The First Gospel

[steve53]

Hi Steve.
Thanks for sharing how some people think.
When I get time I will explain why I think this argument does not hold up.

but for starters,
“Ya. They did not at first believe in the Resurrection in the early years ???”

Are we starting to see some problems with this line of thinking.
More later,
John

.

It is what it is.

Are you suggesting that Mark was originally written and somehow the most important part of Jesus’ ministry according to the Catholic Church, his resurrection, was inadvertently or by mistake left out?

How could this possibly have happened-or was it deliberate sabotage?

 

[patrick457]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the earliest we have of the Gospel of Mark is lacking a resurrection story.

Mark in its current form does lack an original resurrection appearance story after the empty tomb story, but at the same time you have to take this in context. It’s not like Mark is denying the resurrection happened: far from it, the resurrection is really hinted heavily throughout the gospel. For one Jesus predicts His death and resurrection three times throughout the gospel’s second half (8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34) and implies it a couple other times, the young man in white at the tomb tells the women outright that Jesus is alive and waiting for them in the Galilee (16:6-7).

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. (8:31-33)

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. (9:9)

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” (9:30-31)

He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” (10:32b-34)

And Jesus said to them, “You will all become deserters; for it is written,

‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.’
**
But after I am raised up,** I will go before you to Galilee.” (14:27-28)

When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” (16:4-7)

You also have to consider Mark in the context of Paul, our earliest Christian author. Paul already implies the Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection in his letters. Heck, at the very beginning of his earliest letter (1 Thessalonians) Paul commends the Thessalonians for turning away from idols to serve “a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.” (1:9-10)

 

[JohnR77]

Thanks Patrick for the detailed listing.

It is what it is.

Are you suggesting that Mark was originally written and somehow the most important part of Jesus’ ministry according to the Catholic Church, his resurrection, was inadvertently or by mistake left out?

How could this possibly have happened-or was it deliberate sabotage?

No. Sorry. I thought I could make a point and be humorous at the same time. I seemed to have failed on both accounts. Let me start over.

I don’t buy into the shorter must have been first theory because we are not talking about fiction where the authors just make it up as they go.

Jesus’ Resurrection and his appearances over 40 days did happen. These things had to have been known about by the church leaders, especially the Gospel writers.

In the shorter ending, why does Mark list no resurrected appearance of Jesus when that would seem so important?
The only answer I can see is that it was not necessary.

Why was it not necessary ?
The only answer I can see, is because Mark (or rather Peter) knew his audience already knew of these things.

How did Mark (or rather Peter) know that the audience already had knowledge and record of these things?
The only answer that fits in my opinion is that Mark (or rather Peter) knew that the audience already had at least one Gospel, or in this case two, that predated Mark’s Gospel that contained that information.

The Fathers tells that at first Peter was ambivalent about the production and distribution his Gospel, now called Mark’s Gospel. ( I realize, that this is not spelled out exactly, but this is how I read them.) How could this be so ? He was called to evangelize and get the word out. But, if Peter only consider his Gospel for the most part to be a limited repetition of what they already had in Matthew and Luke’s Gospel, then this makes sense.

If you have a lock and one hundred keys and you find that only one key opens that lock it is reasonable to conclude that that key was made for that lock.

I believe that the only solution that can adequately answer all the questions, without getting into a very convoluted explaination, is that Mark’s Gospel was third…

Patrick, you have several arguments, not listed in this thread, why you believe Mark’s Gospel must have been first. Can you please list them here? (for those interested, it will probably take me several months to respond - and everybody responded, “Ya. we don’t want to read John’s comments anyway”)

.

 

[steve53]

My interest in the New Testament is focused on history and not necessarily Catholic dogma.

I never realized what a serious crimp this puts in the official beliefs of the Catholic Church.

Precisely the fact that a resurrection was hinted at in Mark makes the fact that no resurrection story was in Mark at the end all the more difficult to explain away.

You can argue that as the beliefs of the Christian Church solidified in the early years after Jesus’ crucifixion that a resurrection story HAD to be added to the Gospel of Mark.

Interestingly, the Jesus that we see in the original Mark is in line with what most common Jews believe about Jesus-both then and in the present day- and the Jesus who is presented as a prophet in the Islamic religion.

