the Lord' to their own lusts and deny the resurrection and judgment." His later associate Papias at another Pauline church of Asia, Hierapolis, is still concerned with the same peril. Polycarp had advised to "turn to the tradition handed down to us from the beginning." Papias applied the advice in the very practical way of publishing a book of Interpretations of the Oracles of the Lord. His "oracles" were found in the Gospel of Matthew, with some additions from Mark. He sought to prove their true meaning as against Gnostic perversion by citing traditions of Palestinian Elders carefully authenticated. Papias' quest for "commandments (evroλaí) of the Lord" was earlier than 118. His publication is probably not earlier than 140. If, however, we look backward from Polycarp to the long letter of Clement written from Rome in 96, with its repeated reference to "sayings " (Aóyo; not λóyia "oracles") of Jesus containing moral teaching, and to the Pastoral Epistles with their emphasis on "the healthful words, even the sayings (Aóyo) of our Lord Jesus" it will be quite apparent that a body of such teaching was current in the Church throughout this period. A new impetus was given to their circulation by the antinomian peril.

As is well known, the two later Synoptic writers, who cannot be far apart in date since both use the same two principal sources without any evidence of acquaintance with one another's work, employ in common as their "second" source a compilation of discourses of Jesus. This so-called Second Source constitutes in its surviving fragments our main dependence for his teaching. The work in its primary, Aramaic form is probably older than the canonical form of our Gospel of Mark, which seems to make a very limited use of it. Unfortunately we have little to guide us in determining its character and reliability. Besides the internal evidence there is only the manner in which the source is employed by our

evangelists. Tradition there is none, since no writer of antiquity so much as suspects its existence. The internal evidence of the Source is strongly in its favor; for its material is derived from the Aramaic, and in the sublimity of its moral and religious teaching, no less than in the character attributed to Jesus, it corresponds much more closely than Mark to the allusions of Paul. These traits incline us to give high respect to its witness. On the other hand our evangelists disregard its connections, and reject most of such narrative as it contained in favor of Mark. This is hardly compatible with belief in its apostolic origin. Moreover, its discourses differ widely from most of those in Mark, and are framed in a highly developed literary style resembling that of the Stoic diatribe, or still more nearly the better type of Jewish "Wisdom." These considerations make it difficult to regard the Second Source as composed by one of the Twelve. It cannot even be said to bear the marks of the eye-witness. Nevertheless it clearly and certainly reflects the spirit which Paul de scribes as "the mind that was in Christ Jesus." Indeed the predominant traits in its portrait are precisely that "meekness and lowliness" which Paul refers to; whereas, curiously, these particular traits are not even mentioned in the Gospel of Mark. In the pages of the Second Source we are probably nearer than in any other gospel writing to the actual teaching of Jesus, though even here we cannot depend on the precise words.

Supplementation of Mark's all too meager account of Jesus' teaching was sure to take place from this superb reserve. Indeed it seems to be the chief raison d'être of Matthew, if not of Luke also. As we have seen, the danger most acutely felt in this period was the tendency to moral laxity. "Commandments delivered by the Lord to the faith" were the supreme desideratum, and this conviction is the more strongly shown the nearer we

approach to the Jerusalem church with its body of "successors of the Apostles and kindred of the Lord." The epistles of James and Jude appear, to be sure, under fictitious names; but they are intended to reflect the spirit of this group of their successors in Jerusalem. The Epistle of James would make an excellent preface to the Second Source. Jude might serve a similar purpose with respect to Matthew. Mark fell into the background chiefly because it contained so few of the " mandments." But there was clear recognition of other defects also in the Roman Gospel, defects which could not be remedied from the Second Source, and therefore are met in totally different ways by Matthew and Luke, without any indication of literary connection, direct or indirect, between the two.

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There was first Mark's beginning. The genealogies of Matthew and Luke, inconsistent as they are, of course represent a reversion to the primitive belief, attested by Paul but neglected by Mark, that Jesus was "of the seed of David according to the flesh." How to preserve this, and at the same time to hold to the higher conception of a spiritual birth after the Pauline teaching, was of course a problem. It could no longer be solved by the Markan method of a prologue to the Gospel describ ing under the form of vision the descent of the Spirit of Adoption, declaring Jesus the Beloved Son of God's good pleasure," and enduing him with all the powers of the age to come. Heretics had already laid hold of this prologue and made it their own. Adoptionism (as it later came to be called) was the sheet anchor of Docetics like Cerinthus, who maintained that Jesus was a mere receptacle of the Holy Spirit," a Christ who came by water (of baptism) only, and not by blood (of the sacrament of his suffering). To ensure both a continuous and unbroken full presence of the divine

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Spirit in a real humanity no other way seemed open than that which our supplementers of Mark independently adopt. As Isaac was "God-begotten" by a word of promise,1 so Jesus by special miracle had been "the Son of God" from his mother's womb.

Even more conspicuous than at the beginning was the need for supplementation at the end of Mark. The complete divergence of the later evangelists in their story from the moment they reach the point where the mutilated Mark breaks off, suggests that this mutilation had already occurred. It cannot have been accidental, but must be due to dissatisfaction with the story of the appearance to Peter "in Galilee." Whether the dissatisfaction was due to the doctrinal or the geographic representation we cannot say. We do know, however, that questions as to the nature of the resurrection body had been vehemently agitated between Jewish Christian and Greek Christian since Paul had written to the Corinthians. In this age of docetic heresy, as may readily be seen from the Ignatian Epistles, it was doubly urgent. What part the birth in real manhood from the Virgin Mary, and the resurrection in real "flesh (ἀνάστασις τῆς σαρκός) has to play in this age of docetic heresy we may learn from its baptismal confession, commonly called the Apostles' Creed. Luke is more largely concerned in his supplements with the refutation of docetic heresy, Matthew with Jewish objections to the Markan story of the empty sepulchre. But these additions of the later evangelists at beginning and end of the Roman Gospel are principally of interest to the student of early apologetic. They tell us indirectly what was the course of debate over the nature of the body in which Jesus came into and went out of the world, but are of far less importance to the student of his life than the teaching

1 Rom. 4: 16-21; 9: 6-9.

drawn by both North-Syrian and South-Syrian evangelist in common from their mysterious Second Source.

2. The Teaching Source

In the Gospel of Matthew the "double-tradition " material, or material shared with Luke though not derived from Mark and commonly designated Q, is nearly all consolidated into five books of precepts, the first of which, the so-called Sermon on the Mount, is familiar to us all. The narrative merely serves as an introduction to these, just as the Pentateuch narrative frames in the great discourses in which Moses presents the law. Each of the five books into which the substance of the Gospel is divided begins with such narrative, combining material from Mark and the Second Source in various proportion. Only in Book IV (Chapters 14-18) is the narrative introduction derived almost entirely from Mark. On the other hand nearly all the narrative introduction to Book III (Chapters 11-13) is from Q. Each of the five books of Matthew concludes with a stereotyped formula repeated from the end of the first book, where it had occurred in the Second Source. The borrowing and application of the formula proves this fivefold division to be really intended by the compiler; but the two chapters on the Infancy form a Prologue, and the story of the Passion and Resurrection in Chapters 26-28 an Epilogue. The evangelist has thus given us a five-fold book of the new Torah, which with Prologue and Epilogue contains seven divisions in all. In the second century the five-fold division seems to have been still observed; for a versified "argumentum," of a type characteristic of that age, celebrates Matthew's refutation "in five books" of the deicide people of the Jews.2 I cannot now take time to describe these five bodies 2 See Bacon, Expositor, VIII, 85 (Jan., 1918).