The statements of Papias regarding the Synoptists, which Weisse followed, are not deserving of credence. For a whole generation and more the tradition about Jesus had passed from mouth to mouth, and it had absorbed much that was legendary. Luke was the first—as his preface shows—who checked that process, and undertook to separate what was genuine from what was not. He is the most trustworthy of the Evangelists, for he keeps closely to his sources and adds nothing of his own, in contrast with Matthew who, writing at a later date, used sources of less value and invented matter of his own, which Gfrörer finds especially in the story of the passion in this Gospel. The lateness of Matthew is also evident from his tendency to carry over the Old Testament into the New. In Luke, on the other hand, the sources are so conscientiously treated that Gfrörer finds no difficulty in analysing the narrative into its component parts, especially as he always has a purely instinctive feeling “whenever a different wind begins to blow.” Both Gospels, however, were written long after the destruction of the holy city, since they do not draw their material from the Jerusalem tradition, but “from the Christian legends which had grown up in the neighbourhood of the Sea of Tiberias,” and in consequence “mistakenly transferred the scene of Jesus’ ministry to Galilee.” For this reason it is not surprising “that even down into the second century many Christians had doubts about the truth of the Synoptics and ventured to express their doubts.” Such doubts only ceased when the Church became firmly established and began to use its authority to suppress the objections of individuals. Mark is the earliest witness to doubts within the primitive Christian community regarding the credibility of his predecessors. Luke and Matthew are for him not yet sacred books; he desires to reconcile their inconsistencies, and at the same time to produce “a Gospel composed of materials of which the authenticity could be maintained even against the doubters.” For this reason he omits most of the discourses, ignores the birth‐story, and of the miracles retains only those which were most deeply embedded in the tradition. His Gospel was probably produced between 110 and 120. The “non‐ genuine” conclusion was a later addition, but by the Evangelist himself. Thus Mark proves that the Synoptists contain legendary matter even though they are separated from the events which they relate only by a generation and a half, or at most two generations. To show that there is nothing strange in this, Gfrörer gives a long catalogue of miracles found in historians who were contemporaries of the events which they describe, and in some cases were concerned in them—in this connexion Cortez affords him a rich storehouse of material. On the other hand, all objections against the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel collapse miserably. It is true that, like the others, it offers no historically accurate report of the