mls@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Siemon) (08/05/89)
Many arguments, on all sides of the synoptic question, depend on an
assessment of relative probability for one hypothetical editorial
procedure (of evangelist X relative to his supposed sources) as
contrasted to another. These arguments can seem very plausible, but
proper evaluation requires a detailed knowledge of the text and a
linguistic/exegetical expertise far beyond me. I limit myself here
to arguments I think I am competent to judge, and ones that I think
are sufficient to suggest a sane approach to the "synoptic problem."
Does the evidence support Griesbach?
William Farmer says the Griesbach hypothesis is the most parsimonious
way to solve the problem of the detailed literary relations among the
gospel writers, and that more complex solutions should not be tried if
the simplest one works. Another advocate, D. L. Dungan (1970) compares
Mark's procedure to that of Arrian in his biography of Alexander;
Arrian said "Wherever Ptolemy... and Aristobulus... give an identical
account... I follow this with absolute confidence in its accuracy.
Where they disagree, I choose the version which, in my judgment, is the
more credible and at the same time the more interesting of the two."
Dungan asks "Why couldn't the author of Mark have done the same with his
two sources? Does it sound so impossible?"
The answer is yes. First, Mark is *not* some four to five hundred years
later than his sources (as Arrian is), nor is Mark isolated in a library
with scrolls in front of him and nothing else but his own common sense;
he was an evangelist in an evangelizing church that had to teach its
converts. The _Didache_ gives a picture of an early church involved in
its own life of teaching, welcoming visiting apostles -- but vetting
their teaching against what it has already received. An Ockham's razor
argument is inherently suspect in such a case, despite its abstract
intellectual appeal. *No* simple solution is at all likely to be true.
One commentator (J. M. Rist, _On the Independence of Matthew and Mark_,
Cambridge University Press, 1978) compares the simplicity principle in
these situations to "drunkard's search" -- look for your key under the
streetlight, since it's too dark to find it where you dropped it.
I *will* explore the theory on its own terms below, but beyond mere
speculation, there is early testimony about Mark's procedure. Papias,
cited by Eusebius, around 110 investigated the gospel traditions, getting
most notably the opinions of the "blessed elder John" (who may or may not
have been either the apostle or the evangelist or both; in any case this
takes us back to a presumed contemporary of Mark)
"This is what the elder used to say: Mark, having been the
interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately but not in order every-
thing that he [Peter] reported from memory that had been said
or done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord or followed
him, but later, as I have said, followed Peter, who adapted his
teaching to the needs of his audience, not making as it were
a systematic account of the Lord's _logia_ [words & deeds]."
Farmer says "Papias' testimony throws no light on the question of the order
[dates] in which the Gospels were written." And as Farmer says elsewhere
"the earliest statements by the Fathers on this matter are quite late,
from the third and fourth centuries." However, Farmer passes over the
rather obvious fact that Papias essentially contradicts the conflation
theory for the origin of Mark; remarkable intellectual gymnastics are
required to get that theory to accord with Papias statement.
To give Farmer his chance, *does* the assumption that Mark uses Luke
and Matthew adequately explain the "literary" phenomena that puzzle
synoptic scholars? Farmer says of Mark's redactional procedure, "Mark
deviated from his sources as little as possible, following their common
order wherever possible, adhering first to the order of Matthew up to a
distinguishable point of literary transition and thereafter the order of
Luke up to the corresponding point in Luke's narrative... Mark's
redactional procedure reflects no sense of slavish dependence on either
Matthew of Luke." Farmer has left himself an escape hatch as wide as a
barn door -- and he needs it. Remember that the whole point of the
Griesbach theory is to explain VERBATIM agreements among the gospels.
When this suggested procedure of Mark's is followed on a word by word
basis it is trivially easy to show that something is very wrong. (And
despite Farmer's attempt to keep *his* discussion of Mark entirely on
the plane of ordering, he has insisted on criticizing others' use of
arguments from order by dragging in non-order elements of word usage,
the so-called "minor agreements" between Matthew and Luke; sauce for the
goose, sauce for the gander.)
C. M. Tuckett's _Revival of the Griesbach Hypothesis_ (Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1983) goes through *lots* of examples that demolish this idea of
how Mark treated his sources. This is particularly so in some cases
where Mark has a quasi-parallel to Matthew and Luke, but not a very
exact one. For example, the parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32).
Tuckett says:
"Mark must have just switched from using Luke as his main source to
using Matthew... In doing so he must have omitted Matthew's parable
of the tares and inserted his own parable of the seed growing secretly.
