Alan Garrow Didache |
the problem page
The following is an extract from James R Edwards: The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Gospel Tradition (Eerdmans, 2009) pp.245-252
Matthean Posteriority “Posteriority,” a rarely used antonym of “priority,” needs a word of interpretation. The historical-critical method endeavored to uncover or recover the oldest and earliest forms of a given tradition. “Earlier” connoted (more) genuine, whereas “later” was regarded as derivative and less authoritative. On this scale of values, “posterior” is at least slightly denigrating. In the current discussion, however, I wish, if possible, to free “posterior” of any pejorative connotations, for the Gospel of Matthew is not a lesser and redundant work. Throughout the history of the church, the Gospel of Matthew, along with the Gospel of John, has been held in special esteem as one of the two most important gospels. Readings for Sundays and holy days have traditionally been taken from Matthew, and only from other gospels where Matthew was thought to be deficient. At least until modern times, Matthew has always been regarded as the “primary” gospel among the Synoptics. If Matthew was not primary in terms of chronology, from a historical perspective it rightly claims a primacy in terms of definitiveness.[1] But exactly how is Matthew definitive? Certainly, it is definitive in terms of structure. None of the four gospels exhibits the symmetry of the First Gospel. The other gospels display basic structures, to be sure, even elementary symmetrical structures. Both Mark and John devote roughly the first halves of their gospels to Jesus’ initial ministry in Galilee, and the second halves to his concluding ministry in Judea and Jerusalem. The Third Gospel adds a lengthy travel narrative in 9:51-18:14 between the Galilean and Jerusalem ministries of Jesus, creating a three-part structure. But none of the three gospels exhibits the complex design and proportion of the First Gospel, which begins with two chapters of infancy prologue, and ends with two chapters of passion narrative. In between, the body of Matthew consists of five major divisions, each consisting of three subdivisions, contain-[p. 246] ing a block of narrative material, followed by a block of didactic material, and a summary refrain in conclusion, “When Jesus had finished all these things . . . . “[2] The Gospel of Matthew displays greater design, balance, proportion, and order than any of the other three gospels. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the Gospel of Matthew is the Sermon on the Mount. The material in Matthew’s Sermon, gathered in chapters 5-7, is also present in Luke, but in Luke the material is dispersed throughout chapters 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 16 where it is intermingled with Jesus’ travels and healings and parables. The same material is decidedly less distinctive and accessible in Luke. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, on the contrary, presents readers with an arranged manual of Jesus’ teaching. Delimited by subjects and presented in formulaic refrains (e.g., “You have heard it said of old . . . . but I say to you”), Matthew offers the church an anthology of Jesus’ teaching, primarily on ethical matters. It is a catechetical handbook that can be memorized, taught, and transmitted. To somewhat lesser degrees the blocks of didactic material elsewhere in Matthew follow similar canons of arrangement. The instructions to disciples in Matthew 10, for example, or the unit on parables in Matthew 13, the litany of woes against Pharisees in Matthew 23, and the eschatological discourse in Matthew 24, all display similar editorial intent and design. None of the other gospels orders material into the clearly defined categories that are evident in Matthew.[3] [p. 247] The same attention to symmetry and formulaic harmony is evident in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Luke’s prayer in 11:1-4 seems truncated and incomplete compared to Matthew’s prayer in 6:9-13. In Luke, God is addressed simply as “Father,” and two brief ascriptions of praise (“hallowed be your name; your kingdom come”) are followed by three petitions (for bread, forgiveness, and deliverance from temptation). Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, by contrast, is perfectly crafted and balanced: three formulaic ascriptions of praise to God are complemented by three subsequent petitions, the whole of which is prefaced and concluded (at least in a large portion of the textual tradition) with liturgical formulas. Few literary critics will doubt that Matthew’s version represents the full flowering of an earlier version of Luke’s prayer.