The secondary interest of the writer would also seem to have influenced his work somewhat too strongly. That interest is indicated in the following statements: "If Acts was written in A.D. 62, ... and Luke was written before Acts, then Matthew, slipping in between Mark and Luke must throw Mark still further back.... We thus would come very close to the resurrection, perhaps to within fifteen years, and the possibility of legendary and controversial elements having entered into the gospel story would accordingly be reduced to a minimum.... With our understanding of Lucan derivations from Matthew, as well as from Mark, the ghost of a chance of existence belonging to postulated common sources, such as an earlier or a later Mark and a Q is frightened away, and we are left with the Gospels Mark, Matthew, Luke, written in that order," etc.[85] Passing from the details of Mr. Smith's statement to the general argument upon which they rest, the present writer can see no cogency in that argument. Even if the use of Matthew by Luke were not contradicted by so many characteristics of both those Gospels, the writer cannot see how the choice by Luke of the second part of a phrase of which Matthew has taken the first part should prove the use of Matthew by Luke. Why should not Luke feel free to take precisely that part of a Marcan phrase which Matthew has taken--if he wanted it? Why should his finding it in Matthew make him feel that he was not at liberty to use it? Why, indeed, if Luke was copying Matthew, should he not have _followed_ him in his quotation of a certain part of a Marcan phrase, instead of putting himself every time to the trouble of going back to his Mark to pick out that part of the phrase which Matthew had left? It does not quite appear why the facts cited by Mr. Smith (so far as analysis of the passages from which they are cited leaves any of them standing) might not just as well be turned against his theory as for it. CHAPTER VII THE EXISTENCE AND CONTENT OF Q Coming back to the theory that Matthew and Luke used a common document for their sayings-material, we have next to determine what the content of that document was. A reasonable degree of unanimity prevails among scholars as to this content, or at least as to a considerable part of it. Where students differ is as to the sayings which are not very closely parallel in the two Gospels, or as to sayings that are contained in only one of the two. As to the sayings which are practically identical in the two, or which show such very marked literary agreements as to put different sources out of the question, there is no dispute.