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Baring-Gould Sabine
Lost and Hostile Gospels

2. Doubtful Fragments

There are a few fragments preserved by early ecclesiastical writers which we cannot say for certain belonged to the Gospel of the Hebrews, but which there is good reason to believe formed a part of it.

Origen, in his Commentary on St. Matthew, quotes a saying of our Lord which is not to be found in the Canonical Gospels. Origen, we know, was acquainted with, and quoted respectfully, the Gospel of the Hebrews. It is therefore probable that this quotation is taken from it: “Jesus said, For the sake of the weak I became weak, for the sake of the hungry I hungered, for the sake of the thirsty I thirsted.”²³²

That this passage, full of beauty, occurred after the words, “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting,” in commenting on which Origen quotes it, is probable. It is noteworthy that it is quoted in comment on St. Matthew's Gospel, the one to which the lost Gospel bore the closest resemblance, and one which Origen would probably consult whilst compiling his Commentary on St. Matthew.²³³

The saying is so beautiful, and so truly describes the love of our Lord, that we must wish to believe it comes to us on such high authority as the Gospel of the Twelve.

Another saying of Christ is quoted both by Clement of Alexandria and by Origen, without saying whence they drew it, but by both as undoubted sayings of the Saviour. It ran:

“Seek those things that are great, and little things will be added to you.” “And seek ye heavenly things, and the things of this world will be added to you.”²³⁴

It will be seen, the form as given by St. Clement is better and simpler than that given by Origen. It is probable, however, that they both formed members of the same saying, following the usual Hebrew arrangement of repeating a maxim, giving it a slightly different turn, or a wider expansion. In two passages in other places Origen makes allusion to this saying without quoting it directly.²³⁵

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke puts into the mouth of St. Paul a saying of Christ, which is not given by any evangelist, in these words: “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”²³⁶ It is curious that this saying should not have been inserted by St. Luke in his Gospel. Whether this saying found its way into the Hebrew Gospel it is impossible to tell.

In the Epistle of St. Barnabas another utterance of Christ is given. This Epistle is so distinctly of a Judaizing character, so manifestly belongs to the Nazarene school, that such a reference in it makes it more than probable that it was taken from the Gospel received as Canonical among the Nazarenes. The saying of St. Barnabas is, “All the time of our life and of our faith will not profit us, if we have not in abhorrence the evil one and future temptation, even as the Son of God said, Resist all iniquity and hold it in abhorrence.”²³⁷ Another saying in the Epistle of St. Barnabas is, “They who would see me, and attain to my kingdom, must possess me through afflictions and suffering.”²³⁸

In the second Epistle of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians occurs a very striking passage: “Wherefore to us doing such things the Lord said, If ye were with me, gathered together in my bosom, and did not keep my commandments, I would cast you out, and say unto you, Depart from me, I know not whence ye are, ye workers of iniquity.”²³⁹

We can well understand this occurring in an anti-Pauline Gospel.

Again. “The Lord said, Be ye as lambs in the midst of wolves. Peter answered and said unto him, But what if the wolves shall rend the lambs? Jesus said unto Peter, The lambs fear not the wolves after their death; and ye also, do not ye fear them that kill you, and after that have nothing that they can do to you, but fear rather him who, after ye are dead, has power to cast your soul and body into hell fire.”²⁴⁰

This is clearly another version of the passage, Matt. x. 16-26. In one particular it is fuller than in the Canonical Gospel; it introduces St. Peter as speaking and drawing forth the exhortation not to fear those who kill the body only. But it is without the long exhortation contained in the 17-27th verses of St. Matthew.

Another saying from the same source is, “This, therefore, the Lord said, Keep the flesh chaste and the seal undefiled, and ye shall receive eternal life.”²⁴¹ The seal is the unction of confirmation completing baptism, and in the primitive Church united with it. It is the σφραγίς so often spoken of in the Epistles of St. Paul.²⁴²

Justin Martyr contributes another saying. We have already seen that in all likelihood he quoted from the Gospel of the Hebrews, or the Recollections of the Twelve, as he called it. He says, “On this account also our Lord Jesus Christ said, In those things in which I shall overtake you, in those things will I judge you.”²⁴³ Clement of Alexandria makes the same quotation, slightly varying the words. Justin and Clement apparently both translated from the original Hebrew, but did not give exactly the same rendering of words, though they gave the same sense.

