possibly in the lifetime of John himself, since tradition declares that he was but a lad when he followed Jesus and that he lived to extreme old age.

The desire is strong to go still further and fix an exact date in the first century for each gospel; but this is far more difficult. The evidence is entirely internal, and comes from emphasizing a few minute details. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that there is no general agreement among scholars. Perhaps the opinion of the majority would be that Mark was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, i. e., before 70 A. D., Matthew shortly before or shortly after that event, Luke somewhat later, and John about the end of the century. But exact dates are not of supreme importance. It is enough to be assured that the gospels were written sometime in the first century. For down to the very end of that century there would still be living some eye-witnesses of Jesus' ministry, and a great multitude who had heard the story of that ministry from the apostles or other eye-witnesses. And it is impossible to suppose that these would receive and use our gospels, unless the facts therein reported agreed with the story of Jesus' life as they had learned it from these other sources.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM

THE word gospel is the modern form of the AngloSaxon godspell, which is often explained as meaning good-story, but more probably means God-story. It is used as a translation of a Greek word (transliterated into English as evangel) meaning good news or glad tidings-a word which in many of the manuscripts is part of the title of each of the first four books in the New Testament. Accordingly we usually call each of those books a gospel. But the word properly denotes not a book, but the message contained in the book-the good tidings originally proclaimed by Jesus and published to the world by his disciples. Something of this meaning still remains in the word when used as a title; for instead of the gospel by Matthew, i. e., the book written by him, the full title is the Gospel According to Matthew, i. e., the good tidings as Matthew has sent them forth.

Whether each gospel originally had a title is doubtful. If it had, we cannot know what that title was; for in the oldest manuscripts "The Gospel" seems to have been the name for the whole collection, since

the separate books are headed simply "according to Matthew," "according to Mark," and so on, which shows that these headings were not given until the collection was formed. In any discussion, therefore, of the authorship of a gospel, we cannot use the title as conclusive evidence; it merely indicates who was supposed to be the author at the time when the title was adopted. It may represent a very early and reliable tradition; but it must be taken as nothing more than the opinion of some early scribe.

If the authorship assigned by the titles is correct the first gospel and the fourth were written by apostles, the second by a Jewish Christian, whose early home was in Jerusalem, and the third by a Gentile physician who never met Jesus, but was a companion of Paul, and must have known intimately many who had known Jesus. In this case all four evangelists had abundant opportunity to become acquainted with the facts they narrate, and every inducement to state them correctly; and their gospels ought to be first-class historical documents. It would seem, then, that all we have to do is to seek evidence confirming or disproving the traditional authorship.

The matter, however, is not as simple as it seems. A comparison of the first three gospels with one another brings before us a problem peculiar and very difficult; while a comparison of the fourth gospel with the first three discloses another problem quite different

but equally difficult. The former problem will be sufficient to occupy us in the present chapter.

The first three gospels seem to have been written by three different men at different times, and for different classes of readers. Each is so brief that at the utmost it can give only a few of Jesus' deeds and sayings, selected from a great mass of apostolic recollections, concerning which the naïve statement is made by the fourth evangelist, "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written" (John 21:25). We naturally expect, therefore, to find that the three gospels are made up of different selections, and have little in common. The fact is just the reverse. For example, Mark has comparatively few of the teachings of Jesus, but gives various important incidents in his life, from the imprisonment of John the Baptist down to the resurrection. Now these same incidents, often arranged in the same order and told sometimes in almost identical words, form the main part of the narrative in Matthew and in Luke. Indeed, the whole of Mark except two miracles (7:3137; 8:22-26), one short parable (4: 26-29), and various scattered verses, is to be found in Matthew or Luke or both. So great is the similarity of the three that in modern discussions they are called the synoptic gospels, or more briefly the synoptics; by which is

meant gospels giving a common view of the life of Christ, or gospels that for profitable study should be placed side by side and viewed together; and their authors are called the synoptists. Moreover, common to Matthew and Luke are many sayings of Jesus not given by Mark; and these sayings are even more exactly identical than the record of incidents.

As a result of this remarkable agreement we have to study the first three gospels as if they were to a large degree simply different forms of one book. We arrange their contents in parallel columns so that they can be constantly compared, and call such an arrangement a harmony of the synoptics. If we add John, and thus make a harmony of the Four Gospels, the peculiarity of the synoptics becomes still more evident, for John has very little matter in common with the other three; and parallel columns are usually impossible. In fact, there is nowhere else in biographical literature an instance of three books so similar and yet distinct. For, with all their close resemblances, the synoptics are distinct. Each relates or omits certain incidents and sayings not related or not omitted by one or both of the other two; and in a passage common to two or to all three the phraseology may be identical for a little ways, and then vary without any apparent reaEach book has its individual character, its own of treating a topic, and its special purpose; there is no possibility of identifying one with another.

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