Dunn's Oral Gospel Tradition
James Dunn has another new book forthcoming defending his source theory. It should be well worth a read and worth purchasing.


There's a brief introduction to it on the Eerdmans blog

Pericope Adulterae Originally From 'L' Source

I notice a new article out related to 'L' (see previous post re: Streeter's source theory). It is Kyle R. Hughes, "The Lukan Special Material and the Tradition History of the Pericope Adulterae" Novum Testamentum 55.3 (2013): 232–251.

Abstract:
For nearly a century, scholars have wrestled with the presence of Lukanisms in the Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) even as the manuscript evidence clearly indicates this account was not originally part of the Third Gospel. A comparison of the version of this pericope found in Papias and the Didascalia with the pericopae associated with the Lukan special material (or "L source") reveals remarkable similarities in style, form, and content. In light of these discoveries, we conclude that Papias and the Didascalia preserve a primitive form of the Pericope Adulterae that was originally part of the L source behind Luke's Gospel, shedding light on the tradition history of this pericope as well as the nature of L.

This theory builds on that proposed by Bart D. Ehrman, “Jesus and the Adulteress,” New Testament Studies 34 (1988): 24–44.

Hughes' article has been made available at the author's website.

Or for those wanting only a summary see here.

Streeter's Four Document Hypothesis
(CORRECTED Nov 8) Students will find various online resources and many downloadable ones at BiblicalStudies.org.uk including pdfs of Streeter's famous The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins treating of The Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, & Dates.

It's funny that I never got around to reading Streeter's book (though I feel I have indirectly through others) so I haven't previously discussed Streeter's source theory here.

Streeter's influential take on a solution to the Synoptic Problem (first published 1924) is found in chapters 7–12. Much of the 20th century (in the English-speaking "West") was either based on an acceptance or rejection of Streeter's "four-document" solution. I say influential, but his four-document solution is also often misrepresented as though Luke used a Q document.

The first thing that strikes me in looking through the book is that it looks like Streeter's Luke doesn't have a copy of Q. In Streeter's chart (p.150) Luke only knows Q through his copy of "proto-Luke" (whereby Q and L are already combined).

I'm sure I have been misled by others' reading of Streeter's source theory. When Streeter talks about a "four-document" hypothesis he has two documents in mind used by Luke (proto-Luke & Mark) and three documents used by Matthew (Q, Mark and M) thus four source documents (plus other non-documented traditions) in total underlying both of these Gospels (namely: Q, Mark, M, proto-Luke) as diagrammed on his page 150.

However, I remember being taught that Streeter's "four-documents" consisted of Q, Mark, M & L even though L is not a document known or used by Luke.

According to Streeter's diagram one would not think that Streeter's Luke used Q directly (rather than only via his proto-Luke) but on page 218 he says “this same Luke some years afterwards expanded his own early work by prefixing the stories of the Infancy and by inserting extracts from Mark no doubt at the same time making certain minor alterations and additions” so it seems Streeter's own diagram misrepresents his own theory (unless we are to assume "this same Luke" lost his copy of Q? 

Rethinking the Gospel Sources, Volume 2
I notice that Delbert Burkett's second volume is now available (Rethinking the Gospel Sources: The Unity and Plurality of Q), published by SBL. I'll be ordering a copy next week.

Published Introductions to the Synoptic Problem

David Stark's New Testament Interpretation blog has a series of posts reproducing the diagrams of synoptic problem solutions given in Kümmel's NT intro. The 'Synoptic Problem' tag will bring up the set of diagrams so far. Kümmel's presentation of the Synoptic Problem was one of the six I evaluated in my undergrad essay "Solving the Synoptic Problem for Students?"

My essay was written back in 2001 or 2002 (a few years before I had internet access at home) and 'Part A' evaluated six printed/published presentations on the Synoptic Problem, namely:

(1) Joseph A. Fitzmyer, "The Priority of Mark and The 'Q' Source in Luke," (1970);
(2) Werner George Kümmel from his, Introduction to the New Testament (trans. 1975), 38-80;
(3) Robert Stein's classic book from 1987, The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction;
(4) Christopher M. Tuckett's entry for the Anchor Bible Dictionary (vol 6, 1992), 263-270;
(5) David L. Dungan's book, A History of the Synoptic Problem (Anchor Bible Reference Library, 1999);
(6) and two chapters from John S. Kloppenborg, Excavating Q (chapter 1 and chapter 6).

Kümmel's presentation received a 27% rating according to my criteria drawn from a 'student perspective'. Kloppenborg's presentation (in Excavating Q) faired best with 47% but should have been rated higher than that because I had only based my evaluation on 2 of 3 relevant chapters in Excavating Q (I later realized!)

