was self-condemned to oblivion. With it are associated the honour- able names of Lessing and Eichhorn.
7. The fourth and last hypothesis was propounded by Schleier- macher. He took for his starting-point the word διήγησις in the intro- duction of Luke’s Gospel, and found in it the hint that not in one primitive Gospel of comprehensive character was the source ex- ploited by our Gospels to be found, but rather in many Gospelets con- taining a record of some words or deeds of Jesus with which the writer had become acquainted, and which he specially desired to preserve. Each of our evangelists is to be conceived as having so many of these diegeses or Gospelets in his possession, and construct- ing out of them a larger connected story. In so far as they made use of copies of the same dtegesis, there would be agreement in con- tents and style; in so far as they used Gospelets peculiar to their respective collections, there would be divergence; and of course diversity in the order of narration was to be expected in writings compiled from a handful of unconnected leaflets of evangelic tradition. In spite of the great name of its author, this hypothesis has found little support as an attempt to account for the whole phenomena of the Gospels. As a subordinate suggestion to explain the presence in any of the synoptists of elements peculiar to himself, it is worthy of consideration. Some of the particulars, e.g., peculiar to Luke may have been found by him not in any large collection, but in a leaflet, as others may have been derived not fron. \itten sources large or small, but from a purely oral source in answer to local inquiries.
8. None of the foregoing hypotheses is accepted by itself as a satisfactory solution of the synoptical problem by any large number of competent critics at the present time. The majority look for a solution in the direction of a combination of the second and third hypotheses under modified forms. Toa certain extent they recog- nise use of one Gospel in another, and there is an extensive agree- ment in the opinion that for the explanation of the phenomena not one but at least two primitive documents must be postulated. In these matters certainty is unattainable, but it is worth while making ourselves acquainted with what may be called the most probable working hypothesis. With this view I offer here a brief statement as to the present trend of critical opinion on the subject in question.
9. It is a familiar observation that, leaving out of account the reports of the teaching of Jesus contained in the first and third Gospels, the matter that remains, consisting of narratives of actions and events, is very much the same in all the three synoptists. Not