Synoptic Gospels - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The gospels of Matthew

Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...

, Mark

Gospel of Mark

The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...

, and Luke

Gospel of Luke

The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...

are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be accounted for by literary interdependence. Many scholars believe that these gospel

Gospel

A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...

s share the same point of view and are clearly linked. The term synoptic comes from the Greek syn, meaning "together", and optic, meaning "seen".

According to the majority viewpoint, Mark was the first gospel written. Matthew and Luke then used Mark as a source, as well as a hypothetical sayings gospel known as Q

Q source

The Q source is a hypothetical written source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. Q is defined as the "common" material found in Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark...

. Matthew and Luke also included unique material, and the sources for this material are designated M

M-Source

M-source, which is sometimes referred to as M document, or simply M, comes from the M in "Matthean material". It is a hypothetical textual source for the Gospel of Matthew...

and L

L source

In historical-critical analysis, the L source is an inferred oral tradition that Luke used when composing his gospel. It includes the Christmas story and many of Jesus' best loved parables. Like Matthew's unique source, known as M-Source, the L source has important parables that may be authentic to...

, respectively.

The synoptic gospels are the primary source for historical information about Jesus.

Apocryphal gospels

New Testament apocrypha

The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that claim to be accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. These writings often have links with books regarded as "canonical"...

, as well as the canonical

Canonical

Canonical is an adjective derived from canon. Canon comes from the greek word κανών kanon, "rule" or "measuring stick" , and is used in various meanings....

Gospel of John

The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...

, differ greatly from the Synoptic Gospels.

Structure

The triple tradition is the material that is present in all three Synoptic Gospels. It includes most of the narrative about the events in the life of Jesus, starting with his baptism and ending with the discovery of an empty tomb after the crucifixion. It also includes some of the parables (such as the Parable of the Mustard Seed

Parable of the Mustard Seed

The Parable of the Mustard Seed is one of the shorter parables of Jesus. It appears in three of the Canonical gospels of the New Testament. The differences between Gospels of Matthew , Mark , and Luke , are minor...

). The triple tradition accounts for approximately 76% of the text of Mark. Some of this material is present almost verbatim in all three gospels, and sometimes there are minor variations; there are some notable cases, called "minor agreements", where Matthew and Luke agree on wording with each other against Mark.

The double tradition is the material (circa 200 verses) shared by Matthew and Luke, but absent in Mark. It consists almost entirely of Jesus' sayings and teachings, and includes most of the Sermon on the Mount

Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount is a collection of sayings and teachings of Jesus, which emphasizes his moral teaching found in the Gospel of Matthew...

and most parables. In addition to these, the double tradition includes a three-verse quotation (Mt. 3:8-10) that is attributed to John the Baptist (the last verse of this quotation also appears in Mt. 7:19, attributed to Jesus) and the story of centurion's servant (Mt. 8:5-13).

The Mark-Matthew material, shared between Mark and Matthew, includes the story of the death of John the Baptist, several miracles (including one of the two occurrences of feeding the multitude

Feeding the multitude

Feeding the multitude is the combined term used to refer to two separate miracles of Jesus in the Gospels.The First Miracle, "The Feeding of the 5,000" is the only miracle which is present in all four canonical Gospels...

), the expanded version of the ban on divorce (Mt. 19:1-8), and the depiction of the death of Jesus (Mk. 15:34-41).

The Mark-Luke material is limited to a single incident in Capernaum involving exorcism (Mk. 1:21-28).

The material unique to Mark consists of some 40 verses, including, among others, Mark 3:20-21, the parable of the seed and the harvest (Mk. 4:26-29), two miracles (Mk. 7:31-37 and Mk. 8:22-26), two fragments without obvious meaning at Mk. 9:49 and Mk. 14:51-52, and the verse at Mk. 16:8 which states that the women who discovered the empty tomb did not say anything about it to anyone.

The material unique to Matthew or Luke is fairly extensive. It includes two similar but distinct accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, two distinct birth narratives, and two distinct resurrection narratives. Matthew adds several statements to the Sermon on the Mount, several parables (including "the parable of unmerciful servant", "the parable of the weeds", and "the parable of the laborers in the vineyard"), the prophecy of the last judgment (Mt. 25:31-46), and describes the suicide of Judas

Judas Iscariot

Judas Iscariot was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He is best known for his betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver.-Etymology:...

. Luke also contains multiple unique miracles and parables (e.g. "The Parable of the Good Samaritan"). Many details of the last days of Jesus can only be found in Matthew or Luke. For example, Matthew is the only gospel that states that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on two animals (Mt. 21:2-7). Matthew is the only gospel that states that Jesus' tomb was guarded by a soldier. Luke is the only gospel that states that one of the robbers crucified next to Jesus repented and was promised Paradise by Jesus (Lk. 23:40-43).

