A New Two-source Solution to the Synoptic Problem

How to cite this article: Robert L. Lindsey, “A New Two-source Solution to the Synoptic Problem,” Jerusalem Perspective (2014) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/11506/].

Despite the continuing debate between Matthean and Markan priorists, some form of the widely-accepted Two-Source Hypothesis seems necessary for a proper understanding of the synoptic relationships. The Two-Source Hypothesis as generally conceived, however, cannot cover the evidence of dependence and interdependence found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The same must be said for the theory of Matthean priority.

Both Markan and Matthean priorists are guilty of trying to solve the synoptic problem by over reliance on evidence for the interdependence of the Synoptic Gospels. These theorists’ basic error stems from their failure to recognize the necessity of positing the existence of a document other than Q, a document that is not completely present in any of the canonical Gospels. The interdependence of the Synoptic Gospels is a fact from which no theory of origins can escape, but the evidence of dependence on an additional document no longer extant, yet known to each of the synoptic writers, demands an adequate literary explanation.

Very few twentieth-century synoptic theorists can be said to have wrestled seriously with the question of whether a Mark-like, extra-canonical authority may not be necessary to explain unsolved problems of synoptic relationships. Instead, the tendency has been to abandon all hope of finding a literary solution.^[49]

• ^[1] The name given to a conjectured earlier edition of the Gospel of Mark. ↩
• ^[2] Rudolf Bultmann, “The Study of the Synoptic Gospels,” in Form Criticism: A New Method of New Testament Research (trans. F. C. Grant; Chicago, New York: Willett, Clark, 1934), 13-14. ↩
• ^[3] Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1955), 76-77. ↩
• ^[4] Adolf Harnack, The Sayings of Jesus: The Second Source of St. Matthew and St. Luke (trans. J. R. Wilkinson; London: Williams & Norgate, 1908). ↩
• ^[5] M stands for the source of Matthew's unique material. Similarly, L stands for Luke's unique material. ↩
• ^[6] Frederick C. Grant, The Gospels: Their Origin and Their Growth (New York, London: Harper, Faber & Faber, 1957), 50-51. ↩
• ^[7] Benjamin Wisner Bacon, The Beginnings of Gospel Story: A Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Sources and Structure of the Gospel According to Mark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1909), xxi. ↩
• ^[8] On the Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly (Mark 4:26-29), see footnote 17 below. ↩
• ^[9] William Lockton, "The Origin of the Gospels,” Church Quarterly Review 94 (July 1922): 216-239 [Click here to read a reissue of Lockton's article on JerusalemPerspective.com]. Lockton derived Mark from Luke, Matthew from Mark and Luke, and disavowed the existence of Q. His three books should be carefully studied: The Resurrection and Other Gospel Narratives and The Narratives of the Virgin Birth (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1924); The Three Traditions in the Gospels (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926); Certain Alleged Gospel Sources: A Study of Q, Proto-Luke and M (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927). ↩
• ^[10] Lockton, "The Origin of the Gospels," 220. ↩
• ^[11] Alan Hugh McNeille, An Introduction to the Study of the New Testament (2nd ed.; rev. by C. S. C. Williams; London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 66. ↩
• ^[12] Otto Piper, “The Origin of the Gospel Pattern,” 116. ↩
