The Gospels

[catholic1seeks]

Which Gospels derived things from other Gospels? For exmaple, did Matthew take things from Mark’s Gospel, etc.

Thanks.

 

[tobinatorstark]

The Gospels derived from witness to Christ. They didn’t take notes from each others own writing to come up with a Gospel. These were taken from accounts of witness

 

[NotWorthy]

Mark may have been the first one written and Matthew and Luke may have drawn from Mark’s Gospel. That’s one theory.

Another theory is that there is a different source - “Q”, which is the source for the three synoptics. There’s no proof of this “Q” ever existing and no references of it by any other writers. I don’t buy it.

 

[catholic1seeks]

The Gospels derived from witness to Christ.

I know that.

They didn’t take notes from each others own writing to come up with a Gospel. These were taken from accounts of witness

WELL, my NAB bible says that Matthew’s Gospel has “###” verses that are the same with ________'s Gospel, “##” with this, and so many in common with that, etc.

The introduction to the Gospel of Matthew says that the author derived many passages from St. Mark’s gospel and source “Q”.

 

[NotWorthy]

The introduction to the Gospel of Matthew says that the author derived many passages from St. Mark’s gospel and source “Q”.

The “Q” is simply a theory with no proof. There are no references to a source “Q” anywhere in the Early Church Fathers writings, nor is there any archaeological evidence.

I don’t buy into “Q”.

 

[Verbum]

Hi Not__,

St. John’s gospel is quite independent of the others, which are called synoptics. The relationship between the synoptics is a difficult problem that you can read about at

cathtruth.com/catholicbible/synopt.htm

Verbum

 

[tobinatorstark]

I know that.

WELL, my NAB bible says that Matthew’s Gospel has “###” verses that are the same with ________'s Gospel, “##” with this, and so many in common with that, etc.

The introduction to the Gospel of Matthew says that the author derived many passages from St. Mark’s gospel and source “Q”.

NAB notes are not quite reliable. Matthew (Levi as referred to in Mark’s Gospel) was one of the twelve apostles and Mark (or Authors) was not an apostle of Christ. NAB lacks quite a bit in Catholic Doctrine.

 

[NotWorthy]

Hi Not__,

St. John’s gospel is quite independent of the others, which are called synoptics. The relationship between the synoptics is a difficult problem that you can read about at

cathtruth.com/catholicbible/synopt.htm

Verbum

That’s good information, but it does little to persuade the issue. I’m studying Mary Healy’s Gospel of Mark from the “Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture” series - one that I heartily recommend!!!

She says that Mark may have been written first because:

1. It is hareder to exaplin why Mark would omit key passages from his source, such as the infancy narratives, the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, etc., than why Matthew and Luke would add them.
2. It seems more likely that Matthew and Luke would soften Mark’s blunt portrayal of the Apostles’ defects than that Mark would add this theme.
3. Matthew and Luke omit some of the more human actions and emotions that Mark attributes to Jesus, which are harder to explain in light of Jesus’ divinity.
4. If Mark is writing a digest of Matthew it is hard to see why he would add length and detail to many of the incidents he records.
5. Where the Synoptics differ in the order of events, Matthew and Luke rarely agree against Mark, suggesting that they copied his work independently.
6. The Greek of Matthew and Luke is more polished than that of Mark; it seems that they consciously improved his style.

Of course, Matthew is often thought of as first because:

1. In many passages Matthew and Luke differ slightly from Mark’s wording in exactly the same way, which is hard to explain if they copied him independently.
2. The best explanation for the passages Matthew and Luke share is not a hypothetical document Q (for which there is no evidence), but that one used the other’s work, as Luke 1:1 seems to indicate - specifically, that Mark used Matthew, and Luke used both Matthew and Mark.
3. Mark’s omission of certain passages is explained by his intention of writing a brief, evangelistic Gospel conveying the essentials of the good news for new converts.
4. Mark’s portrayal of the disciple’ weaknesses is due to his direct knowledge of these through Peter.
5. Mark accents the human qualities fo Jesus in order to show Jesus’ human face to the suffering Christians of Rome.
6. Early Christians tradition held that Matthew was written first (St. Irenaeus and Origin - according to Eusebius)

 

[patrick457]

WELL, my NAB bible says that Matthew’s Gospel has “###” verses that are the same with ________'s Gospel, “##” with this, and so many in common with that, etc.

