can still reconstruct this source from Matthew and Luke, it may very well have been of Apostolic origin. It must, however, also have contained the story of the Temptation, for which it is absolutely necessary to assume that Matthew and Luke possessed a written authority other than Mark, and also an account of the preaching of the Baptist, which, to judge from Luke iii. 11-14, may even have been more detailed than that preserved in Matthew. Would this sort of material suit a collection of the Logia of Jesus? This may be affirmed without hesitation in the case of the three temptations, and, in spite of its legendary colour, we cannot say that the account is not such as an original Apostle might have believed and gladly transmitted; while in the other case it is quite easy to imagine, considering the close connection between the preaching of Jesus and that of John, that the document might have contained Logia of the Baptist before those of the Messiah. The interest it shows later on in the desert preacher—i.e. in Matt. xi. 2-19 and Luke vii. 18-35, a passage where the mutual relationship of Jesus and John is clearly brought out in both, and which is unknown to Mark— makes it very probable that it had already said something about him beforehand. The only real difficulty is that presented by the story of the centurion of Capernaum, whose servant Jesus heals from a distance.⁸¹ Certain very remarkable touches of Lukeʼs,⁸² which he certainly did not invent, are absent in Matthew, and altogether in the earlier part the points of contact between the two are not considerable, but from verse 8 of Matthew onwards, where the centurion speaks and Jesus addresses him and his own followers, the literary connection with Luke is unmistakable. Yet here the two Evangelists were not drawing from Mark; for to claim the passage, purely for convenienceʼ sake, as one originally belonging to Mark and then accidentally lost, is a very questionable proposal, particularly as the tone of Matthew 10-12 is entirely that of the other Logia. To presume a third authority for the sake of this one passage is not to be commended either, and we must therefore assume that the writer of the Logia document, in order to make the weighty words about the lack of faith in Israel and the many who should ʽcome from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heavenʼ quite clear, for once related the incident that gave rise to them more explicitly than usual. This one exception is not enough to make his book a Gospel like Matthewʼs, a counterpart of Mark, for, as is shown by another episode—that of the man with the withered hand⁸³—it is not always easy to draw the border-line between the words and deeds of Jesus.

We may say, then, that the second authority used in the Synoptic literature (which for convenienceʼ sake we will call Q): served the purpose of handing down to posterity certain precious sayings of the Lord in an authentic form. But since it was only reproduced very freely by Matthew and Luke, since its text is very seldom quoted literally by them, and since a complete absorption of its contents into the Gospels of the two borrowers is still less to be thought of, it is now impossible to reconstruct it. Its plan is as little determinable as its bulk, but it seems certain that the author did not arrange his collection upon a chronological principle, but grouped it catechetically according to its subjects: he wished to illuminate one after the other the main themes with which the teaching of the Church was concerned—such as prayer, confession, etc.—by means of sayings of the Lord. Of the character of Q we can only say that the incisive power and the unpretending simplicity of the words of Jesus are expressed in it to perfection. It contains no signs of the writerʼs having witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, but we may assume from Matthew xxiv. 43-51, and Luke xii. 39 fol., that he had already awaited the Parusia for a considerable. time in vain. The years between 60 and 70 would therefore seem the most convenient assignment for it.

The question as to whether the Apostle Matthew⁸⁴ or some other Christian familiar with the story of Jesus wrote down this book of Logia is of less importance than that of its language. Was it written in the Jewish tongue, and was it preserved unaltered for a considerable time? Since the agreement between Matthew and Luke is so particularly close, extending even to very unusual expressions, in the passages they borrow from this work, we are obliged to assume that they used a Greek translation of Q as their common source. Its Aramaic substratum is unmistakable, for in Matt. a ae for instance, the words ὠρχήσασθε—ἐκόψασθε rest upon an Aramaic word-play of ragedton and argedton.⁸⁵ And to my mind the question is settled by the fact that whereas Luke in one of the ʽWoesʼ on the scribes and Pharisees has ʽGive for alms that which is within,ʼ Matthew reads ʽCleanse first the insideʼ etc., a variant which is inconceivable as coming from the Greek, but perfectly natural if founded upon an Aramaic original, in which the words in question, zakki and dakkt, might easily have been confused. The substitution of alms-giving for cleansing is certainly characteristic of the taste of Luke, but even apart from the fact that he probably did not understand Aramaic, it is impossible to attribute to him the translation of Q into Greek. The facts would best be accounted for by assuming that Q was originally an Aramaic document composed by Matthew between the years 60 and 70, that it was shortly afterwards translated into Greek, and that several different versions of this translation were produced, some of which made corrections in it (like the καθάρισον of Matt. xxiii. 26) according to a better reading of the Aramaic text, others inserted supplementary matter, and others again made arbitrary or formal alterations. Wernle (who, by the way, does not regard Matthew as the author of Q, though he does attribute it to some member of the original Apostolic circle; and believes that not Aramaic, but Greek, was its original language) puts down to one of these revisers all the Judaistic elements in Matthewʼs borrowings from Q (examples of which, in their pristine crudity, he professes to recognise in v. 17-20, x. 5 fol. and xxiii. 3). He is certainly right not to regard the general tone of Q as Judaistic, but, on the contrary, to see in it the truest witness to the free and almost revolutionary Gospel of Jesus himself. But it is not likely that the Judaistic interpolations in Q should have sprung from a later hand; in go far as they are not really genuine words of Jesus they might far rather have been fragments of the tradition of the Primitive Community concerning him; the author of Q, no less than Matthew or Luke,⁸⁶ put another meaning upon them, and was not afraid of their misuse in the interests of party strife.

