Collected Essays, Volume V | Page 5

For if proof exists, that A B C and D wrote them, and that they were
intelligent persons, writing independently and without prejudice, about
facts within their own knowledge--their statements must needs be
worthy of the most attentive consideration.[4] But, even ecclesiastical
tradition does not assert that either "Mark" or "Luke" wrote from his
own knowledge--indeed "Luke" expressly asserts he did not. I cannot
discover that any competent authority now maintains that the apostle
Matthew wrote the Gospel which passes under his name. And whether
the apostle John had, or had not, anything to do with the fourth Gospel;
and if he had, what his share amounted to; are, as everybody who has
attended to these matters knows, questions still hotly disputed, and with
regard to which the extant evidence can hardly carry an impartial judge
beyond the admission of a possibility this way or that.
Thus, nothing but a balancing of very dubious probabilities is to be
attained by approaching the question from this side. It is otherwise if
we make the documents tell their own story: if we study them, as we
study fossils, to discover internal evidence, of when they arose, and
how they have come to be. That really fruitful line of inquiry has led to
the statement and the discussion of what is known as the Synoptic
Problem.
In the Essays (VII.--XI.) which deal with the consequences of the
application of the agnostic principle to Christian Evidences, contained
in this volume, there are several references to the results of the attempts
which have been made, during the last hundred years, to solve this
problem. And, though it has been clearly stated and discussed, in works
accessible to, and intelligible by, every English reader,[5] it may be
well that I should here set forth a very brief exposition of the matters of
fact out of which the problem has arisen; and of some consequences,
which, as I conceive, must be admitted if the facts are accepted.
These undisputed and, apparently, indisputable data may be thus stated:
I. The three books of which an ancient, but very questionable,
ecclesiastical tradition asserts Matthew, Mark, and Luke to be the
authors, agree, not only in presenting the same general view, or
Synopsis, of the nature and the order of the events narrated; but, to a
remarkable extent, the very words which they employ coincide.
II. Nevertheless, there are many equally marked, and some

irreconcilable, differences between them. Narratives, verbally identical
in some portions, diverge more or less in others. The order in which
they occur in one, or in two, Gospels may be changed in another. In
"Matthew" and in "Luke" events of great importance make their
appearance, where the story of "Mark" seems to leave no place for
them; and, at the beginning and the end of the two former Gospels,
there is a great amount of matter of which there is no trace in "Mark."
III. Obvious and highly important differences, in style and substance,
separate the three "Synoptics," taken together, from the fourth Gospel,
connected, by ecclesiastical tradition, with the name of the apostle John.
In its philosophical proemium; in the conspicuous absence of exorcistic
miracles; in the self-assertive theosophy of the long and diffuse
monologues, which are so utterly unlike the brief and pregnant
utterances of Jesus recorded in the Synoptics; in the assertion that the
crucifixion took place before the Passover, which involves the denial,
by implication, of the truth of the Synoptic story--to mention only a
few particulars--the "Johannine" Gospel presents a wide divergence
from the other three.
IV. If the mutual resemblances and differences of the Synoptic Gospels
are closely considered, a curious result comes out; namely, that each
may be analyzed into four components. The first of these consists of
passages, to a greater or less extent verbally identical, which occur in
all three Gospels. If this triple tradition is separated from the rest it will
be found to comprise:
a. A narrative, of a somewhat broken and anecdotic aspect, which
covers the period from the appearance of John the Baptist to the
discovery of the emptiness of the tomb, on the first day of the week,
some six-and-thirty hours after the crucifixion.
b. An apocalyptic address.
c. Parables and brief discourses, or rather, centos of religious and
ethical exhortations and injunctions.
The second and the third set of components of each Gospel present
equally close resemblances to passages, which are found in only one of
the other Gospels; therefore it may be said that, for them, the tradition

is double. The fourth component is peculiar to each Gospel; it is a
single tradition and has no representative in the others.
To put the facts in another way: each Gospel is composed of a threefold
tradition, two twofold traditions, and one peculiar tradition.