1. Solutions offered in the past. — Augustine, bishop of Hippo, at the close of the 4th ac-it., .^^
good i otherwise he could hardly have followed Paul as he did, ministering to his ailing body. The present writer has little doubt that the reason why Titus, though a valued coadjutor of St. Paul, is not mentioned in Acts, is that he was Luke's brother, especially as the only natural way to take the words rbv a5€\<p6v in 2 Co 12^^ is as ' his brother,' i.e. the brother of the man previously mentioned, that is, of Titus. Luke as a teacher was not .so prominent as Titus, and hence is not named there. Tiie true meaning of the passage would have been understood long ago, had it not been for the obscuration produced by the ecclesiastical sense of the term ' brother.'
The oidy part of Luke's life of which we know much is the ])art he spent travelling in St. Paul's company. They met first at Troas, and journeyed together from there by Samothrace and Neapolis to Philippi (Ac 16io-i2). In Philippi Luke remained after Paul had gone, and they appear to have been separated for a little over five years (according to Ramsay's chronology). After meeting again, al- most certainly at Philippi (A.C 2(f'-'>), they appear to have remained together till the death of St. Paul. Certainly they were together on St. Paul's last journey along the coast of Asia Minor and Syria, up to Jerusalem (Ac 211''), and on the eventfvil voyage to Puteoli and Rome (ch. 27). In Rome he appears with St. Paul (Col 4^*, Philem ■^■').
'**Copyrig!il, 1C08, by Cliarles Scribner's Son.i
LUKE, GOSPEL ACCORDIXG TO
LUKE, GOSPEL ACCORDIXG TO 85
the first writer who made a seriuus attempi to solve the Synoptic Problem. He was guided partly by tradition, but chiefly by a careful examination of the internal evidence which the Gospels oflEer. In that age it was perhaps intviiable iLat he should assume, what modern critics are almost united in denying, that the Apostle Matthew was the author of the First Gospel in its present form. From this fundamental eiTor it inevitably followed that he assumed the priority of St. Matthew, and spoke of St. Mark as the • abbreviator and humble follower of St. Matthew.' St. Luke he held to have copied from the other two. Augustine's in- fluence in the Western Church was so transcendent, that his opinion on these intricate questions was accepted without examination until quite modern times. Strange to say, the founders of the famous Tiibingen school in theology, though they reversed most of the traditional beliefs, adhered to this. They upheld the priority of St. Matthew, not for any literary reason, but for a dogmatic one. The miraculous elemenr is somewhat less prominent in St. Matthew than it is ui St. Mark ; therefore, thej" argued, he must be the earlier writer.
2. Priority of St. Mai-k. — The notion of the priority of St. Matthew has, however, been so com- pletely beaten off the field, that we need not spend time in refuting it. Suffice it to say that even so conservative a writer as Dr. Salmon, the late Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, admitted that St. Mark's is the archaic Gospel. And no wonder. for it is simple where the others are complex ; it is meagre where they are rich ; it is a chronicle while they are histories ; it contains Latin and Aramaic words which they have translated or removed. For example, in Mk 15'^^ we find the Latin word Keyrvpicjv, but in the parallel passages St. Matthew writes eA.aro^'rapxos and St. I^uie eKaTovrdpxv^- Both Evangelists felt that they must not disfigure their pages with St. Mark's • barbarism,' and the different forms which they used indicate independent action. Who, on the other hand, could suppose that St. Mark found eKarovrapxas in St. Matthew, and de- liberately altered it into Kevrvpiwv, or that St. Luke found eKOLTbvTapxos, and deliberately altered it into eKarovTapxv^ ? For these and other reasons it is maintained in all orthodox schools of criticism that St. Matthew and St. Luke made use of St. Mark. Indeed. St. Mark's Gospel furnishes the historical framework for the others. Equally certain is it that St. Matthew and St. Luke were ixnacquainted with each other's writings. Whatever agreement exists between them in non-Markan sections comes from their use of a common source. Augustine therefore is wrong in every particular.
3. The doctrine of a proto-Mark, of a deutero- Mark, and of a tnto-Mark. — It has, however, long been debated whether St. Mark's Gospel in its complete form lay -before St. Matthew and St. Luke. Many critics have held that St. Luke, at any rate, had only an Urmarkus — a term which has been iised in Germany to signify a document shorter than our St. Mark, earlier in date, and fi-ee from those 'picturesque' additions which strike the reader of St. Mark's Gospel. Of late years there has been a growing tendency, both in Germany and in England, to repudiate the doctrine of an Urmarkus. Dr. Swete. without arguing the question at length, expresses the opinion that we can dispense with it. The Dean of Westmin.«ter is more positive in setting it aside. Nor is this surprising. Those who reject the oral hypothesis are beginning to feel that they cannot multiply documents at pleasure. Litera scripta nmnet. If St. Mark's Gospel circulated in the Apostolic age in three widely different editions, it is impossible to believe that the first and second editions perished without being noticed by such scholars