New Testament General

Synoptic Gospels I

 

The Synoptic Problem

Reference: D.L. Dungan, A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels, Anchor Bible, 1999

1. The Problem Stated

  • Considering the often close similarities, and the variations, between the first three Gospels how do we explain the relationship between them; which was first, and what use others may have made of the other(s), and of other possible sources?
     
  • Unbelief will from time to time throw up these similarities and differences, and object that there is no ground at all for alleging that any of the Gospels have eyewitness testimony behind them. They will exploit in particular the widely held Markan priority theory, whereby the others are seen as slavishly copying him, to reduce the several testimonies to one, then in turn do a ‘demolition job’ on Mark to discredit the Gospel testimony altogether.

  • 2. History of Solutions
  • Augustine: Pressed by colleagues to reply to infidel objections, in particular those of Porphyry, Augustine wrote his De Consensu Evangelistarum (“Harmony of the Evangelists”) in which he adopted the view that Matthew wrote first, then Mark was an adaptation, while Luke wrote more independently, albeit somewhat influenced by the first two. Hence: Matthew, Mark, Luke. This remained the official view of the RC Church until recent times, while many conservative Protestants also have held to this solution.
     
  • The Reformation signalled a new emphasis on the text of Scripture, combined with a grammatical-historical hermeneutic. But as rationalist philosophical approaches developed in the post-Reformation period the foundations of Biblical historical criticism were laid, whereby all developments must be explained within history itself. Therefore supernatural interventions, and dogmatic prejudice, came to be eliminated.
     
  • Here mention should be made of Spinoza (1632-77): motivated by a war against dogma and traditional metaphysics, both Jewish and Christian, he called for a Biblical criticism that looks only to natural light common to all, as opposed to anything supernatural. As regards the Gospels and Jesus, this consists only in his moral teachings, something which can be grasped by anyone with the light of reason. He was the first to distinguish faith and history, while the role of religion is to engender obedience to the simple, and universal, love command.


3. Modern Treatments

    Griesbach
    Based his approach on (i) his Romanticist influences through which he absorbed the new sceptical, historicist outlook on the New Testament, and (ii) his Lutheran Pietist presuppositions whereby the Spirit works in Christians through the word of the apostles, coming alive through the Gospel. Griesbach stressed the Gospels Matthew and John, but even then neither apostle was inspired in the act of writing.

  • A small treatise by Henry Owen (1764) exercised a considerable influence, albeit he finished up with a different hypothesis, as follows: Matthew was primary, but chronology was not an important issue; Luke used Matthew as his literary model, except for his own narratives; Mark is little more than a commentary on both Matthew and Luke. Griesbach saw the Gospels as variable in reliability, and reflecting the developments in the early church (Romanticist philosophy). By the close of the C18th in Germany historicism had captivated the scholarly mind: there was no Divine inspiration; the Gospel writers wrote in an entirely human fashion.

    Eichhorn and Ewald
  • This student of Griesbach followed an idea first proposed in England, taken up by G.E. Lessing, that the agreement of all three Synoptics is due to a common source, which Lessing identified initially as the Aramaic Gospel of the Nazarenes. Eichhorn, and his own student, Heinrich Ewald, proposed a lost source which the latter postulated was only a didactic or “sayings” source, which was added to a Markan nucleus. Romantic ideas underlaid Ewald’s nine-document hypothesis, viz. ever-growing development from simple and fresh to complex and dogmatic; hence Mark with its simple narrative had to be prior. Teaching such as the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer just had to be later. Another feature of the growing sceptical outlook was the emerging wall between Matthew and Luke: the latter had used all his hypothetical sources, except Matthew.