Clement gives us another saying, but does not say from what Gospel he drew it. “The Lord commanded in a certain Gospel, My secret is for me and for the children of my home.”²⁴⁴

3. The Origin of the Gospel of the Hebrews

We come now to a question delicate, and difficult to answer – the Origin of the Gospel of the Hebrews; delicate, because it involves another, the origin of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark; difficult, because of the nature of the evidence on which we shall have to form our opinion.

Because the Gospel of the Hebrews is not preserved, is not in the Canon, it does not follow that its value was slight, its accuracy doubtful. Its disappearance is due partly to the fact of its having been written in Aramaic, but chiefly to that of its having been in use by an Aramaic-speaking community which assumed first a schismatical, then a heretical position, so that the disfavour which fell on the Nazarene body enveloped and doomed its Gospel as well.

The four Canonical Gospels owe their preservation to their having been in use among those Christian communities which coalesced under the moulding hands of St. John. Those parties which were reluctant to abandon their peculiar features were looked upon with coldness, then aversion, lastly abhorrence. They became more and more isolated, eccentric, prejudiced, impracticable. Whilst the Church asserted her catholicity, organized her constitution, established her canon, formulated her creed, adapted herself to the flux of ideas, these narrow sects spent their petty lives in accentuating their peculiarities till they grew into monstrosities; and when they fell and disappeared, there fell and disappeared with them those precious records of the Saviour's words and works which they had preserved.

The Hebrew Gospel was closely related to the Gospel of St. Matthew; that we know from the testimony of St. Jerome, who saw, copied and translated it. That it was not identical with the Canonical first Gospel is also certain. Sufficient fragments have been preserved to show that in many points it was fuller, in some less complete, than the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew. The two Gospels were twin sisters speaking different tongues. Was the Greek of the first Gospel acquired, or was it original? This is a point deserving of investigation before we fix the origin and determine the construction of the Hebrew Gospel.

According to a fragment of a lost work by Papias, written about the middle of the second century, under the title of “Commentary on the Sayings of the Lord,”²⁴⁵ the apostle Matthew was the author of a collection of the “sayings,” λόγια, of our blessed Lord. The passage has been already given, but it is necessary to quote it again here: “Matthew wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sayings, and every one interpreted them as best he was able.”²⁴⁶ These “logia” could only be, according to the signification of the word (Rom. iii. 2; Heb. v. 12; Pet. iv. 11; Acts vii. 38), a collection of the sayings of the Saviour that were regarded as oracular, as “the words of God.” That they were the words of Jesus, follows from the title given by Papias to his commentary, Λόγια κυριακὰ.

This brief notice is sufficient to show that Matthew's collection was not the Gospel as it now stands. It was no collection of the acts, no biography, of the Saviour; it was solely a collection of his discourses.

This is made clearer by what Papias says in the same work on St. Mark. He relates that the latter wrote not only what Jesus had said, but also what he did;²⁴⁷ whereas St. Matthew wrote only what had been said.²⁴⁸

The work of Matthew, therefore, contained no doings, πραχθέντα, but only sayings, λεχθέντα, which were, according to Papias, written in Hebrew, i. e. the vernacular Aramaic, and which were translated into Greek by every one as best he was able.

This notice of Papias is very ancient. The Bishop of Hierapolis is called by Irenaeus “a very old man.”²⁴⁹ and by the same writer is said to have been “a friend of Polycarp,” and “one who had heard John.”²⁵⁰ That this John was the apostle is not certain. It was questioned by Eusebius in his mention of the Prooemium of Papias. John the priest and John the apostle were both at Ephesus, and both lived there at the close of the first century. Some have thought the Apocalypse to have been the work of the priest John, and not of the apostle. Others have supposed that there was only one John. However this may be, it is certain that Papias lived at a time when it was possible to obtain correct information relating to the origin of the sacred books in use among the Christians.

According to the Prooemium of Papias, which Eusebius has preserved, the Bishop of Hierapolis had obtained his knowledge, not directly from the apostles, nor from the apostle John, but from the mouths of men who had companied with old priests and disciples of the apostles, and who had related to him what Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John and other disciples of the Lord had said (εἶπεν). Besides the testimony of these priests, Papias appealed further to the evidence of Aristion and the priest John, disciples of the Lord,²⁵¹ still alive and bearing testimony when he wrote. “And,” says Papias, “I do not think that I derived so much benefit from books as from the living voice of those that are still surviving.”²⁵²

Papias, therefore, had his information about the apostles second-hand, from those “who followed them about.” Nevertheless, his evidence is quite trustworthy. He takes pains to inform us that he used great precaution to obtain the truth about every particular he stated, and the means of obtaining the truth were at his disposal. That Papias was a man “of a limited comprehension”²⁵³ does not affect the trustworthiness of his statement. Eusebius thus designates him because he believed in the Millennium; but so did most of the Christians of the first age, as well as in the immediate second coming of Christ, till undeceived by events.

