Lecture: Mark comes third and last in time among the synoptic Gospels

[Erich]

I fail to see how the order in which the gospels were written could have any bearing on the truth/s contained in them. What is said in Matthew is just as true whether he wrote his gospel 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.

The early church unanimously held that the gospel of Matthew was the first written gospel and was penned by the apostle of the same name (Matt. 10:2-4). This would make Matthew an eye-witness apostle/evangelist… and as such, the reliability, authenticity, and accuracy of his Gospel would be better substantiated than they would be if the same exact text had been written by a non-eye-witness “Matthew from the next town over” some 40-60 years later, when other “stuff” would be more likely to creep in.

Would you be more, or less, inclined to believe the Peter passages in Matthew if you knew they were written by an eye-witness apostle sometime in the middle of the first century (37-70 AD)? or if they were written by a non-eye-witness evangelist late in the first century or early in the second century?

 

[Erich]

I disagree with Q

So do I (even though that is what I was taught in high school). From *The Authors of the Gospels:

There is not the slightest historical evidence, or even a hint, that Q or its author ever existed. If Q had existed, it would have been the most precious scroll of Christianity during the first 50-70 years of the new religion. According to the Markans we owe the preservation of The Our Father and The Beatitudes to Q. Mark did not bother to record them. If Q had been the key document containing the sayings of Christ, it would have been treasured, copied and passed from hand to hand and read at Services.

Markan priorists want us to believe that the community that produced Q later lost it, although it was so important that Matthew and Luke, unknown to each other, made much use of it. Then the communities of Matthew and Luke also lost it. It is hard to believe that only two copies were made of Q and these just happened to be in the possession of the isolated communities in which Matthew and Luke lived and these communities lost them. If more copies were made for many communities, Markans have to explain how all these copies of this key Christian document were lost. Also, how did ‘Q’ disappear without leaving even a vague reference or echo in any piece of
Christian or heretical literature?

Those who hold the Markan theory demand the most stringent proof for the historicity of the Gospels, for which we have much historical evidence. Yet they accept conjectures and theories about Q, based on further conjectures and theories for which there is no evidence at all. In reality Q was created in the 19th century, out of nothing, to fill a hole in the Markan priority theory.

 

[patrick457]

The early church unanimously held that the gospel of Matthew was the first written gospel and was penned by the apostle of the same name (Matt. 10:2-4). This would make Matthew an eye-witness apostle/evangelist… and as such, the reliability, authenticity, and accuracy of his Gospel would be better substantiated than they would be if the same exact text had been written by a non-eye-witness “Matthew from the next town over” some 40-60 years later, when other “stuff” would be more likely to creep in.

Would you be more, or less, inclined to believe the Peter passages in Matthew if you knew they were written by an eye-witness apostle sometime in the middle of the first century (37-70 AD)? or if they were written by a non-eye-witness evangelist late in the first century or early in the second century?

Just my two cents.

I think there’s this sort of unhealthy obsession on the part of believers and non-believers on the exact date of the gospels: the prevailing idea is ‘older is better’, and that producing a ‘late’ (a really subjective concept) date would somehow throw the reliability of the gospels into doubt. It’s almost kind of ridiculous in a way: anti-Christians will claim that the gospels are not historically reliable because it’s written around five to seventy years (gasp!) after Jesus (much even earlier scholars will propose dates that are too late by current standards); Christians, in their turn, push for earlier and earlier dates for the gospels in the belief that somehow it will make their witness all the more reliable.

But then again, is the veracity of the written Christian message necessarily dependent on whether it was written ‘early’? If you ask me, I don’t think so. While it’s true that sources closer in time to the events they describe often have a chance of being reliable than later ones, this is not a hard and fast rule. ‘Early’ does not always automatically guarantee ‘100% historically accurate/reliable’, nor does ‘late’ automatically mean ‘nigh-unreliable embellished legend’. I think the whole “‘later’ date allow the possibility of ‘myth’ creeping in” card has been played to death, and Christians have unnecessarily fell for it.

