ed compilation. We have, besides, on this point,
an excellent testimony from a writer of the first half of the second
century--namely, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a grave man, a man of
traditions, who was all his life seeking to collect whatever could be
known of the person of Jesus.[1] After having declared that on such
matters he preferred oral tradition to books, Papias mentions two
writings on the acts and words of Christ: First, a writing of Mark,
the interpreter of the apostle Peter, written briefly, incomplete, and
not arranged in chronological order, including narratives and
discourses, ([Greek: lechthenta e prachthenta],) composed from the
information and recollections of the apostle Peter; second, a
collection of sentences ([Greek: logia]) written in Hebrew[2] by
Matthew, "and which each one has translated as he could." It is
certain that these two descriptions answer pretty well to the general
physiognomy of the two books now called "Gospel according to Matthew,"
"Gospel according to Mark"--the first characterized by its long
discourses; the second, above all, by anecdote--much more exact than
the first upon small facts, brief even to dryness, containing few
discourses, and indifferently composed. That these two works, such as
we now read them, are absolutely similar to those read by Papias,
cannot be sustained: Firstly, because the writings of Matthew were to
Papias solely discourses in Hebrew, of which there were in circulation
very varying translations; and, secondly, because the writings of Mark
and Matthew were to him profoundly distinct, written without any
knowledge of each other, and, as it seems, in different languages.
Now, in the present state of the texts, the "Gospel according to
Matthew" and the "Gospel according to Mark" present parallel parts so
long and so perfectly identical, that it must be supposed, either that
the final compiler of the first had the second under his eyes, or
_vice versa_, or that both copied from the same prototype. That which
appears the most likely, is, that we have not the entirely original
compilations of either Matthew or Mark; but that our first two Gospels
are versions in which the attempt is made to fill up the gaps of the
one text by the other. Every one wished, in fact, to possess a
complete copy. He who had in his copy only discourses, wished to have
narratives, and _vice versa_. It is thus that "the Gospel according to
Matthew" is found to have included almos