much more than this, the additional matter in both consisting mainly of words and discourses of Jesus. Each Gospel has not a little peculiar to itself, but there is a large amount of teaching material common to the two, and though this common element is very differently reproduced as to historic connection and grouping, yet there is such a pervading similarity in thought and expression as to suggest forcibly the hypothesis of a second source as its most natural explanation. Assuming that the first and third evangelists borrowed their narrative of events from Mark, and that what needs accounting for is mainly the didactic element, it would follow that this hypothetical second source consisted chiefly, if not exclusively, of sayings spoken by the Lord Jesus. Whether both evangelists possessed this source in the same form, and had each his own way of using it, as dictated by his plan, or whether it came into their hands in different recensions, formed under diverse influences, and meant to serve distinct purposes, are questions of subordinate moment. The main question is: Did there exist antecedent to the composition of our first and third Gospels a collection of the words of Christ, which both evangelists knew and used in compiling their memoirs of Christ’s public ministry? Modern critics, such as Weiss, Wendt, Holtzmann, Jilicher, concur in cnswering this question in the affirmative. «πε genera result is that for the explanation of the phenomena presented by the synoptical Gospels, modern criticism postulates two main written sources: a book like our canonical Mark, if not :dentical with it, as the source of the narratives common to the three Gospels, and another book contain- ing sayings of Jesus, as the source of the didactic matter common ta Matthew and Luke.
11. These conclusions, which might be reached purely by interna) inspection, are confirmed by the well-known statements of Papias, who flourished in the first quarter of the second century, concerning books about Christ written by Mark and Matthew. They are to this effect: “Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, wrote carefully, though not in order, as he remembered them, the things spoken or done by Christ”. “Matthew wrote the Logia in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted these as he could.”! The state- ments point to two books as the fountains of evangelic written tradi- tion, containing matter guaranteed as reliable as resting on the author- ity of two apostles, Peter and Matthew. The first of the two books is presumably identical with our canonical Mark. It is not against this
1 Eusebii, Historia Ecclesiastica, lib. iii., c. 39.