Speaking of which, as I mentioned, ‘early’ and ‘late’ as they are thrown around in this types of discussions are really subjective. Even the current non-conservative estimates of when the gospels were written (late 60s/70s-early 100s) would still be ‘early’ by general ancient history standards. I mean, when compared to surviving biographies of Alexander the Great, these ‘biographies’ of Jesus are on firmer ground and are written just a half-century or so removed from the events. But many modern historians are willing to accept that even these extant biographies of Alexander the Great (which were written 400 years after the man lived) have some degree of historical reliability.

 

[patrick457]

I disagree with Q FYI

Let me guess. You’re a Farrerite.

So do I (even though that is what I was taught in high school). From *The Authors of the Gospels:

Leaving aside the (allow me a bit of exaggeration here) erm, atrocious use of ‘Markan priority’ as synecdoche for ‘two-source hypothesis’ (we gotta be exact, no?), I pretty much agree with the gist of what the quote says: the biggest argument against Q is the fact that it’s so phantom a source, we can’t even find a copy of it. Heck, we couldn’t even agree what it actually contained: was it just a list of sayings by Jesus? Or was it a sort of proto-gospel complete with narrative? (In fact, that the supposed ‘Q material’ apparently has a narrative sequence points against the idea of Q just being a ‘sayings source’.)

Really, the only reason why we even have Q in the first place is because two-source hypothesists think Luke could not have known Matthew’s gospel to make use of it.

The only inaccuracy in the quote is: “In reality ‘Q’ was created in the 19th century, out of nothing, to fill a hole in the Markan priority theory.” This is incorrect. Q as we know it derives ultimately from a theory by Friedrich Schleiermacher in 1832, who got the idea from Papias’ reference to “Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language.” Schleiermacher thought that Papias was actually referring to a sayings collection by Matthew the apostle that was later used, together with narrative elements, by another “Matthew” and by the other Evangelists. This is why in German, Q is still known as the Logienquelle, the ‘Logia (sayings) source’.

This theory of a ‘logia source’ wasn’t combined with the idea of Markan priority until six years later (1838), when Christian Hermann Weisse developed what would become the two-source hypothesis. (Markan priority was first proposed by Gottlob Christian Storr in 1786; it did not meet with much acceptance at first, because most scholars preferred either the Griesbach theory, the traditional Augustinian theory or the ‘fragmentary theory’ - where the gospels were actually pieced together from different stories recorded in several smaller documents and notebooks.) Weisse’s idea, again, did not receive that much attention until Heinrich Julius Holtzmann endorsed it in 1863. German scholars ditched Griesbach in favor of Weisse’s and Holtzmann’s idea, and it - to be more specific, modified forms of it - dominated the field ever since.

(As for Markan priority, scholars continued to debate for a time whether Matthew and Luke used Mark or a ‘proto-Mark’. It was only in the early 1900s that the idea of Markan priority without the need for proposing the existence of a ‘proto-Mark’ began to be popular.)

 

[catholictiger]

Let me guess. You’re a Farrerite.

yeah, and that is mainly because my professor is one. He argued pretty convincingly.

 

[Erich]

Even the current non-conservative estimates of when the gospels were written (late 60s/70s-early 100s) would still be ‘early’ by general ancient history standards. I mean, when compared to surviving biographies of Alexander the Great, these ‘biographies’ of Jesus are on firmer ground and are written just a half-century or so removed from the events. But many modern historians are willing to accept that even these extant biographies of Alexander the Great (which were written 400 years after the man lived) have some degree of historical reliability.

I’m inclined to agree with the bolded statement. As I mentioned earlier, I was taught Markan priority (and the Q Source Theory) in high school, and at the time I accepted it as “gospel truth.” But, **ALL **the earliest historians recorded that it was Matthew who wrote first. Any theory, however clever, must be doubted when it is unable to face the challenge of history… which is why I no longer consider Markan priority (and Q) as “gospel truth.”

I’m sure there are a lot of well-intentioned scholars, Catholic and Protestant alike, who consider almost exclusively the results of “modern methods of literary analysis” and who have come to believe the Markan priority theory. Whether or not they consider themselves “liberal” and whether or not they think they have an axe to grind, there’s no getting around the reason why the Markan priority theory spread as rapidly as it did among Lutheran, Anglican, and other Protestant theologians beginning in the mid- to late-19th century… namely, they did have at the time a vested interest in undermining the scriptural basis for the Catholic Church’s authority.

