Note 10 — Chapter VII · GOSPEL-MAKING

No more general or more far-reaching result can be reached by a mere collation and analysis of the synoptics on purely documentary lines—a process which has gone on for a century without even a documentary decision. The conclusion forced upon Schmiedel, even on the assumption of the historicity of Jesus, that none of the current theories of gospel-composition can meet the problem,10 becomes part of the case of the myth-theory. The assumption that a “source,” once established, gives a historic foundation, is no more tenable in this than in any other case of a challenged myth; and the current methods of establishing sources, rooted as they are in the assumption of historicity, are often quite arbitrary even when they profess to follow documentary tests. Nevertheless, the normal pressure of criticism is seen driving champions of the priority of Mark to the confession that Mark not only contains late additions but is in itself a secondary or tertiary document, pointing to an earlier Mark, an Ur-Markus. The primary flaw in the process is the habit of looking to an author rather than at a compilation; and this habit roots in the assumption of historicity. At no point can we be sure whether we are reading a transcript of oral lore or a redaction.