Of all New Testament authors St. Luke is perhaps the last to have issued his works without modifications. The high art which is self‐evident in a modern writer like Robert Louis Stevenson was not attained without corrections, substitutions, redrafting, and rewriting. Without drawing the parallel too closely, and without impugning his real inspiration, we may well credit some of these processes to St. Luke. This, however, is an argument we cannot press too far, for, as will be seen in the following section, there is good ground for the belief that St. Luke’s revision of his work was never complete. It is sufficient for our hypothesis to find room for a measure of revision and for the presence of modifications required by new information. The nature of St. Luke’s task is an added reason for expecting these processes. In his Preface (i. 1‐4) St. Luke shows a desire to produce a full and accurate record, and claims to have traced the course of all things from the first. Any new information bearing upon the Birth and the hidden years of the Infancy would be especially welcome to him. Any one, moreover, who has had anything to do with collecting memoirs knows that not infrequently new facts come to hand just when the task seems well‐nigh completed, facts for which a place must be found, however great the difficulties may be. We are not indeed left entirely to conjecture. We can examine St. Luke’s treatment of the Markan record. The modifications which he introduces are manifest, and they arise in different ways. Many of them are stylistic, others are intended to clear up difficulties, while it is in every way probable that others again are corrections introduced as the result of new information. If, from such causes, St. Luke does not hesitate to modify the statements of St. Mark’s Gospel, it is inconceivable that he would have refrained from altering his own narrative if occasion should arise.