The statement of Papias does not justify us in supposing that Matthew wrote the Gospel in Hebrew, but only a collection of the logia, the sayings of Jesus. Eusebius did not mistake the Sayings for the Gospel, for he speaks separately of the Hebrew Gospel,²⁵⁴ without connecting it in any way with the testimony of Papias.

According to Eusebius, Papias wrote his Commentary in five books.²⁵⁵ It is not improbable, therefore, that the “Logia” were broken into five parts or grouped in five discourses, and that he wrote an explanation of each discourse in a separate book or chapter.

The statement of Papias, if it does not refer to the Gospel of St. Matthew as it now stands, does refer to one of the constituent parts of that Gospel, and does explain much that would be otherwise inexplicable.

1. St. Matthew's Gospel differs from St. Mark's in that it contains long discourses, sayings and parables, which are wanting or only given in a brief form in the second Canonical Gospel. It is therefore probable that in its composition were used the “Logia of the Lord,” written by Matthew.

2. If the collection of “Sayings of the Lord” consisted, as has been suggested, of five parts, then we find traces in the Canonical Matthew of five groups of discourses, concluded by the same formulary: “And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings” (τοὺς λόγους τούτους), or “parables,” vii. 28, xi. 1, xiii. 53,. xix. 1, xxvi. 1. It is not, however, possible to restore all the “logia” to their primitive positions, for they have been dispersed through the Canonical Gospel, and arranged in connection with the events which called them forth. In the “Sayings of the Lord” of Matthew, these events were not narrated; but all the sayings were placed together, like the proverbs in the book of Solomon.

3. The “Logia” of the Lord were written by Matthew in Hebrew, i. e. in the vernacular Aramaic. If they have formed the groundwork, or a composite part of the Canonical Gospel, we are likely to detect in the Greek some traces of their origin. And this, in fact, we are able to do.

α. In the first place, we have the introduction of Aramaic words, as Raka (v. 22),²⁵⁶ Mammon (vi. 22),²⁵⁷ Gehenna (v. 22),²⁵⁸ Amen (v. 18).²⁵⁹ Many others might be cited, but these will suffice.

β. Next, we have the use of illustrations which are only comprehensible by Hebrews, as “One jot and one tittle shall in no wise fall.” The Ἰῶτα of the Greek text is the Aramaic Jod (v. 18); but the “one tittle” is more remarkable. In the Greek it is “one horn,” or “stroke.”²⁶⁰ The idea is taken from the Aramaic orthography. A stroke distinguishes one consonant from another, as ח and ה from ד. With this the Greeks had nothing that corresponded.

γ. We find Hebraisms in great number in the discourses of our Lord given by St. Matthew.²⁶¹

δ. We find mistranslations. The Greek Canonical text gives a wrong meaning, or no meaning at all, through misunderstanding of the Aramaic. By restoration of the Aramaic text we can rectify the translation. Thus:

Matt. vii. 6, “Give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” The word “holy,” τὸ ἅγιον, is a misinterpretation of the Aramaic קרשא, a gold jewel for the ear, head or neck.²⁶² The translator mistook the word for קורשא, or קרשא without ו “the holy.” The sentence in the original therefore ran, “Give not a gold jewel to dogs, neither cast pearls before swine.”

Matt. v. 37, “Let your conversation be Yea, yea, Nay, nay.” This is meaningless. But if we restore the construction in Aramaic we have יהןא לכם הן הן, לאו לאו, and the meaning is, “In your conversation let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay.” The yea, yea, and nay, nay, in the Hebrew come together, and this misled the translator. St. James quotes the saying rightly (v. 12), “Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.” It is a form of a Rabbinic maxim, “The yea of the righteous is yea, and their nay is nay.” It is an injunction to speak the truth.

We have therefore good grounds for our conjecture that St. Matthew's genuine “Sayings of the Lord” form a part of the Canonical Gospel.

We have next to consider, Whence came the rest of the material, the record of the “doings of the Lord,” which the compiler interwove with the “Sayings”?