 

[patrick457]

Precisely the fact that a resurrection was hinted at in Mark makes the fact that no resurrection story was in Mark at the end all the more difficult to explain away.

I think your choice of words is inaccurate here. There’s no resurrection appearance story (there is an empty tomb story); Mark’s Jesus is resurrected at the end of the gospel (the young man says as much), though He no longer appears in person.

No canonical gospel contains a resurrection story per se; they have the empty tomb story and appearances by the risen Jesus. It is only the apocryphal Gospel of Peter that tries to give an actual ‘resurrection story’, in other words a narration of the actual moment Jesus rises from the tomb.

You can argue that as the beliefs of the Christian Church solidified in the early years after Jesus’ crucifixion that a resurrection story HAD to be added to the Gospel of Mark.

Interestingly, the Jesus that we see in the original Mark is in line with what most common Jews believe about Jesus-both then and in the present day- and the Jesus who is presented as a prophet in the Islamic religion.

Not necessarily. Again, check Mark in the context of Paul. Mark is often connected to Peter in early tradition, but his theology is actually close(r) to Paul’s.

Mark’s Jesus is human, more human when you compare Him to say, John’s Jesus. But that doesn’t necessarily make Him less divine. Mark is often asserted to have a lower Christology compared to the other gospels, but it’s not real ‘low Christology’. If Jesus’ being human is asserted strongly and His being divine is not apparent, then we have a low Christology. But that’s not the case with Mark: Mark’s Jesus is human, but at the same time He is portrayed as a man of power, a man of God - “son of God” - with the power to perform miracles and to incite ‘fear’ and ‘wonder’ (the very things people in the OT experience when they come into contact God). The ‘divinity’ of Mark Jesus not as explicit as John’s outright divine Jesus, but it’s right there between the lines. He’s a man, but He’s not just a man. If it were real low Christology, then Jesus would be a mere man, but Mark’s Christ is exactly not like that. “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

 

[patrick457]

Interestingly, the Jesus that we see in the original Mark is in line with what most common Jews believe about Jesus-both then and in the present day- and the Jesus who is presented as a prophet in the Islamic religion.

Steve, have you really read Mark’s gospel?

Even with the gospel ending in 16:8, Mark’s portrayal of Jesus still wouldn’t fall in line with “what most common Jews believe about Jesus - both then and in the present day.” (I’m assuming you’re referring here to Jews who did not believe in Jesus.) I mean, Mark’s gospel essentially proclaims itself to be “The good news of/about Jesus Christ, son of God” at the very beginning of the gospel. Mark takes all of the miracles of Jesus and the claims about Him seriously. Seriously, that Jesus is the messiah isn’t something any Jew who does not believe in Jesus would seriously say or think of. He would have simply been a pretender who failed like all the other messianic claimants or worse, a false prophet who led the people astray. But Mark portrays Jesus as anything but a false prophet or a failed messianic pretender.

As for the Muslim Jesus, it still isn’t an exact parallel with Mark’s Jesus. The Muslim Jesus is famous for not being crucified: Jesus, in the usual explanation, must have been taken up to heaven beforehand while somebody else was crucified in His place. What that picture is similar to is the docetic idea of Jesus, where Jesus is so divine he could not have been human (since God lacked a material body) which therefore could not physically suffer. It was only either a mirage or someone else that was crucified. (The difference with Muslims and docetist Christians of course is that the Muslims don’t accept Jesus is divine.)

But that’s not what you have with Mark. The crucifixion is central to his gospel. Mark portrays Jesus as a man of “(divine) power;” paradoxically, His shamefully crucifixion serves to proclaim that power. In fact, through all those allusions to Old Testament scripture in the crucifixion story (Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and 69), Mark attempted to show that the crucifixion was in reality God’s will. It isn’t something that Jesus was conveniently spared from.

I think the problem here is - if I’m reading you correctly - that you’re assuming the scenario that the early Christians first thought of Jesus as being simply a man - maybe someone with a special status, but a mere human nevertheless (low Christology), and it was only later that they invented the idea of His being related to God in some way (high Christology), when Christianity was already becoming detached from its Jewish origins - the implication being that it is a sort of gentile/pagan import into the original Jewish ‘Jesus movement’.

 

[steve53]

When the Church Fathers were assembling the New Testament canon, did they know that Mark had been altered?

