(1) There may be said to be a growing appreciation of the part which oral transmission has played in the composition of the Gospels. This is shown for example in the volume of Oxford "Studies in the Synoptic Problem" (1911),[278] and by the statement of Sir John Hawkins, who, in the second edition of his "Horæ Synopticæ" (1909), expresses the strong opinion "that at least the Second and Third Evangelists had provided themselves with written documents as their main sources, but that they often omitted to refer closely to them, partly because of the physical difficulties which there must have been in consulting manuscripts, and partly because of the oral knowledge of the life and sayings of Jesus Christ which they had previously acquired as learners and used as teachers, and upon which therefore it would be natural for them to fall back very frequently."[279] It is natural to suppose, with Schmiedel, that oral tradition continued for a considerable time after the first documents were written.[280] 278: Compare the statement of J. V. Bartlett: "I am not convinced that there ever was a written 'book of discourses' that has perished" (p. 360). 279: "Horæ Synopticæ," 2d ed., p. 217. 280: Art. "Gospels," Encycl. Bib., vol. ii. col. 1846. (2) A considerable number of scholars, finding that Mark condenses his account of such incidents as the Baptism and Temptation of Jesus and the discourse concerning Beelzebub, and that Matthew and Luke are parallel in matter which they add at these points to the Markan account, have concluded that Mark must have used Q, the assumed source of the Matthew-Luke agreements. A moderate statement is that of Dr. Sanday: "I do not think that Q was used by Mark regularly and systematically, as the later Evangelists use his own narrative; but he must have known of its existence, and reminiscences of it seem to have clung to him and from time to time made their way into his text." [281] 281: "Studies in the Synoptic Problem," pp. xvi, xvii.