When one remembers the fine-spun analyses of the historical books of the Old Testament, which, long ridiculed for their elaborateness, have finally been accepted by most scholars, one hesitates on this account alone to pronounce an adverse judgment upon Wendling's theory. Yet his analysis certainly seems over-elaborate. It is a great advantage to be able to distinguish the more obvious work of the redactor from the earlier document upon which he worked. All students will feel this with reference to chap. iv, and the advantage in chap. iii is perhaps only less great. Still more welcome is the assignment of vi, 45-viii, 27, to the redactor. The great stumbling-block of this section is its feeding of the four thousand, so obviously copied from the feeding of the five thousand. That one and the same author should have written both these accounts has seemed strange to many readers. But this duplication is as easily disposed of upon von Soden's theory as upon Wendling's. Von Soden's analysis into two strata (without the assumption of two writers) is much simpler than Wendling's analysis into three, with three writers. Wendling's theory is more secure where it goes with von Soden's, and less convincing where it goes beyond it.
Some distinction has in any case to be made between the final writer of the Gospel and the earliest tradition upon which he worked; and Wendling has indicated the criteria which such a distinction must employ. Von Soden's division of the Marcan material into a Petrine and a later source amounts to the same thing. The two critics do not differ greatly about the passages they regard as secondary. Von Soden's Petrine narrative does not differ greatly from Wendling's M1 + M2. But the line of demarkation between M1 and M2, and Wendling's reasons for drawing this, are not as self-evident as the line which Wendling and von Soden agree in drawing between the earlier document, or source, and the work of the Evangelist.
CONCLUSIONS OF VON SODEN AND WENDLING COMPARED
A tabulation of the results discloses the following agreements and disagreements between von Soden's Petrine narrative and Wendling's M1+M2.
Von Soden i, 4-11, 16-20, 21-39 ii, 1-28 Wendling i, 4-14a, 16-34a, 35-39a, 40-44 ii, 1-15a, 16b-17, 18b, 19b