• ^[13] James Moffatt, An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament (New York, Edinburgh: Scribner's, T&T Clark, 1911), 195. ↩
• ^[14] Cf. G. D. Kilpatrick, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 8-9. Kilpatrick’s examples of Matthean “rewriting” of Mark show Matthew using the more Hebraic text of the Anthology instead of Mark's text. ↩
• ^[15] Cf. Jehoshua M. Grintz, “Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple,” JBL 79.1 (March 1960): 32-47. Grintz, like many a Semitist before him, mistakenly concluded that Matthew represents an original translation of Hebrew material. ↩
• ^[16] For example, in his version of the Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly (Mark 4:26-29), Mark gave the Parable in sixty words, yet managed to include the Pauline-Lukan νύκτα καὶ ἡμέρα and the Lukan ὁ σπόρος. ↩
• ^[17] See J. Courtenay James, The Language of Palestine and Adjacent Regions (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), 244. ↩
• ^[18] Mark's apparent mistranslation of the Hebraic "Boanerges" in Mark 3:17 is only one of several such indications. The Hebrew original must have been בְּנֵי רוֹגֶז ,בְּנֵי רֶגֶשׁ or בְּנֵי רַעַשׁ, none of which would bear the translation “sons of thunder.” If, on the other hand, Mark did know Hebrew, it is possible that his “sons of thunder” explanation of Boanerges is an attempt to heighten רַעַשׁ to רַעַם (thunder) due to the biblical connection of רַעַם and רַעַשׁ (cf. Isa. 29:6). ↩
• ^[19] Jehoshua Grintz, “Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language," 32-47. ↩
• ^[20] Harris Birkeland, The Language of Jesus (Oslo: I kommisjon hos Jacob Dybwad, 1954), 40. ↩
• ^[21] Gustaf Dalman, The Words of Jesus Considered in the Light of Post-Biblical Jewish Writings and the Aramaic Language: I. Introduction and Fundamental Ideas (authorized English version by D. M. Kay of Die Worte Jesu; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1902), 62. ↩
• ^[22] Adolf Schlatter, Der Evangelist Matthäus (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1948), xi. Schlatter accepted the existence of an Ur-Marcus, which he called the grundtext (basic text). ↩
• ^[23] Cf. B. C. Butler's frequent references to the work of Charles F. Burney in The Originality of St. Matthew: A Critique of the Two-Document Hypothesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951). ↩
• ^[24] Bacon, The Beginnings of Gospel Story, xix, xxvii-xxviii, 59, 89, 122-123. ↩
• ^[25] Mark 6:52 ("they had not understood about the loaves, their hearts were hardened") and Mark 8:17 ("Why are you talking about bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened?") ↩
• ^[26] Pierson Parker, The Gospel Before Mark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 160. ↩
• ^[27] Parker delineated his K much too mechanically: for Parker, whatever verbal agreement existed between Matthew and Mark was automatically K. Such agreement naturally includes Mark’s non-Hebraic constructions, some of which, like κηρύσσων τὀ εὐαγγέλιον, are Markan pick-ups from Paul, while others, like the elegen/elegon constructions, are taken from Luke. Parker's supposition that the Matthean-Lukan agreement with Mark in story-order negates the probability that Luke used K to the exclusion of Mark simply shows that he was unable to conceive of any Synoptist using K plus another Synoptic Gospel. ↩
• ^[28] Wilhelm Bussmann, Synoptische Studien (3 vols.; Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1925-1931). ↩
• ^[29] Cf. Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 70-72. Taylor’s criticism number 3 that “many vivid details in Mark, names, numbers, and the like” (p. 71) are not likely to be redactional is completely unfounded. ↩