On the other hand, an Ebionite version of Q has been traced by some in those passages of Luke which, as is proved by their parallels in Matthew —e.g. by the Beatitudes and ʽWoes,ʼ to quote the first examples—are derived from this document, but take a far stronger tinge of hostility to the world and its pleasures in Lukeʼs case than in Matthewʼs. Additions of this kind, considering the growing inclination of the Church in this direction, may well have been the work of some reviser, just as they evidently suit the taste of Luke. But in them also a large part of the most genuine matter we possess from the mouth of Jesus may still linger; for the truth is that Jesus bore within himself something both of the Judaist and of the Ebionite, just as traces of both tendencies may be found in Matthew and in Luke. I shall not venture to trace the development of Q in detail as far as its final disappearance within the Canonical Gospels; but it is safe to assert that its course was chequered by not a few vicissitudes.

6. If we have here been able to acknowledge the truth that lies in the hypotheses of Dependence and an Original Gospel, we may now point out what is sound in the Traditionand Fragment-hypotheses. Owing to the possession of collateral authorities, we are in a position to know where Matthew and Luke followed Mark and where they used the Logia collection. But there still remain large sections— nearly a quarter of Matthew and Luke—which have no parallel anywhere else: part of these might of course still be derived from the « Original Matthew,ʼ for just as Matthew and Luke constantly differ in their selections from Mark, so it must have been with their treatment of the other authority. In the ʽWoesʼ against the Pharisees especially, there are many things peculiar to Matthew which convey the same tone as those which he shares with Luke, and we might also instance the Saying about the eunuchs,⁸⁷ or that about the right way to pray,⁸⁸ or Lukeʼs ʽI came to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I, if it is already kindled?ʼ which suit the tenor of the Logia document to perfection. But it would be a hopeless task to try and decide how far its influence extended over Matthew and Luke, when we can no longer control the one by the other. Certain it is thatin both may be found materials which they must have drawn from sources otherwise quite indefinable. The Birth-stories etc., in both,⁸⁹ the picture of the Day of Judgment in Matthew,⁹⁰ the above-mentioned additions in the last three chapters, and especially Lukeʼs insertions of the stories of Zaccheus,⁹¹ of the Samaritan village,⁹² and of Mary and Martha,⁹³ the parable of Dives and Lazarus⁹⁴� (which he had himself received in a version that altered its original point), and also his mention of the ministering women,⁹⁵ all bear a particular stamp, and must have had their special origin. Much of all this is manifestly the legendary product of later times, like the story of Judas, the guarding of the sepulchre, the appearance to the two disciples at Emmaus⁹⁶ and practically everything in the first chapters of both Luke and Matthew. Asa rule, the object of each story is unmistakable: that of the guarding of the sepulchre, for instance,⁹⁷ arose out of the desire to refute and retaliate upon the slander spread by the Jews that the disciples of Jesus had stolen his body in order to proclaim him risen from the tomb. But I doubt whether the Evangelists who have preserved these narratives for us were also their creators; however unmistakable is the hand of Matthew in i. 22 fol., for instance, or in ii. 5 fol., it is not likely that he would have invented these occurrences himself merely in order to bring in the words of a prophecy; he would rather have made use of fragments of tradition—probably oral—which had crossed his path, and subjected them, though with still greater freedom than he had shown in dealing with written material, to his own ideas and his own design. The genealogy of Jesus, with which Matthew opens his Gospel, serves a wholly different purpose, after all, from that of the story of his miraculous birth, which follows immediately upon it, and are we to suppose that Matthew invented both of these side by side? The anecdote of the payment of the half-shekel by Jesus and Peter—which Matthew alone preserves⁹⁸—ends with a very legendary touch, but I cannot believe that it has. no foundation in fact. The miracle of the fish is connected so superficially with a story otherwise fully worthy of Jesus, that if Matthew—in order to demonstrate the political loyalty of the Christians!—had composed it, he would indeed have surpassed himself. His method as a writer and his ʽtendenciesʼ would naturally gain the upper hand more easily when he was telling some edifying legend that he had never seen written down than when he was merely following a written authority; but it is only necessary to compare Matthew with the apocryphal Gospels of later times in order to realise the absurdity of the idea that he was at the same time a daring inventor of Logia or evangelic narrative, and a faithful copyist of existing written materials.

