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“Synoptic Gospels” refers to three of the four Gospels in the New Testament canon: Matthew, Mark and Luke (John alone is omitted from this grouping). The adjective “synoptic,” like the noun “synopsis” from which it is derived, is based on the Greek adjective synoptikos, meaning “seeing the whole together.” It refers to the fact that the first three Gospels can be printed in three parallel columns and “seen together” because the sayings and stories they contain often exhibit striking literary similarities.
This was first done in 1776, when the German New Testament scholar J. J. Griesbach (1745–1812) arranged the first three Gospels together in parallel columns in a book with a long Latin title, the first part of which was Synopsis Evangelorium Matthai Marci et Lucae (Synopsis of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke). The first three Gospels have been referred to as Synoptic Gospels ever since.
The Gospel of John was omitted from Griesbach’s synopsis, and from most other synopses of the Gospels thereafter, because it is very different from the other three Gospels. About 90 percent of the sayings and stories about Jesus found in John have no parallel in the Synoptic Gospels.
The first sidebar contains the miracle story of Jesus curing the fever of Simon’s mother-in-law, found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. The texts are arranged in parallel columns to form a synopsis.
While these three texts are not identical, there are enough similarities to make any teacher suspect plagiarism. The Mark version is the longest with 44 Greek words, Luke is next with 38 words and then comes Matthew with 30 words.
There is obviously some kind of dependence reflected in these three passages, but what kind? Did one author copy from another? Or did each author depend on the same early Christian oral sources, reproducing the story independently of one another? A combination of these two solutions is also possible. One evangelist could have copied from the text of another, but could also have introduced changes based on a similar oral version with which he was familiar.
Finding a satisfactory explanation for the similarities as well as the differences between the first three Gospels is called the Synoptic Problem. Solving the problem requires source criticism, that is, the attempt to determine the sources used by a particular author.
New Testament scholars have proposed various solutions to this problem during the last two centuries. The solution which is most widely accepted today is referred to as the two-source theory. It is based on the priority of Mark, arguing that portions of the Gospel of Mark, were copied by the authors of Matthew and Luke. On the evidence presented in the first sidebar, it could be argued that Matthew and Luke condensed Mark. It should be noted that while plagiarism is frowned on today, the ancient world had nothing like a copyright law and authors frequently borrowed freely from earlier writings. Even though most New Testament scholars accept the hypothesis of the priority of Mark, a strong minority holds to the theory of the priority of Matthew. called the Griesbach Hypothesis, this minority view contends that Matthew was the first Gospel, and that Luke (who was dependent on Matthew) appeared next. Finally Mark was written based on both Matthew and Luke. Our sample text could be used to support this argument; Mark seems to have combined Matthew and Luke and added some phrases of his own.
There are many instances when Matthew and Luke have very close parallels which are not found in Mark. A typical example is shown at right.
The two texts are identical with the 043single exception of the addition of the word “servant” in Luke (Matthew has 27 Greek words, while Luke has 28). Such a close similarity between Matthew and Luke can be explained in several ways: (1) Luke copied from Matthew (the Griesbach Hypothesis), (2) Matthew copied from Luke or (3) Matthew and Luke copied from a third source. The third possibility is the one accepted by most New Testament scholars today.
The hypothetical source used by Matthew and Luke—the second source of the two-source theory—is called “Q,” an abbreviation for the German term Quelle, meaning “source.” Since Q primarily consists of sayings of Jesus, it is often called the Sayings Source. The simplest definition of Q is that it consists of non-Markan parallels between Matthew and Luke. While Q could have been an oral source, most scholars think that it was a document, now lost, written about 50 A.D. in Palestine. Those who accept the hypothesis of the priority of Matthew, however, do not think that Q existed, since according to their view the similarities between Matthew and Luke arose when Luke copied Matthew.
The similarities of the Synoptic Gospels, which permit them to be printed in parallel columns, also mean that they resemble each other in content, themes and structure. They each show that Jesus is the Messiah of Jewish expectation despite the shattering defeat represented by his execution by the Romans. They do this by demonstrating how the suffering and death of the Messiah was predicted in the Old Testament as well as by Jesus himself, and by emphasizing the victory represented by the resurrection.
The hypothesis of Markan priority declares that Mark is the earliest Gospel (often dated to c. 70 A.D.), implying that Matthew and Luke must be later (they are often dated to c. 80 and 90 A.D., respectively). Mark, the shortest of the synoptics (11,313 words), begins by narrating the activity of John the Baptist, who predicts the coming of Jesus, and ends with the story of the empty tomb. Matthew (18,363 words) and Luke (19,495 words), according to the Markan hypothesis, apparently dissatisfied with the way Mark begins and ends, added material to the beginning and ending of Mark to produce more lengthy and sophisticated accounts. Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy (tracing it back to Abraham through David), inserts an account of the virginal conception and birth of Jesus and concludes with brief cameo resurrection appearances of Jesus before the women who discovered the empty tomb and to his disciples in Galilee. Luke begins his narrative with stories of the conception and birth of both John and Jesus and còncludes with the story of Jesus’ heavenly ascension.
Matthew and Luke also appear to have been dissatisfied with the comparatively few sayings of Jesus found in Mark. To solve this problem they borrowed many sayings from Q. They differ, however, in the way in which they incorporated the Sayings Source into their narratives. Matthew radically rearranged Q by placing its sayings, of Jesus into five extensive sermons attributed to Jesus: (1) Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), (2) On Discipleship (Matthew 10), (3) Parables of the Kingdom (Matthew 13), (4) On Humility and Forgiveness (Matthew 18) and (5) On the End of the Age (Matthew 24–25). Luke, on the other hand, incorporated most of the sayings of Jesus derived from Q into an extensive (and vague) Travel Narrative in Luke 9:51–18:14. Thus Matthew places the Lord’s prayer in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9–13), while Luke inserts it into his Travel Narrative (Luke 11:2–4), not into his version of the Sermon on the Mount, often called the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20–49).
Finally, virtually all New Testament scholars recognize that the written sources that may lie behind the Synoptic Gospels, as well as the Gospels themselves, are based on a great number of oral traditions containing various types of sayings of Jesus and stories about Jesus. Form criticism is the method used to detect the oral “forms” out of which each Gospel has been fashioned. These traditions about Jesus were transmitted individually by word-of-mouth and were not part of a biographical framework of the life of Jesus. Mark was apparently the first to collect these traditions and to place them in a geographical and chronological framework within his narrative. Mark’s purpose in creating this new type of biography, as with Matthew and Luke after him, was not simply to record the facts concerning the life of Jesus, but rather to argue that despite any apparent evidence to the contrary, Jesus ought to be regarded as the Messiah, the Son of God.
“Synoptic Gospels” refers to three of the four Gospels in the New Testament canon: Matthew, Mark and Luke (John alone is omitted from this grouping). The adjective “synoptic,” like the noun “synopsis” from which it is derived, is based on the Greek adjective synoptikos, meaning “seeing the whole together.” It refers to the fact that the first three Gospels can be printed in three parallel columns and “seen together” because the sayings and stories they contain often exhibit striking literary similarities. This was first done in 1776, when the German New Testament scholar J. J. Griesbach (1745–1812) arranged the […]
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