omewhat similar theory; he
considers that the oral teaching of the apostles to catechumens and
others, the simple narrative of facts relating to Christ, gradually grew
into form and was written down, and that this accounts for the marked
similarity of some passages in the different Gospels. He says:--"I
believe, then, that the Apostles, in virtue not merely of their having
been eye-and-ear witnesses of the Evangelic history, but especially of
_their office_, gave to the various Churches their testimony in _a
narrative of facts_, such narrative being modified in each case by the
individual mind of the Apostle himself, and his sense of what was
requisite for the particular community to which he was ministering....
It would be easy and interesting to follow the probable origin and
growth of this cycle of narratives of the words and deeds of our Lord in
the Church at Jerusalem, for both the Jews and the Hellenists--the
latter under such teachers as Philip and Stephen--commissioned and
authenticated by the Apostles. In the course of such a process some
portions would naturally be written down by private believers for their
own use, or that of friends. And as the Church spread to Samaria,
Caesarea, and Antioch, the want would be felt in each of those places of
similar cycles of oral teaching, which, when supplied, would
thenceforward belong to, and be current in, those respective Churches.
And these portions of the Evangelic history, oral or partially
documentary, would be adopted under the sanction of the Apostles, who
were as in all things, so especially in this, the appointed and
divinely-guided overseers of the whole Church. This _common substratum
of Apostolic teachings_--never formally adopted by all, but subject to
all the varieties of diction and arrangement, addition and omission,
incident to transmission through many individual minds, and into many
different localities--_I believe to have been the original source of the
common part of our three Gospels_" ("Greek Test.," Dean Alford, vol. i.,
Prolegomena, ch. i., sec. 3, par. 6; ed. 1859. The italics are Dean
Alford's).

Eichhorn's theory of the growth of the Gospels is one very generally
accepted; he considers that the present Gospels were not in common
circulation before the end of the second century, and that before that
time other Gospels were in common use, differing considerably from each
other, but resting on a common foundation of historical fact; all these,