This plausible but dangerous detail, however, is not insisted on; what is essential is the datum of long oral tradition. Orthodox as he is, too, Mr. Wright holds that Luke i; ii; iii, 23-38, "are comparatively late additions, which never formed part of the primitive oral teaching." [120] Thus he can summarily get rid of a number of incredibilities which the other schools more prudently leave to be excised by the reader as he sees fit. But we shall find him making a stout fight for many others. On the "oral" theory every Church had its own tradition, [121] "differing both in contents and wording from that of other Churches, and in particular exhibiting much mixture and many sayings of Christ which are not in our Gospels at all" [122]--an interesting approximation, in effect, to the theory of scattered leaflets. Thus is to be accounted for the endless variety in Gospel phrasing and detail. For Mr. Wright, further, it is inconceivable that any evangelist left out anything he knew of. "The common idea" (before Dr. Petrie) "that they picked and selected what was specially adapted to their readers, I most confidently reject." [123] Matthew would gladly have given the parable of the Prodigal Son, and Luke the story of the Syrophoenician woman, which would so well have suited his purpose. [124] "He did not give it because he had never heard of it." Thus, in brief, Mr. Wright posits much teaching lost even from the oral tradition, as Dr. Petrie posits many lost leaflets. But Mr. Wright's conception of the oral tradition, upon scrutiny, becomes disquieting to the critical sense. In one place, discussing Luther's estimate of the Epistle of James as an epistle of straw, he remarks--with a great deal more truth, I fancy, than he dreams of--that James's Epistle "is Christianity in swaddling-clothes." [125] Again, the opening verses of John's Gospel "reveal a depth of knowledge to which S. James never attained. Not that S. James would have contradicted them or doubted their truth. But it is one thing to see truth when it is set before you; it is another to set it forth yourself. There is such a thing as latent knowledge." [126] Yet on the same page with the swaddling-clothes passage Mr. Wright has said, with regard to Mark's omission of the words, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest":-- Was it humility that made him deliberately omit them as too good for so insignificant a creature as himself to record? Or was it a conscious or unconscious feeling that they were unsuited to his readers? A man with such preposterous humility was ill-equipped for the work of an evangelist. Readers so unchristian would not value a Gospel.