[4] Another illustration of the same developmental flow occurs in the NT accounts of the Lord’s Supper. All three Synoptics preserve a generally fixed Eucharistic form in which Jesus first institutes the bread and then the cup (Matt 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:19-20). The Eucharistic liturgy of the early church antedated (e.g., 1 Cor 11:23-26) and undoubtedly influenced the earliest gospel accounts of the Lord’s Supper. But Luke is unique among the canonical gospels, and other early Christian Eucharistic texts preserved in the Didache, for example, in prefacing the words of institution with a preliminary cup attended by eschatological sayings. This produces a Lucan Eucharist sequence of cup—bread—second cup. The only other early Christian Eucharistic account known to include the Lucan preface to the Lord’s Supper is the Hebrew Gospel quoted by Epiphanius. On form-critical grounds scholars have long suspected that Luke 22:15-18 preserves the earliest authentic Eucharistic words of Jesus.[5] The agreement of this material with the wording of the Hebrew Gospel not only confirms that suspicion but makes it highly probable that the source of Luke 22:15-18 is the Hebrew Gospel itself. In contrast to Luke’s longer and complex account of the Lord’s Supper, Matthew (and Mark also) presents a concise account of the words of institution, evenly proportioned between bread and cup. Matthew’s account is close to Paul’s account of the same in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, and appears to preserve the ultimate consensus on the Eucharist. [p. 248] The Greek of the First Gospel must also be mentioned in regard to its dating. Although the Gospel of Mark exhibits dramatic structural features by sandwiching a defining narrative into the midst of a host narrative,[6]or signaling a relationship between two texts by placing them side-by-side (e.g., Mark 4:35-5:20), the Greek of the Second Gospel can be and often is less than felicitous. Luke writes a technically superior Greek to Mark, but it is generally more complex, not the least because of its Hebraisms. Matthew’s Greek, on the other hand, is clean and consistent, and his style and wording rarely need to be (or can be) improved. The Gospel of Matthew appears to have passed through many editorial filters. The result is a gospel that affords memorization and is eminently suitable for public reading. Matthew also presents a more developed Christology than does Mark or Luke. This is especially true of titular Christology, as evinced by Matthew’s use—or frequency of use—of such terms as Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of God, Emmanuel, Prophet, Christ, Son of Man, and The Coming One. These titles appear in greater frequency in Matthew than they do in Mark and Luke. If Matthew were the source of the Synoptic tradition or Double Tradition, it is difficult to explain why such terms would be reduced or eliminated in Mark and/or Luke. Matthew also exhibits a sophisticated implicit Christology, an example of which appears in the use of prose,rcomai, which occurs 52 times in Matthew, but only five times in Mark and 10 times in Luke. In the Pentateuch, προσέρχομαιbears unmistakable cultic connotations, indicating an approach to God (or a representative of God in priest, altar, tabernacle, etc). In Matthew, Jesusis overwhelmingly made the object of this verb, thus implicitly transferring divine status to him.[7] Luke, in particular, knew the LXX too well to have missed the significance of Matthew’s achievement with προσέρχομαι) It seems inexplicable why Luke, who otherwise showcases Hebraisms in his gospel, would omit such a term if he were drawing on canonical Matthew as one of his written sources. The above evidence of Matthean posteriority can be illustrated and augmented by considering, briefly, a number of specific Matthean texts that are best explained as developments of earlier Lucan texts. [p. 249]
This conclusion appears to be corroborated in a study of textual transmission, in which Robert McIver and Marie Carroll argue that “[a]ny sequence of exactly the same 16 or more words that is not an aphorism, poetry, or words to a song is almost certain to have been copied from a written document.”[10] McIver and Carroll note 46 passages, each consisting of 16 or more words, that two of the Synoptic gospels have in common. In no case do all three Synoptics share a text of 16 or more words in common. Luke and Mark have three passages in common,[11]and Luke and Matthew have 11 passages in common.[12] In addition to the three passages that Mark has in common with Luke, Mark has nine passages in common with Matthew.