nection with the evangelic tradition is the preservation of the Logia. 2
That is just the part he was fitted to perform. As little are we surprised that Mark’s Gospel, based on Peter's recollections, contains so little of the teaching. Peter was not the kind of man to take notes, nor were discourses full of deep thought the kind of material he was likely to remember. What would make an indelible impres- sion on him would be, not thought, but extraordinary deeds, accompanied by striking gestures, original brief replies to embarrass- ing questions and the like; just such things as we find reported in the second Gospel.
From Matthew the publican might be expected not only a record of Christ’s teaching as distinct from His actions, but an impartial record. We should not suspect him any more than Peter of theological bias; least of all in the direction of Judaism. As a Galilean he belonged to a half-Gentile community, and as a pub- lican he was an outcast for orthodox Jews. It was probably the humane spirit and wide sympathies of Jesus that drew him from the receipt of custom. If, therefore, we find in the Logia any sayings ascribed to Jesus of a universalistic character we do not feel in the least tempted to doubt their authenticity. If, on “he other hand, we meet with words of an apparently opposite character we are not greatly startled and ready to exclaim, Behold the hand of an inter- polator! We rather incline to see in the combination of seemingly incongruous elements the evidence of candid chronicling. It is the case of an honest reporter taking down this and that without asking himself whether this can be reconciled with that. That a deep, many-sided mind like that of Jesus might give birth to startling paradoxes is no wise incredible. Therefore, without undertaking responsibility for every expression, one may without hesitation en- dorse the sentiment of Jiilicher, “that Jewish and anti-Jewish, revolutionary and conservative, new and old, freedom and narrow- ness in judgment, sensuous hopes and a spiritualism blending together present and future, meet together, by no means weakens our impression that Jesus really here speaks”.
7. The mere fact of the preservation of Mark’s Gospel is not without a bearing on the question of historicity. In its own way it testifies to the influence of the historic as distinct from the religious spirit in the early period of the Christian era. It would not have been at all surprising if that Gospel had fallen out of existence, seeing that its contents have been absorbed into the more compre- hensive Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Assuming the correctness
1 Einleitung in das Neue Testament, p. 231.