• ^[30] See, for example, William West Holdsworth, Gospel Origins: A Study in the Synoptic Problem (New York: Scribner's, 1913), 10-11. ↩
• ^[31] Holdsworth, Gospel Origins, 108-109, 117-118, 169; Holdsworth, The Christ of the Gospels (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1911), 64-70. ↩
• ^[32] Adolf Harnack, The Sayings of Jesus. ↩
• ^[33] Gustaf Dalman, The Words of Jesus. ↩
• ^[34] Pierson Parker, The Gospel Before Mark, 87-115. ↩
• ^[35] An example of Mark’s double dependency may be seen in the Confession at Caesarea Philippi. With Luke, Mark omitted Jesus’ Hebraic answer to Peter (cf. Matt. 16:17-18), but he followed the Anthology against Luke by giving Jesus’ rebuke of Peter (Mark 8:32b-33). ↩
• ^[36] For example, Matt. 3:14-15; 16:17-18. ↩
• ^[37] The singular (ἔλεγεν) or plural (ἔλεγον) 3rd person, imperfect tense of the verb λέγειν appears in Mark in 2:16, 24, 27; 3:21, 22, 23, 30; 4:2, 9, 11, 21, 24, 26, 30, 41; 5:8, 28, 30, 31; 6:4, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 35; 7:9, 14, 20, 27; 8:21, 24; 9:1, 24, 31; 11:5, 17, 28; 12:35, 38; 14:2, 31, 36, 70; 15:12, 14, 31, 35; 16:3 (49 occurrences); Matthew 9:11, 21, 24, 34; 12:23; 14:4; 21:11; 26:5; 27:41, 47, 49 (11 occurrences); Luke 3:7, 11; 4:22; 5:36; 6:5, 20; 9:23, 31; 10:2; 13:6, 14, 18; 14:7, 12; 16:1, 5; 18:1; 21:10; 22:65; 23:34, 42; 24:10 (22 occurrences). ↩
• ^[38] However, only twice does Luke agree with Mark on the use of elegen (or elegon): in Mark 2:27 (= Luke 6:5; ἔλεγεν) and Mark 4:30 (= Luke 13:18; ἔλεγεν). ↩
• ^[39] Cf. John C. Hawkins, Horae synopticae: Contributions to the Study of the Synoptic Problem (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 12, 52. Hawkins gives the occurrences of this phrase as Luke 23, Matthew 10 and Mark 50. ↩
• ^[40] Matthew copied from Mark the elegen/elegon usage a total of 7 times: Matt. 9:11 coming from Mark 2:16; Matt. 9:21 from Mark 5:28; Matt. 9:34 from Mark 3:22; Matt. 14:4 from Mark 6:18; Matt. 26:5 from Mark 14:2; Matt. 27:41 from Mark 15:31; and Matt. 27:47 from Mark 15:35. ↩
• ^[41] Jewish usage would be “king,” as in Mark. ↩
• ^[42] The word order in both Matthew and Mark is fully Hebraic, but the priority of the verb in Mark is attractively idiomatic. ↩
• ^[43] Matthew introduced many of his quotations from Scripture with the formula, "this took place to fulfill what was spoken..." (e.g., Matt. 12:17-21; 13:14-15, 35; 21:4-5; 27:9-10). ↩
• ^[44] Capernaum is first mentioned in Mark at Mark 1:21, and first mentioned in Matthew at Matt. 4:13. ↩
• ^[45] In the New Testament, "Andrew" is mentioned in Matt. 4:18; 10:2; Mark 1:16, 29; 3:18; 13:3; Luke 6:14; John 1:40, 44; 6:8; 12:22; Acts 1:13. ↩
• ^[46] James Moffatt, An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, 223. ↩
• ^[47] Mark 6:1. Mark borrowed the noun πατρίς (patris) from Luke’s version of a proverb in Luke 4:24. In a medieval Hebrew document, זבח פסח לאברבנאל נד,ב; דוידזון 489, the proverb has been preserved as אֵין נָבִיא בְּעִירוֹ. The Anthology must have read οὐκ ἔστιν προφήτης ἐν τῇ πόλει αὐτοῦ and Luke (or the First Reconstruction, Luke's second source) changed this to οὐδεὶς προφήτης δεκτός ἐστιν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ. Apparently, Luke found it hard to call Nazareth a πόλις, although in biblical Hebrew a town can be referred to as an עִיר (ir = LXX πόλις [polis, city, town]), e.g., Josh. 19:6; Ruth 3:15 (i.e., Bethlehem, a town). ↩
• ^[48] Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 3.39.15. ↩
• ^[49] Cf. Otto A. Piper, “The Origin of the Gospel Pattern,” JBL 78 (1959): 115. ↩