and his disciples by the apostles, says, "It required a stationary dwelling and more tranquil life than they enjoyed."* Let us apply this remark to Matthew. In Galilee he had a stationary dwelling, and from his profession must have had all the means and appliances for recording events: notwithstanding the conciseness of his narration, there are indications which show that parts of it were originally written in Galilee. Where, for instance, but in Capernaum, would the eastern shores of the lake be termed "the other side" (rò épav)? But in Jerusalem he was deprived of these advantages. We can easily believe, therefore, that he did not commit anything to writing in that city, and that, if called upon after a lapse of years to draw up a narrative of the events, he would be obliged to avail himself of the accounts of the apostles who had committed them to writing at the time, or soon after.

Now, what are the facts of the case, so far as they affect the agreement of the two first Gospels? In the Galilean portion there is much agreement that is not documentary, and the events are arranged in a different order in each Gospel; but in the Judean portion the agreement is altogether documentary, and the arrangement the same. This change in the nature of the agreement coincides precisely with the departure of our Lord and his disciples from Galilee, and is easily accounted for by the circumstances under which we must suppose the first Gospel to have been composed. Mark's (Peter's) account of the last journey to Jerusalem, and of the subsequent events which took place there, forms one continuous narrative, which has been embodied in Matthew's account; hence the sequence of the events is the same. But St Matthew, although he may not have written an account at the time, was himself present; accordingly, we find that whilst he has made the memoir in question the basis of his account, he has added much important matter of his own. The departure from Galilee is related in Matthew, in chap. xix. ver. 1, and in

* Einleitung, p. 222.

Mark, chap. x. ver. 1, the subsequent narrative forming ten chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, and six chapters and eight verses of Mark's.

In the above quoted surmise of Schleiermacher we find a probable reason for the silence of the first three Gospels respecting the earlier visits of our Lord to Jerusalem, whilst the overwhelming importance of the events accounts for our having more than one written account of the last.

I conclude, therefore, that Matthew knew and made use of the memoir which Mark afterwards translated in the composition of his Gospel; but if Mark translated it, it must have existed in a different language when Matthew wrote. How, then, do we account for the very considerable amount of verbal agreement which subsists between their Gospels? I account for it thus:

When it became necessary to publish to the world a written account of the events, the duty of drawing it up naturally devolved upon Matthew, who must have been, of all the apostles, best fitted for its performance. A Jew, holding office under the Roman government, he must have been accustomed to record events both in his own language, the Hebrew, and in Greek, which, in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, was the language of government. In doing so, he would, as a matter of course, avail himself of the writings of any of the other apostles who had recorded the events at which he was not present, or had not himself recorded. St Matthew's account, published under such circumstances which are, in fact, the same as those mentioned in the Fathers-must have been held by the early Christians as the authorised apostolical account of the life of our Lord; and, accordingly, if we refer to the apostolic and earliest of the post-apostolic fathers, it will be found that by far the greatest number of the quotations from the New Testament are from St Matthew. But, as already observed, Matthew's rule in composing his Gospel was to give the words of our Lord as they were spoken, but to condense the narrative. Hence, when he took our Lord's words from the original memoir in question, he translated,

but did not condense them, as he did the narrative. Now, when we remember the weight and authority which must have attached to the apostolic report of the discourses of our Lord, and which the constant reference to it by the earliest Christian writers proves to have attached to it, we see that Matthew's Greek version of Peter's original would, with all who used the Greek language, have the same preference which we are accustomed to give to our own authorised version; and any change in the expressions would jar upon the feelings of the early Christians, as a similar change in the words of our Lord we are accustomed to would upon an English reader. We can see a good reason why, if St Mark was the translator of Peter, he should have preserved the words of Matthew when he could do so. The same reasoning, of course, applies to St Luke. Hence the fact so well known to biblical critics, that there is a much greater verbal agreement in the discourses of our Lord than in the narration, is precisely what we ought to have expected if the evangelists wrote under the circumstances which I suppose them to have done.

