the small number of
Palestinian converts, Greek was necessarily adopted. As the
Greek-speaking members far out-numbered the Aramaean-speaking brethren,
the oral Gospel was put into Greek. Henceforward Greek, the language of
the Hellenists, became the medium of instruction. The truths and facts,
before repeated in Hebrew, were now generally promulgated in Greek by
the apostles and their converts. The historical cyclus, which had been
forming in the Church at Jerusalem, assumed a determinate character in
the Greek tongue" ("Introduction to the New Testament," by S. Davidson,
LL.D., p. 405. Ed. 1848). Thus we find learned Christians obliged to
admit an uninspired collection as the basis of the inspired Gospel, and
laying down a theory which is entirely incompatible with the idea that
the Synoptic Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Our
Gospels are degraded into versions of an older Gospel, instead of being
the inspired record of contemporaries, speaking "that we do know."

Canon Westcott writes of the three Synoptic Gospels, that "they
represent, as is shown by their structure, a common basis, common
materials, treated in special ways. They evidently contain only a very
small selection from the words and works of Christ, and yet their
contents are included broadly in one outline. Their substance is
evidently much older than their form.... The only explanation of the
narrow and definite limit within which the evangelic history (exclusive
of St. John's Gospel) is confined, seems to be that a collection of
representative words and works was made by an authoritative body, such
as the Twelve, at a very early date, and that this, which formed the
basis of popular teaching, gained exclusive currency, receiving only
subordinate additions and modifications. This Apostolic Gospel--the oral
basis, as I have endeavoured to show elsewhere, of the Synoptic
narratives--dates unquestionably from the very beginning of the
Christian society" ("On the Canon," preface, pp. xxxviii., xxxix). Mr.
Sanday speaks of the "original documents out of which our Gospel was
composed" ("Gospels in the Second Century," page 78), and he writes:
"Doubtless light would be thrown upon the question if we only knew what
was the common original of the two Synoptic texts" (Ibid, p. 65). "The
first three Gospels of our Canon are remarkably alike, their writers
agree in relating the same thing, not only in the same manner, but
likewise in the very words