Book excerpt: It would be difficult to find a better starting point for the present inquiry than the words which stand at the head of the canonical accounts of the life of Jesus. “The Gospel according to S. Mark” suggests clearly enough the nature of the facts and the method of their investigation. It implies that there is one Gospel, and that is presented in more than one form. It sanctions a distinction between the essential facts and interpretation of facts upon which Christian belief depends, and the partial and more or less accidental presentation of them which survives in the written records of the evangelists. There is a Gospel behind the Gospels: but it is through the Gospels that the Gospel is to be know.