"That ye may believe that JESUS is THE CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD; and that believing ye may have life in HIS NAME."

OBJECT OF THE PRESENT VOLUME;

TO PROVE

I.

THAT on applying to the general arrangement of the Four Gospels certain rules of construction uniformly obtaining in their detailed narratives, it becomes at once apparent that a section of S. Luke's Gospel has been placed after a section which it originally preceded, and that a new and utterly confusing order of events has been created at three points: (a) where the section was taken from its right place, (b) where it was inserted in the wrong place, (c) where a fictitious connexion was established between the reversed sections.

II.

That, as it originally stood, the displaced section of S. Luke presented a singularly flagrant contradiction to what is, to the present day, supposed to be an implied statement of S. Mark.

III.

That the merely apparent contradiction involved by the original order of the text was got rid of at the cost, not only of creating a host of real though less immediately obvious contradictions, but of effectually obscuring the designed clue both to the original difficulty and to several minor difficulties of the same kind, viz. S. Luke's statement that he wrote "in order" and for the purpose of establishing the 'truthfulness of the Gospels (Aóywv) in which Theophilus had been instructed.'

IV.

That the above displacement being rectified, the general arrangement of the Gospels is perfectly simple throughout, S. Luke's restored order at once explaining both the exact plan of S. Matthew's Gospel and the rare and very slight departures from a chronological arrangement observable in S. Mark.

V.

That, in accordance with the implied statement of the Parable of the Barren Fig-tree, our Lord's Ministry lasted for a period of four years, every portion of which is duly accounted for, and that in a manner which the exact order observed renders it impossible to misunderstand.

H. G.

b

PREFACE.

WHILST engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to prepare a book on the Gospels of a sufficiently simple character to make it available for school and parochial purposes, I was brought continually face to face with the two old problems, into which nearly all Gospel Difficulties may be said to resolve themselves, viz. (1) what are the rules which govern the method of narration and literary construction adopted by each Evangelist, and (2) what principles underlie the variations and agreements in their several narratives and what may be termed the phenomena of selection.

Having come to the conclusion that until, or unless, these problems could, at least to some extent, be solved, any effort to carry out my purpose could only result in a 'darkening of counsel by words without knowledge', I determined to make the actual text of the Gospels a subject of special study, with a view to ascertain the exact measure of the difficulties which these problems presented.

In the course of this study I eventually found myself confronted with the ascertained fact that whilst certain principles bearing upon both problems applied with the most absolute uniformity to the separate parallel narratives throughout the whole of all the Gospels, and also to the method of construction of the earlier and later portions of each Gospel, there was a central section in all four Gospels -varying from a third to a fourth of the whole in each

in which these principles, so far as they concerned the method of construction, were contradicted, so to speak, at every turn.

Assuming from this point that principles, clearly deducible from a great variety of facts, and so generally applicable, must be right, and that the failure of their application must be due to some entirely abnormal arrangement peculiar to the middle portion of the Gospels, I was soon able to ascertain the exact manner in which the apparent inconsistency would be removable, and eventually to localize and define the exact limits of what was abnormal, and to see how the offending arrangement, with all the well-nigh inextricable complications it involved, was undoubtedly caused.

I found that in one particular, S. Luke's Gospel was demonstrably not in the order, in which, from overwhelming internal and external evidence, it must have been written. The alteration which had been made stood out as clearly revealed as though the arguments, by which some early revisers had justified it, came floating down the centuries no less audibly than when they first propounded them to their contemporaries. Nay, the mistake was evidently of such a plausible and inviting character that, especially in an age of MSS., it was not only very likely to be made, but was so apparently necessary, that, when once made, it would be almost certain to have the effect of discrediting correct MSS. and to establish itself as the true reading.

The mistake was evidently due to causes exactly analogous to those which led to the substitution of Galilee for Judæa in Luke iv. 44, a mistake equally plausible, and one which though not so wide-reaching in its consequences