We have tolerably convincing evidence that the compiler placed under contribution both Aramaic and Greek collections.

For the citations from the Old Testament are not taken exclusively from the Hebrew Scriptures, nor from the Greek translation of the Seventy; but some are taken from the Greek translation, and some are taken from the Hebrew, or from a Syro-Chaldaean Targum or Paraphrase, probably in use at the time.

Matt. i. 23, “A virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son.” This is quoted as a prophecy of the miraculous conception. But it is only a prophecy in the version of the LXX., which renders the Hebrew word παρθένος, “virgin.” The Hebrew word does not mean virgin exclusively, but “a young woman.” We may therefore conclude that verses 22, 23, were additions by the Greek compiler of the Gospel, unacquainted with the original Hebrew text.

Matt. ii. 15, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” This is quoted literally from the Hebrew text. That of the LXX. has, “Out of Egypt have I called my children,” τὰ τέκνα. This made the saying of Hosea no prophecy of our Lord; consequently he who inserted this reference can have known only the Hebrew text, and not the Greek version. But in ii. 18, the compiler follows the LXX. And again, ii. 23, “He shall be called a Nazarene,” Ναζωραῖος. The Hebrew is כזר of which Ναζωραῖος is no translation. The LXX. have Ναζιραῖος. The compiler was caught by the similarity of sounds.

Matt. iii. 3. Here the construction of the LXX. is followed, which unites “in the wilderness” with “the voice of one crying.” The Hebrew was therefore not known by the compiler.

Matt. iv. 15. Here the LXX. is not followed, for the word γῆ is used in place of χώρα. The quotation is not, moreover, taken exactly from Isaiah, but apparently from a Targum.

Matt. viii. 17. This quotation is nearer the original Hebrew than the rendering of the LXX.

Matt. xii. 18-21. In this citation we have an incorrect rendering of the Hebrew לתורתו “at his teaching,” made by the LXX. “in his name,” adopted without hesitation by the compiler. He also accepts the erroneous rendering of “islands,” made “nation,” “Gentiles,” by the LXX.

But, on the other hand, “till he send forth judgment unto victory,” is taken from neither the original Hebrew nor from the LXX., and is probably derived from a Targum.

Thus in this passage we have apparently a combination of two somewhat similar accounts – the one in Greek, the other in Aramaic.

Matt. xiii. 35. This also is a compound text. The first half is from the LXX., but the second member is from a Hebrew Targum.

Matt. xxvii. 3. In the Hebrew, the field is not a “potter's,” nor is it in the LXX., who use χωνευτήριον “the smelting-furnace.” The word in the Hebrew signifies “treasury.” The composer of the Gospel, therefore must have quoted from a Targum, and been ignorant both of the genuine Hebrew Scriptures and of the Greek translation of the Seventy.

These instances are enough to show that the material used for the compilation of the first Canonical Gospel was very various; that the author had at his disposal matter in both Aramaic and Greek.

We shall find, on looking further, that he inserted two narratives of the same event in his Gospel in different places, if they differed slightly from one another, when coming to him from different sources.

The following are parallel passages:

The existence in the first Canonical Gospel of these duplicate passages proves that the editor of it in its present form made use of materials from different sources, which he worked together into a complete whole. And these duplicate passages are the more remarkable, because, where his memory does not fail him, he takes pains to avoid repetition.

It would seem therefore plain that the compiler of St. Matthew's Gospel made use of, first, a Collection of the Sayings of the Lord, of undoubted genuineness, drawn up by St. Matthew; second, of two or more Collections of the Sayings and Doings of the Lord, also, no doubt, genuine, but not necessarily by St. Matthew.

One of these sources was made use of also by St. Mark in the composition of his Gospel.

According to the testimony of Papias:

“John the Priest said this: Mark being the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he recorded he wrote with great accuracy, but not, however, in the order in which it was spoken or done by our Lord, for he neither heard nor followed our Lord, but, as before said, he was in company with Peter, who gave him such instruction as occasion called forth, but did not study to give a history of our Lord's discourses; wherefore Mark has not erred in anything, by writing this and that as he has remembered them; for he was carefully attentive to one thing, not to pass by anything that he heard, nor to state anything falsely in these accounts.”²⁶³

It has been often asked and disputed, whether this statement applies to the Gospel of St. Mark received by the Church into her sacred canon.