From page 120 of The Gospel of Jesus by William Reuben Farmer (who was Professor of New Testament * Emeritus,* at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.):

In this case, the difference can be measured in terms of how the  Two-Source Hypothesis affects the scriptural basis for a belief that the  gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church. In a phrase, the  Two-Source Hypotheses weakens scriptural support for this belief. It  does this by underscoring that Jesus' assurance that the gates of hell  shall not prevail against his church is not found in the Gospel of Mark.  This assurance is also not found in Q. It is not attested in either of  the two earliest and most reliable sources, assuming the validity of the Two-Source Hypothesis.

The same can be said about the tradition in which Jesus promises to give the keys of the kingdom to Peter. The Two-Source Hypothesis also weakens scriptural support for the belief that authority in the church is in some unique way related to the person of Peter. All those who doubt that Jesus made this promise to Peter will find support for their reservations, assuming the validity of the Two-Source Hypothesis, because these words are absent from both Mark and Q. Conversely, Christians who hold that Jesus promised to give Peter the keys find scriptural support for this conclusion under the Two Gospel Hypothesis .

 

[patrick457]

I’m inclined to agree with the bolded statement. As I mentioned earlier, I was taught Markan priority (and the Q Source Theory) in high school, and at the time I accepted it as “gospel truth.” But, **ALL **the earliest historians recorded that it was Matthew who wrote first. Any theory, however clever, must be doubted when it is unable to face the challenge of history… which is why I no longer consider Markan priority (and Q) as “gospel truth.”

And this is why I said appeals to authority (‘Mark is first because scholars said so,’ ‘Matthew is first because the Fathers said so’) are not enough. In the case of the Fathers, there is first the issue of whether these testimonies are independent or not. IMHO the case would certainly be stronger if all the writers who spoke of Matthew writing (a Hebrew gospel) first are independent on each other, since if it turns out that these writers copied (and adapted) what a past writer wrote, it will place a burden on the earlier authors who made the claim, especially St. Irenaeus, the first writer we have to claim Matthaean priority. (The earlier Papias is too ambiguous; so ambiguous, that some even read him - if you read my earlier posts - as espousing Markan priority! ) In other words, a lot of things will stand or fall on Irenaeus. So there’s this issue at the first: were these early Christian writers simply repeating what a past writer had written (dependency), or was there this common tradition that they all independently drew from (independency)?

 

[patrick457]

I’m sure there are a lot of well-intentioned scholars, Catholic and Protestant alike, who consider almost exclusively the results of “modern methods of literary analysis” and who have come to believe the Markan priority theory. Whether or not they consider themselves “liberal” and whether or not they think they have an axe to grind, there’s no getting around the reason why the Markan priority theory spread as rapidly as it did among Lutheran, Anglican, and other Protestant theologians beginning in the mid- to late-19th century… namely, they did have at the time a vested interest in undermining the scriptural basis for the Catholic Church’s authority.

I think you’re showing a very oversimplified view of history here. I think the only place where the two-source hypothesis was explicitly appropriated for the state’s ideological (even anti-Catholic) purposes - in other words, where there was ‘a vested interest in undermining the scriptural basis for the Catholic Church’s authority’ - was Prussia under Bismarck’s Kulturkampf.

As I mentioned, before the Q theory came into the scene many members of the Tübingen school (like most German Protestant scholars at the time) favored Griesbach’s Matthew-Luke-Mark order, because it so fitted in their Hegelian worldview: Matthew the Jewish thesis, Luke the gentile antithesis, and Mark the synthesis that reconciled the two. Not to mention that the very (even by modern standards) late date assigned to Matthew in those days enabled some in the school to question the reliability of the gospels: their logic was, if Matthew was late, and the other two gospels were dependent on Matthew, wouldn’t that put into question their historical reliability? (So the two-source hypothesis was hardly the first or the only theory that was appropriated for ideological purposes. )

