Two-source hypothesis
Encyclopedia
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
and the Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
were based on the Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...
and a lost, hypothetical sayings collection called Q.
The two-source hypothesis emerged in the 19th century. B. H. Streeter
Burnett Hillman Streeter
Burnett Hillman Streeter was a British biblical scholar and textual critic.-Life:He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. Streeter was ordained in 1899 and was a member of the Archbishop’s Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England...
definitively stated the case in 1924, adding that two other sources, referred to as M
M-Source
M-source, which is sometimes referred to as M document, or simply M, comes from the M in "Matthean material". It is a hypothetical textual source for the Gospel of Matthew...
and L
L source
In historical-critical analysis, the L source is an inferred oral tradition that Luke used when composing his gospel. It includes the Christmas story and many of Jesus' best loved parables. Like Matthew's unique source, known as M-Source, the L source has important parables that may be authentic to...
, lie behind the material in Matthew and Luke respectively. The strengths of the hypothesis are its explanatory power
Explanatory power
Explanatory power is the ability of a theory to effectively explain the subject matter it pertains to. One theory is sometimes said to have more explanatory power than another theory about the same subject matter if it offers greater predictive power...
regarding the shared and non-shared material in the three gospels; its weaknesses lie in the exceptions to those patterns, and in the hypothetical nature of its proposed collection of Jesus-sayings. Later scholars have advanced numerous elaborations and variations on the basic hypothesis, and even completely alternative hypotheses. Nevertheless, "the 2SH commands the support of most biblical critics from all continents and denominations."
When Streeter's two additional sources, M and L, are taken into account, this hypothesis is sometimes referred to as the Four Document Hypothesis.
History
The Two-Source Hypothesis was first articulated in 1838 by Christian Hermann WeisseChristian Hermann Weisse
Christian Hermann Weisse , was a German Protestant religious philosopher.- Philosophy :He was born at Leipzig, and studied at the university there, at first adhering to the Hegelian school of philosophy. In the course of time, his ideas changed, and became close to those of Schelling in his later...
, but it did not gain wide acceptance among German critics until Heinrich Julius Holtzmann
Heinrich Julius Holtzmann
Heinrich Julius Holtzmann , German Protestant theologian, son of Karl Julius Holtzmann , was born at Karlsruhe, where his father ultimately became prelate and counsellor to the supreme consistory....
endorsed it in 1863. Prior to Holtzmann, most Catholic scholars held to the Augustinian hypothesis
Augustinian hypothesis
The Augustinian hypothesis is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matthew the Evangelist...
(Matthew → Mark → Luke) and Protestant biblical critics favored the Griesbach hypothesis (Matthew → Luke → Mark). The Two-Source Hypothesis crossed the channel into England in the 1880s primarily due to the efforts of William Sanday
William Sanday
William Sanday was born in Holme Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire, England to William Sanday and Elizabeth Mann. He was a British theologian and biblical scholar...
, culminating in B. H. Streeter's
Burnett Hillman Streeter
Burnett Hillman Streeter was a British biblical scholar and textual critic.-Life:He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. Streeter was ordained in 1899 and was a member of the Archbishop’s Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England...
definitive statement of the case in 1924. Streeter further argued that additional sources, referred to as M
M-Source
M-source, which is sometimes referred to as M document, or simply M, comes from the M in "Matthean material". It is a hypothetical textual source for the Gospel of Matthew...
and L
L source
In historical-critical analysis, the L source is an inferred oral tradition that Luke used when composing his gospel. It includes the Christmas story and many of Jesus' best loved parables. Like Matthew's unique source, known as M-Source, the L source has important parables that may be authentic to...
, lie behind the material in Matthew and Luke respectively.
Background: the synoptic problem
The hypothesis is a solution to what is known as the synoptic problem: the question of how best to account for the differences and similarities between the three synoptic gospelsSynoptic Gospels
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
, Matthew, Mark and Luke. The answer to this problem has implications for the order in which the three were composed, and the sources on which their authors drew.