The introduction to the Gospel of Matthew says that the author derived many passages from St. Mark’s gospel and source “Q”.

That’s one weakness of the NAB: it buys too much on the Markan Priority/Q Hypothesis trumpeted around today as fact in scholarly circles. They fail to mention that there are actually different hypotheses to explain the so-called Synoptic Problem, and that the hypothetical “Q Document” is actually not a required element in most of them.

Here are five of the commonly offered solutions to the Synoptic Problem. Notice that Q is only required in two:

1.) Two-Source Hypothesis: This is the one which the NAB adheres to and the most common hypothesis that one encounters today. It asserts that Mark wrote first, and Mark and Luke used Matthew, along with a document called Q (usually defined as a sort of collection of Jesus’ sayings).

2.) Griesbach Hypothesis: Asserts that Matthew wrote his gospel first with Luke following him, using Matthew as one of his various sources. Mark then made some use of Luke and Matthew in writing his gospel.

3.) Farrer Hypothesis: Asserts that Mark wrote first, followed by Matthew (who made some use of Mark and expanded upon it), followed by Luke who used the two gospels among his sources.

4.) Augustinian Hypothesis: This is very much the traditional view, dating back to the early Church fathers. It holds that Matthew wrote first (tradition holds that he wrote a form of his gospel in ‘Hebrew’ first, only producing a Greek version later), followed by Mark – whom St. Augustine held as merely the “attendant and abbreviator of Matthew”, then by Luke who used both Matthew and Mark.

5.) Four Document Hypothesis: This is one of the most complicated hypotheses. It asserts that Matthew used Q, the Gospel of Mark, as well as two more hypothetical documents (dubbed “M” and “Antiochian Document”), while Luke used Mark and Q to compose “proto-Luke”, later expanding on it (using a document which has the infancy narratives) to produce the final version.

Personally, I stand in-between the Griesbach and Augustinian hypotheses.

 

[eric_sammons]

Patrick gives a good summary of the various hypotheses regarding the various dependencies among the Gospels. But it is important to understand also why people speculate that the Gospels are dependent upon one another.

If you look at the original Greek of the Synoptic Gospels, you will find a large number of cases in which an account from two separate Gospels has the exact same (or almost the exact same) wording. As any lawyer will tell you, this is impossible to happen when you have two or more people recounting the same event. Two witnesses will invariably tell their accounts in very divergent wording, even if what they say is consistent in the details. So the fact that the Gospels have instances of identical wording show that one is in fact copying the other (or they are both copying from a shared source). This is something that has been realized by Scripture scholars since the early church (see Augustine’s explanation of their dependence, for example). Luke himself admits in his introduction that he used other sources for his account.

The problem is when we put too much credence in one theory. The fact is that we just don’t know exactly how the Gospels were formed into their canonical shape. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong. The traditional view is that Matthew came first and the modern view is that Mark was first. Both theories have merit, but ultimately we’ll never know. It is also very possible that the process of development was not linear - perhaps Matthew wrote much of his Gospel first, then Mark copied parts of it, then someone associated with Matthew used parts of Mark to add to Matthew’s account, etc. No matter how they were written, the end result is that the Holy Spirit is the inspirator of what we have now in our Bibles.

I would say that any statement of the meaning of a Scriptural passage that is wholly dependent upon the order in which the document was written should be considered suspect. Since we don’t know the order with certitude, any conjecture based on a certain order has a shaky foundation.

 

[thistle]

I know that.

WELL, my NAB bible says that Matthew’s Gospel has “###” verses that are the same with ________'s Gospel, “##” with this, and so many in common with that, etc.

The introduction to the Gospel of Matthew says that the author derived many passages from St. Mark’s gospel and source “Q”.

If you want to read Bible notes the NAB notes are worst you could read.

I agree with the other posters. “Q” is sheer unfounded speculation plucked out of the air. There is absolutely no evidence to support this.