Composition

There is continuing debate regarding the composition of the Synoptic Gospels.

Traditional view

Traditionally, the Gospel of Matthew was seen as the first Gospel

Gospel

written. The Gospel of Mark was written after Matthew, with the Gospel of Luke then dependent on Matthew, Mark, and other eyewitness testimony. This is commonly referred to as Augustinian hypothesis

Augustinian hypothesis

The Augustinian hypothesis is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matthew the Evangelist...

. Unlike some competing hypotheses, this hypothesis does not rely on, nor does it argue for, the existence of any document that is not explicitly mentioned in historical testimony. Adherents to the Augustinian Hypothesis view it as a simple, coherent approach to understanding the Synoptic Gospels. However, textual criticism

Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

has shown serious flaws with this traditional approach and it has been largely abandoned by the academic community. Most modern study, however, focuses on the two-source or four-source hypothesis.

A return to the traditional view is found in the hypothesis of Eta Linnemann

Eta Linnemann

Eta Linnemann was a German Protestant theologian. In her last years, she broke completely with the theology of her teacher Rudolf Bultmann.-Life:...

, formerly a pupil of Bultmann, that Matthew and Mark were written together as "two witnesses" required by Mosaic Law.

Markan priority

The understanding that Mark was the first of the canonical gospels and that it served as a source for Matthew and Luke is foundational to modern critical scholarship.

Q source

Another fundamental feature of modern Bible studies is the presumption of the existence of Q, a written source, now lost, hypothesized to have been used both by Matthew and by Luke.

Two-source hypothesis

The two-source hypothesis states that Matthew borrowed from both Mark

Gospel of Mark

and a hypothetical sayings collection, called Q (for the German Quelle, meaning "source"). Much work has gone into the extent and wording of Q, particularly since the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas

Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library...

, an example of the sayings gospel genre. Holtzmann's

Heinrich Julius Holtzmann

Heinrich Julius Holtzmann , German Protestant theologian, son of Karl Julius Holtzmann , was born at Karlsruhe, where his father ultimately became prelate and counsellor to the supreme consistory....

1863 theory posited an Ur-Marcus in the place of our Mark, with our Mark being a later revision. Some scholars occasionally propose an unattested revision of Mark, a deutero-Mark, being the base of what Matthew and Luke used. In 1924 Burnett Hillman Streeter

Burnett Hillman Streeter

Burnett Hillman Streeter was a British biblical scholar and textual critic.-Life:He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. Streeter was ordained in 1899 and was a member of the Archbishop’s Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England...

further refined the Two-Source Hypothesis into a Four-Source Hypothesis

Four Document Hypothesis (Synoptic problem)

A Four Document Hypothesis is an explanation for the relationship between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that there were at least four sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark, and three lost sources: Q, M-Source, and L source...

, with an M and an L being a unique source to Matthew and Luke respectively, with Q and L combined into a Proto-Luke before Luke added Mark. While unique sources, such as M, L, or Semitic first editions, are interesting for form-critical purposes, they are quite peripheral to the Synoptic Problem as to how the canonical gospels are interrelated.

Four-source hypothesis

There were difficulties with the Two Source Hypothesis, the most serious of which was that it could not account for all the material in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (1924), Burnett Hillman Streeter

Burnett Hillman Streeter

refined the Two-source hypothesis into a Four-source hypothesis. It attempts to explain the relationship among the three Gospels and posits that there were at least four sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark, and three hypothesized sources: Q, M-Source

M-Source

M-source, which is sometimes referred to as M document, or simply M, comes from the M in "Matthean material". It is a hypothetical textual source for the Gospel of Matthew...

and L source

L source

.

According to Streeter's analysis, the non-Marcan matter in Luke has to be distinguished into at least two sources, Q and L. In a similar way he argued that Matthew used a peculiar source, which we may style M, as well as Q.

Two-gospel hypothesis

Johann Jakob Griesbach

Johann Jakob Griesbach , German biblical textual critic, was born at Butzbach, a small town in the state of Hesse, where his father, Konrad Kaspar , was pastor...

(1745–1812) proposed that Mark was the last Synoptic gospel written and that it was based on Matthew and Luke. In the 20th century, the view was revived by William Farmer. The hypothesis states that Matthew was written first (probably in the 40s AD by the apostle Matthew), while Christianity was still centered in Jerusalem, to calm the hostility between Jews and Christians. After Matthew, as the church expanded beyond the Holy Land

Holy Land

The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...

, Luke was written as a gospel to the Gentiles by Luke the Evangelist

Luke the Evangelist

Luke the Evangelist was an Early Christian writer whom Church Fathers such as Jerome and Eusebius said was the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles...

