Mark—“But they understood not that saying” (ix, 32).
Luke—“But they understood not this saying” (ix, 45).
The theory that the Synoptics borrowed from each other will account for the agreements in their books; but it will not account for the disagreements, and these are quite as numerous as the agreements. The following hypothesis, however, will account for both. When the Synoptics were composed probably fifty gospels, some of recent and others of early origin, were already in existence. In addition to these were a hundred other documents pertaining to Christ and his teachings. From this mass of Gospel literature the Synoptics were compiled. Those portions that agree were taken from a common source; those that do not agree were taken from different documents.
Dean Alford believes that in the early ages of the church there existed what he terms a “common substratum of apostolic teachings,” “oral or partially documentary.” This, he says, “I believe to have been the original source of the common part of our three Gospels.” Canon Westcott admits that “their substance is evidently much older than their form.”
Professor Ladd, of Yale College, says: “In some respects each of the first three Gospels must be regarded as a compilation; it consists of material which the others have in common with it, and which was of a traditional kind more or less prepared before the author of the particular Gospel took it in hand to modify and rearrange it” (What Is the Bible? p. 295).
Bishop Marsh, in his Michaelis, says: “The notion of an absolute independence, in respect to the composition of our three first Gospels, is no longer tenable” (Vol. III, part 2, p. 170).
Prof. Robertson Smith, of Scotland, pronounces them “unapostolic digests of the second century.” Evanson goes further and declares them to be “spurious fictions of the second century.”
The Encyclopedia Britannica concedes the fact that Protestant scholarship in Europe has virtually abandoned the popular orthodox position regarding the origin of these books. It says:
“It is certain that the Synoptic Gospels took their present form only by degrees, and that while they have their root in the apostolic age, they are fashioned by later influences and adapted to special wants in the early church. They are the deposits, in short, of Christian traditions handed down first of all in an oral form, before being committed to writing in such a form as we have them; and this is now an accepted conclusion of every historical school of theologians in England no less than in Germany, conservative no less than radical.”