Would be good to know if other students have similarly evaluated other published presentations on the synoptic problem. I guess nowadays students instead go online for introductions to the Synoptic Problem which might explain why there are still not very many introductions/presentations published (compare my 'top ten recommended books for students' to the right). 

The Problem Never Completely Resolves
We cannot say much about what exactly the sources looked like that preceded the synoptic Gospels, only that that direct dependence does play a large part in the end result. Even if we do conclude that Mark is the earlier written Gospel it seems that Mark is still somewhat secondary to earlier sources. Mk 13 for instance looks to be older material very unlikely to have been freshly penned by the Gospel author. Also I have previously indicated my own theorizing that most of the healing stories apparently predate our written Gospels, although in these cases they would likely have existed only in oral form. So Mark is not necessarily the oldest 'source' of shared material.

So students should be aware that hypothesizing a chronology for dating Matthew, Mark and Luke still does not completely (re)solve the problem of Gospel sources. It merely gives us a simplified ‘working hypothesis’ for supposing how a particular Gospel author may have put their own stamp on the material which we suppose to have been already available to the author (and in many cases material likely already known by the audience).

I'm perpetually agnostic concerning 'Q.' How is it that the material in Matthew and Luke concerning John the Baptizer is written virtually word-for-word? This would be the result of someone copying slavishly from a written source. So if the text in Matthew is not being copied here into Luke (or theoretically from Luke into Matthew) whether by a secondary Gospel author (or inserted by a scribe within the first hundred years of copying) we must suppose that both have here accessed the same written source concerning John the Baptizer. Yet the other shared material in Matthew and Luke (and not found in Mark) is less likely to be from the same shared written source since everywhere else the doubly-shared material in Mt-Lk is phrased independently by both authors making it impossible to know much about the immediate source of such traditions or whether these traditions originated from the very same source as the John-Baptizer material. How can we conclude the same way (all stems from a singular written source?) with this differing evidence?

So the precise sources of all the triply and doubly shared traditions are still largely unknown even after having ‘solved’ the problem of the likely order the Gospels were published. There will always remain the problem of whether an earlier version of Mark, or Matthew or Luke was known or accessed by any of the other Gospel authors (aurally or in written form) on top of the problem of other pre-Gospel traditions.

Improving Definitions
Recently I visited the Wikipedia article on the Synoptic Problem to read the definition there. I decided to help clarify it by adding a few more words to the definition. This was my first experience of editing a Wikipedia article. This inspired me to write my own definition on my own wiki-site. I hope to include more of the information found here on this weblog, but in a more readable format. I'm still looking at various options for site hosting but currently I'm experimenting over here at http://sites.google.com/site/sourcetheory/

An Example of a Textual Critical Approach
This blog is always at risk of being neglected. Especially when I have nothing new to add.
So this doesn't happen completely, the present post acknowledges Randall Buth's post on ευθυς in Matthew & Mark as a good example to students of the synoptic problem, because of its text-critical approach. This is not surprising in this case given Buth's text critical involvments (a shorter version of his post can be found at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.

Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency
A book which looks worthy of a look is that by Terence C. Mournet, Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency: Variability and Stability in the Synoptic Tradition and Q (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). It is Mournet's revised doctoral thesis supervised by James D. G. Dunn so it may also help shed some light on Dunn's unclear perspective concerning what counts as oral sources in Mt & Lk (Mournet, like Dunn, presupposes some form of the Mk-Q hypothesis). When I get hold of a copy I hope to comment on it here.

Matthew According to Patristic Citations
Given that early church fathers often quote from the Gospel of Matthew it would be interesting to see what Matthew would read like when constructed entirely from such quotations. Our critical Greek text of Matthew (NA27) depends basically on fourth century manuscripts, however, reconstructing a text of Matthew according to patristic quotations would yield a much earlier text (although perhaps a less accurate text if the quotations of Matthew were drawn from memory and/or give a harmonized/mixed quotation influenced by other Gospels).

But I would still like to see what Matthew looks like when so reconstructed. Peter Head has recently pointed out (here & here in answering a question of mine on Synoptic-L restated here) that it is only for Luke's Gospel that we have extensive amounts of papyri text. Understandably textual criticism for the Gospels cannot usually give to patristic citations the same 'weight' (if much at all) as actual Gospel manuscripts but it would be an interesting experiment to see what Matthew looks like when having to rely solely on early (second to fourth century) citations. Of course, this would leave many gaps in such a reconstructed text since we would probably be lucky if altogether we got 50% of Matthew. I think such an experiment may benefit not only textual criticism but also studies in the synoptic problem.