Any solution to the synoptic problem needs to account for two features:
- The "triple tradition": The three gospels frequently share both wording and arrangement of "pericopes" (incidents, stories - this substantial sharing is what led to them being called "synoptic", or seeing-together). Where they differ on this shared material, Mark and Luke will agree against Matthew, or Mark and Matthew will agree against Luke, but very rarely will Mark be the odd one out. Matthew's and Luke's versions of shared pericopes will usually be shorter than Mark's.
- The "double tradition": Sometimes Matthew and Luke share material which is not present in Mark. In these cases Matthew and Luke sometimes parallel each other closely, but at other times are widely divergent.
Overview of the hypothesis
The 2SH attempts to solve the synoptic problem by advancing two propositions, Markan priority to explain the triple tradition, and the existence of a lost Q document to solve the double tradition. In summary, the two-source hypothesis proposes that Matthew and Luke used Mark for its narrative material as well as for the basic structural outline of chronology of Jesus' life; and that Matthew and Luke use a second source, Q (from German Quelle, “source”), not extant, for the sayings (logia) found in both of them but not in Mark.Markan priority
The 2SH explains the features of the triple tradition by proposing that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Mark appears more 'primitive': his diction and grammar are less literary than Matthew and Luke, his language is more prone to redundancy and obscurity, his ChristologyChristology
Christology is the field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the nature and person of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament. Primary considerations include the relationship of Jesus' nature and person with the nature...
is less supernatural, and he makes more frequent use of Aramaic. The more sophisticated versions of Mark's pericopes in Matthew and Luke must be either the result of those two "cleaning up" Mark, if his is the first gospel, or of Mark "dumbing down" Matthew and/or Luke, if he was later. Critics regard the first explanation as the more likely. On a more specific level, Markan priority seems to be indicated due to instances where Matthew and Luke apparently omit explanatory material from Mark, where Matthew adds his own theological emphases to Mark's stories, and in the uneven distribution of Mark's stylistic features in Matthew.
The existence of Q
The 2SH explains the double tradition by postulating the existence of a lost "sayings of Jesus" document known as Q, from the German Quelle, "source". It is this, rather than Markan priority, which forms the distinctive feature of the 2SH as against rival theories. The existence of Q follows from the conclusion that, as Luke and Matthew are independent of Mark in the double tradition, the connection between them must be explained by their joint but independent use of a missing source or sources. (That they used Q independently of each other follows from the fact that they frequently differ quite widely in their use of this source).Problems with the hypothesis
While the 2SH remains the most popular explanation for the origins of the synoptic gospels, two questions, the existence of the so-called "minor agreements", and problems with the hypothesis of Q, continue at the centre of discussion over its explanatory power.The minor agreements
The "minor agreements"—the word "minor" is not intended to be belittling—are those points where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark (for example, the mocking question at the beating of Jesus, "Who is it that struck you?", found in both Matthew and Luke but not in Mark). The "minor agreements" thus call into question the proposition that Matthew and Luke knew Mark but not each other. Streeter devoted a chapter to the matter, arguing that the Matthew/Luke agreements were due to coincidence, or to the result of the two authors' reworking of Mark into more refined Greek, or to overlaps with Q or oral tradition, or to textual corruption.A few later scholars explain the minor agreements as being due to Luke's using Matthew in addition to Q and Mark (3SH). But the modern argument for Q requires Matthew and Luke to be independent, so the 3SH raises the question of how to establish a role for Q if Luke is dependent on Matthew. Accordingly, some scholars (like Helmut Koester
Helmut Koester
Helmut Koester is a German-born American scholar of the New Testament and currently Morison Research Professor of Divinity and Winn Research Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School. He teaches courses at both the Divinity School and at Harvard Extension School, and was the...
) who wish to keep Q while acknowledging the force of the minor agreements attribute them to a proto-Mark, such as the Ur-Markus in the Markan Hypothesis (MkH), adapted by Mark independently from its use by Matthew and Luke. Still other scholars feel that the minor agreements are due to a revision of our Mark, called deutero-Mark. In this case, both Matthew and Luke are dependent on proto-Mark, which did not survive the ages.
