lovingly sought her good, had spoken with reverence of her God- given law (while treating with disrespect Rabbinical traditions), and honoured it by personal observance. This hypothesis fairly meets the requirements of the case. It covers the phenomena of the Gospel, and it is compatible with unity of plan and authorship.’
1. The most outstanding characteristic of the first Gospel is that it paints the life-image of Jesus in prophetic colours. While in Mark Jesus is presented realistically as a man, in Matthew He is presented as the Christ, verified as such by the applicability of many prophetic oracles to the details of His childhood, His public ministry, and His last sufferings.
2. If the realism of Mark makes for the historicity of this Gospel, the prophetic colouring so conspicuous in Matthew need not detract from the historicity of its accounts. This fe-sture may be due in part to the personal idiosyncrasy of the writer and in part to his didactic aim. He may have set himself to verify the thesis, Jesus the Christ, for his own satisfaction, or it may have been necessary that he should do so in order to strengthen the faith of his first readers. In either case the presumption is that the operation he was engaged in consisted in discovering prophetic texts to answer facts ready to his hand, not in first making a collection of texts and then inventing facts corresponding to them. The facts suggested the texts, the texts did not create the facts, though in some instances they might influence the mode of stating facts. In this connection it is important to note that the evangelist applies his prophetic method to the whole of his material, including that which is common to him with Mark. He has his prophetic oracles ready to be attached as labels to events which Mark reports simply as matters of fact. Thus Mark's dry statement, “they went into Capernaum,”? referring to Jesus and His followers proceeding northwards from the scene of the baptism, in Matthew's hands assumes the character of a solemn announcement of an epoch-making event, whereby an ancient oracle concerning the appearing of a great light in Galilee of the Gentiles received its fulfilment. Again, Mark’s matter-of-fact report of the extensive healing function in Capernaum on the Sabbath evening is in Matthew adorned with a beautiful citation from Isaiah’s famous
1 Vide Weiss, Das Matthaus-Evangelium und seine Lucas-parallelen, p. 39. 2 Mark i, 21, * Matt. iv. 12-17,