If they knew, why did they include the alternate version in the Canon?

 

[patrick457]

When the Church Fathers were assembling the New Testament canon, did they know that Mark had been altered?

If they knew, why did they include the alternate version in the Canon?

I think “altered” is a loaded word to use. We still don’t know if Mark really intended to end at 16:8 or whether there was an ending that was either never written or got lost. And if it was lost, whether it was lost by accident or on purpose. I think a better way to put it is “did they know that longer and shorter versions of Mark exist?”

The so-called ‘longer ending’ (vv. 9-20) is old enough: writers from the 2nd century like Irenaeus (ca. 130-202) and Tatian (ca. 120-180), possibly even Tatian’s teacher Justin Martyr (100-165) already allude/quote/use it. Now Eusebius and Jerome in the 4th century both know the ‘ending’-less version of Mark: Eusebius in fact states that the longer ending does not occur in the “accurate copies.” In fact some manuscripts that contain the longer ending mark it with something like a sort of marginal note or symbols like asterisks. In other words the scribes are aware that the verses beyond 16:8 don’t occur in some texts. (Generally speaking, people in antiquity are hesitant to omit verses deliberately, especially if it was something Jesus-related. So if they found a body of text from a manuscript they’re copying from that they know is not in other manuscripts, rather than omit said text, they often tend to copy it as it is; at best they’ll mark it.)

I think you’re confusing ‘canonical’ with ‘original’: actually the ‘canonized’ version of the text need not be exactly the same as the ‘original’ version of the text as the evangelist or apostle wrote it. Technically, only the work per se is canonized, not a particular version of it. So when the Fathers promoted texts as authoritative for Christians (let’s say Mark or Romans), they only meant that the works ‘The Gospel of Mark’ or ‘The Epistle to the Romans’ are authoritative. They did not require a particular form or version of Mark or Romans. They never stated that in commending Mark they had in mind only the version of Mark ending at 16:8 or the one ending at 16:20. (They didn’t go like, “The longer version is canonical, the shorter version is not.”) The book accepted as canonical was the form of the text one happened to possess, whatever it was. If your copy of Mark ended at 16:8, that’s canonical. If your copy had the longer ending, that’s also canonical. As long as it’s the gospel of Mark, it doesn’t matter which version it is or whether your copy had “Jesus said” instead of “he said” in it.

 

[steve53]

Thanks.

If the shorter version of Mark was divinely inspired, the Fathers must have accepted that whoever added on the final verses was divinely inspired to a similar degree.

Convoluted reasoning, don’t you think?

While the shorter version of Mark alludes to Jesus’ divinity (semi or otherwise) and his resurrection, all that can be interpreted in a symbolic and non-literal sense. But the added versions have the resurrected Jesus walking around and interacting with his Disciples and other people.

Big difference.

The shorter version of Mark has almost a surreal ending to it, reminiscent of the ending of the Gospel of John. Not that it matters.

I think the Church would have been on firmer grounds going with the original version.

 

[Erich]

It is what it is.

Are you suggesting that Mark was originally written and somehow the most important part of Jesus’ ministry according to the Catholic Church, his resurrection, was inadvertently or by mistake left out?

How could this possibly have happened-or was it deliberate sabotage?

I was taught the Q theory as “gospel truth” in high school… but I have found *The Authors of the Gospels *to be quite convincing. For one thing:

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.

 

[abucs]

In reality Q was created in the 19th century, out of nothing, to fill a hole in the Markan priority theory.

Yep and Markan priority was to support Bismark’s attempt in Germany to play down the primacy of Peter for secular political reasons.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Thanks.

If the shorter version of Mark was divinely inspired, the Fathers must have accepted that whoever added on the final verses was divinely inspired to a similar degree.

Convoluted reasoning, don’t you think?

While the shorter version of Mark alludes to Jesus’ divinity (semi or otherwise) and his resurrection, all that can be interpreted in a symbolic and non-literal sense. But the added versions have the resurrected Jesus walking around and interacting with his Disciples and other people.

Big difference.

The shorter version of Mark has almost a surreal ending to it, reminiscent of the ending of the Gospel of John. Not that it matters.

I think the Church would have been on firmer grounds going with the original version.

I agree with you.

