§ 8. THE INNER RELATION OF THE GOSPEL TO THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS OF ST. MATTHEW AND ST. LUKE.

The oldest ecclesiastical writers say nothing regarding the inner relation of our Gospel to the other two synoptic Gospels. But Augustine speculated on the subject. Assuming the chronological anteriority of St. Matthew's Gospel, he imagined that St. Mark followed his predecessor on foot as it were, only taking shorter cuts, or abbreviating the evangelical narrative as he went along.1 "He "has," says Augustine, "nothing in his Gospel which he shares with "John alone. He has very little that is peculiar to himself. He has "still less in common with Luke alone. But he has very much in common with Matthew, often expressed too in just so many, and "indeed the very same, words. In these instances he sometimes "accords with Matthew alone, and sometimes with the other "Gospels in addition, when they run parallel with Matthew."

Augustine had somewhat minutely observed the remarkable correspondences and variations of the four Gospels, though he speculated no further regarding their inner inter-relationship. It is a fact that there are no correspondences that are peculiar to St. Mark and St. John. It is also a fact that there are but few incidents in the life of our Lord, and but few of His discourses or remarks, that are recorded by St. Mark alone. It is likewise a fact that there is still less that is peculiar to St. Mark and St. Luke as a pair. Eichhorn,3 followed by Bertholdt, specifies only five paragraphs of this description, four of which are very brief. The five are these: (1) Mark i. 21-28, Luke iv. 31-37; (2) Mark i. 35-39, Luke iv. 42-44; (3) Mark iii. 7-19, Luke vi. 12-16; (4) Mark iv. 21-29, Luke viii. 16-18; (5) Mark xii. 41-44, Luke xxi. 1-4.

Eichhorn has made a mistake in specifying the third of these paragraphs, for it is almost as fully given in Matthew x. 1-4 as in Luke vi. 12-16. There is a mistake too in the fourth specification, for ver. 21-25 of chap. iv. have their homologues as really in

1 "Marcus eum subsecutus, tanquam pedissequus et breviator ejus videtur." -Consensus Evangelistarum, i. 2.

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Cum solo quippe Joanne, nihil dixit; solus ipse, perpauca; cum solo Luca, "pauciora; cum Matthæo vero, plurima, et multa pene totidem atque ipsis "verbis, sive cum solo, sive cum cæteris consonante."-Consensus Evv., ut supra.

Einleitung, vol. i., § 70, p. 348.
p. 1103.

4 Einleitung, vol. iii., § 301,

Matthew (v. 15, x. 26, vii. 2, xxv. 29), as in Luke; and ver. 26-29 have nothing in either Luke or Matthew that is analogous. So that only three peculiar paragraphs remain. Of these, it is merely the first, and longest, in which there is a verbal agreement. And that verbal agreement is complete only in two verses, namely the 24th and 25th of Mark, and the 34th and 35th of Luke. In these two verses, however, the phraseology is all but identical, absolutely so in the Received or Erasmian text.

Ferdinand C. Baur gives a list of the peculiar coincidences of St. Mark and St. Luke, somewhat different from Eichhorn's. He has Eichhorn's first, second, and fifth instances. But he has other three, viz.: (1) Mark iii. 7-12, Luke vi. 17-19; (2) Mark ix. 38-40, Luke ix. 49, 50; (3) Mark xii. 38-40, Luke xx. 45-47.1 Let them be accepted. Augustine was right in saying that the precise correspondences that are found between St. Mark and St. Luke, without homologues in St. Matthew and St. John, are few, fewer indeed than the peculiarities in incident or discourse that are found in St. Mark alone.

He is also correct in saying that the correspondences between St. Mark and St. Matthew are very numerous. If we take, for instance, such a work as Griesbach's Synopsis of the three Synoptic Gospels, we find that, in a sum total of a hundred and fifty sections into which he subdivides his Synopsis, there are between sixty and seventy in which there are marked correspondences between St. Matthew and St. Mark. If again we take, let us say, Robinson's Harmony of the Four Gospels, we find that in the hundred and seventy-three sections into which he distributes the harmonised narrative, there are above eighty in which the harmony of St. Mark and St. Matthew is regarded as evident.

