First Gospel, which would correspond
to this idea, from their historical setting. The theory is not without
its attractions: it promises a solution of some difficulties; but
hitherto it has not yielded any results which would justify its
acceptance.

Our author speaks of those critics who reject it as 'in very many cases
largely influenced by the desire to see in these [Greek: logia] our
actual Gospel according to St Matthew' [171:1]. This is true in the same
sense in which it is true that those who take opposite views are largely
influenced in very many cases by the opposite desire. But such language
is only calculated to mislead. By no one is the theory of a collection
of discourses more strongly denounced than by Bleek [171:2], who
apparently considers that Papias did not here refer to a Greek Gospel at
all. 'There is nothing,' he writes, 'in the manner in which Papias
expresses himself to justify this supposition; he would certainly have
expressed himself as he does, if he meant an historical work like our
New Testament Gospels, if he were referring to a writing whose contents
were those of our Greek Gospel according to Matthew.' Equally decided
too is the language of Hilgenfeld [171:3], who certainly would not be
swayed by any bias in this direction.

Indeed this theory is encumbered with the most serious difficulties. In
the first place, there is no notice or trace elsewhere of any such
'collection of discourses.' In the next place, all other early writers
from Pantaenus and Irenaeus onwards, who allude to the subject, speak of
St Matthew as writing a Gospel, not a mere collection of sayings, in
Hebrew. If they derived their information in every case from Papias, it
is clear that they found no difficulty in interpreting his language so
as to include a narrative: if they did not (as seems more probable, and
as our author himself holds [172:1]), then their testimony is all the
more important, as of independent witnesses to the existence of a Hebrew
St Matthew, which was a narrative, and not a mere collection of
discourses.

Nor indeed does the expression itself drive us to any such hypothesis.
Hilgenfeld, while applying it to our First Gospel, explains it on
grounds which at all events are perfectly tenable. He supposes that
Papias mentions only the _sayings_ of Christ, not because St Matthew
recorded nothing else, but because he himself was concerned only with
these, and St Matthew's Gospel, as distinguished fr