"Therefore, the minor agreements, if taken seriously, force a choice between accepting pure Markan priority on one hand or the existence of Q on the other hand, but not both simultaneously as the 2SH requires."
Problems with Q
A principal objection to the 2SH is that it requires a hypothetical document, Q, the existence of which is not attested in any way, either by existing fragments (and a great many fragments of early Christian documents do exist) or by early Church tradition. The minor agreements are also, according to the critics, evidence of the non-existence of, or rather the non-necessity for, Q: if Matthew and Luke have passages which are missing in Mark (the "Who is it that struck you?" sentence quoted above is a famous example), this demonstrates only that Matthew is quoting Luke or vice-versa.Two additional problems are noteworthy, the "problem of fatigue" and the Q narrative problem. The first relates to the phenomenon that a scribe, when copying a text, will tend to converge on his source out of simple fatigue. Thus Mark calls Herod by the incorrect title basileus, "king", throughout, while Matthew begins with the more correct tetrarches but eventually switches to basileus. When similar changes occur in double tradition material, which according to the 2SH are the result of Matthew and Luke relying on Q, they usually show Luke converging on Matthew.
Pierson Parker in 1940 suggested that the non-canonical Gospel of the Hebrews was the second source used in the Gospel of Luke. This view is yet to gain influence.
Other hypotheses
Some form of the Two Source hypothesis continues to be preferred by an overwhelming majority of critically trained New Testament scholars as the theory that is best able to resolve the synoptic problem. Nevertheless, doubts about the problems of the minor agreements and, especially, the hypothetical Q, have produced alternative hypotheses.The traditional view is represented by the Augustinian hypothesis
Augustinian hypothesis
The Augustinian hypothesis is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matthew the Evangelist...
, which is that the four gospels were written in the order in which they appear in the bible (Matthew → Mark → Luke), with Mark a condensed edition of Matthew. This hypothesis was based on an argument from authority
Argument from authority
Argument from authority is a special type of inductive argument which often takes the form of a statistical syllogism....
: the claim by the 2nd century AD bishop Papias that he had heard that Matthew wrote first. By the 18th century the problems with Augustine's idea led Johann Jakob Griesbach
Johann Jakob Griesbach
Johann Jakob Griesbach , German biblical textual critic, was born at Butzbach, a small town in the state of Hesse, where his father, Konrad Kaspar , was pastor...
to put forward the Griesbach hypothesis, which was that Luke had revised Matthew and that Mark had then written a shorter gospel using material on which both Matthew and Luke agreed (Matthew → Luke → Mark).
The two-document hypothesis emerged in the 19th century: Mark as the earliest gospel, Matthew and Luke written independently and reliant on both Mark and the hypothetical Q.
In 1924 B. H. Streeter
Burnett Hillman Streeter
Burnett Hillman Streeter was a British biblical scholar and textual critic.-Life:He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. Streeter was ordained in 1899 and was a member of the Archbishop’s Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England...
refined the Two Document Hypothesis into the Four Document Hypothesis
Four Document Hypothesis (Synoptic problem)
A Four Document Hypothesis is an explanation for the relationship between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that there were at least four sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark, and three lost sources: Q, M-Source, and L source...
based on the possibility of a Jewish M source (see the Gospel according to the Hebrews).
In 1955 a British scholar, A. M. Farrer, proposed that one could dispense with Q by arguing that Luke revised both Mark and Matthew. In 1965 an American scholar, William R. Farmer, also seeking to do away with the need for Q, revived an updated version of Griesbach's idea that Mark condensed both Matthew and Luke. In Britain, the most influential modern opponents of the 2SH favor the Farrer hypothesis
Farrer hypothesis
The Farrer theory is a possible solution to the synoptic problem. The theory is that the Gospel of Mark was written first, followed by the Gospel of Matthew and then by the Gospel of Luke.It has mainly been advocated by English biblical scholars...
, while Farmer's revised Griesbach hypothesis, also known as the Two Gospel hypothesis, is probably the chief rival to the Two Source hypothesis in America.