It is well known that
many critics, without any apologetic object, have found a more or
less exact criterion in the eschatological discourses (Matt. xxiv,
Mark xiii, Luke xxi. 5-36), and to this large additions may be
made. As I hope some day to have an opportunity of discussing the
whole question of the origin and composition of the Synoptic
Gospels, I shall not go into this at present: but in the mean time
it should be remembered that all these further questions lie in
the background, and that in tracing the formation of the Canon of
the Gospels the whole of the evidence for miracles--even from this
_ab extra_ point of view--is very far from being exhausted.
There is yet another remaining reason which makes the present
enquiry of less importance than might be supposed, derived from
the particular way in which the author has dealt with this
external evidence. In order to explain the _prima facie_
evidence for our canonical Gospels, he has been compelled to
assume the existence of other documents containing, so far as
appears, the same or very similar matter. In other words, instead
of four Gospels he would give us five or six or seven. I do not
know that, merely as a matter of policy, and for apologetic
purposes only, the best way to refute his conclusion would not be
to admit his premisses and to insist upon the multiplication of
the evidence for the facts of the Gospel history which his
argument would seem to involve.
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