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SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

Three Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — so called because of the very close relationship they bear to each other, so close that one can usefully place them alongside each other and compare them (Gk. syn, “with” + optikóss, which refers to “looking”). All three agree extensively in the order of the events they describe, and there is also a high measure of verbal agreement in the stories and traditions they share in common. This wide-ranging agreement has led to the almost universal view that the three Gospels are related to each other through a literary relationship: the work of one Evangelist has been used by one or more of the others, and/or the Evangelists had access to (a) common source(s). The problem of determining the precise nature of this relationship is known as the Synoptic Problem.

The most widely held solution to the Synoptic Problem today is the so-called Two Source theory. This theory claims that Mark’s Gospel was used as a source by Matthew and Luke. In addition, Matthew and Luke had access to another body of source material, usually known as Q. (There is, however, much more disagreement about the precise nature of Q.)

Such a solution has in broad terms commanded widespread support. However, it is by no means universally accepted. A strong minority view has continued to defend the theory (associated above all with the 18th-century scholar J. J. Griesbach) that Mark’s Gospel was written last, not first, using both Matthew and Luke as sources. (This “Griesbach hypothesis” is staunchly advocated today by William R. Farmer and others.) Others too, while accepting the theory that Mark’s Gospel was a source for Matthew and Luke (the theory of “Markan priority”), have questioned the existence of the hypothetical Q, and have argued that direct dependence of Luke on Matthew can best explain the agreements between these Gospels (cf. Michael D. Goulder).

The current debate about the Synoptic Problem has highlighted the weaknesses of some arguments used in the past to establish and defend the Two Source theory. For example, simply appealing to the fact that virtually all of Mark’s Gospel is paralleled in Matthew or Luke or both, as some have done to argue for Markan priority, is now seen to be inconclusive. Of itself it shows nothing. Defenders of the Two Source theory would, however, seek to argue further that the theory of Markan priority can be made more plausible when one considers the nature of the contents shared by all three Gospels within each Gospel. Matthew’s and Luke’s parallels to Mark are often shorter, and Matthew and Luke both have a lot more material than Mark. If Mark’s Gospel were first, Matthew and Luke would have abbreviated Mark’s stories to make space for other traditions they had available. This seems to be a plausible general editorial procedure. The Griesbach hypothesis has to presume that Mark omitted large parts of Matthew and Luke, but also expanded the material he did retain quite considerably. Such a redactional procedure seems rather less plausible.

Detailed comparison of the wording of individual traditions also seems to many to be most easily explained if Mark’s Gospel came first. Mark’s version of Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi in Mark 8:29 is “You are the Christ.” This is paralleled in Matt. 16:16 by the longer “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” If Matthew used Mark as a source, he must have added the extra reference to Jesus as Son of God, and such a note is thoroughly characteristic of Matthew’s Christology. If Matthew came first, and Mark used Matthew, Mark must have omitted this reference to Jesus as Son of God. Given Mark’s clear interest in Jesus’ divine sonship elsewhere (cf. Mark 1:1; 15:39) this seems very difficult to envisage. It is on the basis of arguments such as these that a progressive and plausible case for the theory of Markan priority can be built up.

The case for the existence of Q is clearly more complex, if only because the alleged Q source is no longer extant. Most scholars would base the case for such a source on the implausibility of either Matthew or Luke (usually Luke) using the other as a direct source. If, e.g., Luke used Matthew, he must have changed Matthew’s order drastically: yet he seems to have kept closely to the Markan order. Further, Luke seems to know none of Matthew’s substantial additions to Mark in Markan passages (cf. Matt. 16:17-19). In addition, many would argue that, in the material they share in common which is not derived from Mark, neither Matthew nor Luke consistently gives the more original form of the tradition: sometimes Matthew is more original, sometimes Luke (e.g., Luke’s shorter versions of the Beatitudes in 6:20-23, or the Lord’s Prayer in 11:2-4, are both widely regarded as more original than Matthew’s expanded versions). Hence, it is argued, direct dependence of one Gospel writer on the other is unlikely and the close verbal agreement between the Gospels is to be explained by common dependence on prior source material(s) Q. Whether Q was a single source or a more general set of unrelated materials is a further question, though there has been a strong movement in recent years to analyze Q from the point of view of redaction criticism and to try to determine characteristic theological features of Q.

The Synoptic Problem is important for study of the Synoptic Gospels at a number of levels. If one’s interest in the Gospels is in discovering information about Jesus, then it is important to be able to identify the earliest strands of the tradition, and to be able to recognize which of the parallel versions in the Gospels is likely to be the earlier and which secondary. This does not of course mean that by isolating the earliest strands of the Gospels we have necessarily reached a pure, unvarnished Jesus. Redaction criticism has taught that all our Gospels are influenced by the outlook and situation of their authors, and this applies as much to Mark (and probably to Q for those who believe in its existence) as to Matthew and Luke.

Our understanding of the Evangelists themselves is also significantly dependent on the Synoptic Problem. One way of determining the Evangelists’ concerns is to see the way they use their sources: and hence an accurate delineation of the source relationships between the Gospels is vital to enable that work to be undertaken. Certainly different solutions to the Synoptic Problem would lead to rather different conclusions about the concerns and interests of the Evangelists.

In one sense, treating “the” Synoptic Gospels as a whole is an anachronism. Each Gospel deserves to be treated on its own merits. But a study of all three together does throw fascinating light on the ways in which traditions about Jesus were circulating, and the freedom which the Evangelists evidently felt in relation to those traditions, in a period prior to the canonizing and fixing of these books as “scriptural.”

Bibliography. A. J. Bellinzoin, Jr., ed., The Two-Source Hypothesis (Macon, 1985); W. R. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem (1964, repr. Macon, 1981); J. A. Fitzmyer, “The Priority of Mark and the ‘Q’ Source in Luke,” in Jesus and Man’s Hope (Pittsburgh, 1970), 1:131-70 (repr. in To Advance the Gospel, 2nd ed. [Grand Rapids, 1998], 3-40); M. D. Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm. JSNTSup 20 (Sheffield, 1989); C. M. Tuckett, “The Existence of Q,” in The Gospel Behind the Gospels, ed. R. A. Piper. NovTSup 75 (Leiden, 1995), 19-47 (repr. in Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity [Peabody, 1996], 1-39).

Christopher Tuckett

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)