lose, will say that he believes the Gadarene
story.

The choice then lies between discrediting those who compiled the
Gospel biographies and disbelieving the Master, whom they, simple
souls, thought to honour by preserving such traditions of the exercise
of his authority over Satan's invisible world. This is the dilemma. No
deep scholarship, nothing but a knowledge of the revised version (on
which it is to be supposed all that mere scholarship can do has been
done), with the application thereto of the commonest canons of common
sense, is needful to enable us to make a choice between its
alternatives. It is hardly doubtful that the story, as told in the
first Gospel, is merely a version of that told in the second and
third. Nevertheless, the discrepancies are serious and irreconcilable;
and, on this ground alone, a suspension of judgment, at the least, is
called for. But there is a great deal more to be said. From the dawn
of scientific biblical criticism until the present day, the evidence
against the long-cherished notion that the three synoptic Gospels are
the works of three independent authors, each prompted by Divine
inspiration, has steadily accumulated, until, at the present time,
there is no visible escape from the conclusion that each of the three
is a compilation consisting of a groundwork common to all three--the
threefold tradition; and of a superstructure, consisting, firstly, of
matter common to it with one of the others, and, secondly, of matter
special to each. The use of the terms "groundwork" and "superstructure"
by no means implies that the latter must be of later date than the
former. On the contrary, some parts of it may be, and probably are,
older than some parts of the groundwork.[57]

The story of the Gadarene swine belongs to the groundwork; at least,
the essential part of it, in which the belief in demoniac possession
is expressed, does; and therefore the compilers of the first, second,
and third Gospels, whoever they were, certainly accepted that belief
(which, indeed, was universal among both Jews and pagans at that
time), and attributed it to Jesus.

What, then, do we know about the originator, or originators, of this
groundwork--of that threefold tradition which all three witnesses (in
Paley's phrase) agree upon--that we should allow their mere statements
to outweigh the counter arguments of humanity, of common sense, of
exact science, and to imperil the respect which all would be glad to