The progress of the inquiry brings us to the Gospel of Mark. Having already explained the nature of its connection with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, nothing more remains than to state the proofs that it is a translation of an original memoir, written by an eyewitness, and that Mark the evangelist is literally "the translator of Peter."

It cannot be said that I am here starting a hypothesis. unknown to the ancients. The difficulty hitherto experienced by critics has not been to discover proofs that the second Gospel was the Gospel of Peter, but to discover reasons by which they might explain why, in ancient times, it was so called.

Before entering upon the proof, I must request the reader to keep in mind, that if the Gospel of St Mark be a translation of an original memoir, there must be two distinct classes of phenomena to be accounted for-namely, those which relate to Mark the translator, and those which relate to the original author of the memoir. Had Mark been merely a translator, the task of

deciphering the phenomena would have been comparatively easy. But he is also an editor and continuator. There has been added to the original work the title i. 1, the continuation xvi. 9, &c., and explanations of Jewish terms and Jewish customs, which, in a modern work, would have formed marginal notes, but which are here, according to the practice of the ancients, included in the body of this work. These comments are all such as would be required to render the work intelligible to Roman readers, and strongly confirm the statement of Irenæus, quoted by Eusebius, H. E., v. 8, that the Gospel of Mark was first published at Rome, after the death or departure of Peter—μετὰ τὴν τούτων ἐξόδον.—Contra Haer. iii. 1.

Critics who reason from those portions of the second Gospel which are Mark's own, must infer that it is later than Matthew, and probably than Luke; those, on the other hand, who reason from the historical details, must infer that it precedes Matthew. There is no contradiction in these inferences, if the Gospel of Mark be the translation of an original autoptical memoir. I do not, however, assume that it is, for the purpose of reconciling these opposite conclusions. I maintain that the phenomena exhibited in the parallel passages prove that an original, in a different language, must have existed, upon precisely the same grounds as I maintain that Suchet's Memoirs must have existed in another language before that work was used by Alison.

Such phenomena can only be accounted for by the existence of an original writing in another language. This is not a hypothesis contrived to afford an explanation, but a matter capable of proof. The existence of translational phenomena proves the existence of a written original, for on no other supposition can the phenomena be accounted for. A person may be so ignorant as never to have heard of the Iliad of Homer, and may suppose Pope's Iliad to be an original poem; but let him compare it with any other translation, and its existence in another language is proved. We have the very same proof of the existence of an original in the case in question in the Gospels.

D

Let us, for example, compare St Luke's version of the Parable

of the Widow's Mite with that of St Mark, which I translate literally.

The information in Mark's account, that two lepta (mites, E. T.) are equivalent to a quadrans (farthing, E. T.), is an editorial addition for the information of Roman readers, otherwise it is evident that here we have two versions of the same. written original.

I now proceed to show that Mark is the translator of Peter. The earliest notice of this evangelist, in any ancient author, is

*

* The existence of the Gospels in the age anterior to Papias would be fatal to the mythical theory. Strauss, accordingly, tries to prove that the Mark of Papias, or rather of John, is not the Mark who wrote the Gospel. According to him, "Our second Gospel cannot have originated from Peter's instructions-i. e. from a source peculiar to itself—since it is evidently a compilation, whether made from memory or otherwise, from the first and third Gospels. As little will the remark of Papias, that Mark wrote without order (ov Táέei) apply to our Gospel; for he cannot, by this expression, intend a false chronological arrangement, since he ascribes to Mark the strictest love of truth." The first of these arguments rests upon the ipse dixit of Griesbach, who, according to Strauss, has demonstrated that Mark is entirely taken from Matthew and Luke. I humbly think I have shown that it is impossible that this can be so. With regard to the last argument, that the description of Papias does not agree with that of Mark, who wrote the Gospel, it is due to the ingenuity of Schleiermacher, although unacknowledged-an ingenuity which discovers difficulties where it would puzzle duller spirits even to suspect any. What are the facts of the case tending to show that the Mark of Papias is the evangelist Mark? Irenæus tells us that Mark's Gospel began and ended precisely as our present Gospel does.