Augustine therefore was correct in the general result of his collation.

But there are insuperable objections to his theory of the genetic relationship of St. Mark's Gospel to St. Matthew's. His great name indeed bore down, for many centuries, so far as the Western church was concerned, everything like opposition to his view; only there were now and again put forth, tentatively, small tinkering efforts to reconcile St. Mark's 'footman '-relationship to St. Matthew with the interpreter '-relationship to the apostle Peter ascribed to him. by the other fathers. Even after the Revival of letters, and the sub

1 Markusevangelium, p. 114.

sequent genesis and development of a somewhat independent spirit of biblical criticism and theological inquiry, Augustine's opinior remained for long comparatively unchallenged. Le Fèvre d'Etaples however, with his characteristic independence, strongly opposed it.1 But Erasmus acquiesced in it. And so did even Wetstein, in his day, though he made some little allowance for the independent influence of Peter's instructions.3

It is however an utterly indefensible theory, and has been long abandoned by all critics, as a crudity of nascent speculation. It would account indeed for the minute verbal correspondences that sometimes occur in the two Gospels, as for instance in Matthew xxiv. 4-36 and Mark xiii. 5-32. But it can never account for the divergences of phraseology, which also frequently occur; and the divergences in order too. Still less can it afford a clue to a principle of omission, that would account for the absence of some of the most interesting contents of St. Matthew's narrative. And yet less still can it account for the multitudes of vivid touches in details, which are present in St. Mark but wanting in St. Matthew, and which have all the appearance of 'autopticity'; such for instance as the circumstantialities connected with the cure of the demoniac lad at the foot of the mount of transfiguration (chap. ix. 14-29). And then the theory not only fails, it entirely founders, when the fact is taken into account that there are incidents, discourses, and remarks, found in St. Mark, of which there are no traces whatsoever in St. Matthew. See, for instance, the remarkable parable contained in chap. iv. 26-29; and the remarkable miracles recorded in chaps. vii. 31-37 and viii. 22–26. See also the fact of the pairing of the apostles when sent out on their first apostolical tour (vi. 7). See likewise those great deep utterances in chaps. iv. 22, iv. 28, ix. 23, ix. 40, ix. 49; and those remarkable expressions in chap. vii. 3 and xiv. 41: all of which are peculiar to St. Mark.

When we take the sum total of these details of things into consideration, we cannot hesitate to come to the conclusion that Koppe was right in the title of his Dissertation, published in 1782, Mark not the Abbreviator of Matthew.*

1 Commentarius in Marcum; Prooemium, fol. 216, ed. 1522.

2 Annotationes in Marcum; Prooemium, in all the editions.

3 Novum Testamentum; Procemium in Marcum.

♦ Marcus non Epitomator Matthæi: published in Pott and Rupert's Sylloge, vol i., pp. 35-69.

Neither did the evangelist, as Griesbach imagined,1 cut and cull his narrative, in an alternating manner, out of the two Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. It is an extremely artificial and mechanical theory. And yet the distinguished critic actually supposed that he could reproduce the precise zig-zag process that was pursued by the evangelist, as he elaborated his Gospel out of the two anterior Gospels lying before him.

St. Mark had resolved, according to Griesbach, to compile out of the two a shorter account than either, and to make it suitable for Gentile readers. That was his general determination.

He then started with St. Matthew, to whose leadership he intended to adhere in the main. He omitted however, at the outset, the whole contents of the first and second chapters, as having no immediate reference to the public ministry of Christ. Coming down therefore to the third chapter, he passed carefully along its course, and thence down to the 22nd verse of the fourth chapter,— appropriating the facts recorded in that stretch, and condensing the substance of the narrative into the first twenty verses of his own first chapter.

