It should no longer be denied that the ‘recollection’ of the authors (i.e. of their informants and those who handed material on to them) and not primarily the inventive creativity of anonymous early Christian prophets, communities, or even self-confident theological poets, played the normative role in the origin of the Synoptic Gospels. The authors are above all responsible for the selection and ordering of the material and for the linguistic and stylistic form that it is given.