pieces bearing on definite religious questions and interests of the primitive Church.! This may be carried too far, but the idea is not altogether baseless. In this Gospel the so-called “Sermon on the Mount” is really a Sermon (Kerygma not Didache) delivered to a Christian congregation with all the local and temporary matter eliminated and only the universal and perennial retained. The same adaptation to present and general use is apparent in the words, καθ᾽ ἡμέραν, added to the law of cross-bearing (ix. 23).
3. The question may be asked whether this adaptation of the matter of the evangelic tradition to present conceptions and needs is to be set down to the account of Luke as editor, or is to be regarded as already existing in the documents he used. On this point there may be room for difference of opinion. J. Weiss in his commentary on Luke (Meyer, eighth edition) inclines to the latter alternative. Thus, in reference to Luke's mild version of Peter's denial, he remarks: “A monstrous minimising of the offence if Luke had Mark’s account before him”; and he accordingly thinks he had not, but used instead a Jewish Christian source, giving a mitigated account of Peter’s sin. Of such a source he finds traces throughout Luke’s Gospel, following in the footsteps of Dr. Paul Feine, who had previously endeavoured to establish the existence of a precanonical Luke, i.¢., a Orst attempt to work up into a single volume the evangelic traditions in Mark, the Logia, and other sources, after the manner of the third Gospel.2. This may be a perfectly legitimate hypothesis for solving certain literary problems connected with this Gospel, and the argument by which Feine seeks to establish it is entitled on its merits to serious consideration. But I hardly think it suffices to account for all the traces of editorial discretion in Luke’s Gospel. It does not matter what documents Luke used; he exercised his own judgment in using them. If he did not, his relation to the work of redacting the memoirs of Jesus becomes so colourless that one fails to see what occasion there was for that imposing prefatory announcement in the opening sentence. A primitive Luke was ready to his hand, and he did not even contribute to it the colour of his own religious personality. Inten- tion, bias, purpose to utilise the material for edification of believers were all there before he began. He did what? Added, perhaps, a
. 1 Vide his Umtersuchungen iiber die Evangelische Geschichte, and his Apostolic Age, vol. ii. 2 Fine vorkanonische Uberlieferung des Lukas in Evangelium und Apostel- geschichte, 1891.