Note 8 — Chapter I · THE APPROACH

Lastly, scholars are also beginning to remember that the evangelists did not need to draw their material from books alone, but that from youth up they were acquainted with it from oral narration and could easily commit it to writing precisely in this form in either case—whether they had it before them in no written form, or whether they had it in different written form. In this matter, again, we are beginning to be on our guard against the error of supposing that in the synoptical problem we have to reckon merely with given quantities, or with such as can be easily ascertained.8