 

[patrick457]

Yep and Markan priority was to support Bismark’s attempt in Germany to play down the primacy of Peter for secular political reasons.

Oh no, no, no. Let’s clarify things here.

(1) First off, Markan priority does NOT equal two-source (Q) hypothesis. It’s a common mistake (perpetrated even by Q adherents) to use the term ‘two-source hypothesis’ interchangeably with ‘Markan priority’, but in reality the theory of Markan priority is actually just only a side element of the Q theory. These are two independent, different theories developed at different times that were only joined together later. The two-source hypothesis relies on Markan priority, that’s true, but disproving the existence of the phantom Q does not necessarily disprove Markan priority. (cf. the Farrer-Goulder hypothesis)

(2) The ‘Kulturkampf’ argument against Markan priority and the two-source hypothesis should really be laid to rest. I always argue that it’s essentially throwing the baby with the bathwater. It’s true, imperial chancellor Bismarck noticed the anti-Catholic potential of the two-source hypothesis and used it for political ends. But Bismarck’s endorsement of the theory was not 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 Bismarck’s Kulturkampf or its ideologies.

Seriously, if we’re gonna go the ‘Markan priority is unacceptable/heterodox/evil/whatever because Bismarck used it’ route, that would also put the Griesbach theory in question.

Before the Q theory came into the scene, many members of the infamous Tübingen school of theology (like most German Protestant scholars at the time) favored Griesbach’s Matthew-Luke-Mark order, because it so fitted their Hegelian worldview: Matthew the Jewish thesis, Luke the gentile antithesis, and Mark the synthesis that reconciled the two.

(The Tübingen school had a Hegelian scenario of early Christianity: in their picture, the very first generations of Christianity was actually comprised of two opposing factions. On the one side, you had the earlier Jewish Christianity represented by figures like Peter, James or Matthew - the ‘thesis’. On the other side, you had the later Gentile Christianity represented by Paul and Luke - the ‘antithesis’. Much later generations of Christians - such as (in this scenario) Mark and John - attempted to reconcile the conflict between these two opposing theologies - the ‘synthesis’.)

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 overall reliability of the gospels. The logic of the Tübingen school was, if Matthew was late, and the other two gospels were ultimately dependent on Matthew, wouldn’t that put into question their historical reliability?

This is where other scholars disagreed with the Tübingen school: if the gospels were not historically reliable to begin with, then what is the point of studying them for the historical Jesus? That is where Markan priority and the two-source hypothesis come in: these were partly reactions against the Tübingen school’s perceived excesses and their use of Griesbach. Since Tübingen scholars were using Matthean priority/Markan posteriority (coupled with a late date for Matthew) as an excuse to attack the historicity of the gospel accounts, scholars who wished to argue that the gospels are valid historical sources championed Markan priority instead.

It’s not a coincidence that Heinrich Holtzmann’s (the originator of the two-source hypothesis) 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.

(I’ll continue in the next post.)

 

[patrick457]

(Continued)

You also have to keep in mind that the two-source hypothesis as we know it today was not actually developed in Germany. It was manufactured in England - Oxford specifically and was imported again to Germany.

(Back then - and even now, to an extent - scholarship generally tended to be divided along national lines: 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.)

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: rather than think of the evangelists being literarily dependent on each other, they argued for a non-literary and non-dependent oral origin to the gospels. In other words, the three evangelists did not use each others’ gospels; instead, 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 Christian Hermann Weisse’s and Heinrich Holtzmann’s two-source 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.

Now Holtzmann’s and Weisse’s original theory was not ‘true’ Markan priority. Holtzmann thought that Matthew and Luke used, not Mark’s gospel itself, but a proto-gospel that strongly resembled Mark’s: Ur-Markus or Alpha. Mark’s gospel, in Holtzmann’s theory, was an independent adaptation of this ‘proto-Mark’. (Now Weisse originally proposed that Matthew and Luke used canonical Mark, which he identified with Mark’s written account reported in Papias, but backed away in 1856 and proposed that Papias’ Mark was Ur-Markus instead.)

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? They argued convincingly enough that even Holtzmann himself dropped the idea of an Ur-Markus. 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, where it was taken back.

 

[patrick457]

I once posted this in another thread. This is a summary of some* of the solutions to the synoptic problem in the 18th-19th century.