Then, looking forward to the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew, and noticing that they contained a long and 'verbose' discourse2-the Sermon on the Mount-which he wished, as Ferdinand C. Baur expresses it, 'completely to ignore,' 3-he turned to St. Luke. Following the thread of this evangelist's narrative, he comes to chap. iv. 31, which seems to refer to the same period that is spoken of toward the close of that paragraph of St. Matthew which he had already turned to account. He goes on therefore with St. Luke iv. 31-44, reproducing that paragraph into ver. 21-39 of his own first chapter. Then he looks forward to St. Luke v. 1-11, which seems to him to be not unlike what he had already recorded in ver. 16-20 out of St. Matthew iv. 18-22. He therefore pretermits that paragraph; but makes use of what follows from v. 12 to the end of the chapter, and thence on to vi. 11. All this he reproduces in his own Gospel, throughout chaps. i. 40-45; ii. 1-28; iii. 1-6.

Then he thinks it time to go back to St. Matthew, where he finds in chap. xii. 14 a parallel statement to his own in chap.

1 Commentatio qua Marci Evangelium totum e Matthæi et Lucæ commentariis decerptum esse monstratur. See pp. 358-425 of his Opuscula Academica, vol. ii. 2. Nimis enim verbosa videbatur ei."—p. 371.

3 "Er die Bergrede völlig ignorirte "-Markusevangelium, p. 148.

iii. 6. Hence, for some inexplicable reason, he spins out a paragraph consisting of ver. 7-12 in his own third chapter, to correspond with ver. 15 and 16 of Matthew xii. But noticing that what follows in St. Matthew is a quotation from the Old Testament, he feels as it were repelled,1 and turns once more to St. Luke, taking up the narrative where he had formerly left it, and transferring, in his own way, ver. 12–16 of chap. vi. into ver. 13-19 of his own chap. iii. Then he seems to have got wearied of St. Luke, and turned to St. Matthew once more, and made use of xii. 22-32 in his own iii. 20-30.

He then passes over ver. 33-45 in St. Matthew, as containing matter that he did not wish; but instead of turning abruptly on that account to St. Luke, as might have been expected, he reproduces, in that portion of his own narrative which extends from chap. iii. 31-35 to chap. iv. 1-20, what he found in Matthew xii. 46-50 and xiii. 1-23. Then he turns once more to St. Luke, and makes use of viii. 16-18 in his own iv. 21-25. After which he reverts again to St. Matthew xiii. 24-30; but in place of reproducing the parable there contained he is reminded, by the expression while the men slept,' of another parable in which not the 'men,' but the husband-' man,' slept, and so he inserts it instead, in iv. 26-29. Then he copies from St. Matthew once more, reproducing St. Matthew's two verses, xiii. 31, 32, into his own three, iv. 30, 31, 32. After that, passing over the little parable in the 33rd ver. of St. Matthew, he condenses what he finds in the 34th and 35th verses into his own statement as contained in his ver. 33 and 34. And at length, 'fatigued' with the multitude of St. Matthew's parables, 'he bids good-bye for a little' to his chosen leader,2 and, betaking himself again to St. Luke, resumes the thread of narrative which he had let go when he turned to St. Matthew xiii. 24. He finds, however, on resuming the thread, that he had already obtained out of St. Matthew what corresponds to St. Luke viii. 19-21, and hence he passes on to the following paragraphs, in ver. 22-25, and ver. 26-56. These he reproduces in his own chap. iv. 35-41, and chap. v. 1-43. Then he once more relents, though still only half recovered from the inundation of parables,3 and turns to St. Matthew xiii. 53-58: etc., etc., etc.

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1 "Consulto omittit locum prophetæ comm. 17-21 laudatum."—p. 372.

2 "Cum vero Matthæus porro parabolis adderet parabolas, Marcus velut 'fatigatus hunc ducem aliquantisper valere jussit."—p. 374.

3 "Marcum nimia parabolum Matthæi cap. 13 copia quasi obrutum, Lucæ