The Synoptic Problem

Matthew, Mark, and Luke can be printed in parallel columns and “seen together,” and when they are, their close agreement in wording and order — alongside their differences — calls for explanation: who wrote first, and who used whom. This file sets out the data (the triple tradition, the double tradition shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark, and each evangelist’s special material), then presents the three principal modern solutions as named [Disputed: ...] positions with their proponents, weighing the case for and against the hypothetical sayings source Q. It closes with the Orthodox stance: the Church receives all four Gospels as inspired Scripture and is bound to no single source-critical theory.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Phenomena To Be Explained

The first three Gospels stand in a relationship of evident literary kinship. Long stretches of narrative appear in the same order, often in nearly the same Greek words, and sometimes with shared parenthetical asides that are hard to explain except by some form of literary dependence — three independent authors do not lightly coincide in the same incidental phrasing. Yet the agreements are crossed by equally striking differences: episodes present in one Gospel are absent from another, the same saying appears in different settings, and each evangelist carries material found nowhere else. The “synoptic problem” is the attempt to give a coherent account of both the agreements and the divergences at once (Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I–IX, 1981, introduction). It is, by its nature, a question of literary composition — of sources and the use authors made of them — and Luke himself signals at the outset that “many have undertaken to compile a narrative” before him, which he has “followed all things closely” in order to set down “an orderly account” (Luke 1:1–4; see The Third Gospel).

The data are conventionally sorted into three bodies of material. The triple tradition is the matter common to all three — much of it narrative, told in the same sequence, with Mark’s wording very often standing between Matthew’s and Luke’s. The double tradition is the substantial body of material, mostly sayings of the Lord, shared by Matthew and Luke but having no parallel in Mark — the Beatitudes, much of the Sermon material, the Lord’s Prayer, and many parables — running to some two hundred or more verses of close verbal agreement. Finally there is the special material unique to each: the matter peculiar to Matthew (often labelled M) and the matter peculiar to Luke (often labelled L), which in Luke includes the infancy narrative, the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and much of the great central travel section (on Luke’s distinctive material, see The Gospel of Mercy). Any adequate solution must account for all three bodies at once, and for the puzzling “minor agreements” of Matthew and Luke against Mark within the triple tradition.

The Ancient Ordering Testimony

The Fathers did not pose the problem in modern source-critical terms, but they did transmit data about the order and origin of the Gospels. Papias of Hierapolis, as quoted by Eusebius, reports that Mark wrote down accurately, though “not in order,” the things Peter related, and that “Matthew composed the oracles (logia) in the Hebrew dialect” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39, NPNF II/1) — testimony that links Mark to Peter and assigns Matthew a Semitic origin, and that has been pressed into the service of more than one modern theory. Augustine, in De consensu evangelistarum, treats the four in their canonical order and famously calls Mark “the follower and abbreviator of Matthew” (tamquam pedisequus et breviator eius) — a view of Markan dependence on Matthew (Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum 1.2.4, NPNF I/6) that the modern Griesbach school would in part revive, though Augustine’s larger interest was harmonizing the four, not reconstructing their sources. The patristic data thus supply ancient anchors that the competing modern hypotheses each claim, but they do not by themselves settle the literary question.

The Three Principal Modern Solutions

[Disputed: the literary relationship among the Synoptics is unresolved; three named hypotheses divide the field — (1) the Two-Source / Two-Document Theory, (2) the Farrer Hypothesis, and (3) the Griesbach / Two-Gospel Hypothesis — each with identified proponents, set out below.]

(1) The Two-Source (Two-Document) Theory. On this view, which has been the dominant scholarly position for over a century, Mark was written first, and both Matthew and Luke used Mark independently; the double tradition they share is explained by a second, hypothetical source — a collection of sayings designated Q (from German Quelle, “source”). The theory was first set out by Christian Hermann Weisse (1838), systematized by Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, and given its classic English form by B. H. Streeter, who elaborated it into a Four-Source scheme by adding M (Matthew’s special material) and L (Luke’s) to Mark and Q (Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, 1924). Its case rests on Markan priority — Mark’s roughness, his preservation of difficult readings the others smooth out, and the way Mark’s order stands between the other two — and on the close, sometimes word-for-word agreement of Matthew and Luke in non-Markan material, which Streeter argued is best explained by a shared written source rather than by one of them copying the other. Joseph Fitzmyer’s major Luke commentary adopts this framework (Fitzmyer, 1981).

