o other
documents, and those two other documents agree together and differ
from it on as many as 944 separate points, there can be little
doubt that in the great majority of those points it has deviated
from the original, and that it is therefore secondary in
character. It is both secondary and secondary on a lower stage
than St. Mark: it has preserved the features of the original with
a less amount of accuracy. The points of the triple synopsis on
which Matthew fails to receive verification are in all 944; those
on which Mark fails to receive verification 334; or, in other
words, the inaccuracies of Matthew are to those of Mark nearly as
three to one. In the case of Luke the proportion is still greater--
as much as five to one.

This is but a tithe of the arguments which show that the first
Gospel is a secondary composition. An original composition would
be homogeneous; it is markedly heterogeneous. The first two
chapters clearly belong to a different stock of materials from the
rest of the Gospel. A broad division is seen in regard to the Old
Testament quotations. Those which are common to the other two
Synoptists are almost if not quite uniformly taken from the
Septuagint; those, on the other hand, which seem to belong to the
reflection of the Evangelist betray more or less distinctly the
influence of the Hebrew [Endnote 153:1]. Our Gospel is thus seen
to be a recension of another original document or documents and
not an original document itself.

Again, if our St. Matthew had been an original composition and had
appeared from the first in its present full and complete form, it
would be highly difficult to account for the omissions and
variations in Mark and Luke. We should be driven back, indeed,
upon all the impossibilities of the 'Benutzungs-hypothese.' On the
one hand, the close resemblance between the three compels us to
assume that the authors have either used each other's works or
common documents; but the differences practically preclude the
supposition that the later writer had before him the whole work of
his predecessor. If Luke had had before him the first two chapters
of Matthew he could not have written his own first two chapters as
he has done.

Again, the character of the narrative is such as to be inconsistent
with the view that it proceeds from an eye-witness of the events.
Those graphic touches, which are so conspicuous in the fourth Gospel,
and come out from time to time in the second, are