[13] Of the 46 passages, 14 appear in Luke, 12 appear in Mark, and 20 [p. 251]appear in Matthew. Of a total of 23 pairs shared by Luke and Mark, or Luke and Matthew, or Mark and Matthew, Matthew shares 20of them. Matthew, in other words, is almost twice as likely to share material in common with Mark, or in common with Luke, as either Luke or Mark is to share material in common with the other. This statistic suggests that Matthew is either the sourceof material for Mark and Luke; or, conversely, that Matthew is the recipientof material from either Mark or Luke. The theory of Markan priority supplies solid and repeated evidence for the assumption that Matthew has been the recipient of Markan material. The foregoing arguments, and especially the list of examples on pages 7-8 above, argue the same, that Matthew is the recipient of Lucan material. The work of McIver and Carroll seems to supply further statistical evidence that Matthew concludes and consummates the Synoptic tradition. Already in 1838, Christian Gottlob Wilke argued that the similarities between Luke and Matthew could best be explained by Matthew’s use of Luke.[14] The Gospel of Matthew appears to represent positions on women, sinners, tax-collectors, lawless people, wealth, and possessions that reflect a time period later than the Gospel of Luke.[15] Detailed literary analyses of the relationship between Matthew and Luke are offered by Ronald Huggins and George Blair. Huggins argues that the problem of the relationship between Matthew and Luke is reasonably and satisfactorily resolved on the supposition that Matthew used Mark as his main source, which he supplemented by the use of Luke.[16] In a thorough and minute comparison of Matthew and Luke, Blair sets forth the similar thesis that Mark was the first gospel, Luke’s a revision of Mark’s, with additions, and that Matthew was a revision of both.[17] [p. 252] The posteriority of Matthew can also be advocated on historical grounds. Martin Hengel argues that Luke stands closer to the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in 70 than does Matthew, and that he displays better knowledge of Judaism prior to it. Hengel further argues that the divide between the Christian movement and the Roman state is less critical in Luke than in later Matthew, and that Matthew presupposes the consolidation of Judaism under later rabbinic programs. Hengel’s arguments that the gospels named for apostles are laterthan those named for non-apostles are also well-known.[18] From both a global and detailed perspective, the Gospel of Matthew looks like the terminus of a long process of kerygmatic incubation in the early church. If Matthew were prior to the other two Synoptics, it would be difficult to conceive why its symmetry, practical design, topical organization, and structural felicity would be dismembered and parceled into more pedestrian roles in both Mark and Luke.[19] According to virtually every standard of literary creativity and development, the design and content of canonical Matthew suggest a later provenance in the Synoptic birth order. ------------------------------ As a supplement to the above, James Edwards adds the following: Matt 26:55 uses the expression καθ᾽ ἡμεραν only here, but this expression is frequently used in Luke and is considered quintessentially Lukan. The sole appearance of καθ᾽ ἡμεραν in Matt. seems explainable on the basis of its frequent usage in Luke. Again, Matt 27:8, the temporal delimiter "still to this day" suggests a long time after Jesus' death. This phrase assumes the writing of the Gospel at a significantly later date. Finally, in my article "The Hermeneutical Significance of Chapter Divisions in Ancient Gospel Manuscripts" NTS 56/3 (2010) 423, I note that the precision of Matthew's Passion Narrative produces a symmetry in the Passion Narrative that rivals the otherwise symmetry in his Gospel as a whole. No other Gospel achieves the symmetry that Matthew does in notes #63-68 in the Eusebian Canons (= Matt 26:17-28:20). I attach a typescript of this art., pp. 18-20 discuss Matt's Passion Narrative. ------------------------------- Footnotes to The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Gospel Tradition (Eerdmans, 2009) [1]G. A. Blair, The Synoptic Gospels Compared, 311:“Matthew was called the ‘first’ Gospel . . . because [it] was the most important of the Gospels, the ‘definitive Gospel’ (at least with respect to the three Synoptics).” [2]Division I: narrative, 3:1-4:25; teaching, 5:1-7:27; summary refrain, 7:27; Division II: narrative, 7:28-9:38; teaching, 10:1-42; summary refrain, 11:1; Division III: narrative, 11:2-12:50; teaching, 13:1-51, summary refrain, 13:53; Division I V: narrative, 13:54-17:27; teaching, 18:1-35; summary refrain, 19:1; Division V: narrative, 19:2-22:46; teaching, 23:1-25:46; summary refrain, 26:1. [3]M. Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, 176-177, summarizes the above situation as follows: “[Matthew’s] five great discourse complexes are predominantly fashioned by this [marked theological concern]. Luke has little to set over against this overarching skill in composition. . . . Luke’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’ is itself a mere ‘shadow’ of the Sermon on the Mount. Therefore, it is utterly improbable that, for example, Luke reshaped a Matthean original. He would not have torn apart discourses which have been worked out so masterfully, but integrated them into his work. One could make a Sermon on the Mount out of a ‘Sermon on the Plain,’ but not vice versa. Therefore, Luke cannot be dependent on Matthew, as is consistently asserted.” Similarly, H. P. West, Jr., “A Primitive Version of Luke in the Composition of Matthew,” 91: “it is incredible to think that the Sermon on the Plain comes from the Sermon on the Mount. To argue that Luke has so abridged Matthew’s sermon is to accuse him of using Matthew in a way utterly different from his use of Mark. We remember that Luke nowhere selectively abridges a Marcan block in this way.” [4]On Luke’s preservation of a more primitive form of the Lord’s Prayer, see S. Hultgren, Narrative Elements in the Double Tradition, 290-309. [5]Str-B 4.75; J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, trans. N. Perrin (New York: Scribners, 1966) 97-100; 164; L. Goppelt, poth,rion( TDNT6.153-154. [6]See J. Edwards, “Markan Sandwiches: The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives,”NovT31/3 (1989) 193-216. Reprinted in The Composition of Mark’s Gospel(Brill’s Readers in Biblical Studies 3, compiled by D. Orton; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 192-215. [7]See J. R. Edwards, “The Use of προσέρχεσθαιin the Gospel of Matthew,” JBL 106/1 (1987) 65-74. [8]See the discussion on the very considerable difficulties in assuming that Luke followed Matthew in S. Hultgren, Narrative Elements in the Double Tradition, 329-335. [9]So M. Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, 69-70: “ . . . as a rule the more original version is attributed to Q-Luke as opposed to Q-Matthew.” [10]“Experiments to Develop Criteria for Determining the Existence of Written Sources, and Their Potential Implications for the Synoptic Problem,” JBL 121/4 (2002) 680 (italics in original). [11]Luke 18:15-17//Mark 10:13-16; Luke 4:31-37//Mark 1:21-28; Luke 20:45-47//Mark 12:38-40. [12]Luke 10:21-24//Matt 11:25-30; Luke 12:41-48//Matt 24:45-51; Luke 16:10-13//Matt 6:24; Luke 3:1-20//Matt 3:1-12; Luke 11:9-13//Matt 7:7-12; Luke 9:57-62//Matt 8:18-22; Luke 11:29-32//Matt 12:38-42; Luke 7:18-35//Matt 11:1-19; Luke 7:1-10//Matt 8:5-13; Luke 5:12-16//Matt 8:1-4; Luke 9:21-27//Matt 16:21-28. [13]Mark 13:3-13//Matt 10:16-25; Mark 8:31-9:1//Matt 16:21-28; Mark 13:14-23//Matt 24:15-28; Mark 14:12-21//Matt 26:17-25; Mark 7:1-23//Matt15:1-20; Mark 12:35-37//Matt 22:41-46; Mark 10:35-45//Matt 20:20-28; Mark 8:1-10//Matt 15:32-39; Mark 13:24-31//Matt 24:29-35. For a chart of all 46 passages and their relationships among the Synoptics, see Ibid, 681. [14]C. G. Wilke, Der Urevangelist oder kritische Untersuchung über das Verwandtschaftsverhältnis der drei ersten Evangelien (Dresden und Leipzig: Gerhard Fleischer Verlag, 1838) 685-693. On pages 460-462 Wilke specifically argues this case for Matt 3:1-12; 10:1-14; 12:9-14; 12:22-32; and 13:1-35. [15]H. Ph. West, Jr., “A Primitive Version of Luke in the Composition of Matthew,” 80-88. [16]R. Huggins, “Matthean Posteriority: A Preliminary Proposal.” Likewise, G. D. Kilpatrick, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew, (Oxford: University Press, 1946) 7, 140. [17]G. A. Blair, The Synoptic Gospels Compared, esp. 307-312. [18]See The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ,169-179; 254-255; and 303-305 (notes 663-670). In a personal letter to me dated 24 May 1998, Hengel succinctly summarizes the same: “Dass Lk früher ist als Mt ergibt sich 1. aus seiner grösseren Nähe zur Katastrophe von 70, 2. aus seiner besseren Kenntnis der Verhältnisse vor 70, 3. aus der Tatsache, dass die den Apostelschülern zugeschriebenen Evangelien älter sind als die angeblich von Aposteln verfassten, 4. dass Mt schon die Konsolidierung des Judentums unter rabbinisher Führung voraussetzt und 5. dass Lk noch denkt, dass ein Kompromiss mit dem römischen Staat möglich ist, d.h. er gehört in die frühere Flavierzeit.” [19]S. Hultgren, Narrative Elements in the Double Tradition, 333: “In general it has been thought more likely that Matthew grouped disparate sayings material into a few great speeches than that Luke broke up Matthew’s well-constructed speeches and scattered the sayings throughout his gospel. This argument is compelling, and it makes it that much less likely that Luke is dependent on Matthew in the double tradition.”
