This is but a tithe of the arguments which show that the first Gospel is a secondary composition.  An original composition would be homogeneous; it is markedly heterogeneous.  The first two chapters clearly belong to a different stock of materials from the rest of the Gospel.  A broad division is seen in regard to the Old Testament quotations.  Those which are common to the other two Synoptists are almost if not quite uniformly taken from the Septuagint; those, on the other hand, which seem to belong to the reflection of the Evangelist betray more or less distinctly the influence of the Hebrew [Endnote 153:1].  Our Gospel is thus seen to be a recension of another original document or documents and not an original document itself.

Again, if our St. Matthew had been an original composition and had appeared from the first in its present full and complete form, it would be highly difficult to account for the omissions and variations in Mark and Luke.  We should be driven back, indeed, upon all the impossibilities of the ‘Benutzungs-hypothese.’  On the one hand, the close resemblance between the three compels us to assume that the authors have either used each other’s works or common documents; but the differences practically preclude the supposition that the later writer had before him the whole work of his predecessor.  If Luke had had before him the first two chapters of Matthew he could not have written his own first two chapters as he has done.

Again, the character of the narrative is such as to be inconsistent with the view that it proceeds from an eye-witness of the events.  Those graphic touches, which are so conspicuous in the fourth Gospel, and come out from time to time in the second, are entirely wanting in the first.  If parallel narratives, such as the healing of the paralytic, the cleansing of the Temple, or the feeding of the five thousand, are compared, this will be very clearly seen.  More; there are features in the first Gospel that are to all appearance unhistorical and due to the peculiar method of the writer.  He has a way of reduplicating, so to speak, the personages of one narrative in order to make up for the omission of another [Endnote 154:1].  For instance, he is silent as to the healing of the demoniac at Capernaum, but, instead of this, he gives us two Gadarene demoniacs, at the same time modifying the language in which he describes this latter incident after the pattern of the former; in like manner he speaks of the healing of two blind men at Jericho, but only because he had passed over the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida.  Of a somewhat similar nature is the adding of the ass’s colt to the ass in the account of the Triumphal Entry.  There are also fragmentary sayings repeated in the Gospel in a way that would be natural in a later editor piecing together different documents and finding the same saying in each, but unnatural in an eye- and ear-witness drawing upon his own recollections.  Some clear cases of this kind would be Matt. v. 29, 30 (= Matt. xviii. 8, 9) the offending member, Matt. v. 32 (= Matt. xix. 9) divorce, Matt. x. 38, 39 (= Matt. xvi. 24, 25) bearing the cross, loss and gain; and there are various others.