It can hardly be denied that the Canonical Gospel of Mark does answer in every particular to the description of its composition by John the Priest. John gives five characteristics to the work of Mark:

1. A striving after accuracy.²⁶⁴

2. Want of chronological succession in his narrative, which had rather the character of a string of anecdotes and sayings than of a biography.²⁶⁵

3. It was composed of records of both the sayings and the doings of Jesus.²⁶⁶

4. It was no syntax of sayings (σύνταξις λογίων), like the work of Matthew.²⁶⁷

5. It was the composition of a companion of Peter.²⁶⁸

These characteristic features of the work of Mark agree with the Mark Gospel, some of the special features of which are:

1. Want of order: it is made up of a string of episodes and anecdotes, and of sayings manifestly unconnected.

2. The order of events is wholly different from that in Matthew, Luke and John.

3. Both the sayings and the doings of Jesus are related in it.

4. It contains no long discourses, like the Gospel of St. Matthew, arranged in systematic order.

5. It contains many incidents which point to St. Peter as the authority for them, and recall his preaching.

To this belong – the manner in which the Gospel opens with the baptism of John, just as St. Peter's address (Acts x. 37-41) begins with that event also; the many little incidents mentioned which give token of having been related by an eye-witness, and in which the narrative of St. Matthew is deficient.²⁶⁹ St. Mark's Gospel is also rich in indications of the feelings of the people toward Jesus, such as an eye-witness must have observed,²⁷⁰ and of notices of movements of the body – small significant acts, which could not escape one present who described what he had seen.²⁷¹

That the composer of St. Matthew's Gospel made use of the material out of which St. Mark compiled his, that is, of the memorabilia of St. Peter, is evident. Whole passages of St. Mark's Gospel occur word for word, or nearly so, in the Gospel of St. Matthew.²⁷²

Moreover, it is apparent that sometimes the author of St. Matthew's Gospel misunderstood the text. A few instances must suffice here.

Mark ii. 18: “And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. And they came to him and said to him, Why do the disciples of John, and the disciples of the Pharisees, fast, and thy disciples fast not?” It is clear that it was then a fasting season, which the disciples of Jesus were not observing. The “they” who came to him does not mean “the disciples of John and of the Pharisees,” but certain other persons. Καὶ ἔρχονται is so used in St. Mark's Gospel in several places, like the French “on venait.”

But the compiler of St. Matthew's Gospel did not understand this use of the verb without a subject expressed, and he made “the disciples of John” ask the question.

Mark vi. 10: Ὅπου ἂν εἰσέλθητε εἰς οἰκίαν, ἐκεῖ μένετε ἕως ἄν ἐξέλθητε ἐκεῖθεν. That is, “Wherever (i. e. in whatsoever town or village) ye enter into a house, therein remain (i.e. in that house) till ye go away thence (i. e. from that city or village).” By leaving out the word house, Matthew loses the sense of the command (x. 11), “Into whatsoever town or village ye enter – remain in it till ye go out of it.”

Mark vii. 27, 28. The Lord answers the Syro-Phoenician woman, “Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.” The woman answers, “Yes, Lord; yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs.” The meaning is, God gives His grace and mercy first to the Jews (the children); and this must not be taken from the Jews to be given to the heathen (the dogs). True, answers the woman; but the heathen do partake of the blessings that overflow from the portion of the Jews.

But the so-called Matthew did not catch the signification, and the point is lost in his version (xv. 27). He makes the woman answer, “The dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.”

Mark x. 13. According to St. Mark, parents brought their children to Christ, probably with some superstitious idea, to be touched. This offended the disciples. “They rebuked those that brought them.” But Jesus was displeased, and said to the disciples, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” And instead of fulfilling the superstitious wishes of the parents, he took the children in his arms and blessed them. But the text used by St. Matthew's compilator was probably defective at the end of verse 13, and ended, “and his disciples rebuked…” The compiler therefore completed it with αὐτοῖς instead of τοῖς προσφέρουσιν, and then misunderstood verse 14, and applied the ἄφετε differently: “Let go the children, and do not hinder them from coming to me.” In St. Mark, the disciples rebuke the parents; in St. Matthew, they rebuke the children, and intercept them on their way to Christ.

Mark xii. 8: “They slew him and cast him out,” i. e. cast out the dead body. The compiler of St. Matthew's Gospel did not see this. He could not understand how that the son was killed and then cast out of the vineyard; so he altered the order into, “They cast him out and slew him” (xxi. 38).²⁷³

Examples might be multiplied, but these must suffice. If I am not mistaken, they go far to prove that the author of St. Matthew's Gospel used the material, or some of the material, out of which St. Mark's Gospel was composed.

