Facing once more the sharp antithesis between this and the strictly Judaic command in Matthew, we dismiss as a futility the notion that the same teacher delivered both about the same time, and that the pro-Gentile compiler merely "selected" one and dropped the other. The two sayings are framed for two schools or two sects; and it is idle to see history in either. If the deified Teacher had delivered the first, the second would have been a daring blasphemy. They are alike but men's counsels ascribed to "the Lord." To this conclusion we are always driven. The starting-point of the diverging sects must be looked for in something else than a body of oracular teaching of any kind. CHAPTER XIV ORTHODOXY AND THE "ORAL" HYPOTHESIS The diverging schools of documentary "construction" being thus alike unable to yield a coherent notion either of the process of Gospel-making or of the beginnings of the cultus, it is not surprising to find yet a third school of scholarly interpretation undertaking to do better, and to build on an "oral" basis where others have vainly built on documents. This theory, long ago predominant in Germany, [117] is latterly represented in England by the Rev. Arthur Wright, author of The Composition of the Gospels, a Synopsis of the Gospels, and Some New Testament Problems. Writing before the appearance of Dr. Petrie's treatise, Mr. Wright did not contemplate that development of the later school which gives the earliest possible dates for the Gospels; but we may feel sure that he would give it small quarter. Himself essentially orthodox, and making without question all the primary assumptions of historicity, he dates the Epistle of James before the year 50, Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians in the year 52; Mark about 70; Matthew "not much" later; Luke in 80; and John later still. [118] He is not tied to the synoptics: when they become unmanageable he vigorously rectifies them by the aid of the Fourth Gospel. But on his own lines he is so candid that he can always be read with pleasure; and his arguments are well worth consideration. Mr. Wright's theory, in brief, is that the Gospels, one and all, represent the late consignment to paper of matter preserved from the first in the Christian catechetical schools, given by the apostles and preserved by their pupils in the Rabbinical fashion. As Matthew divides plausibly into fifty-one lessons, and Mark in the Westcott and Hort text into forty-eight paragraphs, it is suggested that the plan in both cases had been to attain to a set of fifty-one or fifty-two; and If there really was an attempt to provide every Sunday with a Gospel of its own, we shall understand why the formation of Gospel sections proceeded rapidly at first and then ceased; we shall understand why all our Gospels are so short and contain so little which is not essential; we shall understand how S. Mark's order became fixed. [119]