THE TEACHING CHRIST

BESIDE the memoirs which were the chief source of St. Mark's Gospel the Apostolic age possessed at least another body of tradition in which the Lord's teaching was more fully represented. Whether this second cycle is to be identified with the " oracles " attributed by Papias to the Apostle Matthew,1 we need not stop to inquire; certainly it was largely used by the writer of our first Gospel. To the Mattbean tradition, as we will venture to call it, our attention must now be turned. 1. The most extensive collection of sayings in the Synoptic Gospels is that which in Augustine's time 2 had already received the title of the "Sermon on the Mount." The name is misleading if it suggests a formal discourse, or even a K~plJ"fμa addressed to the crowd who hung about our Lord's person. The "Sermon" was, in fact, an instruction or a series of instructions intended, as both St. Matthew and St. Luke are careful to say,3 for the disciples who formed the inner circle of His audience.4 It is a specimen, not of Christ's public preaching, but of His manner of teaching those who acknowledged Him as their Master. Moreover, it does not belong to the first days of the Galilean ministry, as its early place in the Gospel of St. Matthew might lead us to suppose, but rather, as St. Luke's more chronological arrangement makes evident, to the days