in the well known and generally admitted order of their appearance. First by an interval of decades come the great Epistles of Paul, continued in a later succession of Deutero-Pauline and Catholic Epistles. The latter are attributed to Apostles and Brethren of the Lord who had the authority of Apostles, and in substance as well as form are largely Pauline. Contemporary with some of the later Epistles come the Synoptic writings, be ginning with Mark, and including both treatises of Luke. For practical purposes we group with these the kindred book of the Revelation of John. Later still, at the very close of the first century or beginning of the second, come the so-called Johannine writings, which consist of a Gospel and three brief Epistles.

It is important to observe that we cannot reckon the Revelation in the "Johannine " group, or class; we should reserve the term "Johannine" to this book which alone of the five canonized at Ephesus bears the name of " John " in its text. The Ephesian Gospel and Epistles while not much later in date than the Revelation are at the widest possible remove from it doctrinally, and as literature belong in a totally different class. We should also note that of the three groups described the first and third (Epistles and Johannine Writings) are composed exclusively of writings which are Greek, and never were anything but Greek; whereas the second group (Synoptics and Revelation) is almost as completely Semitic in origin, scarcely any part save the story of Paul in the second half of Acts having been originally composed in Greek. The rest seems to have been translated from Aramaic in its main substance.

The middle period of New Testament literature represents, therefore, an Aramaic enclave. The statement seems simple enough. It means only that the Synoptic writings and Revelation are based on translations from the Aramaic, and in this carefully chosen expression

would probably be admitted by all philologians. Considered in itself alone it is not a fact of great importance; for we may accept the translation as in general quite ade quate. But considered as a symptom of the origin and nature of the material embodied in these naturalized Greek writings, it has an importance which entirely transcends the apprehension of the ordinary reader.

Stated in other terms the phenomenon is this: practically the whole literature of our European, Greekspeaking, Pauline Christianity, in those vital elements which cover the life and teaching of Jesus, and the founding and extension of the Church, together with its entire apocalyptic eschatology, is a foreign substance relatively to its literary context. It is a rib taken out from the body of the Aramaic-speaking branch of the Church, and grafted into the Pauline. The Palestinian 1-70 mother-church was dispersed in the formative period of the New Testament, leaving no literature of its own. What survives is due to the pious care of the Pauline churches, which incorporated with their own apostolic writings such of the Aramaic material as could be made available. This material was foreign in language, and to some extent in conception also, but not really alien. Had it been foreign to this extent the adapted material could never have been vitalized at all. Unchristian material, whether Jewish or heathen, would never have been received; or if taken up it would have been promptly ejected. The enclave is Christian, but retains something of its Jewish origin. Apart from the single book of prophecy, ascribed in the editorial framework to John, this Aramaic material is distinctively, and in every sense of the word, "Petrine"; since not only the foundation narrative transmitted from Mark to the later Synoptists is universally understood to represent the reminiscences of Peter, but the subsequent story of the founding of the Church is centered on this Apostle.

But why did the Pauline churches take up this Semitic material? For two reasons. First, Paul himself looked back to and rested upon this Petrine authority (I Cor. 15:1-11); and after Paul's "departure" his churches had no other recourse against the unbridled speculations of Gnostic heresy. Second, while the translation probably errs if at all rather in the direction of too slavish literalness, the much more important matter of selection was entirely in the hands of Greek editors. And unless every indication both of ancient tradition and modern inference is wrong, these Greek editors took up only what was most congenial to the Pauline churches among which their compilations were intended to circulate. In Matthew we have a few traces of material which if not anti-Pauline is at least irreconcilable with Paul's teaching. The same is true of Acts. But editors anxious to believe that all Apostles taught precisely the same doctrine found a harmonizing sense quite as easily as moderns find it in the Epistle of James. Their catholicity was generously inclusive.

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The case of Mark is typical, and this Gospel became determinative of later Synoptic narrative. There is good reason to accept the testimony of antiquity that this Petrine foundation stone of the sayings and doings of Jesus was compiled under the direction of Mark. least it appeared under his authority. And Mark, as we know, was a follower of Paul. Until the end Mark was with Paul at Rome, or acting for him from Rome, as his trusted representative. Such connection as this lieutenant of Paul had had with Peter was probably only a matter of his young manhood, at least a score of years before the time of writing.

It is true that Mark appears in a different relation in a writing known to us as the First Epistle of Peter. This is an encyclical, later than the Gospel, addressed from Rome to the Pauline churches of Asia Minor. It

encourages them to stand fast in the fiery persecution they are called upon to undergo together with their brethren throughout the world, apparently the Domitianic persecution of about 90 A. D. It purports to speak for Peter, and conveys a greeting from "Mark" as Peter's (spiritual) "son," implying a second association of Mark with Peter after the death of Paul. I need hardly say that if the date 90 a. D. is correct the assumption to speak for Peter is a literary fiction. The device was regarded as admissible at the time, and perhaps at first was fully understood as the mere convention which it almost certainly is. Few scholars to-day would attempt to maintain Petrine authorship in any real sense. At all events everything about First Peter save the name is Pauline, and Pauline only. Hence we can use its mention of Mark as Peter's "son" only as witness to the regard which was accorded to the evangelist at the place of composition as early as 90 A. D. And this is of no small importance. For we learn from Acts that Mark really had been associated with Peter in the days before he accompanied Paul and Barnabas on the socalled First Missionary Journey. We may perhaps assume also that he came down with Peter from Jerusalem to Antioch after having left Paul and Barnabas at Perga. That was about the year 47 or 48. This early association with Peter might well account for his being referred to in the Epistle as Peter's spiritual

The data of Acts will also account for Mark's being called an "interpreter" (punveurns) of Peter in a very ancient tradition of Palestinian origin which spoke of him as author of the Gospel. In its original form and sense this tradition is perfectly credible. Before his journey to Cyprus with Barnabas after the breach with Paul at Antioch Mark may very well have been associated with Peter. But there is not a word in the tra

dition itself to justify the idea which second and third century writers formed by combining it with the mention of "Babylon " in I Pt. 5:13. Assuming (as they did) that Peter himself wrote the Epistle, and that "Babylon" stands for Rome (which is probably true) they inferred that after having been Paul's follower to the end at Rome Mark had become associated for a second time with Peter, this Apostle having come to take Paul's place in Rome. Peter was thus made in a direct sense responsible for the Roman Gospel; practically its author. If, however, we place his relation to Mark before Mark's association with Paul, as we probably should, Peter's connection with the narrative becomes much more remote.

The designation of Mark's Gospel the "Memoirs of Peter" is thus seen to be a typical second-century exaggeration. The Gospel is no doubt a product of the Roman church. It probably does represent in the most primitive form, the compilation by Mark of what he could gather, or remember, of the preaching of Peter. Its material was largely documentary, and has been translated from the Aramaic. But it is certainly not a primary Apostolic record; nor did the oldest form of the tradition even venture to call it such. It is a posthumous collection of Petrine material by a Paulinist for Paulinists. It represents the practical use to which primitive Palestinian material could be put by a great Greek-speaking, Gentile church, thoroughly Pauline in all its anti-Jewish tendencies, a decade or so after both Peter and Paul were dead.

If such be the case with the Gospel of Mark it is hardly needful to point out that the still later, probably Antiochian work Luke-Acts, and the Palestinian Gospel to which tradition early attached the name of “ Matthew" have a similar history of adaptation. Both of these depend largely on Mark. Both are Greek com