These difficulties are felt by the ablest advocates of the borrowing hypothesis, and hence
they call to aid one or several pre-canonical Gospels which are to account for the startling
discrepancies and signs of independence, whether in omissions or additions or arrangement. But
these pre-canonical Gospels, with the exception of the lost Hebrew Matthew, are as fictitious as
the Syro-Chaldaic Urevangelium of Eichhorn, and have been compared to the epicycles of the old
astronomers, which were invented to sustain the tottering hypothesis of cycles.
As to Luke, we have shown that he departs most from the triple tradition, although he is
supposed to have written last, and it is now almost universally agreed that he did not use the
canonical Matthew.^889 Whether he used the Hebrew Matthew and the Greek Mark or a lost
proto-Mark, is disputed, and at least very doubtful.^890 He follows a plan of his own; he ignores a
whole cycle of events in Mark 6:45–8:26; he omits in the common sections the graphic touches of
Mark, for which he has others equally graphic; and with a far better knowledge of Greek he has
yet more Hebraisms than Mark, because he drew largely on Hebrew sources. As to Matthew, he
makes the impression of primitive antiquity, and his originality and completeness have found able
advocates from Augustin down to Griesbach and Keim. And as to Mark, his apparent abridgments,
far from being the work of a copyist, are simply rapid statements of an original writer, with many
fresh and lively details which abundantly prove his independence. On the other hand, in several
narratives he is more full and minute than either Matthew or Luke.^891 His independence has been
successfully proven by the most laborious and minute investigations and comparisons.^892 Hence
many regard him as the primitive Evangelist made use of by both Matthew and Luke, but disagree
among themselves as to whether it was the canonical Mark or a proto-Mark.^893 In either case Matthew
and Luke would be guilty of plagiarism. What should we think of an historian of our day who would(^889) So Weisse, Ewald, Reuss, Ritschl, Thiersch, Plitt, Meyer, Holtzmann, Weizsäcker, Mangold, Godet, Weis. See Meyer on
Matthew, p. 34 (6th ed.), and on Luke, p. 238 (6th ed. by Weiss, 1878). Only the Tübingen "tendency critics" maintain the
contrary, and this is almost necessary in order to maintain the late date which they assign to Luke. Had he written in the second
or even at the end of the first century, he could not possibly have been ignorant of Matthew. But him very independence proves
his early date.
(^890) For the use of Mark by Luke are Reuss, Weiss, and most of the advocates of the Urmarkushypothese. Against such use are
Weizsäcker, Godet, and all those who (with Griesbach) make Mark an epitomizer of Matthew and Luke. Farrar also, in his Com.
on Luke, p. 9, very decidedly maintains the independence of Luke both on Matthew and Mark: "It may be regarded as certain,"
he says, "that among these ’attempts’ Luke did not class the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark. The inference that he was
either unaware of the existence of those Gospels, or made no direct use of them, suggests itself with the utmost force when we
place side by side any of the events which they narrate in common, and mark the minute and inexplicable differences which
incessantly occur even amid general similarity."
(^891) Compare the healing of the paralytic, Mark 2:3-12, with Matt. 9:2-8 the murder of John the Baptist, Mark 6:14-29, with
Matt. 14:1-13; Luke 9:7-9; the healing of the demoniac boy, Mark 9:14-29, with Matt. 17:14-21 and Luke 9:37-43; also the
accounts of Peter’s denial.
(^892) I mean especially the works of Wilke (Der Urevangelist, 1838), Holtzmann (Die Synopt. Evang., 1863), and Weiss (Das
Marcusevangelium und seine synoptischen Parallelen, 1872; comp. his Matthäusevangelium, etc., 1876). Weiss deserves all the
more a hearing as he strenuously advocates the genuineness of John. See notes at the end of this section. Dr. Fisher thinks that
"the independence of Mark as related to the other Gospels is one of the most assured and most valuable results of recent criticism."
The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 275. Dr. Davidson in the "revised and improved edition" of his Introduction, Vol. I., 551-563,
still adheres to the old Tübingen position of the dependence of Mark upon both Matthew and Luke, and ignores the works of
Wilke, Holtzmann, Weiss, Renan, and the article of his own countryman, Abbott, in the "Encycl. Brit."
(^893) Holtzmann, Mangold, E. A. Abbott, and others go back to a fictitious Urmarkus; while Ewald, Meyer, and Weiss make our
canonical Mark the basis of Matthew and Luke, yet with the important addition that Mark himself used, besides the oral tradition
of Peter, the lost Hebrew Matthew, or rather a Greek translation of it, which was more than a mere collection of discourses
(σύνταξις τῶν λογίων) and embraced also brief narratives. But if Mark had the rich collection of our Lord’s discourses before
him, his meagreness in that department is all the more difficult to account for.
A.D. 1-100.