The indictment before us, in short, is an illustration of the mode of theological fence discussed above. You undertake to show that the most alert presentments of a given historical conception fail to stand critical tests, and you are met with the reply: "We are not concerned to discuss the presentments you deal with, which are not generally accepted: we demand that you discuss instead the documentary theory which in those presentments is treated as obsolete. If you do not do this, you show you are incompetent." When on the other hand the critical significance of an older theory is indicated, the reply is made that that theory is "obsolete." One theory is too new, another is too old, for discussion. All the while, the theory founded-on for the defence is really the oldest of all. It was in fact the obvious inadequacy of the familiar documentary hypothesis that dictated our discussion of more up-to-date theories, as it had elicited these. If our exegete's favourite hypothesis had had any power of satisfying independent students, we should not have had such treatises as those of the Rev. Dr. Wright and Dr. Flinders Petrie, or the searching analysis and commentary of M. Loisy, to say nothing of the vigorous Dr. Blass. In dealing with such writers, and particularly in following the "real" procedure of M. Loisy on the main issues of historical fact, I took what seemed to me the candid controversial course. To resort instead to a mere exposure of the obvious insufficiency of the "two-documents hypothesis" would be like arguing as if Genesis were the only alternative to the Darwinian theory. Dr. Wright's "oral hypothesis" is a vivid and interesting revival of what, as I pointed out, had long ago been the "predominant" view. [7] Our exegete nevertheless affirms that I regard it "as something new in England." To the lay reader I would again explain the situation thus handled. Theological discussion on the gospels has moved in cycles, by reason of the invariable presupposition as to historicity, which was a main factor in the partial failure of the mythical theory as introduced by Strauss. As I expressly stated, the oral hypothesis was before Strauss "well established." Then ensued the age-long discussion of documentary hypotheses. At the close of the nineteenth century we find Schmiedel saying: Lastly, scholars are also beginning to remember that the evangelists did not need to draw their material from books alone, but that from youth up they were acquainted with it from oral narration and could easily commit it to writing precisely in this form in either case--whether they had it before them in no written form, or whether they had it in different written form. In this matter, again, we are beginning to be on our guard against the error of supposing that in the synoptical problem we have to reckon merely with given quantities, or with such as can be easily ascertained. [8]