, probably in the 50s AD. But since neither Luke (nor his patron Paul) were eyewitnesses of Jesus, Peter

Saint Peter

Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...

gave public testimonies that validated Luke’s gospel. These public speeches were transcribed by Mark the Evangelist

Mark the Evangelist

Mark the Evangelist is the traditional author of the Gospel of Mark. He is one of the Seventy Disciples of Christ, and the founder of the Church of Alexandria, one of the original four main sees of Christianity....

into Mark’s gospel and distributed immediately thereafter, as recorded by the early church father Irenaeus

Irenaeus

Saint Irenaeus , was Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire . He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology...

. Mark's shorter and less-polished nature is therefore a consequence of the fact that it came from a series of transcribed speeches that were never meant to be a separate gospel tradition. Paul then allowed Luke’s gospel to be published. This hypothesis is the most serious alternative to the two-source hypothesis

Two-source hypothesis

The Two-Source Hypothesis is an explanation for the synoptic problem, the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were based on the Gospel of Mark and a lost, hypothetical sayings...

. Its main advantages over the two-source hypothesis include the fact that it relies not just on internal evidence, that it doesn’t require lost sources or other “plugs” (like the Q document) and that it reconciles the view of the early church with the evidence.

Three-source hypothesis

In 1880, Eduard Simons presented the first detailed case for a hypothesis according to which Matthew used Mark and a written sayings source, whereas Luke used both of these as primary sources, plus Matthew as a subsidiary source. The sayings source in this hypothesis is not necessarily identical to Q, for Luke may have derived some of the supposedly Q material from Matthew instead of from the sayings source.

Farrer hypothesis

In 1955, Austin Farrer

Austin Farrer

Austin Marsden Farrer was an English theologian and philosopher. His activity in philosophy, theology, and spirituality lead many to consider him the outstanding figure of 20th century Anglicanism.-Life:...

argued that the Gospel of Mark

Gospel of Mark

was written first, that it was a source for the Gospel of Matthew

Gospel of Matthew

, and that Mark and Matthew were then sources for the Gospel of Luke

Gospel of Luke

. Farrer's position has the advantage of simplicity, as there is no need for hypothetical sources.

Parker hypothesis

In 1953, Pierson Parker

Pierson Parker

Pierson Parker was professor of New Testament at the General Theological Seminary during the 1960s.Pierson is best known for his work on the origins and priority of the Gospels....

argued that a Hebrew proto-Matthew was the first gospel to be written and it was the basis for later gospels. James R. Edwards

James R. Edwards

James R. Edwards is an American New Testament scholar and minister of the Presbyterian Church.In 1997 he joined the faculty at Whitworth University, Spokane where he is currently Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology. In 2009 he advanced a "controversial" theory that the synoptic Gospels are partly...

(2009) argued that the 4th Century Jewish-Christian Gospels

Jewish-Christian Gospels

Jewish-Christian Gospels are non-canonical Gospels used by various Jewish Christian groups that were declared heretical by other members of the Early Church. They are mentioned by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome...

preserved in citations by Jerome

Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...

and others preserve material from a proto-Matthew which, if more had survived, would correspond to "L material" used in the Gospel of Luke.

Other minority hypotheses

Other hypotheses that have been proffered in order to deal with the synoptic problem include, the Oral transmission (synoptic problem)

Oral transmission (synoptic problem)

Oral Transmission is a different approach to understanding the Synoptic Gospels in New Testament scholarship. Current theories attempt to link the three synoptic gospels together through a common textual tradition. However, many problems arise when linking these three texts together...

, the Lindsey hypothesis (1963), Jerusalem school hypothesis

Jerusalem school hypothesis

The term "Jerusalem School Hypothesis" is not a scientific name, but a popular name, given to the Jerusalem School methodology, as well a designation related to one of many possible solutions to the synoptic problem developed by the late Robert Lindsey...

(1973), the Logia Translation hypothesis (1998) and the Progressive Publication of Matthew hypothesis.

The problems with Q

Although most scholars accept the Two Source Hypothesis (2SH), many are not entirely happy with it. The difficulty tends to center around Q. The 2SH explains the double tradition by postulating the existence of a lost "sayings of Jesus" document known as Q. It is this, rather than Marcan priority, which forms the distinctive feature of the 2SH as against rival theories.

While the 2SH remains the most popular explanation for the origins of the synoptic gospels, the existence of the "minor agreements" have raised concerns. These minor agreements are those points where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark (for example, the mocking question at the beating of Jesus, "Who is it that struck you?", found in both Matthew (26:67–68) and Luke (22:63–64) but not in Mark (14:65)). The "minor agreements" thus call into question the proposition that Matthew and Luke knew Mark but not each other.

Secondly, how could a major and respected source, used in two Canonical gospels totally disappear? Why was Q never mentioned in any of the Church catalogs? Also not one scholar from the time of Christ to Jerome has ever mentioned it. Until these issues are resolved, Q will remain in doubt.

External links

Catholic Encyclopedia: Synoptics

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