Excerpt from Records of the Life of Jesus: Book I, the Record of Mt-Mk-Lk; Book II, the Record of John IT is now beyond all reasonable doubt that Mark is the earliest Gospel, and that it was used by Matthew and Luke as the basis of their Gospels. The editor of the First Gospel, whom for the sake of brevity we shall call Matthew, reserving St. Matthew for the designation of the Apostle, uses Mark with considerable freedom. He shortens and expands and, particularly in the earlier chapters, rearranges Mark's narrative to suit his special purpose; but those alterations are relatively quite subordinate. He omits little that is in Mark, and though he frequently changes the order, he follows Mark in the main outline of the story. Though he is not a slavish copyist, the verbal agreement in what is common to them is very much greater than the divergence. There is a tradition attested by Papias, who lived in the early years of the second century, that Mark's Gospel embodies the memoirs of St. Peter. An Elder, who was an immediate disciple of Jesus, informed Papias that Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remembered. There is no reason to question this tradition. Mark's Gospel is thus to be held as embodying the preaching of the Apostle Peter, and, since it forms the framework of Matthew, we have the ultimate authority of St. Peter for the historicity of the main narrative of the First Gospel, covering the public life of Jesus. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