The same may be said of Luke. It is true that he has some independent invention; he alone is probably responsible for the bringing in of Herod into the trial of Jesus: kings and governors (βασιλεῖς καὶ ἡγεμόνες) were to attest the innocence of Jesus in order that now, at the time when Luke wrote, the innocence of Christians might be demonstrated before the same tribunals with greater vraisemblance. But then, again, he evidently owes the episode of the disciples of Emmaus, with its Aramaicisms and its reference to an appearance to Peter⁹⁹ (which the author himself certainly did not mean to make), to another hand; while his story of the Birth and Childhood is so distinct in style from the rest of the Gospel that if cannot be explained without assuming a different written authority for it. The exact personal information of villi. 1-3 must of course also have been founded on documentary reports, and in any case how could one seriously believe that Luke should wilfully have made use of only two of the many predecessors whose existence he was aware of? His first two chapters might have been in circulation by themselves among Christian communities—a ʽFragment,ʼ in Schleiermacherʼs sense—and it is possible, too, that he may have known and made use of a collection of parables, to which we owe the beautiful allegories of the Prodigal Son, of the lost piece of silver, of the unjust judge, of the Pharisee and the Publican, and of the Good Samaritan. According to his own prologue Luke took great pains over the collection of his material; but this would indeed be an empty boast if he had merely made a patchwork composition out of two original works of considerable bulk, which were certainly accessible to many of his readers, and had adorned it with a succession of his own inventions. It is probable, on the contrary, that he procured as many records as possible (ἀπομγημονεύματα), but he would also have gone round among the elders listening to their tales, in the manner of Papias, and he was proud of having secured a far more complete Gospel in this way than any others known to him. Matthewʼs procedure also must have been very similar to this, except that, as a rule, he did not obtain access to the same witnesses and evidence as Luke. Occasionally, of course, he may even have done this, or he may have heard such parables as those of the talents,¹⁰⁰ or the marriage-feast,¹⁰¹� by word of mouth, like Luke, who gives a remarkably different version of them.¹⁰² Or, again, one of them may have drawn from oral tradition what the other already possessed in a written form. It is impossible to say more on this point, except perhaps that Luke seems to recur more constantly to written authorities than Matthew. But to assume a special ʽEbioniteʼ source for Luke is quite unwarranted, because the Ebionite colouring pervades the whole of his Gospel from beginning to end, and is just as noticeable in the material he took from Mark and from the Logia document as in what he borrowed from anonymous sources.