Does he pick up Matthew at just this point because there is a Lukan
parallel, albeit in a different context? But if so, why does Mark not
include also the parable of the leaven, which follows immediately in
both his sources?... Having just reverted to using Matthew as his main
source, Mark immediately avoids using Matthew's form of the introduction
... the lack of close verbal agreement makes any theory of direct
literary dependence here difficult... After the introduction, Mark was
faced with a common grammatical construction and strong verbal agree-
ments in his sources. Yet just here, when he should, according to
Farmer [p. 264 in Farmer's book], be reproducing the text common to his
sources, Mark does precisely the opposite. Matthew and Luke both have
_homoia estin_ + dative; Mark avoids this grammatically perfect con-
struction and has instead _ho:s_ + dative. The grammar here is odd...
Moreover, Mark's version has left the sentence without a main verb...
Mark appears to have taken an intense dislike to Luke... and to have
gone through Matthew's text, changing it where Matthew and Luke agree,
but leaving it alone where they differ. Moreover, the result is, in
places, grammatical chaos."
Tuckett was having fun (but Farmer deserves it). The weakest part of this
note is the question of Mark's ommissions and additions. Griesbachians
claim that "reasonable suggestions" can be made concerning these, and
formally this doesn't absolutely demolish the theory. But one of the
"suggestions" is that Mark is following a traditional preaching outline;
the Griesbachians have apparently not noticed that such a way of handling
the problem obliterates their claim to a parsimonious and purely literary
solution, for it admits that Mark has access to traditions external to
Matthew and Luke, and uses these at times. Where now is Ockham's razor?
Difficulties with other Theories
C. S. Mann, whose adoption of the Griesbach theory in his edition of
Mark for the Anchor Bible was the start of this whole synoptic quest of
mine, has one paragraph (on p. 272) on the mustard seed parable and its
context in Mark (4:26-34) pointing out awkwardnesses in ordering that
would arise if Matthew were copying Mark. This deserves note against
Tuckett's remarks; Mann says "If indeed Matthew is dependent upon Mark,
this distribution of Markan material is almost bizarre." Yet Mann has
*no* comments at all on the verbal correspondences, i.e. the whole point
most at issue. I repeat; there is no value to the Griesbach hypothesis
UNLESS it explains the verbal similarities and differences in the gospels.
At most, Mann's comment *also* rejects the dependence of Matthew on Mark.
It should be observed that, except for "grammatical chaos," the mustard
seed pericope makes it equally hard to believe that Luke was creating his
version using Matthew and Mark as sources (i.e., Augustine's hypothesis.)
Cases like this (and Tuckett deals with several more) are also problems
for the two-sourcers. They come to the _ad hoc_ conclusion that Mark
shares some of the material of Q, possibly in a less-developed form.
This isn't as devastating to the two-source theory as to Griesbach's,
but it is exactly the sort of adhocery that Farmer dislikes (reasonably
enough) in the defenses of the two-sourcers. That theory runs up against
a number of odd things besides these supposed overlaps of Mark and Q,
notably the "minor agreements" of Matthew and Luke against Mark (i.e.,
in some details of wording; the name derives by contrast to the "major
ageements" where there is no Markan parallel). Farmer complains that
Streeter's case-by-case handling of these tends to discount the total
weight of their objection against the two-source theory.
Farmer also emphasizes that if Matthew and Luke use Mark independently,
and both are found to depart from Mark's order at times, it is unlikely
that in all cases where one departs from Mark, the other one stays in
synch. This is a strong objection, as far as it goes -- the difficulty
is that an actual "probability" here is impossible to calculate without
spurious assumptions. F. Neirynck [cited by Tuckett] writes "In fact
the disagreement against Mark is the exception and the absence of con-
currence between Matthew and Luke is less surprising than the somewhat
misleading formulation [of Farmer] may suggest." Jameson (whom Farmer
wants to enlist on his side) pointed out in 1922 that
"Matthew and Mark, after the dislocations of order in the early
chapters, agree throughout the rest of their course, and Luke,
when he is following Mark, scarely ever deserts his order at all
except towards the close. It is evidently very unlikely, under
these conditions, that variations in order [i.e. of Matthew and
Luke diverging from Mark] should coincide."
Farmer *does* have a good point about the patristic data; although it is
late, it universally holds Matthew to have been the first gospel written.
The major controversies now have to do with the priority of Mark versus
Matthew (i.e., proving that one of them depends on the other) and the
possible existence of a _logia_ source Q (a collection of more or less
isolated sayings and deeds of Jesus, not written as narrative.) I won't
go into those issues here, just refer you to the "excursus" by G. M.
Styler in C. F. D. Moule's _The Birth of the New Testament_ (3rd edition,
Harper & Row, 1982; p.285ff) which addresses the challenges by Butler,
Farmer and others. Besides being a good short introduction, it names
the main works of the challengers, so you can look these up to get the
arguments for Matthean priority, as well as Styler's case for Mark.