(* This is not a full listing - that would be too long, and I’m already a wordy person in writing. 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 Markan 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))

To the OP: I’m really sorry for all the text. This is all very heady stuff if you’re not used to this kind of talk, so I’d take the discussion somewhere else if you like.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I once posted this in another thread. This is a summary of some* of the solutions to the synoptic problem in the 18th-19th century.

(* This is not a full listing - that would be too long, and I’m already a wordy person in writing. 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 Markan 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))

To the OP: I’m really sorry for all the text. This is all very heady stuff if you’re not used to this kind of talk, so I’d take the discussion somewhere else if you like.

Actually this is excellent, and it just goes to show that everyone has an opinion, but nobody know what was written first.

 

[patrick457]

Oh yeah, I forgot.

“In reality Q was created in the 19th century, out of nothing, to fill a hole in the Markan priority theory.”

Wrong. Q does have some kind of origin: Papias’ mention of Matthew’s ‘Hebrew’ logia: “Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language/style, but each person interpreted them as best he could.” If you’ll look at the list I gave in my last post, you would notice that many of those earlier authors - Lessing, Marsh, Eichhorn, Schleiermacher, even Weisse and Holtzmann - often proposed a proto-gospel as the source for the synoptics. They get this idea from Papias’ logia (and the later Fathers’ subsequent interpretation of it as ‘The Gospel to the Hebrews’). Q is just a variation on this idea. If that isn’t obvious enough, the original term for Q was Logienquelle ‘Logia source’.

Q as we know it today is really just Papias’ claim of a ‘Hebrew’ Logia penned by Matthew without Papias or Matthew. (Later scholars in the late 19th-early 20th century began to doubt whether earlier scholars’ interpretation of Papias is correct, or whether even if Papias’ account is really historically true, but they liked the idea of a proto-gospel anyway so it became stuck. And that’s how the phantom Q came into existence.)

Thanks.

If the shorter version of Mark was divinely inspired, the Fathers must have accepted that whoever added on the final verses was divinely inspired to a similar degree.

Convoluted reasoning, don’t you think?

I think you really have to consider the following: the early Christians were never really specific. When they said such-and-such book is inspired, they never really explicitly addressed issues like which particular version of a particular book is ‘inspired’ or what the exact status of interpolations/additions are and such. (Not that they apparently cared.) So it became de facto accepted that a given work is authoritative, irregardless of said work’s existing versions - even if they differ wildly from each other - and textual variants.

Case in point: the book of Tobit. Tobit exists in different versions (two to three Greek versions, the Latin Vulgate version, the Vetus Latina versions, medieval Hebrew and Aramaic versions, the five DSS manuscripts, etc.), not all of them the same. In fact, they’re all to varying degrees dissimilar to each other, at times even wildly so. (At times they even contradict each other on small details, such as in just exactly how old was Tobit when he became blind (14:1-2 or just how many days elapsed before Sennacherib was killed by his two sons (1:24).)

Now, the Catholic Church considers the book of Tobit to be canonical, but it has not declared which version of Tobit is canonical. That’s why you can’t see an agreement among Bibles on which source text to use: the Douai-Rheims uses the Vulgate version (translated by Jerome from a late Aramaic version/paraphrase of Tobit), the RSV uses the shorter Greek version, the NAB uses the longer Greek version (which are closer to the DSS manuscripts of Tobit), the Nova Vulgata Tobit is an adaptation of the Vetus Latina versions (which are close to the DSS Tobit manuscripts and the longer Greek version).

While the shorter version of Mark alludes to Jesus’ divinity (semi or otherwise) and his resurrection, all that can be interpreted in a symbolic and non-literal sense.

You could say the same thing for the other gospels really.

Case in point: you had a lot of ‘-isms’ in early Christianity, a lot of ideas just exactly what Jesus was. (Was He a human being that became the “Son of God” only in a metaphorical or in an adopted sense? Was He just a mirage or a spiritual that only seemed to take on human form? Was He a subordinate divine being that was created by God the Father? Was He both human and divine, of the same substance as the Father? Was He sent by the Jewish God or by some other (higher) God? etc.) But all of Christianity took the four canonical gospels as their starting point. Sure, some people accepted more gospels or rejected the authority of the four canonicals, but their starting point always was any or all of the four: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.