rnal evidence would permit;
whereas, upon the first hypothesis, the Synoptic Gospel would be
proved to be current as early as 140 A.D.; and there will be room
for considerations which may tend to date it much earlier. There
will still be the third possibility that Marcion's Gospel may be
altogether independent of our present Synoptic, and that it may
represent a parallel recension of the evangelical tradition. This
would leave the date of the canonical Gospel undetermined.

It is a fact worth noting that the controversy, at least in its
later and more important stages, had been fought, and, to all
appearance, fought out, within the Tuebingen school itself.
Olshausen and Hahn, the two orthodox critics who were most
prominently engaged in it, after a time retired and left the field
entirely to the Tuebingen writers.

The earlier critics who impugned the traditional view appear to
have leaned rather to the theory that Marcion's Gospel and the
canonical Luke are, more or less, independent offshoots from the
common ground-stock of the evangelical narratives. Ritschl, and
after him Baur and Schwegler, adopted more decidedly the view that
the canonical Gospel was constructed out of Marcion's by
interpolations directed against that heretic's teaching. The
reaction came from a quarter whence it would not quite naturally
have been expected--from one whose name we have already seen
associated with some daring theories, Volkmar, Professor of
Theology at Zuerich. With him was allied the more sober-minded,
laborious investigator, Hilgenfeld. Both these writers returned to
the charge once and again. Volkmar's original paper was
supplemented by an elaborate volume in 1852, and Hilgenfeld, in
like manner, has reasserted his conclusions. Baur and Ritschl
professed themselves convinced by the arguments brought forward,
and retracted or greatly modified their views. So far as I am
aware, Schwegler is the only writer whose opinion still stands as
it was at first expressed; but for some years before his death,
which occurred in 1857, he had left the theological field.

Without at all prejudging the question on this score, it is
difficult not to feel a certain presumption in favour of a
conclusion which has been reached after such elaborate argument,
especially where, as here, there could be no suspicion of a merely
apologetic tendency on either side. Are we, then, to think that
our English critic has shown cause for reopening the discus