Advocates of the oral theory allege the reten- tiveness of Eastern memories, and the habit of preserving orally the Rabbinic traditions, or the instances, common among Mohammedans, of being able to repeat the whole or large portions of the Koran. But it should be remcmbereil that what has to be explained in the i)re.sent ca.se is, not the pre8er\"ation of a record atter its very words had come to be regarded as sacred, but the process itself of forming the fixed tradition. Could it have been fixed down to so many mere turns of expression as the result of the work of the ai>ostles' teaching and preaching freely? .-\nd wouht either they or their immediate fellow-workers in instruct- ing others have had any reason to insist on the reproduction of what they taught vnth that sort of uniformity?
Again, it is said that the oral theory alone will account for the iliirerences between tlie Gospels. But the force of this argument seems to depend on ado|iting a point of view which is too much that of our own time. The writers of our tJospeU would feel tliem.selves to be far more nearly on a level with tho.se of the documents (assuming that they had such before them) which they used, than men of later generations could. Aud it it till- iiiiturnl tendency of historians who embod,F
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GOSPELS
matter from other ^\Tit^n!,'s in their own works to abbreviate parts of it, to improve the stylo, or at least to alter it in accordance with tlieir own habits of expression, and at times, after picturing to themselves the scenes described, to represent them in their own way. Many of the dillerences between Mk and the two other Synoptic Gospels are of this character. This is especially the cose in regard to Lk, tlie dillerences between which and Mk are, as has been said, the greatest. More- over, even in the case of intentional quotation, there was in ancient times less desire for scrupu- lous accuracy in regard to the exact words used than there is at the present day.
(4) The Source or Sources of the matter common to Mt and Lk. — The phenomena here are in various respects dillerent from those examined under tlie last head, and other considerations have to be ajiplied to them. The material in question forms such a distinct mass that even on the oral liyjio- thesis it must be supposed to have been collected and shaped separately from that account of the life and work of Christ upon which our attention has so far been fixed, and to have been subsequently in the first and third Gospels combined there- with. And indeed we may, with at least as good reason as before, attribute an important share to the influences of the period of oral teaching in forming the body of tradition now in question, though the needs to be met were dillerent from tliose which called forth a general presentation of our Lord's work. Disciples who were familiar with the main facts of His life w ould be impelled to recur again and again to His precepts, whicli were to be the guide and support of their lives. Those sayings especially would be called to mind and repeated which set forth the character that was to distinguish the true followers of Christ, or which gave an authoritative decision in matters of ordinary conduct, or which inculcated the spirit that was to govern the members of the infant Christian communities in their relations with one another, or prescribed the rules that were to guide the missionaries of the gospel, or which afforded a solace and stay under persecution and sorrow, or, lastly, which spoke of that great consummation, that coming of the Lord and judgment upon an evil world, for which their hearts yearned so eagerly. In \'iew of these wants, it would be exceetlingly probable that sayings, parables, and discourses upon these themes should soon come to be put together and handed on in the shape of larger or smaller collections even before they were written down (cf. Weizsiicker, Apost. Zeitalter, pp. 369-401). They would form, as it were, a body' of divine law, treasured in the communities of Christians. The form and contents of the dis- courses in Mt speci.ally suggest this origin. Other traits appear in Lk which would also be natural after such a history of the preservation of the material.
But can the resemblances between these two Gospels be explained solely on the oral theory? Those who think so have a stronger case here than in regard to the resemblances between the same Gospels and Mk. There the close paralleli.'^m between tlie sequence of sections furnished a strong argument against that theory ; here the great dis- similarity of ^rrangement is a serious difficulty in the way of the bypotliesis that the same document was used by both evangelists. There, again, the similarity is found in ordinaiy narrative ; here the matter in question consists almost entirely of Christ's own teaching, which would be likely to be preserved with special accuracy even in oral repetition. Nevertheless, there is in a consider- able portion of the passages under consideration an amount of verbal agreement which it is hard
to account for without supposing some intervention of writing.
15y those who suppose that the use of a single documentary source, which contained all this matter, will explain the i)henomena, efforts are made to reconstruct that document through a critical comparison of Mt and Lk. In each it may certainly have been altered in difl'erent ways and at dillerent points; and it will be fair to remember that the divcrjjence between th.; two Gospels, as they now lie oefore us, would in all probability be greater than that between either of them and the common source. Furthei', many pieces of teaching in it may have been introduced by formulas such as 'Jesus said,' which specified no particular occasion. The recently discovered Oxjrhynchus fragment atlbrds an ilfustration ol sayings so compiled. The very dillerent positions which the s,ame sayings occupj' in the first and tliird Gospels may thus be less inconsistent with their derivation from a common document than we at first fancy. Possibly, it would not ha\e been necessary for either of the evangelists to do sucli violence to the source as we may be inclined at first to fancy, in pursuing different pl<"is in the arrangement of^ their material. That the first was inclined to mass together similar material, seems to be rendered probable by the fact that there are one or two cases in which pieces of teaching from Mk and from another source seem to have been woven together in Mt, which in Lk remain separate. Thus Lk has an account of a charge to the Twelve ('fi'^) which is closely parallel to Mk C*''^. He has also an address to the Seventy in eh. 10. Now, the substance of v-v."'" of the latter is found woven witli the substance of Mk 6'" in Mt lO'"'*. Something of the same kind may perhaps be observed on com- paring Mt 24. 25, "Mk 13'-^', Lk 21»-^ IV^"" 12»'-«» 1912-28 Yg(;_ ^Q show how cautious we must be in drawing inferences, it may be worth while to observe that in Lk 10'»-'» compared \y\Vn Mt 10" and II*''*', the usual parts, so to speak, of the two evangelists are reversed.