So we sat down, and I began to question him about Mark and the other gospels. But before I describe our conversation, I must remind my readers that at that time, forty-five years ago, in the second year of Hadrian, the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, were not regarded as on the same level as scripture, nor as entirely different from other writings composed by pious Christians such as, for example, the epistle of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians. No doubt, some Christians, even at that date, were disposed to rank the three gospels by themselves as superior to all others past or future; and some of them may have asserted that the number three was, as it were, predicted in the Law. For Moses said, “Out of the mouth of two witnesses” (that might be Mark and Matthew) “or three witnesses” (that would include Luke) “shall every word be established.” But if they spoke thus, I do not know of it. On the contrary, I have heard, that about the very time of our conversation, that is in the second year of Hadrian, there were traditions about Mark (current in the neighbourhood of Ephesus) placing him on a very much lower level than the Hebrew prophets. Some used to accuse him (as I have confessed above that I was perhaps too prone to do) of being disproportioned and lengthy in unimportant detail. An Elder near Ephesus defended Mark. He laid the blame on the necessities of the case, saying that Mark recorded what he had heard from Peter, and that Peter adapted his teachings to the needs of the moment, so that “Mark committed no error” in writing some things as he did. Whether this Elder was right or wrong, his words shewed that neither he, defending Mark, nor his opponents, attacking Mark, regarded the evangelist as perfect. Indeed his gospel was generally underrated, being placed far below that of Matthew and Luke, because people did not perceive that Mark often contained the account that was the truest—although expressed obscurely or in such a way as to cause some to stumble. At that time it would have been thought profane to put Mark or Luke on the same level with Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah and the prophets, to whom “the word of the Lord” is said to have “come.” Luke never says, “The word of the Lord came to me,” but, in effect, this: “I have traced things back carefully and accurately, and have thought it well to set them forth in chronological order.” Matthew, as being an apostle, might have been placed on a different footing. But as he wrote in Hebrew, and his gospel was circulated in Greek, it was not thought that we had the very words of the apostle. Moreover Matthew’s words often differed in such a way from Luke’s, that even a child could perceive that two writers were describing the same words of the Lord in two different versions, so that both could not be exactly correct. And, very often, Luke’s version appeared better than Matthew’s.