mls@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Siemon) (07/15/89)
Farmer's book (_The Synoptic Problem_, Macmillan 1964; 2nd edition 1976) is the main challenge to the thesis that Matthew and Luke are dependent on Mark (or something like Mark) and a hypothetical sayings source. A few earlier works raised the question, but Farmer has inspired the most effort, pro and con, in the last 25 years. This is all very odd on a reading of Farmer's book. This is 300 pages with the first 200 devoted to a "historical survey" purporting to show that the current dominance of the 2 source theory is purely a result of ideological controversies and not a critical establishment of that theory or rejection of the Griesbach hypothesis (Matthew -> Luke -> Mark). Only the last 100 pages treats the critical issues directly. The historical section reads fairly plausibly, though it seems to me exaggerated in tone and is a bit incoherent in chronology. It's bizarre that Farmer *never* summarizes or quotes the textual arguments of the German sources; he *only* alludes to their (supposed) motivations and party affiliations. In _The Revival of the Griesbach Hypothesis_, 1983, Cambridge University Press, C. M. Tuckett shows that Farmer's survey is a caricature: "a study of the history of the debate in this period does not support Farmer's claims... real arguments were brought against the Griesbach Hypothesis during this period and these were believed to be sufficiently cogent to warrant the rejection of the hypothesis... Mark was alleged to have conflated his sources on some occasions with very great care (e.g., Mk. 1:32), and yet at other times he failed to do so. Similarly, Griesbach had thought that Mark's order and choice of material could be explained by Mark's switching between his two sources, and had claimed that good reasons could be given for the precise changes involved. However, Weiss showed that these reasons were unsatisfactory and did not adequately explain Mark's alleged procedure in detail." concluding that "Study of the history of research may help one to recognize where the strengths and weaknesses of different hypotheses have been felt to lie, but one must in the end examine the text itself to see which is the best explanation of the source question. Such is the aim of the rest of this book." Tuckett's sense of proportion is reassuring -- he spends 5 pages on the history and 180 on general and detailed examination of the data, including all the major arguments brought by Farmer and subsequent works allied to his thesis. Another source for reviewing the critical arguments is A. J. Bellinzoni's _The Two-Source Hypothesis, A Critical Appraisal_, Mercer University Press, 1985. This book has four groups of essays, selected from the major participants in the debate from the time of Streeter's 1924 study that crystalized the two-source consensus. One group argues for the priority of Mark (over the other gospels), the next argues against that position, a third group argues for a sayings source, and the last argues against any sch thing as Q. An almost scholastic "sic et non"! Farmer spends so much time on history, and emphasizes the ideological element, because he is trying to "explain" why he himself, and teachers whom he respects, had taught the two-source theory, whereas he now sees it as outrageously false. The exaggerations and caricature in his survey derive from his emotional involvement in a change of position; this suggests to me that *in his own case* the ideological motivations for adopting one of the hypotheses *are* overwhelming. It is hard for me to read something like this from Farmer's Preface: "This book seeks to demonstrate that the idea of Markan priority is highly questionable. The fact than an idea which is highly questionable is nevertheless widely believed or assented to is not new. What may be new to some is the demonstrable fact that ideas which could be grossly false can gain acceptance and credence in the highest intellectual circles and councils of the modern West, under the guise of being the assured results of criticism." without all my ideology-alarm bells going off. Farmer's view of history should warn him about his *own* biases. But the lines from his preface have an emotional connection, not a logical one, between showing Markan priority is questionable and showing it is "grossly false." Note his easy slide from "seeks to demonstrate" to "demonstrable fact." Farmer's discussion of early 20th century work *does* mention objections posed by Woods to the Griesbach hypothesis, but he dismisses these with ridicule and dodges the force of the objections. See p.67-69 of Farmer; in brief, Woods (after a thorough go-through of the evidence) noted that the Griesbach hypothesis 1. "cannot reasonably account for the remarkable omissions which St. Mark must continually have made..." Farmer says "such considerations equally well lead to the conclusion that John also could not have been written after Matthew and Luke." This is nonsense! No one proposes that John is a conflation of Mt. & Lk., which is *exactly* the claim of Griesbach. Farmer says further "the argument from omissions is inconclusive at best, and there is no hypothesis which does not face this problem in some form." That at least is formally true; but it is also an evasion: on any other source hypothesis, there is *much* less omission, and that is exhibited primarily in places of conflicting tradition (viz. the Nativity in Mt. vs. Lk.) Historical reasoning is not a matter of formal logic only, but crucially involves *preponderance* of evidence. 2. "it is almost impossible to suggest any method by which St. Mark could have made his selection." (Woods) Farmer says "it cannot be regarded as a fatal objection... by the impartial critic who has himself as yet made no effort to rethink the redactional method of each Evangelist." In other words, as long as we don't try to explain the actual data, the hypothesis can't be ruled out! To be fair to Farmer, he does try to address this problem in his last chapter. 