The effective conclusion is to all this argumentation is that *all* of
the "literary dependency" solutions tend to get into trouble when taken
seriously and looked at in detail. The two-source theory seems to hold
up best, but not without its own absurdities.
An Oral Solution?
Let me criticize my own viewpoint, as an act of academic piety. Recall
that I think Mark recorded a (relatively fixed) oral tradition stemming
from Peter's preaching (as seen in skeletal form in Acts 10:36-43 and in
other scenes in Acts). I assume Luke and Matthew to have supplemented
this with other traditions, some (at least one) of which they share in
common. Arguments for a position close to this may be found in Bo Reicke,
_The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels_ (I misnamed the author as "Reith" in
my first note; sorry.) Unfortunately, Reicke loads too much speculative
weight on his arguments; he makes claims that I think are unprovable. In
particular, he wildly overreads the Papias fragment and the proemium of
Luke: he insists, for no reason I can discern, that what Luke's sources
"handed over" (_paredosan_) was *necessarily* oral. Maybe, but nothing
in the text says so!
On this view, the question of which gospel came first is mostly irrelevant.
The literary scholars tend to dismiss the possibility of oral transmission
accounting for the high correspondence of verbatim expression. Yet most
of them admit that each gospel overlays its own characteristic expressions
on earlier ones in the editorial process of actually writing. And all the
evangelists were operating in the context of teaching new converts (I do
not mean this as a claim that they were themselves teachers in this context,
just that their churches were in fact, undergoing the first great expansion
of our faith), in Greek, presumably with ever-increasing conventionalizing
and "fixing" of the instruction. All of this from the very earliest days
in Jerusalem: consider the Hellenists of the early part of Acts. Philip
probably taught the eunuch in Greek. Certainly, we have to assume that
Greek was used to proclaim the good news from very near the beginning of
its proclamation anywhere.
One other argument for my view: Farmer tries to make a case for Luke
having copied Matthew on the basis that their gospel form is unique and
unprecedented in ancient literature. But *all four* gospels share the
"Petrine" outline of Acts: a sketch of Jesus' ministry from the baptism
by John through crucifixion and resurrection -- and what Matthew and
Luke add beyond that is *precisely* the folkloric elements that oral
literatures have in biographies of their heros. Luke and Matthew share
that form and not a single element in common except the virgin birth in
Bethelehem, from Mary the wife of Joseph. (You may well regard that as
a central and important element in common; I just want to point out that
the *stories* are quite different.) See Albert Lord's "The Gospels as
Oral Traditional Literature" in Wm. Walker ed., _The Relationships Among
the Gospels_, Trinity University Press, 1978.
The main problem with my thesis is that we have no clear evidence of the
oral traditions of the early church, and the issue of verbatim agreement
remains much too speculative, so that it is hard to confirm or deny any
assertion about the relations that show up among writers who used the
traditions. Some help may be found by looking at other oral traditions
(such as Yugoslav oral epic), but that is too weak to be more than just
suggestive. On the other hand, the late 19th century two-source theory
thoroughly explored these gospel relations under the assumption of a
written "Urmarkus" -- and then found it could not justify there being a
*document* preceding Mark that was substantially the same as Mark. Of
course not; the difference is oral vs. written.
Accept no simplistic "solutions" to the synoptic "problem," not even mine.
The Griesbach theory is simply unbelievable when looked at in detail. The
Augustinian theory is as weak or weaker. The two-source theory has serious
problems, but it also has within itself the notion (i.e., a recognition of
at least one hard to localize tradition embodied in two or more gospels)
that any of the text-dependency hypotheses *needs* in order to be more than
schematic nonsense. The gospels were not written in isolated libraries on
the basis of collected documents. Even if the evangelists knew and used each
other's works; they were participants in the missionary growth of the church,
and their gospels can't be understood by word-games in isolation from that
context.
There is a final, theological point. The attempt to make evangelist X
"secondary" to evangelist Y and/or Z is frequently driven by an agenda
wanting to dismiss the testimony of X. That is just as much true of
Augustinians who write Mark off as a "mere abbreviator" of Matthew or of
Griesbachians who call him a conflator as it is of two-source advocates
who consign Luke and Matthew to a limbo of "late tradition." Whatever the
historical sequence or mutual dependencies of the gospels, they are *all*
canonical and need to be given serious consideration in any matter that
wants scriptural attestation. Not one of them can be ignored.
--
Michael L. Siemon "Look at him! a glutton and a drinker,
...!cucard!dasys1!mls a friend of taxgatherers and sinners!"
And yet God's Wisdom is proved right by
all who are Her children. -- Luke 7:34-35