The important point to note in the documentary evolution is that the mystery-play remained a secret representation for some time after written gospels were current. To begin with, all the mystery-plays of the age were on the same footing of secrecy. What takes place finally in the Jesuist cult is a simple adding-on of the mystery-play to the gospels. It was not for nothing that the school of B. Weiss, seeking to expiscate a "Primitive Gospel" from the synoptics, made it end before the Tragedy. This was what they were bound to do by their documentary tests; and the common objection that such an ending is very improbable--a difficulty avowed by Weiss and weakly sought to be solved by some of the school--is seen in the light of the myth-theory to be a difficulty only for those who assume not merely the historicity of a Jesus but the historicity of the whole tragedy story down to the resurrection. Once it is realized that that story is a dramatic development of an originally simple myth of sacrificial death, the documentary difficulty disappears. [It should not be necessary to point out the absolute falsity of the assertion of Dr. Conybeare (Histor. Christ, p. 49) that in my theory "The Christian Gospels ... are a transcript of the annually performed ritual drama, just as Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare are transcripts of Shakespeare's plays." In Pagan Christs (p. 201) it is expressly argued that "the Mystery Play is an addition to a previously existing document.... The transcriber has been able to add to the previous gospel the matter of the mystery-play; and there he loyally stops." And it is repeatedly pointed out that the transcription has been made with the minimum of necessary narrative connection. Thus the parallel with Lamb's Tales is false even as regards the matter posited as constituting the play; while the assertion that the whole of the gospel is represented as a transcription of a play is pure fabrication. And this mere falsification of the theory passes with traditionalist critics as a confutation.]