Note 4 — Chapter XI · THE LOGIA THEORY AND THE HISTORICAL TEXT

The Nucleus, be it explained, is Dr. Petrie’s substitute for the Primitive Gospel of the school of B. Weiss, and is constructed by the simple and certainly quite objective process of selecting “everything that is common to all three synoptics in a parallel text”—that is, occurring in all three in the same order. This is the “structural” test, and it yields a document which does not, like the Weiss selection, end before the Last Supper, but goes on to the Resurrection. But this Nucleus, be it noted, was practically complete almost immediately after the Founder’s death. The close “suggests a document drawn up within a few months of the final events.”4 How, then, Dr. Petrie can speak of logia incorporated in the Nucleus in respect of the conditions of the time, is not very clear. By his account the prevalent Christian idea about the year 30, during the Ministry, “was the proper understanding of the law, which was not yet abrogated in any particular.” At this stage, accordingly, the Sermon on the Mount would be the prominent logion. “And when we notice how the fulfilling of the law is the main theme of the nucleus, and how little [even] of the completed Gospels refer to the Gentile problems, we must see how devoid of historic sense is the anachronism of supposing the main body of the Gospels to have originated as late as the Gentile period”5 [i.e. 60–70!]. But in 40–50, with the spread of the Church, as set forth in the Acts, “the Samaritans were welcomed, and Gentile proselytes such as the centurion Cornelius”; whereupon the suitable logia would be added to the Gospels current. Then in 50–60, when the Gentiles began to enter in decisive numbers, there was “a special meaning in the parable of the Prodigal Son, and in the subjection to kings and rulers”; hence further embodiments. Then, after the fall of Jerusalem in 70, “Christianity lost its sense of any tie to Judaism.”