St. Luke, it will be noticed, omits the hint just referred to, and as his account of Christ's prophecy of the siege is rather more detailed than the others, it is sometimes thought to have been written _after_ the event. But this is a needless assumption, for the hint would have been quite useless to Theophilus, to whom the Gospel was addressed; and the prophecy is anyhow no closer than that in Deut. 28., which everyone admits was written centuries before (Chapter XI.). On the whole, then, everything points to our first three Gospels having been written some years before the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70; and most likely by the Evangelists, to whom they have been universally ascribed. It may also be added, in regard to the Evangelists themselves, _St. Matthew_ the Apostle was a publican or tax-collector, so just the sort of person to keep records, in either Greek or Hebrew.[214] _St. Mark_ came of a wealthy family, as his relative, Barnabas, had some property; and his mother, Mary, had a large house at Jerusalem, where Christians used to assemble, and where it has been thought the Last Supper was held.[215] And the _young man_ who followed from here to Gethsemane was probably St. Mark himself, or he would not have recorded such a trivial incident.[216] [Footnote 214: Matt. 9. 9.] [Footnote 215: Acts 4. 37; 12. 12; 1. 13; Col. 4. 10.] [Footnote 216: Mark 14. 51.] And _St. Luke_, as we shall see in the next chapter, was a doctor, who says he got his information from _eye-witnesses_. And if he was the companion of Cleopas, as is perhaps probable (for such a graphic narrative must have come from one who was present, yet the language is thoroughly that of St. Luke), he would also have had some slight knowledge of Christ himself.[217] And in similar cases where St. John speaks of two disciples, but gives the name of only one, it is practically certain that he himself was the other.[218] Moreover St. Luke says that his Gospel, which only goes as far as the Ascension, was about _those matters which have been fulfilled among us_[219] (_i.e._, which have _occurred_ among us), and this implies that it was written in Palestine at a very early date, and that St. Luke himself was there during at least part of the time referred to. [Footnote 217: Luke 24. 18; _Expositor_, Feb., 1904.] [Footnote 218: John 1. 40; 18. 15.] [Footnote 219: Luke 1. 1. (R.V.). A short paper on _Fulfilled among us_, by the present writer, appeared in the _Churchman_, Aug. 1914.] All three must thus have been well-educated men, and quite in a position to write Gospels if they wanted to. While as none of them seem to have taken a prominent part in the founding of Christianity, there was no reason for ascribing the Gospels to them, rather than to such great men as St. Peter and St. Paul, unless they actually wrote them. (_B._) THE FOURTH GOSPEL.