7. Two questions still remain unanswered, even for those who, without accepting our proposed solution of the Synoptic problem as a piece of new ʽdogma,ʼ may yet feel it to be relatively the most probable—i.e. first, that of the mutual relationship between the two main authorities (Mark and Q) used by Matthew and Luke, and, secondly, that of the relation of these two Gospels to each other. According to the tradition, of course, Mark wrote from memory alone, merely reproducing the substance of Petrine lessons. And, on the other hand, it goes without saying that the man of the primitive Apostolic age to whom we owe the epoch-making collection of Sayings of the Lord, would not have used as his main authority a book so unproductive for his purpose as Mark, even granted that he knew Greek and was acquainted with the Gospel in question. The contrary would be by no means so improbable, in spite of the tradition. Professor Weiss does in fact assert that several passages common to all three Synoptics are derived from this ʽApostolic authority,ʼ so that occasionally of course Matthew or Luke might have preserved it in a more faithful form than the older Mark. The proofs he adduces in support of this theory from a number of narratives¹⁰³ (for he regards the authority, not as a mere collection of Logia, but as a true Gospel, though one which, curiously enough, possessed no ending) are not very convincing; and even where the sayings of Jesus seem to bear a more primitive stamp in Matthew or Luke, we can always explain this by the fact that many of them must have been widely known throughout Christendom long before Mark was written, so that even a copyist of Mark might by trusting his memory have handed down some things in a more primitive form than Mark himself. But no one will doubt that certain words of Jesus, like the parable of the sower in Mark iv., or a great deal of the eschatological discourse in Mark xiii., were already contained in the Logia document, for the idea that Mark never coincided with anything in the other authority, that none of the Logia he preserves found entrance into Q, is wholly unintelligible. If Q obtained recognition very rapidly in Christian circles, it is surely most natural to suppose that in those sections which were common to both, Markʼs narrative would have been moulded under its influence. Moreover the remarkably small space which is granted in his Gospel to the words of Jesus, rather leaves the impression that the writer did not attempt any completeness in that respect,—an idea which, considering the enormous value which every syllable from the lips of Jesus possessed, would only be possible on the supposition that the propagation of the Lordʼs sayings had already been provided for. Mark did not write his Gospel as a supplement to the Logia document, but as an independent work; still, this does not make it impossible that he half unconsciously took his predecessor into account. It is, however, not conclusively proved that Mark had any written authorities, more particularly the ʽgenuine Matthew,ʼ before him when he wrote. This would only be demonstrable if Matthew and Luke, in passages which were connected with undoubted portions of the earlier authority, but which were also to be found in Mark, agreed with one another against Mark so often as to exclude all idea of chance, and moreover presented a text which was obviously more primitive than his, so that Markʼs motive in ʽemendatingʼ it would become apparent. This case, however, does not exist, so that we cannot get beyond hypotheses. Luke xvii. 2 certainly gives the saying about ʽcausing-one of these little ones to stumbleʼ in a more primitive form than Mark ix. 42 or Matthew xviii. 6, and yet in language so similar to Markʼs that we are tempted to believe Lukeʼs version to have been identical with Q, which was then used as the foundation for Mark and through Mark for Matthew; but might not Lukeʼs text just as well have been a combination of Mark and Q?

In cases where similar observations may be made on narrative portions which cannot be referred to Q, (e.g. that a sentence of Markʼs, in opposition to the great majority of data to the contrary, occasionally seems to be dependent upon Matthew or Luke and to represent the later version) the hypothesis has been started of an Original Mark, which is supposed to have undergone a more thorough revision in accordance with later standards than either Matthew or Luke, so that in its canonical form it might sometimes appear as the later version beside its Synoptic parallels. It is true that Mark gives the saying of the ʽunforgivable sinʼ in a later form than the other two¹⁰⁴; he alone ventures no longer in the case of blasphemy against the Son of Man to give an express promise of forgiveness. Matthewʼs version, again, of the saying ʽI will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you (μεθ̓ ὑμῶν) in my Fatherʼs kingdomʼ¹⁰⁵ seems more primitive than Markʼs,¹⁰⁶ where the words ʽwith youʼ have disappeared (Lukeʼs version is still more modern in tone); but this verdict can only be applied to individual words or sentences in Mark, never to a complete passage, so that the data are insufficient to bear out this hypothesis of an Original Mark. The bad state in which the text of Mark has been handed down to us warns us to be careful, and it is always possible that im the case of material so widely known as this, the writer drawing from an earlier source may sometimes have corrected it from knowledge gained elsewhere, and so may even offer us a text identical with that from which his modelʼs had arisen, perhaps through mere misunderstanding.

