Oral gospel traditions called the M source for Matthew and the L source for Luke, which may have been a mix of written and oral material (see Two-source hypothesis). Most scholars believe that the author of John's gospel used oral and written sources different from those available to the Synoptic authors – a "signs" source, a "revelatory discourse" source, and others – although there are indications that a later editor of this gospel may have used Mark and Luke. Oral transmission may also be seen as a different approach to understanding the Synoptic Gospels in New Testament scholarship. Current theories attempt to link
Parable of the talents or minas Parable of the talents or minas The Parable of the Talents (also the Parable of the Minas) is one of the parables of Jesus, which appears in two of the synoptic, canonical gospels of the New Testament: Although the basic story in each of these parables is essentially the same, the differences between the parables as they appear in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke are sufficient to indicate that the parables are not derived from the same source. In Matthew, the opening words link the parable to the preceding Parable of the Ten Virgins, which