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"When I first encountered the Synoptic Problem, the leading Two-Document Hypothesis appeared to rest on two highly improbable contentions, (1) that a document of faith as ostensibly influential as Q had simply evaporated without a trace from the historical record, and (2) that the later of Matthew or Luke had somehow remained unaware that another gospel of similar scope and content had already been published. To sustain such intuitively improbable premises one would need to demonstrate conclusively that both Matthew and Luke had no awareness of the other. In exploring the arguments favoring Q and the 2DH, it became apparent that the discussion was entirely focused on Luke’s unlikely use of Matthew, while there was a palpable silence on Matthew’s possible awareness of Luke. Moreover, every argument used to show that Luke did not know Matthew did not operate in reverse. Thus I began to suspect that the Q theory was a house built upon sand, and that Matthew’s use of Luke might be a viable solution to the Synoptic Problem."
"My attitude to the Synoptic Problem was influenced, during my undergraduate studies, by RT France. He was highly sceptical of Q and also generally steered clear of favouring any one hypothesis. By the time I finished my BA, therefore, I was definitely a Q skeptic - although one that generally leaned towards the Farrer Hypothesis. A major change occurred in 1998 during my doctoral studies (supervised by the 2DH advocate Christopher Tuckett). While working on the Didache's relationship to Matthew's Gospel I came across the curious triangular relationship between Did. 1.2-5a, Matt 5.38-48 and Luke 6.27-37: Didache 1.2-5a These Didache sayings are remarkable because there are very good reasons for suspecting that Did. 1.3-5a was added to a version of the text that already included Did. 1.2. This is important because, in Luke 6.27-36, elements similar to both Did. 1.2 and 1.3-5a are combined into a seamless, unified whole. This caused me to suspect that Luke's set of sayings had been woven out of the cloth provided by the whole of Didache 1.2-5a (rather than the reverse as was more commonly assumed). Furthermore, I then noticed a very peculiar pattern of similarity and difference between all the three versions: wherever Matthew's version is dissimilar to Luke's, his version is similar to the Didache's. The only reasonable way to explain this, it seemed to me, was to allow that that Matthew had attempted to conflate Luke's version with the sayings in the Didache. (A fuller presentation of this proposal is offered here).
Contemplating this possibility reminded me of a comment made by Michael Goulder in, 'Is Q a Juggernaut' (JBL, 1996): '[I]n a scientific subject a paradigm shift is possible because new and irrefutable evidence may come to light, new evidence in arts subjects is rare, and so are paradigm shifts' (p. 669). Here, it seemed to me, was a tiny piece of new evidence. It was tiny, but it was enough to shake me out of my prior assumptions. Why could not Matthew have used Luke? And why, if Matthew used Luke, could they also not have had access to sources they both shared (in addition to Mark)? Once I started to look at the Synoptic relationships with these questions in mind I came increasingly to suspect that Matthew was an author who had sought to harmonise and conflate together a range of earlier traditions, including Mark, Luke, portions of the Didache, and probably several other written and oral sources. This line of approach, it seemed to me, preserved all the strengths of the Farrer and Two Document Hypotheses without reproducing their weaknesses. Sometimes friends suggest that my arguments for Matthew's use of Luke would be more appealing if I kept it simpler - i.e. stopped including Did. 1.2-5a. I understand what they mean, which is why I tried to keep the Didache to one side in my initial presentation of the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis. For me, however, Did. 1.2-5a is the jewel of great price that has lain abandoned in a field since its discovery in 1873. New historical evidence of this quality, as Michael Goulder rightly observed, hardly ever comes to light. It seems a shame, therefore, to refuse to allow it to shake our old assumptions. But, of course, such a suggestion is stupidly naive. If we allowed our old assumptions to be disturbed, we would face the massive upheaval of having to wrestle with something disturbingly new."
