One wonders why both these writers appeal to Holtzmann, seeing that they practically abandon the Marcan plan which he had worked out at the end of his very thorough examination of this Gospel. They do not accept as sufficient the controversy regarding the ceremonial regulations in Mark vii. which, with the rejection at Nazareth, constitute, in Holtzmann’s view, the turning‐point of the Galilaean ministry, but find the cause of the change of attitude on the part of the people rather in the Johannine discourse about eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the Son of Man. The section Mark x.‐xv., which has a certain unity, they interpret in the light of the Johannine tradition, finding in it traces of a previous ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem and interweaving with it the Johannine story of the Passion. According to Schenkel the last visit to Jerusalem must have been of considerable duration. When confronted with John, the admission may be wrung from the Synoptists that Jesus did not travel straight through Jericho to the capital, but worked first for a considerable time in Judaea. Strauss tartly observes that he cannot see what the author of the “characterisation” stood to gain by underwriting Holtzmann’s Marcan hypothesis.(130) Weizsäcker is still bolder in making interpolations from the Johannine tradition. He places the cleansing of the Temple, in contradiction to Mark, in the early period of Jesus’ ministry, on the ground that “it bears the character of a first appearance, a bold deed with which to open His career.” He fails to observe, however, that if this act really took place at this point of time, the whole development of the life of Jesus which Holtzmann had so ingeniously traced in Mark, is at once thrown into confusion. In describing the last visit to Jerusalem, Weizsäcker is not content to insert the Marcan stones into the Johannine cement; he goes farther and expressly states that the great farewell discourses of Jesus to His disciples agree with the Synoptic discourses to the disciples spoken during the last days, however completely they of all others bear the peculiar stamp of the Johannine diction. Thus in the second period of the Marcan hypothesis the same spectacle meets us as in the earlier. The hypothesis has a literary existence, indeed it is carried by Holtzmann to such a degree of demonstration that it can no longer be called a mere hypothesis, but it does not succeed in winning an assured position in the critical study of the Life of Jesus. It is common‐land not yet taken into cultivation.