[Sidenote: _Influences that gave rise to the earliest Gospels_]

The influences which originally produced the Gospels and Acts were very
different from those which called forth the Epistles. The natural
preference of the early Christians for the spoken word explains why we
do not possess to-day a single written sentence in the Gospels which we
can with absolute assurance assign to the first quarter-century
following the death of Jesus. Two influences, however, in time led
certain writers to record his early life and teachings. The one was that
death was rapidly thinning the ranks of those who could say, _I saw and
heard_; the other was the spread of Christianity beyond the bounds of
Judaism and Palestine, and the resulting need for detailed records felt
by those Christians who had never visited Palestine and who had learned
from the lips of apostles only the barest facts regarding the life of
the Christ.

[Sidenote: _Testimony of Luke's Gospel_]

The opening verses of Luke's Gospel are richly suggestive of the origin
and growth of the historical books of the New Testament:

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning
those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered
them unto us,--they who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and
ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having traced the
course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in
order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed.

This prologue states that many shorter Gospels had previously been