one of them has had its advocates. One of the most interesting, in virtue of the course it ran, is: Matthew, Luke, Mark. This arrange- ment was contended for by Griesbach, and utilised by Dr. Perdinand Christian Baur in connection with his famous Tendency-criticism. Griesbach founded on the frequent duality in Mark’s style, that is to say, the combination of phrases used separately in the same connec- tion in the other synoptical Gospels: ¢.g., “at even when the sun did set” (i. 82). In this phenomenon, somewhat frequently recurring, he saw conclusive proof that Mark had Matthew and Luke before him, and servilely copied from both in descriptive passages. Baur’s interest in the question was theological rather than literary. Accept- ing Griesbach’s results, he charged Mark not only with literary dependence on his brother evangelists, whence is explained his graphic style, but also with studied theological neutrality, eschewing on the one hand the Judaistic bias of the first Gospel, and on the other the Pauline or universalistic bias of the third; both charac- teristics, the literary dependence ana the studied neutrality, implying a later date. Since then a great change of view has taken place. Por some time the prevailing ορίπίοα has been that Mark’s Gospel is the earliest not the latest of the three, and this opinion is likely to hold its ground. Holtzmann observe. that the Mark hypothesis is a hypothesis πο longer,' mear..ng that it is an established fact. And he and many others recognise in Mark, either as we have it or in an earlier form, a source for both the other synoptists, thereby acknow- ledging that the hypothesis of mutual use likewise has a measure of truth.
6. The third hypothesis is that of one primitive Gospel from which all three synoptists drew their material. The supporters of this view do not believe that the evangelists used each other’s writings. Their contention is that all were dependent on one original document, an Urevangelium as German scholars call it. This primitive Gospel was, ex hypothesi, comprehensive enough to cover the whole ground. From it all the three evangelists took much in common, hence their agreement in matter and language in so many places. But how about their divergencies? How came it to pass that with the same document before them they made such diverse use of it? The answer is: it was due to the fact that they used, not identical copies of one document, but different recensions of the same document. . By this flight into the dark region of conjectural recensions, whereof no trace remains, the Urevangelium hypothesis
1 Hand-Commentar, p. 3.