Erik answered my question as follows:
"I have read my NTS-article from 2001 again and now I remember. What put me on the track was the astonishing correspondence between Lk 4:25–27 about the widow in Zarephath in Sidon with a sick child and the pagan officer Naaman on the one hand and on the other hand Mt 8:5–13 about the pagan officer and Mt 15:21–28 about the woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon with a sick child. Only Matthew has both these stories and the Mt-redaction has assimilated them to each other, especially through putting in the "great faith" at the end, in 15:28 (not in Mark 7:24–30 – but in Mt 8:10), making these two pagans, one man and one woman, the only two persons whom Jesus praises for their great faith. Matthew obviously wants the stories to be seen as a pair that belongs together, as the two OT counterparts do in Luke 4:25–27. The Mt-redaction also put in "Sidon" at the beginning, in Mt 15:21, not mentioned in Mk 7:24, but in Lk 4:26 – a sign that Mt also wants us to see the connection between the two NT-pagans and their OT counterparts mentioned in Lk 4:25–27. That was and is enough to convince me that Matthew knew the saying Luke 4:25–27. My reasons are elaborated in paragraphs II-IV (pp. 431-436). And my explanation of the fact that Matthew does not render the saying himself, although it seems to be so important to him, is presented in paragraph VI (p. 439f). In short: he did not want to contradict the program as it is expressed in Mt 10:5f (and 15:24): first to Israel. But he also wanted to show how the incalculable reality, i.e. the surprising great faith of two pagans overcame the program. If this were the only evidence it might, however, also be explained through the assumption that Matthew just knew (the tradition behind) the saying recorded in Luke 4:25–27, not necessarily the whole Gospel of Luke. The tradition could be Syrian, as both examples are connected to Syria – and Mt is often presumed to emanate from Syria (p. 438). But I was more impressed and convinced especially by von Dobschuetz, Hengel and Huggins, and the last years even more by Garrow, that Mt in fact knew the whole of Luke (as well as the Q-tradition[s], p. 439 n. 41)." "During my PhD program at Dallas Seminary in the 2000s, I took a course on the Synoptic Problem taught by Harold Hoehner. Dr. Hoehner was a proponent of the Two Gospel Hypothesis and had been a personal friend of William Farmer, who had also taught in Dallas, at Perkins School of Theology in Southern Methodist University. I began Hoehner’s course favoring the Two Document Hypothesis, but the required readings showed me that there were reasons to question Q. I then started to wonder why it seemed that everyone who disbelieved in Q concluded that Luke must have used Matthew as a source. Why not the reverse? Then I came across the article by Ronald V. Huggins, “Matthean Posteriority: A Preliminary Proposal” (NovT 34 [1992], 1-22). I found it intriguing and persuasive." Rob went on to publish his PhD dissertation as: Robert K. MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority: An Exploration of Matthew’s Use of Mark and Luke as a Solution to the Synoptic Problem, LNTS 501; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015. Here is the final paragraph of an RBL review by J Andrew Doole: In New Testament gospel studies, of course, the 2DH remains the democratically elected head of state. The leader of the opposition has recently been a post held securely by the FH, and it is refreshing to have a new case for a peripheral candidate. MacEwen almost always comes down against the 2GH, whose position becomes all the more untenable. His criticism of his main rival, the FH, proves successful in many regards and should be taken seriously by anyone considering Lukan familiarity with the Gospel of Matthew. At times one wonders if the arguments against the established 2DH are directed too specifically to the International Q Project and the idea of a reconstruction of Q. Nevertheless, MacEwen is surely correct in concluding, following a desideratum of an MPH commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, that the theory of Matthew’s familiarity with Luke “is worthy of more consideration than scholars have usually given it” (196). He has certainly convinced me. For most of my career I thought the Q hypothesis was the most convincing explanation of the material common to Matthew and Luke, though with the proviso that maybe Q was not a single source. When comparing parallel passages in these two Gospels in detail, I usually found that redactional changes to a common source by the respective evangelists explained satisfactorily their similarities and differences. What changed my mind about Q was the problem of envisaging what the source as a whole could have been like. Q is often said to have been a sayings collection, but in fact the Q material begins with a substantial amount of narrative and then seems to abandon narrative form in favour of sayings alone, sometimes with a brief narrative setting but often not. As a piece of literature, this is incoherent. I doubt if this problem can be solved by dividing Q into more than one source, though I would be open to a sustained argument along those lines if anyone were to develop one.
