They are, so to speak, the variations of a musician improvising on a given theme.

The theme is not without some authenticity; but in the execution, the imagination of the artist has given itself full scope.

We are sensible of the factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss.[6] Let us add that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognized in the portions of which we speak.

The expression, "kingdom of God," which was so familiar to the Master,[7] occurs there but once.[8] On the other hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel, presents the most complete analogy with that of the Epistles of St.John; we see that in writing the discourses, the author followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat monotonous movement of his own thought.

Quite a new mystical language is introduced, a language of which the synoptics had not the least idea ("world," "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," etc.).