6.  But with these remarkable agreements coexist equally remarkable differences.  Each writer has his own peculiarities of style, which appear more distinctly in the original than they can in any version.  It has been noticed also by Biblical scholars that these peculiarities are more marked in the narrative than in the recitative parts of the gospels in question.  Each writer, moreover, brings in incidents peculiar to himself, not in the form of patchwork, but as parts of a self consistent whole.  So far is he from exact outward conformity to either of the other gospels, in respect to arrangement and circumstantial details, that the diversity between him and them in these particulars, sometimes creates serious difficulties when we attempt to arrange the three different narratives in the form of a harmony.

7.  No theory of the origin of these three gospels can be true which does not explain both their coincidences and their differences.  Hence we may set aside at once the hypothesis of their mutual dependence on each other—­that the later evangelists used the writings of the earlier.  By the different advocates of this theory, each of the three synoptic gospels has been made in turn the primary record from which the others drew; but no one of them has been able, upon this hypothesis, to account for the omissions or insertions of the supposed later evangelists, much less for the remarkable fact already noticed, that the peculiarities of each writer appear more fully in the narrative than in the recitative part of his gospel.  The later evangelists may, indeed, have been acquainted with the writings of the earlier and have consulted them, but this supposition alone does not explain their peculiar coincidences and differences.

Another hypothesis is that of an original document or documents, from which all three are supposed to have drawn.  The assumption of a single original written gospel, as the basis of our first three canonical gospels, is manifestly untenable.  Had a primitive gospel existed of such compass and authority as to be the common source of our three synoptic gospels, it is inconceivable that the churches, which carefully preserved these three gospels, though two of them proceeded not from apostles themselves but only from their companions, should have allowed the original gospel so speedily and utterly to perish, that no traces of it remained in the days of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria.  Besides, this hypothesis, as it was soon seen, does not explain the peculiar relation of these gospels to each other in respect to coincidences and differences.  Hence various modifications were proposed—­an original Aramaic gospel with various Greek translations, this original Aramaic gospel variously increased with new matter, etc.  In a word, the form of these assumed original documents was hypothetically explained from the actual form of our three synoptic gospels; the very reverse of the true problem, which was to explain, from some reliable data, the form of the canonical gospels themselves.