    The Markan Priority
  • With the advent of D.F. Strauss’ Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835), radical scepticism had now thrown down the gauntlet and scholarship had to come to terms with it. Political agendas also played their part: Holtzmann, the new star in NT research, supported a Protestant “Small Germany”, in opposition to the “Greater Germany” which Bismarck sought. With the German capture of Alsace in 1871 Holtzmann was appointed to Strasbourg (1874), and together with von Weizsäcker at Tübingen, and Weiss at Berlin, the Two-Document theory took shape between these scholars and came to dominate NT research. This hypothesis, in large part the brain child of Holtzmann, held that that Mark, or rather a hypothetical Ur-Markus, was written first, and that both Matthew and Luke independently used another hypothetical source, initially called λ (Holtzmann), but later called Q. (For the way this theory supported the C19th political purposes of Bismarck; see Dungan, pp.328-9)
     
  • There was also a racial agenda in the new theory. Hatred of Jews and all things Jewish, traditional in Germany, both fed and undergirded the Markan priority hypothesis. The quest was for a Gospel source hypothesis that would “sever German Christianity from its Jewish roots”. With the very Jewish Gospel of Matthew safely locked away, the un-Jewish and Pauline Gospel of Mark was seen as the source of original Christianity, and the Q source, very conveniently, having a non-Jewish message, the Christian faith could now be seen as independent from any Jewish connection.

    English Developments
    Sanday, Abbott, and Burkitt at Oxford, as well as Holtzmann and Wernle in Germany and Switzerland, dispensed with an Ur-Markus lying behind the canonical Gospel (until it was revived by Bultmann and co. in the mid-C20th). The “common root of the synoptic texts”, Holtzmann asserted in 1907, is to be found in Mark. Earlier German scholars, including the earlier Holtzmann, had avoided such identification, but British scholars had no such hesitancy. The Two-Document theory, now a “four-source” theory, reached its ‘canonical’ form with the work of B.H. Streeter, 1924. According to this Mark is first, together with an independent “sayings” source, Q, which both Matthew and Luke used. Material unique to Matthew and Luke came from two others sources, M and L respectively.

    Atomising the Material
  • For Holtzmann it was important that the pericopes (tradition units) be atomistic snippets, as opposed to the Griesbach and Tischendorf synopses then circulating, which showed them as unacceptably large. Holtzmann commissioned a pastor in the Strasbourg area, Albert Huck, to prepare a synoptic display to illustrate his Two Source Hypothesis, the result being his Synopse der drei ersten Evangelien. The preface acknowledged complete dependence on Holtzmann’s Commentary, while his arrangement put Mark in the left column, and distributed the Matthean and Lukan parallels accordingly (just short sayings, and brief narrative segments), out of chronological order when necessary. Page references to Holtzmann’s commentary appeared frequently.
     
  • Similar support for the Markan Hypothesis in England found expression in the publication in 1880 of Rushbrooke’s multicoloured Synopticon, which also printed Mark in the left-hand column, and next to it the Matthean and Lukan parallels, out of order when necessary. Where all three agreed, it was ‘bedrock tradition’, and coloured red, while surrounding text was in black. Rushbrooke also printed in capital letters where Matthew and Luke had identical words, and material unique to each of these was printed separately in black. By this tendentious arrangement of material the mere illustration of Holtzmann’s theory of Markan priority had the (surreptitious) effect of “proving” it, when in reality it was merely a circular process. Yet this Synopsis is still the backbone of NT research and introduction, and the silencing of all objections.

  • 4. The Synoptic Problem Today
  • The Two/Four Document theory is so widely held as to be almost orthodoxy, but few deal with the inherent problems it poses. However, it is important also to observe the milieu in which the theory moves, as follows:
     
  • Positivist Historicism: the Bible is anchored in its own world, and its religion was an amalgam of motifs borrowed from the religions of the surrounding world. Thus revelation and Spirit-givenness are excluded.
     
  • Open Canon: not only the four Gospels, but relevant apocryphal gospels (especially the Gospel of Thomas), Q, and a hypothetical “signs” source (behind John’s Gospel) are in the grid for consideration. We can see this in Aland’s Synopsis (1964), and Funk’s New Gospel Parallels (1985). The latter’s links with the radical Jesus Seminar should likewise be noted.
     
  • Epistemological scepticism: the text and its interpreter are so far apart that they can never encounter each other: “there is no unmediated understanding” (Conzelmann). To overcome this the interpreter must master a plethora of disciplines even to make a start, but in these circles the goal of Bible study is not primarily edification. This “new hermeneutic”, as it is called, can and must be seriously challenged.

    A further treatment of the Synoptic problem is in preparation for this site.
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