4. "the relation between St. Matthew and St. Luke, which the views argued out in this paper at least partially explain, become an almost hopeless enigma." Farmer writes, "it is true that ahderents of [Griesbach] never reached a consensus on this point." In other words, pending any new suggestions by Farmer or others, Woods' point is valid. Farmer also gives no detailed handling of Luke. The obfuscation and evasiveness of Farmer's discussion bothers me greatly. I turn apprehensively to his "New Introduction to the Problem" (Chapter 6). (BTW: This is reprinted in the Bellinzoni book.) Farmer's general remarks start by dismissing oral tradition from consideration and blandly claiming that the gospels were written in a sequential 1-2-3 order. He explicitly asserts (as the "point of view from which this book has been written") "Matthew appears to be the earliest Gospel and Luke seems next in order... the use of hypothetical written sources (and/or oral tradition) by the Evangelists is not the best way to account for the major phenomena of similarity, and the extensive verbal agreement among Matthew, Mark, and Luke... the cogency of this argument depends upon a web of evidence structured by arguments ... which... taken together... constitute a supportive basis that will bear the full weight of the conclusion.. The destruction of one or more of the strands... would not destroy the web." (p. 200ff) There is some point to this, but it is mainly a way for him to dodge the refutation of any of his claims. Farmer himself has flatly condemned an earlier effort, by Hawkins, in words that must stand as a contradiction to the way he himself procedes: "The very idea that here motivates Hawkins is lethal to the science, not to speak of the art, of literary criticism. It is impossible to make progress in the attempt to understand the literary relationship between two documents when the literary phenomena are analyzed into categories on the basis of their compatibility with a particular solution to the problem in view." (p. 106) Apparently Farmer forgot his own stricture in the intervening 100 pages of diatribe. He goes on to state formally 16 "steps" in his "web" of argument. To my mind, *all* of these steps are effectively countered by opposing views that have as much or more "cogency." The weakest of his points is the assumption that a linear sequence is necessary; this shows up in his steps 12 through 16 arguing that the gospel tradition "must" have moved from the Jewishness of Matthew towards a Hellenistic emphasis. That begs the question and ignores the substantial presence of Hellenistic components (e.g., Stephen, Philip) from the very start of the Church. The only argument he presents for literary influence is in his step 1: "The nature of this similarity is such as to warrant the judgment that the literary relationship between these Gospels *could* be one involving direct copying. That is, the degree of verbatim agreement in Greek between any two of these three Gospels is as high or higher than that which generally exists between documents where it is known that the author of one copied the text of the other." I added the ** around could; from this contingent statement (which I agree with, though he gives no examples of such copying) however, Farmer procedes arbitrarily (and to my mind speciously) to rule out any hypothesis *except* direct copying to explain the agreements. Fallacy alert! The one strand that really "holds" is his formal complaint on the argument from order, and this strand goes back to Butler in 1951. Quoting Farmer with a deletion to remove some of his bias: "With very few exceptions, which are no more difficult for one hypothesis than for any other, the order of material in Mark [is] the order of material common to Matthew and Luke... Matthew and Luke almost never agree in order against Mark." This puts Mark in the "middle" between the others, which suggests (ignoring for this purpose the question of Luke's relation to Matthew) a number of possible literary relationships; that is both Matthew Luke and Mark \ / /\ \ / / \ \ / / \ \ / / \ Mark Matthew Luke are possible readings of this order. Decision between these hypotheses *must* call in other data than the ordering. Farmer points out that an early version of the 2-source theory has Mark on the same level as Matthew and Luke _vis a vis_ an original source used by all three, call it U for "Urschrift" U / | \ / | \ Matthew Mark Luke In this case, the lack of agreement between Matthew and Luke definitely argues *for* Mark's having preserved the original order of U. Since we don't know of any such U source, Farmer is right to say that the Griesbach theory is as valid a reading of the order as the two-source theory. Other arguments are needed to make a decision. What must be said is that the adherents of one of these theories are not convinced by their opponents' other arguments; each side believes the other's case is weak or wrong. If s.r.c. readers are interested, I'll write one more essay detailing a few of the arguments each side feels is fatal to the other, and suggest my own reading of the data (for whatever that's worth; I certainly don't claim to have "solved" the synoptic problem. In the absence of more data, I feel it is in fact "insoluble.") Briefly stated, I think a good case can be made that there *is* a candidate for "U" -- namely the preaching of Peter from the earliest days of the Church. That is obviously an oral and not a literary source; this suggestion will *not* satisfy those who think the verbal agreements demand textual copying. -- Michael L. Siemon Inflict Thy promises with each Occasion of distress, That from our incoherence we May learn to put our trust in Thee