ab ipso haec sunt,
nec ab ejus apostolis scripta, sed multo post eorum assumptionem, a
nescio quibus, et ipsis inter se non concordantibus SEMI-JUDAEIS, per
famas opinionesque comperta sunt; qui tamen omnia eadem in apostolorum
Domini conferentes nomina vel eorum qui secuti apostolos viderentur,
errores ac mendacia sua secundum eos se scripsisse mentiti sunt."
(Faust.: lib. 88. Quoted in Ibid. p. 66.)

[461:1] Taylor's Diegesis.

[463:1] Says Prof. Smith upon this point: "All the earliest external
evidence points to the conclusion _that the synoptic gospels are
non-apostolic digests of spoken and written_ apostolic tradition, and
that the arrangement of the earlier material in orderly form took place
only gradually and by many essays."

_Dr. Hooykaas_, speaking of the four "Gospels," and "Acts," says of
them: "Not one of these five books was really written by the person
whose name it bears, and they are all of more recent date than the
heading would lead us to suppose."

"We cannot say that the "Gospels" and book of "Acts" are _unauthentic_,
for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. _They
appeared anonymously._ The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe
their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no
confidence whatever." (Bible for Learners, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25.)

These Gospels "can hardly be said to have had authors at all. _They had
only editors or compilers._ What I mean is, that those who enriched the
old Christian literature with these Gospels did not go to work as
independent writers and compose their own narratives out of the accounts
they had collected, but simply took up the different stories or sets of
stories which they found current in the _oral_ tradition or already
reduced to writing, _adding here_ and _expanding there_, and so sent out
into the world a very artless kind of composition. These works were
then, from time to time, somewhat enriched by _introductory matter or
interpolations_ from the hands of later Christians, and perhaps were
modified a little here and there. Our first two Gospels appear to have
passed through more than one such revision. The third, whose writer says
in his preface, that 'many had undertaken to put together a narrative
(Gospel),' before him, appears to proceed from a single collecting,
arranging, and modifying hand." (Ibid. p. 29.)

[463:2] "Christiani doctores non in vulgus prodebant libros sacros,
licet soleant plerique a