The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (39 page)

Finally, certain stylistic features in Mark appear in Matthew almost exclusively in the material he has in common with Mark. Mark was particularly fond of using the temporal adverb “immediately,” which appears 41 times in his Gospel. The adverb appears 18 times in Matthew's Gospel. Fourteen of these occurrences appear in material that Matthew shares with Mark. R. Stein has calculated that the adverb appears once for every 778 words in material shared with Mark but only once for every 1,848 words in the material not shared by Mark. This suggests that the frequency of occurrences of the adverb “immediately” in Matthew was influenced by his dependency on Mark.
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Illustration 3.3: Markan Priority

The Two-Document Hypothesis
The two-document hypothesis argues that Mark was written first (Markan priority). When Matthew and Luke wrote their Gospels, they wrote independently of each other but relied heavily on Mark (or perhaps an early version of Mark that is slightly different from the canonical version) and an additional now-lost document known as “Q.”
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Although many scholars attribute the origins of the two-document hypothesis to H. J. Holtzmann who wrote in 1863, the origins of the hypothesis actually date nearly a century earlier.
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As early as 1794, J. Eichhorn argued that Matthew and Luke independently used a presynoptic source. In 1798, H. Marsh argued for the existence of a proto-Gospel and a sayings source. In 1836, K. A. Credner suggested that Matthew and Luke independently used a sayings collection in addition to an early version of Mark's Gospel as their primary sources. C. H. Weisse proposed a similar hypothesis a few years after Credner. However, Weisse argued that the version of Mark used by Matthew and Luke was the canonical form of Mark rather than an earlier version.
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The two-document hypothesis was popularized in the English-speaking world by B. H. Streeter in 1924.
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Illustration 3.4: Two-Document Hypothesis

Evidence for Q
Some scholars argue that the material shared by Matthew and Luke but not by Mark—mostly discourse material containing Jesus' teachings and sayings—must be explained by an appeal to another shared document because Matthew could not have used Luke and Luke could not have used Matthew. These scholars point to three major lines of evidence that suggest the literary independence of Matthew and Luke and necessitate their reliance on a hypothetical document.

First, when a parallel account appears in all three Synoptics but either Matthew or Luke contains additional material, they very rarely share the same additions. Similarly, it is difficult to explain why Luke or Matthew would have omitted material unique to the other Gospel if one Gospel had used the other. It seems unlikely, for example, that Matthew would eliminate Luke's parable of the prodigal son or that Luke would have omitted Matthew's visit of the magi. This makes it improbable that either writer knew the other.
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Second, Luke places the material that he shares with Matthew but not with Mark in different contexts than Matthew.
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Matthew divided the material into five blocks of teaching and Luke into two. Third, Matthew and Luke never share the same order of pericopes when they are absent from Mark and never agree in order against Mark.
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Many scholars reason that since Matthew and Luke share similar material that is absent from Mark and since Matthew did not use Luke nor did Luke use Matthew, Matthew and Luke must share in common another source in addition to Mark. Most scholars who argue for the existence of such a source believe that it was a written source. The similarities in wording and in the order of the sayings from this hypothetical source are often even
greater than the similarities of Matthew and Luke to Mark. This remarkable similarity is taken to imply the existence of a written sayings source.

The Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis
Not all scholars who affirm Markan priority are convinced that the similarities between Matthew and Luke that are not shared by Mark are best explained by an appeal to a hypothetical document. A small but growing number of scholars (particularly in Great Britain) believe that the similarities between Matthew and Luke are best explained if Luke used Matthew's Gospel in addition to Mark when he wrote his own Gospel. Interestingly, although Holtzmann's name is most frequently associated with the two-document hypothesis, Holtzmann abandoned that hypothesis only a few years after he proposed it and suggested that Luke knew and used Matthew.
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In 1955 A. M. Farrer argued that Luke did indeed use Matthew's Gospel in addition to Mark and that this made Q completely unnecessary.
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M. Goulder wrote an entire commentary on Luke that examined the hypothesis of Luke's use of Matthew in 1989.
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The most important evidence supporting Luke's use of Matthew is the so-called minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark. Based on different methods of identifying such minor agreements, various scholars have suggested that anywhere from 770 to 3,785 such minor agreements exist. Some of these agreements may be explained as coincidental agreements in improving Mark. However, other agreements are more significant and may indicate Luke's dependence on Matthew. Such agreements include Mark 1:7–8; 2:12; 3:24,26–29; 5:27; 6:33; 8:35; 9:2–4,18–19; 10:29; 14:65,72 and the parallel texts in Matthew and Luke.

