consider himself bound by the law: he might be a Gentile Pauline
convert, neither knowing of nor caring for such restrictions. In
neither case would he find in "Mark" any serious stumbling-block. In
fact, persons of all the categories admitted to salvation by Justin,
in the middle of the second century,[7] could accept "Mark" from
beginning to end. It may well be, that, in this wide adaptability,
backed by the authority of the metropolitan church, there lies the
reason for the fact of the preservation of "Mark," notwithstanding its
limited and dogmatically colourless character, as compared with the
Gospels of "Luke" and "Matthew."

XI. "Mark," as we have seen, contains a relatively small body of
ethical and religious instruction and only a few parables. Were these
all that existed in the primitive threefold tradition? Were none
others current in the Roman communities, at the time "Mark" wrote,
supposing he wrote in Rome? Or, on the other hand, was there extant,
as early as the time at which "Mark" composed his Greek edition of the
primitive Evangel, one or more collections of parables and teachings,
such as those which form the bulk of the twofold tradition, common
exclusively to "Matthew" and "Luke," and are also found in their
single traditions? Many have assumed this, or these, collections to be
identical with, or at any rate based upon, the "logia," of which
ecclesiastical tradition says, that they were written in Aramaic by
Matthew, and that everybody translated them as he could.

Here is the old difficulty again. If such materials were known to
"Mark," what imaginable reason could he have for not using them?
Surely displacement of the long episode of John the Baptist--even
perhaps of the story of the Gadarene swine--by portions of the Sermon
on the Mount or by one or two of the beautiful parables in the twofold