This is where other scholars disagreed with the Tübingen school: if the gospels were not historically reliable to begin with, then what’s the point of studying them for the historical Jesus? That’s why Markan priority and the two-source hypothesis were partly reactions against the Tübingen school’s perceived excesses; they tried to secure at least a historical basis for the gospels. It’s not a coincidence that Heinrich Holtzmann’s work came out in the 1860s when members of the Tübingen school were retiring - the driving force of the school, F.C. Baur, had just died - and a new generation of scholars were arriving. Apparently imperial chancellor Bismarck was shrewd enough to notice that these then still-young theories would be useful for his nationalistic/anti-Catholic ends: he can’t of course repudiate the gospel of Matthew outright, but he could try to lessen its impact. And Markan priority (and to a lesser extent, the two-source hypothesis) proved useful to this end. In 1874, Holtzmann was appointed in a prestigious position as professor ordinarius at the University of Strasbourg. The circumstances behind the appointment are rather mysterious; some would claim that Bismarck was actually behind the appointment.

So it’s true that Bismarck did play a role in the history of the two theories, but I think Farmer was wrong in suggesting that Bismarck’s endorsement of the theory was the only or even the main reason Markan priority or the Q theory became predominant. Both had outlived Bismarck’s intrigues; both theories have been adopted and defended by people without reference to or influence from the Kulturkampf or its ideologies. As I said earlier, it comes close to throwing the baby with the bathwater.

(Continued in the next post)

 

[patrick457]

(Continued)

A thing to keep in mind is that German scholarship and British scholarship are different worlds entirely. While in Germany, you may have things like the shift in theories or Bismarck going on, the same was not necessarily the case in England.

(This scholarship divided along national lines still holds true to an extent today; even today you have an American side of academia, a German side, a UK side, etc. It’s not always the case that a scholar from a certain side can make a name for themselves into another side: some scholars are so influential that they’re internationally-recognized to the point that even a layman knows them, while others are only really well-known within their respective countries. I mean, while I think you’ve heard of Robert Funk (from the US side) or NT Wright (UK) or Martin Hengel (Germany), can you say the same thing about say, Kenzo Tagawa (Japan) or Fr. Erich Zenger (Germany)?)

In England, Markan priority arrived first before ‘true’ two-source hypothesis. Before that happened, many English scholars had a different solution to the synoptic problem than their German counterparts: they argued for a non-literary, oral origin to the gospels. In other words, no one copied from another; any similarities between the three gospels must have been due to them using the same oral tradition independently. (This was Westcott’s - of the Westcott and Hort NT fame - theory.)

But then came William Sanday (1843-1920), who imported Holtzmann’s theory to England around the 1870s. It is in England that the two-source hypothesis became closer to the form of the theory we know today.

Holtzmann’s theory was not ‘true’ Markan priority: he thought that Matthew and Luke used, not so much Mark’s gospel, but a proto-gospel that strongly resembled Mark’s: Ur-Markus. Mark’s gospel, in Holtzmann’s theory, was an independent adaptation of this ‘proto-Mark’. English scholars at Oxford studied Holtzmann’s theory and felt that he was unnecesarily multiplying sources: rather than postulate the existence of a ‘proto-Mark’, why couldn’t have Matthew and Luke simply used Mark outright? In fact, from then on it was mostly British scholars who modified Holtzmann into the form we know the theory today: J. C. Hawkins (1899), F.C. Burkitt (1909), B.H. Streeter (1924). This modified form of Holtzmann became the standard, eventually even in its native Germany.

(Funnily enough, it was an Oxford professor who was one of the first in the English-speaking world to receive Holtzmann’s theory (William Sanday), an Oxford professor who modified the two-source hypothesis into its current form (B.H. Streeter), and an Oxford professor who was one the first to ditch Q (Austin Farrer). You might say that Oxford just completed the process: first they got rid of Ur-Markus, then it was Q’s turn. )

 

[patrick457]

yeah, and that is mainly because my professor is one. He argued pretty convincingly.

Now I’m very curious, not least because of all the theories we’ve talked about in this thread (Q, Griesbach, Farrer), Farrer’s has got to be the most ‘in the minority’. Or at least, it used to be; the internet sure makes wonders. (I mean, sure, Griesbach’s also in the minority when compared to the two-source theory too, but c’mon, we gotta admit Griesbach redivivus gets some more publicity than Farrer’s because it has some more adherents and is so ‘rad’ by today’s standards: it opposes both of the two pillars the two-source theory was built in (Markan priority and Q). Farrer’s, on the other hand, accepts one (Markan priority) while rejecting the other (Q). In other words, it just looks like a Q-less two source theory to an outsider. )

I hope this is not a personal question (feel free to ignore this), but who did you study under?