But the impression one gets from virtually all studies of the Synoptic problem is that the only viable alternative to Q is the Farrer hypothesis (Luke’s use of Matthew). I have never found that hypothesis credible. The major problem I see is the way that Luke would have had to rearrange the material he shares with Matthew. The common objection along these lines has been: Whywould Luke break up Matthew’s well structured and coherent discourses and scatter the material around his Gospel? Advocates of the Farrer hypothesis have devoted their defences to answering that question. But my problem is with the how, not the why. The process by which Luke would have had to select and arrange the material he takes from Matthew (which would have involved very carefully avoiding any Markan material in the context of this Matthean material) would have been extremely complex. Alan Garrow has shown this very convincingly, and it can only be appreciated by people who are willing to sit down with a synopsis and examine the parallel texts in detail. Francis Watson in his book Gospel Writing has now made the best available attempt to explain and account for Luke’s compositional procedure. I doubt if anyone could do better, but I ended reading it with the conclusion: This is unbelievably complex. It is also completely unparalleled in the way that other ancient authors worked with their sources. So I hung onto Q for longer than I would otherwise have done because I still found it more credible than Luke’s use of Matthew. But occasionally the question occurred to me: why has hardly anyone even attempted to explore the possibility that Matthew used Luke? It seemed like a solution that had never been tried, rather than one that been tried and found wanting (as one might say of the Griesbach hypothesis). I discovered that it had been proposed (by Christian Gottlob Wilke), back in the nineteenth century just when the Q hypothesis originated and became popular. At that stage most scholars adopted the latter, and the “Wilke hypothesis” (as we might have called it had anyone pursued it then) was forgotten. When eventually an alternative to Q again appeared on the scholarly horizon, it was the Farrer hypothesis. To me Matthew’s use of Luke had the obvious advantage of avoiding what I found incredible in the Farrer hypothesis. Though Matthew’s compositional procedures, if he took the “Q” material from Luke, would involve often conflating Luke with Mark (in the way that advocates of Q envisage him conflating Q with Mark), his procedures would be much less complex and difficult than those of Luke according to the Farrer hypothesis. A further consideration is that Q scholars, when judging whether Matthew or Luke preserved the more “primitive” form of a saying of Jesus, tend in a large majority of cases to decide for Luke. While the criteria for making these judgments are often not very secure, the overall impression that Luke has the earlier form of sayings he shares with Matthew should surely make it worth considering the hypothesis that Matthew took the “double tradition” material from Luke, rather than vice versa. (Since B. H. Streeter, the case for Q has standardly included the “alternating primitivity” of the “double tradition” material. In other words, sometimes Matthew, sometimes Luke preserves the more primitive form. This assertion seems to have obscured the fact that actually most scholars working with the Q hypothesis judge Luke to be more primitive far more often than they judge Matthew to be.) These considerations mean that, if one begins from the position of thinking that the Q hypothesis works rather well in many respects, as I do, but find it in the end unsatisfactory, as I do, then the more obvious of the other two principal possibilities must be Matthew’s use of Luke, not Luke’s use of Matthew. Many of the really good arguments for Q can also support Matthew’s use of Luke. Encouraged by the work of Robert MacEwen and Alan Garrow, who have devoted far more time and effort to exploring the “Matthean Posteriority” hypothesis (as MacEwen calls it) than I can spare, I decided I had sufficient reason to adopt it as a working hypothesis. The reason I am 99% convinced of Markan priority is that I have worked with it as a plausible hypothesis throughout my career and have always found it made good sense of the data. I have now made a start to working with Matthew’s use of Luke as a working hypothesis and so far it seems to me to doing well. The main reason the Synoptic Problem is difficult is that it involves working on both macro- and micro-levels. In other words, a hypothesis must give a plausible account of what an evangelist is doing with his sources overall and why he should be doing it, but it must also meet the test of explaining the precise similarities and differences between the parallel texts of each Gospel in each pericope. Probably this is a reason why so few people have so far taken “the road less travelled” – Matthew’s use of Luke. |
AuthorAlan Garrow is Vicar of St Peter's Harrogate and a member of SCIBS at the University of Sheffield. Archives
April 2024
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