documents

and therefore accreted from independently. At this point the Mark-Luke connection practically ends, beyond this only seven scattered verses being in common sequence. Just before this break, begins the series of Matthew-Mark sequence connections which extend on to the end. What can be the explanation of this sharp change in the relation of the gospels to each other?

Can it be that Luke has omitted all these Matthew-Mark passages? From their nature that is very unlikely, as they were on subjects of importance in a Gentile gospel, including the defilement by words and not ceremonially, the faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the law of divorce, and the great commandment. None of these would be omitted intentionally by Luke. Also a theory of Lucan omissions would not account for the absence of any Matthew-Mark connections in earlier chapters.

Can it be that Luke had the Nucleus only before the Matthew-Mark additions were incorporated? But still that would not account for Luke having passages in sequence with Mark down to Mark vi and not beyond.

There seems to be only one solution to fit

the case before us. This is that there was a break during the compilation of Mark's additions to the Nucleus. At first he was in contact with an early stage of Luke's gospel, and then abruptly in contact with an early stage of Matthew's gospel. This view would compel us to place Mark as contemporary with an early stage of the other evangelists, drawing upon their additions to the Nucleus, but ceasing his accretions long before Matthew and Luke ended the growth of their gospels.

10. The Scattered Documents (III).

We now turn to the third class of materials; in this the same internal order is maintained in different versions, but they are inserted at different places in the three gospels. This class is therefore clearly marked out as having existed in the form of separate documents. These documents were then incorporated or extracted by the evangelists, at a date after the Nucleus had been added to in common by Mark and Luke, and by Matthew and Mark,

The principal document is the so-called Sermon on the Mount, here lettered A. This

is always recognised as extending from Matt. v 1 to vi 29. As, however, we see in Luke two later episodes following his extracts in the same order as they, so in Matthew it seems that the Sermon had received an accretion of two narratives, Matt. viii 5-13 and Matt. xi 2-24, before it was used by the evangelists. These are on the centurion's servant and the discourse about the Baptist. The character of the Sermon is remarkable for the absence of all detail of time and place in it, for the entirely ethical and fundamental character of it, and for the regular system and arrangement of it as a whole. It obviously belongs to the time when the relation of the new teaching to the old was the first question to the hearers, and when all the local and personal facts were familiar, and did not need any mention or allusion. It has every characteristic of an encheiridion compiled during the ministry or immediately afterwards. Now, it is most instructive to see in what way Mark and Luke used this document (see Table V). Mark took out of it successively two passages, Mark ix 50 and xi 25-26. Luke used it largely when writing his great

supplementary blocks of chapters, vi 20 to viii 18 and x-xvii. His insertions shew that he went through it three times to select suitable quotations for his subjects. First he inserted his chapters vi 20-21, 22-23, 28-36, 37-42, 31, 43; vii 10, 18-35; and x 12-16, exactly in the order of the Sermon, excepting a single verse. This shews how we must look for a chain of scattered quotations in recognising the documentary source of other passages. Then he went through it a second time for his chapters xi to xiii, making ten extracts. Yet a third time he resorted to it for three sayings when writing chapter xvi; see Table V.

We here get a view into the way in which the documents were used, and how they were worked one after another, through and through, for the sake of grouping the material. But the portions of documents which we can thus identify are by no means the whole of them; for the recognition of the sources we are entirely dependent on one episode being quoted by two writers, in its original order between other quotations. No doubt there was much that was only quoted by one evangelist, or was not quoted at all.

Another such document, of short length, C, is the accusation of satanic agency and its repudiation, Matt. xii 22-45. Less than half of this was inserted by Mark in iii 22-30, and this is in proper sequence with the Nucleus; but it was used by Luke in xi 14-32, out of sequence, and one verse in vi 45. In short, it was being used in building up the same passages in which the previous document appears.

Another short document, E, condemning the Pharisees, appears in Matt. xxiii 8-39; it was used by Luke in his central block of new chapters, with inversions, Luke xi from 37 to 52.

A third short document, F, was used in all the gospels, but not in the order of the Nucleus. It contains three parables: of the tares, the mustard seed, and the leaven. These are in Matt. xiii 24-43: of that 24-32 is abbreviated in Mark iv 26-32; and 31-33 is in Luke xiii 18-21. The last verses, 34-43, are greatly abbreviated in Mark iv 33-34.

11. The Use of Doublets.

In the previous section, documents A and C were both similarly used, and it might well be