smalley's postion on these matters is essentially the same in his most recent work he is still writing on the subject moreover smalley's perception is also that of many other leading authorities on the gospels in the early church such as christopher rowland theologian christopher rowland who may not unlike smalley be specialists in the johannine literature the pespectives reperesented in the article as it is currently represent to my reading one particular strand of the 'redaction critical' approach broadly this approach shares with smalley rowland a decreased tendency to regard the synoptic gospels as transmitting a 'historical' source but the corollary is to treat both the gospel genre and much of the charactersistic gospel content as a theological construct specifically due to the author of mark but if mark 'invented' the feeding in the wilderness as a theological construct then the presence of the same story in john shows dependence but this view of mark is not by any means a consensus many scholars like smalley and rowland would maintain that there were indeed independent 'historical' accounts of jesus's ministry and gospel message that preceded both the synpoptics and john and provided the basis for their common narrative material this is not reflected in the article at present