7 (= Matt.xiv.

1) Herod's title is [Greek: tetrarchaes], in Mark vi.

14 [Greek: basileus]; in the succeeding paragraph [Greek: hoi ochloi aekolouthaesan] and the important [Greek: to perisseuon (-san)] are wanting in the intermediate Gospel; in the first prophecy of the Passion it has [Greek: apo] where the other two have [Greek: hupo], and [Greek: meta treis haemeras] where they have [Greek: tae tritae haemera]: in the healing of the lunatic boy it omits the noticeable [Greek: kai diestrammenae]: in the second prophecy of the Passion it omits [Greek: mellei], in the paragraph about offences, [Greek: elthein ta skandala ...ouai...di hou erchetai].
These points might be easily multiplied as we go on; suffice it to say that in the aggregate they seem to prove that the second Gospel, in spite of its superior originality and adhesion to the normal type, still does not entirely adhere to it or maintain its primary character throughout.

The theory that we have in the second Gospel one of the primitive Synoptic documents is not tenable.
No doubt this is an embarrassing result.

The question is easy to ask and difficult to answer--If our St.Mark does not represent the original form of the document, what does represent it?
The original document, if not quite like our Mark, must have been very nearly like it; but how did any writer come to reproduce a previous work with so little variation?
If he had simply copied or reproduced it without change, that would have been intelligible; if he had added freely to it, that also would have been intelligible: but, as it is, he seems to have put in a touch here and made an erasure there on principles that it is difficult for us now to follow.