In connexion with the question before us, the greater or less clearness and naturalness of the contexts in which the same sayings occur in Mt and Lk respectively must also be taken into account. But this is a subject on which there is ■wide diversity of view. To the present writer it seems that the connexions are far more often obscure and difficult in Lk than in Mt. But however this may be, and when every allowance has been made which our ignorance of the actual form of the common document may suggest, it remains very ditficult to believe either, on the one hand, that any one in the circle in which the first Gospel must have been composed should have emplo3-ed the amount of literary art and labour necessary to construct the discourses found in that Gospel out of fragments ; or that, on the other hand, the third evangelist, if he had tliose wholes before him, should have felt it to be his duty to break them up.
Moreover, the hypothesis that the two evan- gelists derived all this matter from the same document, is as incapable as the oral theory of explaining the singular phenomenon referred to above as to the degree of agreement in diU'erent parts (see i. (1) (b)). For the character of the sub- ject-matter in the two classes of parallel passages aflbrds no reason for either evangelist having pre- served it with so much less fidelity in the one case than in the other. It would seem to be more possible to account for the facts by 8U[)posing that two compilations which had in the main an independent history, though copies of some of the same written fragments have passed into each,
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have been embodied in the lirst and third Gospels respectively.
(5) SoTne subsidiary features of relationship. — There are no groups of facts indicative of con- nexion between the Synoptic Gospels, or between pairs of them, wliich are at all comparable in extent and prominence with those discussed under the two last headings. A few others, however, which need investigation must be briclly noticed.
(a) In spite of the signs of 'prioritj'' in Mk on the wliole, tliere are ca-ses in which Mt or Lk or both of them have a stronger appearance of origin- ality in |)articular words, or turns of expression, and even in the character of a whole section. Mk l«)-48 OI-13 31-6^ compared witli their parallels, may be taken as examples. Similarly, there are in- stances in wliich 3lk has words or phrases not like his usual style, and which occur more fre- quently in one or both the others {e.g. i jrarijp 6 if ToU oCpavoU in Mk ir-^=Mt 6". It appears only here in Mk, but is common in Mt).
(6) Again, altliough the records of Christ's teach- ing are so much more limited in Mk than in Mt and Lk, that Gospel has, in certain cases, accounts of discourses winch, so far as they extend, are closely parallel with Mt and Lk ; at the same time, the accounts of these two are longer and, to a greater or less degree, parallel with one another. Here, plainly, Mk is not the source, and does not in all .■espects most fully represent it (e.g. cf. Mk 1'* with Mt 3'-'- and Lk 3'""; Mk S---*' with Mt IS^"" and Lk ll'»-»and l'2i»).
(c) In narratives in which Mt and Lk are on the whole closely ])aralle! witk 4lk, they yet have little touches, phrases, etc., in common, which are not in Mk (e.g. cf. Mk 2' with Mt 9^ and Lk 5" ; Mk 2» with Mt 9= and Lk 5" : Mk 2-- with Mt 9" and Lk 5").
Holtziiiann's a.ssumption, in his Si/nopt. Evang., that although the source common to the three Synoptic Gosiiels is on tlie whole most nearly re- produced in Mk, yet there are cases in whicli it has been more exactly preserved in the other two, seems capable of explaining many at least of these phenomena in a simple manner. It sliould, further, be remembered that some discourses or incidents of which that document may have contained accounts, may also have been elsewhere recorded in a fuller or slightly different form, and that Mt and Lk may have known of these other records, and have adopted them, or at least been influenced by their recollection of them, in particular instances.
These considerations render it unnecessary to suppose, with B. Weiss, tliat Matthew's ' Logia ' (if we may for convenience so speak) was used in the composition of Mk, as well as in Mt and Lk, though in Mk only to a very much smaller extent. They also go far to destroy the force of siicli evidecce as is alleged in .sujiport of the view that our J1r.1t Gospel was known .nnd made use of by our third evangelist. The wide diU'erences between the two render it very diflicult to suppose this to liave been the case. Wiiys of accounting for coincidences between them wliich do not assume knowledge of one Gospel by the writer of the other are tlierefore to be preferred. In addition to those already suggested, it may be observed that aciidintal agreement, revision Iiy later hands, an<l unintentional lussimilation of tlie texts of the two by copyists, may well in conjunction be respon- sible for a consideralile number of the instances. Others explain tlie class of phenomena to which we are referring, by the supimsiticm (alluded to above, 11. 2.17) that the third evangelist knpw the first lloltzmann himself ha-s a<lo|>tcd this view, thus rendi'ring his earlier bj'iiothcsis, that the original common document differed in certain respects from .Mk, and is at times more exactly VOL. II. — 1(>