3. Relation to St. Matthew and St. Luke.- The question of priority of composition among the Synoptic Gospels has long been the subject of vehement controversy, and to judge by the diver sity of the views entertained, and the confidence each appears to feel of the correctness of his own, it would seem to be as far as ever from being settled. May it not be that we are not yet, and perhaps never shall be, in possession of data suf ficient for the solution of the problem ? The position of St. Mark in relation to the other two has, in particular, given rise to the widest dif ferences of opinion. The independence of his record was maintained up to the time of Augustine. He conceived the view, which, however, he does not employ with much consistency, that Mark was merely tanquam pedissequus et breviator' of St. Matthew (De Consens. En., i. 4); and from his day it has been held by many that Mark delibe rately set himself to make an abridgment of one or both the other Synoptists. Griesbach expressed this opinion most decidedly in his Commentatio quo Marci Evangelium totum a Matthwi et Lucm commentaries decerptum esse monstratur ;' and it has been stated in a more or less modified form by Paulus, Schleiermacher, Thiele, DeWette,Delitzsch, F'ritzsche, and Bleek, the two last named adding St. John's Gospel to the materials before him. Nor can it be denied that at first sight this view is not devoid of plausibility, especially as regards St. Matthew. We find the same events recorded, and apparently in the same way, and very often in the same words. St. Mark's is the shorter work, and that principally, as it would seem, by the omis sion of the discourses and parables, which are a leading feature in the others. And yet, though this opinion was for a long time regarded almost as an established fact, no very searching investigation is needed to show its baselessness. Instead of St. Mark's narrative being an abridgment of that of St. Matthew or of St. Luke, it is often much fuller. Particulars are introduced which an abridger aim ing at condensation would have been certain to prune away if he had found them in his authority; while the freshness and graphic power of the his tory, the life-like touches which almost put us on the stage with the actors, and his superior accuracy as regards persons, words, times, and places, prove the originality and independence of his work. Of late, therefore, opinion has been tending as violently in the opposite direction, and the prevailing view among modern critics is, that in St. Mark we have the primitive gospel, Urevangelium,' from which both those of St. Matthew and St. Luke were derived. This is held by Weisse, Wilke, Ewald, Lachmann, Hit zig, Reuss, Ritschel, Thiersch, Meyer, etc., and has been lately maintained with considerable inge nuity in Mr. Kenrick's Biblical Essays. Hilgenfeld again adopts an intermediate view, and considers St. Mark to have held a middle position both as re gards form and internal character ; himself deriving his gospel from St. Matthew, and in his turn sup plying materials for that of St. Luke ; while doc trinally he is considered to hold the mean between the Judaic gospel of the first, and the universal gospel of the third evangelist.
Many formidable difficulties beset each of these theories, and their credit severally is impaired by the fact that the very same data which are urged by one writer as proofs of the priority of St. Mark, are used by another as irrefragable evidence of later date. We even find critics, like Baur, bold enough to attribute the vivid details which are justly viewed as evidences of the independence and originality of his record, to the fancy of the evan gelist ; thus importing the art of the modern novelist into times and works to the spirit of which it is entirely alien.
So much, however, we may safely grant, while maintaining the substantial independence of each of the Synoptica1 gospels—that St. Mark exhibits the oral tradition of the official life of our Lord in its earliest extant form, and furnishes the most direct representation of the common basis on which they all rest. In essence, if not in composition,'
says Mr. Westcott, p. 190 (the two not being necessarily identical, the earlier tradition being perhaps possibly the latest committed to writing), ' it is the oldest.' The intermediate theory has also so much of truth in it, that St. Mark does actually occupy the central position in regard to diction ; frequently, as it were, combining the lan guage of the other two (i. 32 cf. Matt. viii. 16 ; Luke iv. 4o—i. 42 cf. Matt. viii. 3 ; Luke v. 53— ii. 13-18 cf. Matt. ix. 9-14; Luke v. 27-33—iv. 30-32, cf. Matt. xiii. 31-33; Luke xiii. 18-21), as indeed would naturally be the case if we consider that his gospel most closely represents the original from which all were developed. In conclusion we may say, that a careful comparison of the three gospels can hardly fail to convince the unprejudiced reader, that while St. Mark adds hardly anything to the general narrative, we have in his gospel, in the words of Meyer (Comment.), 'a fresher stream from the apostolic fountain,' without which we should have wanted many important elements for a true conception of our blessed Lord's nature and work.
If we now proceed to a detailed comparison of the matter contained in the gospels, we shall find, that while the history of the conception and birth and childhood of our Lord and His forerunner have no parallel in St. Mark, afterwards the main course of the narrative (Luke ix. 51–xviii. 14, being of course excepted) is on the whole coincident ; and that the difference is mainly due to the absence of the parables and discourses, which were foreign to his purpose of setting forth the active ministry of Christ. Of our Lord's parables he only gives us four : the sower,' the mustard seed,' and ' the wicked husbandmen'—common also to Mat thew and Luke ; and one, ' the seed growing secretly,' iv. 26-29 (unless indeed it be an abbre viated and independent form of the `tares'), pecu liar to himself. Of the discourses, he entirely omits the sermon on the mount, the denunciations against the Scribes and Pharisees, and almost entirely the instructions to the twelve ; while of the other shorter discourses he only gives that on fasting (ii. 19-22), the Sabbath (ii. 25-28), the casting out devils by Beelzebub (iii. 23-29), on eating with un washen hands and Corban (vii. 6-23), and divorce (x. 5-9). That on `the last things' (xiii.) is the only one reported at any length. On the other hand, his object being to develope our Lord's Mes sianic character in deeds rather than words, he records the greater part of the miracles given by the Synoptists. Of the twenty-seven narrated by them, eighteen are found in St. Mark, twelve being common to all three ; three—the Syrophcenician's daughter, the feeding of the four thousand, and the cursing of the fig-tree—common to him and St. Matthew ; one—the demoniac in the syna gogue—to him and St. Luke ; and two—the deaf stammerer (vii. 31-37), and the blind man at Beth saida (viii. 22-26), (supplying remarkable points of correspondence, in the withdrawal of the object of the cure from the crowd, the use of external signs, and the gradual process of restoration)—peculiar to himself. Of the nine omitted by him, only three are found in St. Matthew, of which the centurion's servant is given also by St. Luke. The others are found in St. Luke alone. If we suppose that St. Mark had the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke before him, it is difficult to assign any tolerably satisfactory reason for his omission of these miracles, especially that of the centurion's servant, so kindred to the object of his work. On the contrary hypo thesis, that they copied from him, how can we account for their omitting the two remarkable miracles mentioned above ? The arrangement of the narrative, especially of our Lord's earlier Galilean ministry, agrees with St. Luke in opposition to that of St. Matthew, which appears rather to have been according to similarity of subject than order of time.