Papias said [Endnote 146:1], ’wrote the oracles ([Greek:  ta logia]) in the Hebrew tongue, and every one interpreted them as he was able.’  ’Mark, as the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he remembered that was said or done by Christ.  For he neither heard the Lord nor attended upon Him, but later, as I said, upon Peter, who taught according to the occasion and not as composing a connected narrative of the Lord’s discourses; so that Mark made no mistake in writing down some things as he remembered them.  For he took care of one thing, not to omit any of the particulars that he heard or to falsify any part of them.’

* * * * *

Let us take the second of these statements first.  According to it the Gospel of St. Mark consisted of notes taken down, or rather recollected, from the teaching of Peter.  It was not written ’in order,’ but it was an original work in the sense that it was first put in writing by Mark himself, having previously existed only in an oral form.

Does this agree with the facts of the Gospel as it appears to us now?  There is a certain ambiguity as to the phrase ‘in order.’  We cannot be quite sure what Papias meant by it, but the most natural conclusion seems to be that it meant chronological order.  If so, the statement of Papias seems to be so far borne out that none of the Synoptic Gospels is really in exact chronological order; but, strange to say, if there is any in which an approach to such an order is made, it is precisely this of St. Mark.  This appears from a comparison of the three Synoptics.  From the point at which the second Gospel begins, or, in other words, from the Baptism to the Crucifixion, it seems to give the outline that the other two Gospels follow [Endnote 147:1].  If either of them diverges from it for a time it is only to return.  The early part of St. Matthew is broken up by the intrusion of the so-called Sermon on the Mount, but all this time St. Mark is in approximate agreement with St. Luke.  For a short space the three Gospels go together.  Then comes a second break, where Luke introduces his version of the Sermon on the Mount.  Then the three rejoin and proceed together, Matthew being thrown out by the way in which he has collected the parables into a single chapter, and Luke later by the place which he has assigned to the incident at Nazareth.  After this Matthew and Mark proceed side by side, Luke dropping out of the ranks.  At the confession of Peter he takes his place again, and there is a close agreement in the order of the three narratives.  The incident of the miracle-worker is omitted by Matthew, and then comes the insertion of a mass of extraneous matter by Luke.  When he resumes the thread of the common narrative again all three are together.  The insertion of a single parable on the part of Matthew, and omissions on the part of Luke, are the only interruptions.  There is an approximate agreement of all three, we