 

[patrick457]

This is a summary of some of the solutions to the synoptic problem in the 18th-19th century. Note: this is just some - this is not a full listing. (For a more complete version see this page: hypotyposeis.org/synoptic-problem/2004/09/chronology-of-synoptic-problem.html)

Henry Owen (1764) and J. J. Griesbach (1776)

• Matthew was first, Luke used Matthew, Mark used Luke as well as Matthew

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1778)

• Hebrew/Aramaic proto-gospel (Gospel of the Hebrews/Nazarenes) used independently by all three synoptics

Johann Gottlieb Koppe (1782)

• Argued against the traditional Augustinian theory of Mark being an ‘abridgement’ of Matthew because Mark deviated in order from Matthew but which Luke supports over the apostle
• Proposed gospels were compiled from Greek and Hebrew fragments

Gottlob Christian Storr (1786)

• Earliest proponent of Markan priority (he argued that only with Marcan priority could one explain Mark’s omission of so much of Matthew and Luke)
• Proposed Mark was used by Matthew and Luke independently
• Argued against Koppe (based on Papias) that the authority of Mark comes from Peter

Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1794)

• ‘The gospel of the Hebrews’, in Aramaic, was written first
• This rather fluid proto-gospel was revised four times, with each gospel being derived from one or more of the four editions (A became the basis for Matthew; B became the basis for Luke; C, derived from A and B, became the basis for Mark; and D was used by both Matthew and Luke but not Mark)
• Eichhorn did not believe in one evangelist making use of another, or that their similarities derive from common oral tradition or firsthand experience, but in a common source (in this case, the ‘Hebrew’ gospel) which the three synoptics drew from independently

Herbert Marsh’s document hypothesis (1798-1802/3)

• A proto-gospel (Aleph) is written first
• Aleph became the source for two documents, dubbed Aleph1 and Aleph2
• Aleph 1 is used by Matthew (Matthew-Mark agreements vs. Luke), Aleph 2 by Luke (Luke-Mark agreements vs. Matthew)
• In addition, both Matthew and Luke used a sayings source (dubbed Beth)
• Canonical Mark is a conflation of Aleph1 and Aleph2

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1832)

• Followed the ‘fragmentary hypothesis’ (Diegesentheorie): the common wording of the synoptics is due to indirect dependence on several smaller documents but their common order is due to an oral tradition
• Proposed the existence of a sayings source or Logia (inspired by Papias’ statement about Matthew’s Hebrew logia)

Karl Lachmann (1835)

• Also followed the fragmentary hypothesis
• Argued that Mark’s order best reflected a relatively fixed oral sequence for these sections (Mark being ‘middle term’)

Tübingen School (1835)

• Followed the Griesbach hypothesis combined with a late dating for Matthew (AD 130)
• A late date for Matthew meant for the school that Matthew (and the two gospels which rely on him) are not historically credible
• Lasted until 1861-4 with the death of F.C. Baur and the appointment of Karl Weizsäcker

Weisse’s and Holtzmann’s Two-source hypothesis (1838-1860s)

• A Mark-like proto-gospel (Ur-Markus or Alpha/A), is written first
• Canonical Mark is a reworking of said proto-Mark
• Matthew and Luke use both Ur-Markus/Alpha as well as a sayings source Holtzmann dubbed Lambda (Λ, for Logia)

(Weisse originally proposed that Matthew and Luke used canonical Mark, which he identified with the Mark’s gospel reported in Papias, but backed away in 1856 and proposed that Papias’ Mark was Ur-Markus instead)

’Oxford-style’ Two-source hypothesis (1870s-1920s)

• Canonical Mark is written first (Ur-Markus was abandoned, even by Holtzmann himself)
• Matthew and Luke use canonical Mark as well as a sayings source (Logia / Quelle)

(B.H. Streeter’s version proposed two more additional sources: M (source for Matthew’s original material) and L (source for Lukan material))