Many years ago the early fathers thought it necessary to say why there were four inspired books, and some of them said, because there were four cardinal directions and the gospels fitted the north, south, east and west. Others said that there were four principal winds--a gospel for each wind. They might have added that some animals have four legs. Renan admits that the narrative portions have not the same authority; "that many legends proceeded from the zeal of the second Christian generation; that the narrative of Luke is historically weak; that sentences attributed to Jesus have been distorted and exaggerated; that the book was written outside of Palestine and after the siege of Jerusalem; that Luke endeavors to make the different narratives agree, changing them for that purpose; that he softens the passages which had become embarrassing; that he exaggerated the marvelous, omitted errors in chronology; that he was a compiler, a man who had not been an eye-witness himself, and who had not seen eye-witnesses, but who labors at texts and wrests their sense to make them agree." This certainly is very far from inspiration. So "Luke interprets the documents according to his own idea; being a kind of anarchist, opposed to property, and persuaded that the triumph of the poor was approaching; that he was especially fond of the anecdotes showing the conversion of sinners, the exaltation of the humble, and that he modified ancient traditions to give them this meaning." Renan reached the conclusion that the gospels are neither biographies after the manner of Suetonius nor fictitious legends in the style of Philostratus, but that they are legendary biographies like the legends of the saints, the lives of Plotinus and Isidore, in which historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are combined in various degrees; that they are "inexact" that they "contain numerous errors and discordances." So he takes the ground that twenty or thirty years after Christ, his reputation had greatly increased, that "legends had begun to gather about Him like clouds," that "death added to His perfection, freeing Him from all defects in the eyes of those who had loved Him, that His followers wrested the prophecies so that they might fit Him. They said, 'He is the Messiah.' The Messiah was to do certain things; therefore Jesus did certain things. Then an account would be given of the doing." All of which of course shows that there can be maintained no theory of inspiration.