Recent research by R. Vinson concluded that these verbatim agreements by Matthew and Luke in their revision of Mark could not have been accidental. They are best explained if Luke used Matthew. Vinson established an experiment in which he collected 10 paragraphs from three student term papers then submitted these paragraphs to 10 doctoral students for revision. He then examined the revisions to determine the number of verbal agreements. He considered every possible pairing of the revisions and calculated the average rate of verbal agreement. He next counted the number of minor verbal agreements between Matthew and Luke. Finally, he compared the rates of verbal agreement in his experiment against agreements in Matthew and Luke utilizing the U-statistic, a method that ensures that the agreements were compared on an appropriate scale. The calculations demonstrated that the agreement between Matthew and Luke was significantly higher than the pairs of modern editors and too high to be dismissed as merely coincidental.
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Scholars who affirm the two-document hypothesis have sought to explain these minor agreements in the following ways.
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First, Mark and Q may have overlapped in their contents at a number of points. When Mark and Q shared the same material but had slightly different readings, Matthew and Luke may have both opted for the Q reading at the same place. Second, the minor agreements may sometimes be products of textual corruption. Matthew's Gospel was the favorite Gospel of many people in the early church. Scribes may have produced some of the minor agreements by conforming Luke's readings to Matthew. Third, both Matthew and Luke may have been familiar with oral traditions that overlapped with Mark and prompted them to revise Mark in the same way at the same point.

Table 3.8: Theories of Literary Dependence of the Synoptic Gospels

Value of the Study
Source criticism is a complex and difficult exercise. Although the two-document hypothesis was the consensus view of Gospel relationships in the mid- and late twentieth century, at present no single theory of Gospel relationships can be described as the scholarly consensus—though Markan priority is held by a majority of scholars. This thorny issue may not be fully resolved until (and unless) new evidence comes to light. In the meantime, questions surrounding Gospel relationships remain important for several reasons.

First, source criticism is an important preliminary step in the historical investigation of Jesus' life. The discussion of the criteria of authenticity earlier in this chapter demonstrates that one of the most widely accepted criteria is the criterion of multiple independent attestation. However, various theories of source criticism have different views of what is
necessary to satisfy this criterion. If one accepts the two-document hypothesis, a saying or theme of Jesus' teaching that appears in at least two of the Gospel sources—Mark, Q, M, L, or John—is likely authentic. But if one accepts the Goulder-Farrer hypothesis, material shared by Matthew and Luke is a result of Luke's dependence on Matthew and thus does not constitute multiple independent attestation.

Second, source criticism is a prerequisite for redaction criticism in which scholars examine how Gospel writers adapted their sources in order to understand the theological purpose that prompted this adaptation. Thus the potential benefits of source criticism are well worth the effort invested in this difficult enterprise.

Redaction and Composition Criticism

As mentioned, form criticism emerged in the 1920s as a quest to discern the prehistory of individual pericopes included in the Gospels in the form of units of oral tradition as they were passed on by the community on the basis of certain laws of oral transmission. Source criticism, in turn, sought to discern the use of written and/or oral sources by the evangelists. For example, the possible use of Mark and Q and other sources by Matthew and Luke was examined in order to see what light such use might shed on the final text of these Gospels. Also, scholars speculated as to John's possible use of sources such as a “signs” or “discourse source” in his Gospel.
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One other important interpretive methodology should be mentioned in conjunction with form and source criticism: redaction criticism.
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Redaction criticism was first practiced in the 1950s by students of R. Bultmann , including G. Bornkamm, W. Marxsen, and H. Conzelmann. The primary concern of redaction criticism is to view a given document as a composition and literary whole. Consequently, the focus is not on the work of the community at large (form criticism) or on the use of sources by the evangelists (source criticism) but on the theological contributions made by the evangelists in their own right as they processed and shaped their source material. (In this regard redaction criticism is predicated on source criticism in that it presupposes a certain source-critical view, such as Mark's use by Matthew.) When it appears that one of the evangelists has adapted one of his sources, the theological implications of his revision are explored.

For example, redaction criticism (or its more recent form, composition or narrative criticism) might observe that Matthew's treatment of the disciples' understanding of Jesus' words is markedly more positive than that of Mark, who repeatedly and consistently
focused on the disciples' failure to comprehend the true meaning of Jesus' teaching and of his messianic identity. On the basis of this observation, it is concluded that Mark sought to demonstrate that it is only after the resurrection, and as aided by the Holy Spirit, that anyone was able to understand Jesus' true nature as the Son of God. Hence a comparison of Mark with Matthew reveals a difference in perspective (or at least emphasis) that has the potential of helping the reader to better understand the distinctive contributions and theological emphases of the respective evangelists.