8. Of the many ʽsubsidiaryʼ authorities used by Luke, Matthew may have been one—provided, that is, that Matthew was the earlier of the two, which has, however, not yet been proved.¹⁰⁷ It is certainly safe to say that if Matthew was in existence at the time when Luke wrote, the Third Evangelist could scarcely have overlooked so brilliant a work in the course of his laborious researches, still less have deliberately left it unused, presumably out of some dislike he bore to it. Moreover Matthew and Luke coincide in a few points where Mark and the Logia document no longer serve as authorities: both, for instance, add to the mocking cry ʽProphesy!ʼ of Mark xiv. 65 the words ʽwho is he that struck theeʼ¹⁰⁸— both give the words ἐζήτει εὐκαιρίαν¹⁰⁹ (of Judas) where Mark contents himself with an ἐζήτει . . . εὐκαίρως; the simile of the lightning, which both employ—though in different ways—in describing the angel who guards the sepulchre,¹¹⁰ is absent from Mark, and a few lines before¹¹¹ both use the by no means common word ἐπιφώσκειν to denote the earliest dawning of the day (though in Luke that day is the Sabbath and in Matthew the first day of the week). In the Birth-story the words of Matt. i. 21, ʽshe shall bring forth a son and thou shalt call his name Jesus,ʼ are almost identical in Luke.? Some have even thought they could discover in Luke original passages of Matthewʼs own composition, and this would constitute a proof. But it is impossible to tell what was Matthewʼs own composition and where he was drawing from oral or written tradition, and in some cases his authorities may have been equally accessible to Luke. In any case the latter did not pay very much attention to Matthew; he tells quite a different Birthstory, and varies from him almost as much in the last three chapters. All we can definitely say is, that the points of agreement between Matthew and Luke in passages which both draw from the same source only extend further than the substance of that source in minor details which both might have hit upon independently, and that the turns of phrase characteristic of Matthewʼs own hand cannot be proved to exist in Luke. Thus it is not very probable that Luke was acquainted with Matthew as one of the ʽmany,ʼ nor that Matthew made use of Luke. In my opinion, both took up their pens more or less simultaneously, each unaware of the otherʼs work, and both actuated essentially by the same motive, i.e. that of bestowing a Gospel upon the Church which should at once be complete, and well adapted both to refute unjust accusations from outside and to edify the believers themselves. The employment of the same main authorities by both is the strongest proof of the fact that, in spite of Luke i. 1, the choice was limited, and the connecting links between the two great Synoptists and the events which they described fragile and precarious. They appeared just in time to save some portion of the old inheritance.

1) Mark xi. 1 fol.

2) Mark ii, 1-22; Matt. ix. 1-17; Luke v. 17-39.

3) Mark iv. 35-v. 20; Matt. viii. 23-34 Luke viii. 22-39.

4) E.g., Mark i. 7 fol., Matt. iii. 11 and Luke iii. 16; Mark ii. 10, Matt. ix. 6. and Luke Vv. 24; Mark ii. 22, Matt. ix. 17, Luke v. 37 fol.; Mark viii. 35, Matt.. xvi. 25, Luke ix. 24; Mark xiv. 48, Matt. xxvi. 55, Luke xxii. 52^b.

5) Matt. iii. 7^b-10 and 12, Luke iii. 7^b-9 and 17.

6) Matt. viii. 9, Luke vii. 8.

7) Matt. xi. 4-6, Luke vii. 22 fol.

8) Mark x. 37-40, Matt. xx. 21-23.

9) Mark vi. 56, Matt. xiv. 36.

10) Mark i. 23-25, Luke iv. 33-35^a

11) Mark xii. 43^b fol. Luke xxi. 3 fol.

12) Mark xii. 44, Luke xxi. 4, ἐκ τοῦ περισσεύοντος αὐτοῖς ἔβαλον; Mark vi. 56, Matt. xiv. 36, ἵνα ἅψωνται τοῦ κρασπέδου τοῦ ἱματίου αὐτοῦ; Matt. iii. 12, Luke iii. 17, τὸ πτύον ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ, διακαθᾶραι τὴν ἅλωνα αὐτοῦ; Mark xiii. 25, Matt. xxiv. 29, Luke xxi. 26, αἰ δυνάμεις . . .  σαλευθήσονται,, which is a quotation from Isaiah xxxiv. 4, rendered, however, in the Septuagint τακήσονται; and finally Mark ii. 3, Matt. xii. 1, Luke vi. 1, ʽthrough the cornfields,ʼ διὰ σπορίμων.

13) Mark iii. 1-6; Matt. xii. 9-14; Luke vi. 6-11.

14) xiii. 33.

15) xiii. 31.

16) iv. 31.

17) xiii. 18 fol.

18) xii. 1-14.

19) Luke xv. 3-7; Matt. xviii. 12-14.

20) xx. 1-16

21) xxv. 31-46,

22) viii. 22-26

23) 1. Cor. xi. and xv.

24) In Der Urevangelist, 1838.

25) Matt. v.—vii.; Luke vi. 20-viii. 3 and ix. 51—xviii. 14.

26) Vv. 1-34.

27) Vv. 1-35, and cf. Luke viii. 4-18.

28) Matt. xvii. 24-26.

29) Mark ix. 38-40.

30) Mark ii. 1-12; Matt. ix. 1-8; Luke v. 17-26.