But there are also other proofs. The text of St. Mark has been taken into that of St. Matthew's Gospel, but not without some changes, corrections which the compiler made, thinking the words of the text in his hands were redundant, vulgar, or not sufficiently explicit.

Thus Mark i. 5: “The whole Jewish land and all they of Jerusalem,” he changed into, “Jerusalem and all Judaea.”

Mark i. 12: “The Spirit driveth,” ἐκβάλλει, he softened into “led,” ἀνήχθη.

Mark iii. 4: “He saith, Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath-days, or to do evil?” In St. Matthew's Gospel, before performing a miracle, Christ argues the necessity of showing mercy on the Sabbath-day, and supplies what is wanting in St. Mark – the conclusion, “Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath-days” (xii. 12).

Mark iv. 12: “That seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not hear.” This seemed harsh to the compiler of St. Matthew. It was as if unbelief and blindness were fatally imposed by God on men. He therefore alters the tenor of the passage, and attributes the blindness of the people, and their incapability of understanding, to their own grossness of heart (xiii. 14, 15).

Mark v. 37: “The ship was freighted,” in St. Matthew, is altered into, “the ship was covered” with the waves (viii. 34).

Mark vi. 9 “Money in the girdle,” changed into, “money in the girdles” (x. 9).

Mark ix. 42: “A millstone were put on his neck,” changed to, “were hung about his neck” (xviii. 6).

Mark x. 17: “Sell all thou hast;” Matt. xix. 21, “all thy possessions.”

Mark xii. 30: “He took a woman;” Matt. xxii. 25, “he married.”

But if it be evident that the author of St. Matthew's Gospel laid under contribution the material used by St. Mark, it is also clear that he did not use St. Mark's Gospel as it stands. He had the fragmentary memorabilia of which it was made up, or a large number of them, but unarranged. He sorted them and wove them in with the “Logia” written by St. Matthew, and afterwards, independently, without knowledge, probably, of what had been done by the compiler of the first Gospel, St. Mark compiled his. Thus St. Matthew's is the first Gospel in order of composition, though much of the material of St. Mark's Gospel was written and in circulation first.

This will appear when we see how independently of one another the compiler of St. Matthew and St. Mark arrange their “memorabilia.”

It is unnecessary to do more to illustrate this than to take the contents of Matt. iv. – xiii.

According to St. Matthew, after the Sermon on the Mount, Christ heals the leper, then enters Capernaum, where he receives the prayer of the centurion, and forthwith enters into Peter's house, where he cures the mother-in-law, and the same night crosses the sea.

But according to St. Mark, Christ cast out the unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum, then healed Peter's wife's mother, and, not the same night but long after, crossed the sea. On his return he went through the villages preaching, and then healed the leper.

The accounts are the same, but the order is altogether different. The deutero-Matthew must have had the material used by Mark under his eye, for he adopts it into his narrative; but he cannot have had St. Mark's Gospel, or he would not have so violently disturbed the order of events.

The compiler has been guilty of an inaccuracy in the use of “Gergesenes” instead of Gadarenes. St. Mark is right. Gadara was situated near the river Hieromax, east of the Sea of Galilee, over against Scythopolis and Tiberias, and capital of Peraea. This agrees exactly with what is said in the Gospels of the miracle performed in the “country of the Gadarenes.” The swine rushed violently down a steep place and perished in the lake. Jesus had come from the N.W. shore of the Sea to Gadara in the S.E. But the country of the Gergesenes can hardly be the same as that of the Gadarenes. Gerasa, the capital, was on the Jabbok, some days' journey distant from the lake. The deutero-Matthew was therefore ignorant of the topography of the neighbourhood whence Levi, that is Matthew, was called.

St. Mark says that Christ healed one demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum, then crossed the lake, and healed the second in Gadara. But St. Matthew, or rather the Greek compiler of St. Matthew's Gospel, has fused these two events into one, and makes Christ heal both possessed men in the country of the Gergesenes. In like manner we have twice the healing of two blind men (ix. 27 and xx. 30), whereas the other evangelists know of only single blind men being healed on both occasions. How comes this? The compiler had two accounts of each miracle of healing the blind, slightly varying. He thought they referred to the same occasion, but to different persons, and therefore made Christ heal two men, whereas he had given sight to but one.