he story of the visit to
Mary and Martha (Luke x. 38-42), and the lamentation of Jesus over
Jerusalem (Luke xiii. 34, 35; Matt, xxiii. 37-39). All three gospels,
moreover, agree in attributing to emissaries from Jerusalem much of the
hostility manifested against Jesus in his Galilean ministry (Luke v. 17;
Mark iii. 22; Matt. xv. 1; Mark vii. 1), and presuppose such an
acquaintance of Jesus with households in and near Jerusalem as is not easy
to explain if he never visited Judea before his passion (Mark xi. 2, 3;
xiv. 14; xv. 43 and parallels; compare especially Matt, xxvii. 57; John
xix. 38). These all suggest that the narrative of Mark does not tell the
whole story, a conclusion quite in accordance with the account of his work
given by Papias. It has been assumed that Peter was a Galilean, a man of
family living in Capernaum. It is not impossible that on some of the
earlier visits of Jesus to Jerusalem he did not accompany his Master, and
in reporting the things which he knew he naturally confined himself to his
own experiences. If this can explain the predominance of Galilean
incidents in the ministry as depicted in Mark, it will explain the
predominance of Galilee in the first three gospels, and the contradiction
between John and the three is reduced to a divergence between two accounts
of Jesus' ministry written from two different points of view.

33. The question of the trustworthiness of the fourth gospel is greatly
simplified by the consideration of the one-sidedness of Mark's
representation. It is further relieved by the fact that a ministry by
Jesus in Jerusalem must have been one of constant self-assertion, for
Jerusalem represented at its highest those aspects of thought and practice
which were fundamentally opposed to all that Jesus did and taught.
Whenever in Galilee, in the ministry pictured by the first three gospels,
Jesus came in contact with the spirit and feeling characteristic of
Jerusalem, we find him meeting it by unqualified assertion of his own
independence and exalted claim to authority, altogether similar to that
emphasis of his own significance and importance which is the chief
characteristic of his teachings in the fourth gospel. If it be remembered
that that gospel was avowedly an argument written to commend to others the
reverent conclusion concerning the Lord reached by a disciple whose
thought had dwelt for long years on the marvel of that life, and if we
recognize that for such an argumen