and single traditions would have been great improvements; and might
have been effected, even though "Mark" was as much pressed for space
as some have imagined. But there is no ground for that imagination;
Mark has actually found room for four or five parables; why should he
not have given the best, if he had known of them? Admitting he was the
mere _pedissequus et breviator_ of Matthew, that even Augustine
supposed him to be, what could induce him to omit the Lord's Prayer?

Whether more or less of the materials of the twofold tradition D, and
of the peculiar traditions F and G, were or were not current in some
of the communities, as early as, or perhaps earlier than, the triple
tradition, it is not necessary for me to discuss; nor to consider
those solutions of the Synoptic problem which assume that it existed
earlier, and was already combined with more or less narrative. Those
who are working out the final solution of the Synoptic problem are
taking into account, more than hitherto, the possibility that the
widely separated Christian communities of Palestine, Asia Minor,
Egypt, and Italy, especially after the Jewish war of A.D. 66-70, may
have found themselves in possession of very different traditional
materials. Many circumstances tend to the conclusion that, in Asia
Minor, even the narrative part of the threefold tradition had a
formidable rival; and that, around this second narrative, teaching
traditions of a totally different order from those in the Synoptics,
grouped themselves; and, under the influence of converts imbued more
or less with the philosophical speculations of the time, eventually
took shape in the fourth Gospel and its associated literature.

XII. But it is unnecessary, and it would be out of place, for me to
attempt to do more than indicate the existence of these complex and
difficult questions. My purpose has been to make it clear that the