The Synoptic Problem

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so alike — in content, in order, and often in wording — that they can be laid out in parallel columns and “seen together” (the meaning of “synoptic”), and yet they differ in ways no theory of independent memory easily explains. This file sets out the data that demand a literary explanation: the triple and double traditions, the agreements in arrangement and phrasing, and the minor agreements; notes Augustine’s early observation; and frames the question of priority that the next file takes up.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

“Seen Together”

The first three Gospels share so much material in such similar form that scholars since J. J. Griesbach (who coined the term synopsis for his 1776 parallel edition) have called them the Synoptic Gospels, and the question of their literary relationship the Synoptic Problem. John stands apart, overlapping the others only occasionally and telling its own story in its own idiom; but Matthew, Mark, and Luke run side by side through the same Galilean ministry, the same journey to Jerusalem, and the same Passion, frequently in the same sequence and sometimes word for word over long stretches. The closeness is too great, and too detailed, to be the chance product of independent reminiscence; it points to some relationship of literary dependence, whether direct (one Gospel using another) or mediated (shared written sources). Defining that relationship — who used whom, and what common sources lie behind them — is the synoptic problem.

It is worth saying at the outset that the problem is a literary-historical question about the channels through which the Gospel material reached its written form. It is not, in itself, a question about the truth or inspiration of the Gospels, and no ecumenical council has defined an answer. The Orthodox tradition affirms all four Gospels as the inspired and apostolic witness to Christ and leaves the literary question open; the discussion that follows is offered in that spirit (see Holy Scripture).

The Triple Tradition

The largest body of shared material is the triple tradition — passages found in all three Synoptics. Most of Mark’s content reappears in both Matthew and Luke: of Mark’s roughly 661 verses, the substance of the great majority is paralleled in Matthew, and a large portion in Luke. In this triple material the three Gospels frequently agree in order — the same episodes in the same sequence — and often in wording, sometimes over whole sentences. A striking and much-discussed feature of the order is that where Matthew departs from Mark’s sequence, Luke generally supports Mark, and where Luke departs from Mark, Matthew generally supports Mark; Matthew and Luke rarely agree against Mark in arrangement. This pattern — Mark as the “middle term” whose order both others tend to follow — is one of the central data of the problem and a principal argument in the debate over priority (see The Question of Priority).

The Double Tradition and the Minor Agreements

Besides the triple tradition, Matthew and Luke share a substantial body of material — some 220–235 verses — that is absent from Mark: this is the double tradition. It is overwhelmingly sayings-material, much of it teaching of the Lord (the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, large parts of the Sermon, the preaching of John the Baptist, the temptation dialogue, many parables and woes), and Matthew and Luke often render it in closely similar Greek, occasionally near-identical. Yet they place this material differently: Matthew gathers much of it into his great discourses, while Luke scatters it through his “travel narrative” (Luke 9–19). The double tradition demands explanation — Matthew and Luke share what Mark lacks, in similar words but different arrangement — and it is the principal ground for the hypothesis of a lost sayings-source, conventionally called Q (from German Quelle, “source”). Whether Q existed, or whether Luke simply used Matthew (or Matthew used Luke), is one of the live questions of the next file.

A third, finer body of data is the minor agreements: places where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark in small details of wording within the triple tradition — a shared phrase, a shared omission, a shared addition where Mark differs. These are individually minor but cumulatively important, because on the dominant theory (Markan priority plus Q) Matthew and Luke worked independently and should not agree against their common Markan source; the minor agreements are accordingly the chief difficulty pressed against that theory by its critics and a recurring topic of the discussion.

Augustine and the Ancient Awareness

The synoptic problem is not purely modern. Augustine in the early fifth century already saw that the first three Gospels overlap and asked how they stand to one another. In The Harmony of the Gospels (De consensu evangelistarum) he proposed that the evangelists wrote in their canonical order and that each later one knew the work of his predecessors — and he famously called Mark “the follower and abridger” of Matthew (tamquam pedisequus et breviator eius), Mark following Matthew and condensing him (Augustine, The Harmony of the Gospels 1.2.4; NPNF I/6). Augustine’s scheme — Matthew first, then Mark dependent on Matthew, then Luke — is the ancestor of all later “Matthean priority” theories, and his observation that the Gospels are literarily related, not independent, anticipates the whole modern enterprise. The Fathers as a body placed Matthew first in the canon and generally assumed Matthew was written first (Origen and Eusebius, in HE 6.25 and 3.24), so that the traditional answer to the synoptic problem was a form of Matthean priority long before the modern alternatives arose.

The Shape of the Solutions

The data — the triple tradition with Mark as the middle term, the double tradition pointing to a sayings-source or to direct dependence between Matthew and Luke, and the minor agreements — admit of more than one explanation, and the history of the problem is the history of competing solutions. The two great families are the traditional/patristic Matthean priority (Augustine; the Griesbach or Two-Gospel hypothesis) and the now-dominant Two-Source theory (Markan priority plus Q). Each accounts well for some of the data and is pressed hard on others; each has distinguished proponents and a long bibliography; and the question remains genuinely open in detail even where the Two-Source theory commands majority assent. The next file sets out the two solutions, their arguments, and their proponents, and marks the dispute as the unresolved question it is.

See Also

• The Question of Priority — Matthean priority and Markan priority, with proponents and arguments
• Papias and the Logia — the order-and-interpretation contrast in the earliest testimony
• The Semitic Origin Question — the sayings-source and the Hebrew logia
• Holy Scripture — the four-Gospel canon and inspiration

References

• Augustine of Hippo. The Harmony of the Gospels (De consensu evangelistarum) 1.2.4 (Mark as follower and abridger of Matthew). Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 6.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History 3.24; 6.25. Trans. McGiffert. NPNF II/1.
• Streeter, B. H. The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins. London: Macmillan, 1924 (the classic statement of the data and the Two-Source/Four-Document theory).
• Sanday, W., ed. Studies in the Synoptic Problem. Oxford: Clarendon, 1911.
• Stein, Robert H. Studying the Synoptic Gospels: Origin and Interpretation. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.