The Synoptic Problem and Biblical Criticism

Overview

Recall questions on Markan priority and the Q hypothesis, and on source, form and redaction criticism.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What exactly is the synoptic problem?

   Model answer

   It is the problem of accounting for the pattern of agreement and disagreement between the first three gospels. They share a great deal of material in a broadly common order and often in identical Greek wording, which rules out wholly independent composition, yet each also has material the others lack and each diverges at points. The question is what literary relationship best explains both the closeness and the differences.

2. 2

   What are the main arguments for the priority of Mark?

   Model answer

   Mark is much the shortest yet its individual episodes are often the fullest, which is easier to explain as later abbreviation of episodes than as expansion of a summary. Almost all of Mark reappears in the other two. Where the other two diverge in order from Mark they rarely agree with each other against him. And the awkward readings, rough Greek, and passages that could embarrass the church tend to be smoothed in the other two rather than roughened in Mark.

3. 3

   What is Q, and what is the evidence for it?

   Model answer

   Q is the name for a hypothetical source containing material shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark, mostly sayings. The evidence is that this material sometimes agrees almost word for word in Greek, which suggests a written source, yet Matthew and Luke place it in quite different narrative positions and contexts, which is hard to explain if either had simply read the other. No manuscript of it has ever been found.

4. 4

   Set out the two-source hypothesis.

   Model answer

   It holds that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke each independently used two written sources: Mark for the narrative framework and Q for the shared sayings material. This accounts economically for the triple tradition through Mark, for the double tradition through Q, and for the independence of Matthew's and Luke's arrangements. It remains the most widely held solution.

5. 5

   What does the four-source hypothesis add?

   Model answer

   It keeps Mark and Q but adds two further bodies of material to account for what is unique to each gospel: a source or collection behind Matthew's own material, and another behind Luke's, conventionally labelled M and L. These are not necessarily single documents and may include oral tradition. The refinement explains, for instance, why the two birth narratives and the two sets of unique parables have so little in common.

6. 6

   What is a proto-gospel theory?

   Model answer

   It is the proposal that behind the surviving gospels lies an earlier written account, perhaps in Aramaic, which each evangelist used in a different recension or translation. Versions of this idea were advanced by Enlightenment scholars and it offers an explanation of both the shared substance and the variation in wording. It has largely given way to the two-source approach, partly because the postulated document is untraceable and partly because source theories that work with the surviving texts require fewer unknowns.

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