31) Verse 5.

32) Verse 9.

33) Verse 8.

34) Verse 22.

35) Verse 25.

36) Verse 4.

37) Matt. verse 2; Luke uses κλινίδιον, vv. 19 and 24.

38) Matt. vv. 2 and 4.

39) Verse 5.

40) Verse 12.

41)� Verse 8.

42) Luke v. 27-39; Matt. ix. 9-17.

43) Verse 29.

44) Mark 16; Matt. 11.

45) Mark 17; Matt. 12.

46) Mark 19; Luke 34.

47) Matt. 15.

48) Mark 21^b; Luke 36.

49) Matt. 11.

50) Matt. 12.

51) Matt. 16.

52) Matt. 17; Luke has ἐκχυοήαεηι καὶ ἀπολοῦνται, verse 37.

53) Mark x. 32-34.

54) Matt. xx. 17-19.

55) Luke xviii. 31-34.

56) Verse 34.

57) Vv. 32 fol.

58) Verse 32.

59) E.g., Mark ix. 38-40 =Luke ix. 49 fol.; Mark xii. 41-44 = Luke xxi, 1-4.

60) E.g., Mark ix. 39, ʽfor there is no man which shall do a mighty work in my name, and be able quickly to speak evil of me.ʼ

61) E.g., Mark xi. 14: ʽAnd his disciples heard it;ʼ xi. 16, xii. 43: τῶν βαλλόντων εἰς τὸ γαζοφυλάκιον, or the note prefixed by Mark, τὰ μέλλοντα αὐτῷ συμβαίνειν, to the speech of Jesus in x. 32.

62) Verse ix. 9.

63) xii. 11 and 12^a.

64) xiv. 5.

65) Luke v. 39

66) Matt. iii. 7^b-10, 12; Luke iii. 7^b-9, 17.

67) Matt. iv.5; Luke iv. 9.

68) Matt. xxv. 14-30; Luke xix. 11-27.

69) Matt. xxiv. 43-51; Luke xii. 39-48.

70) Matt. xii. 39-45; Luke xi. 29^b-32.

71) E.g., Matt. vii. 11 and Luke xi. 13; Matt. vi. 29 and Luke xii. 27^b; Matt. Vv. 26 and Luke xii. 59; Matt. xi. 12 fol. and Luke xvi. 16.

72)viii. 22.

73) ὑπάρχοντες, a word which, while absent in Matthew and Mark, is thoroughly characteristic of Luke.

74) Matt. xi. 8.

75) Luke xi. 13.

76) vii.11.

77) vi. 9-13.

78) xi. 2-4.

79) Matt. vi. 32 fol.; Luke xii. 30 fol.

80) E.g., Matt. xxvii. 3-10 and 62-66 (the repentance of Judas and the guarding of the sepulchre), and Luke xxiii. 40-43 (the conversation with the malefactor) and xxiv. 13-3 (the disciples at Emmaus).

81) Matt. viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 1-10 and xiii. 28 fol.

82) vii, 3-5.

83) Matt. xii. 9-14; Luke xiv. 1-16.

84) See p. 307.

85) Cf, Matt. xii. 41 fol. and Luke xi. 31 fol.

86) Esp. xvi. 17. ʽBut it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the Law to fail.

87) Matt. xix. 10-12.

88) Matt. vi. 5-8.

89) Matt. i. and ii.; Luke i. and ii.

90) Matt. xxv. 31-46.

91) Luke xix. 1-10.

92) Luke ix. 51-56.

93) Luke x. 38-42.

94) xvi. 19-31.

95) Luke viii. 1-3.

96) Luke xxiv.

97) Matt. xxvii.

98) xvii. 24-27.

99) xxiv. 34.

100) xxv. 14-30.

101) xxii, 1-14.

102) xix, 11-27, xiv. 15-24.

103) E.g., from that of the man sick of the palsy, Mark ii. 1 etc.; from the feeding of the five thousand, Mark vi. 35 etc., and from the healing of the blind man, Mark x. 46 etc.

104) Mark iii. 28 fol.; Matt. xii. 31 fol.; Luke xii. 10.

105) Matt. xxvi. 29.

106) xiv. 25.

107) See pp. 381, 382.

108) Matt. xxvi. 68; Luke xxii. 64.

109) Matt. xxvi. 16; Luke xxii. 6.

110) Matt. xxviii. 3; Luke xxiv. 4.

111) Matt. xxviii. 1; Luke xxiii. 54.