(2) The Farrer Hypothesis (Farrer–Goulder–Goodacre). This view accepts Markan priority but dispenses with Q: Luke used both Mark and Matthew directly, so the double tradition is simply Luke’s reworking of Matthew, and no hypothetical source need be posited. It was proposed by Austin Farrer in his essay “On Dispensing with Q” (1955), developed at length by Michael Goulder, and defended in detail by Mark Goodacre (The Case Against Q, 2002). Its proponents press the “minor agreements” of Matthew and Luke against Mark — agreements that, on the Two-Source theory, must be explained as coincidences or overlaps — and the principle of economy: a known document (Matthew) is to be preferred to an unknown, never-attested one (Q). The chief objection is that Luke, had he known Matthew, would hardly have broken up Matthew’s superbly ordered Sermon on the Mount and scattered its contents, or omitted so much distinctively Matthean material; Farrer’s defenders answer that Luke’s editorial freedom is no less explicable than the Q editor’s would be.

(3) The Griesbach / Two-Gospel Hypothesis. On this older view, revived in the twentieth century, Matthew was written first, Luke used Matthew, and Mark was written last, conflating and abbreviating both — so there is neither Q nor Markan priority. It was argued by Johann Jakob Griesbach (1789) and revived as a serious modern option by William R. Farmer (The Synoptic Problem, 1964). Its proponents note that it accounts naturally for the Matthew–Luke agreements (Luke used Matthew directly), claims the patristic order (Matthew first; Augustine’s “abbreviator” comment for Mark), and explains Mark’s brevity as conflation. Its principal difficulty is the reverse of Markan priority’s strength: it must explain why a later Mark would omit so much — the entire Sermon material, the infancy narratives — and why he would so often preserve the harder reading that the others, on this theory, had already improved.

The Q Hypothesis, Fairly Stated

Because Q is a reconstructed document — no manuscript of it has ever been found, and its existence is an inference — it bears the heaviest argumentative weight in the debate. The case for Q: the verbal agreement of Matthew and Luke in the double tradition is frequently too close to be oral, yet Luke’s order and form of these sayings often look more primitive than Matthew’s, which is hard to explain if Luke simply copied Matthew; a common written source accounts for both the agreement and the independence (Streeter, 1924). The case against Q: it is a hypothetical entity defended by an array of auxiliary hypotheses, the “minor agreements” tell against the independence it requires, and a known source (Matthew) explains the data without multiplying unseen documents (Farrer, 1955; Goodacre, 2002). The honest position is that Q remains a serious and widely held inference, not a discovered fact, and that the burden of the whole Two-Source edifice rests on it.

The Orthodox Stance

For the Orthodox Church, the synoptic problem is a genuine question of literary history, but it is not a matter of dogma. The Church confesses the four Gospels as the one fourfold Gospel of the one Christ — Irenaeus already insists that there can be neither more nor fewer than four (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8, ANF 1; see St. Irenaeus of Lyons) — and receives each as inspired Scripture, theopneustos (2 Timothy 3:16), written by human authors moved by the Holy Spirit whose literary gifts and historical settings were taken up into the divine purpose (see Holy Scripture). Inspiration does not require that the evangelists wrote without sources; Luke says plainly that he used them (Luke 1:1–4). Whether Luke knew Mark alone, or Mark and Matthew, or drew on a sayings collection, touches the manner of composition, not the truth or authority of the result. The Church is therefore free before the competing hypotheses, neither bound to defend Q nor obliged to reject it, and reads the Gospels not as quarried sources but within the living Tradition that gave and received them (see The Church Fathers; on the world that received the fourfold Gospel, Pre-Schism Church). The same literary judgments return, in chronological dress, in the dating of Luke–Acts (see The Dating of Luke–Acts).

See Also

References

  • Streeter, B. H. The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins. London: Macmillan, 1924. (Markan priority; Q; the Four-Source theory adding M and L.)
  • Farrer, Austin M. “On Dispensing with Q.” In Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot, ed. D. E. Nineham. Oxford: Blackwell, 1955.
  • Goulder, Michael D. Luke: A New Paradigm. 2 vols. JSNTSup 20. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989.
  • Goodacre, Mark. The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002.
  • Griesbach, Johann Jakob. Commentatio qua Marci Evangelium totum e Matthaei et Lucae commentariis decerptum esse monstratur. Jena, 1789.
  • Farmer, William R. The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis. New York: Macmillan, 1964.
  • Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Gospel According to Luke I–IX. Anchor Bible 28. New York: Doubleday, 1981. (The Two-Source framework applied to Luke.)
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History (3.39, the Papias fragments on Mark and Matthew). Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1.
  • Augustine of Hippo. De consensu evangelistarum (The Harmony of the Gospels) (1.2.4, Mark as breviator of Matthew). Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 6.
  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies (3.11.8, the fourfold Gospel). Trans. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.