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day-if His future really included that unparalleled experience it is by no means inconceivable that a person with a destiny so extraordinary should have contemplated and spoken of it. If the certainties with which we start are that Jesus was only a human being, exactly like the rest of us, and that He had no resurrection on the third day, but only came to life again in the hearts of His followers, then Mark 8 27 to 10 5 must seem radically 827 untrue. But so must a great deal more in the life of Jesus-so must everything, in short, which connects that life with Christian faith. But these certainties are assumed, not proved, and we can approach with unprejudiced minds this as all the other parts of the gospel. It is not doing anything but justice to the whole of the facts involved if we say that we ought to have a bias in favour of what connects Christianity with Jesus, rather than in favour of ideas which fix a great gulf between them.

The priority of Mark to Matthew and Luke, its relation to Peter, and its date in the sixties, are the first important conclusion of gospel criticism. There is a second which is perhaps even of higher interest. A comparison of Matthew and Luke shows not only that each of them has embodied practically the whole of Mark, but that each of them has also in common with the other a large quantity of matter which is not found in Mark. This matter consists in the main of words of Jesus, and it is pretty generally agreed that besides Mark, which supplied them with the narrative outline which they follow, Matthew and Luke used a second source which supplied them with reports of Jesus' teaching. Many attempts have been made to reconstruct this document, but naturally with precarious results. It is easy to take the first step, and to refer to it all the matter which is

1 For the two latest, v. Harnack's Sprüche und Reden Jesu; B. Weiss, Die Quellen der synoptischen Ueberlieferung.

common to Matthew and Luke, but wanting to Mark. But this does not take us far. It is quite possible that one of the evangelists may have made extracts from it which the other ignored. For example, it contained an account of the ministry of the Baptist from which both. certainly borrowed. But what of the differences between Matthew and Luke at this point? Matthew alone tells us of a reluctance on John's part to baptize Jesus (Matt. 314f) was this found in the source common to him and Luke, but passed over by the latter? Luke alone gives a report of John's teaching to the multitudes, to publicans, and to soldiers (310-14): was this found in the common source, and similarly passed over by Matthew? We cannot tell. The document which both our evangelists use may have been more comprehensive than they enable us to see. If we notice the way in which they make use of Mark, a document which we have in our hands, we may even infer that it was possible for them to omit what we should regard as very characteristic or interesting things. For instance, neither takes over from Mark the fact that Jesus called the sons of Zebedee sons of thunder; neither mentions the irreverent exclamation of His friends, He is beside himself; neither reproduces the beautiful parable of the seed growing spontaneously, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear; neither records the singular miracles of 31 ff., 8 22 ff.. The story of the widow's mites, which is borrowed by Luke but not by Matthew, shows us how one could take what the other left, and though the natural inclination (we might think) would be to take everything good for which there was room, it is obviously possible that there may have been things overlooked by both. The one question of great interest here is whether this lost. document contained an account of the Passion of Jesus. Scholars are divided. B. Weiss, who has given unusual at

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tention to the subject, thinks it did not; and he has been followed by the majority, including Harnack. Professor Burkitt, on the other hand, inclines to believe it did. While admitting that not a single phrase in the last three chapters of Matthew can be supposed to come from this lost source, he points out that some of the peculiar matter in the twenty-second chapter of Luke is actually given in earlier chapters of Matthew: in other words, there is found in Luke, chapter 22, matter which comes from this lost source. But if it be the case, as it really seems to be, that Luke gives his extracts from this source xa0€,s -in the order in which he found them-it is clear that the source did tell things about the Passion, and so was in some sense a gospel as truly at Mark.'

The question, though interesting, is not vital. It is of less consequence to know the exact compass of the document than to be acquainted with its date and authorship. Until quite recently it was held by all who admitted its existence to be older than Mark. Opinions differed as to whether he had or had not made use of it in his work, but its antiquity was unchallenged. The opinion, too, was widely spread that it was of apostolic authorship. It was connected, perhaps ingeniously, perhaps also soundly, with another of the traditions of the Elder John preserved by Papias. We have already quoted what this elder, an immediate disciple of Jesus, says about Mark. 'But concerning Matthew,' Eusebius proceeds in his quotation from Papias, 'the following statement is made [by him]: so then Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as he could.'' The expression

1 Weiss, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, § 45; Die Quellen der synoptischen Ueberlieferung, 1-96; Harnack, Sprüche und Reden Jesu, 88-102; Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission, 133; Journal of Theological Studies (Review of Harnack), viii. 454.

2 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii. 39. The translation is again from Professor Gwatkin.

'composed the oracles' is probably identical in meaning with 'wrote his gospel'; but the term 'oracles' suggests that the main interest of the work in question is to be found in the words of divine authority which it contains. The description would suit quite well such a document as the vanished source used in common by our first and third evangelists; and as our first gospel, in the form in which we have it, is certainly not a translation from Hebrew (or Aramaic), but a writing based chiefly on two sources, Mark and the one we are now discussing, which lay before the compiler (as they lay before Luke) in Greek, it was open to any one to propound the hypothesis that the words of Papias referred not to our first gospel but to the Aramaic original of the source common to it and Luke-a source which would thus be of immediate apostolic authorship, the work of Matthew the publican. The first gospel owes its characteristic peculiarity to the fact that it amasses the oracles of the Lord and presents them so as to minister to the needs of the Church; and as preserving in a suitable historical framework the substance of the publican apostle's work, it might reasonably, though not with strict accuracy, be called the gospel according to Matthew. This combination of the data gains in plausibility when we consider that the lost source under consideration originally existed in an Aramaic form;1 and although, in the nature of the case, it does not admit of demonstration, it has in the judgment of the writer a far higher degree of probability than any other hypothesis with which he is acquainted.

It would, of course, be thoroughly discredited if we could accept the conclusion of Wellhausen, who from internal evidence infers that the lost source of Matthew and Luke was somewhat inferior to Mark in age, and altogether inferior to it in authority. His most im

1 See Wellhausen's notes on Luke 6 23, 1141.

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portant argument is the general one that the process of 'Christianising' the material, which in Mark is practically limited to the section chapter 8 27-10 45, has in this document been carried through from beginning to end. Jesus everywhere speaks to His disciples as Christians, and that in a predominantly esoteric fashion. It is not only when He has His Passion in view that He reveals Himself to them as the Messiah who is destined to pass through death to glory; on the contrary, He comes forward as Messiah from the first; His preaching throughout is directed to this end-to found His Church, and in doing so to lay the foundation of the Kingdom of God upon earth. What has been already said of Wellhausen's estimate of the 'Christian' section of Mark can be applied here also: even if we find in the source with which we are concerned features which prove that there was no solution of continuity between the life of Jesus and the life of the Church, we shall not for that reason hold that such features are necessarily unhistorical. We shall not feel obliged to argue that the Church has carried back its faith and experience into the life of Jesus, and is putting its own mind into the lips of its Master. Even if it were the case--which we do not believe-that the lost document was more recent than Mark, it would be a stupendous and groundless assumption that Mark meant to tell us all that was really known of the words and deeds of Jesus; and that everything in Matthew or Luke which goes beyond him was either unknown to him or regarded by him as of no value. The contents of the source which Matthew and Luke used in common besides Mark did not come into existence in a moment. They were not produced out of nothing by the author who wrote them down. It is as certain as anything can be in history that in substance. 1 Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, 84.