Part VII: Conclusion to the First Volume
Bibliography
Appendix A: Verbal Comparison of Parallel Synoptic Pericopes
We have argued that the internal form critical, linguistic, stylistic, semantic and sequential evidence is much too equivocal to overturn the external historical and manuscript evidence favoring Matthaean priority. We have found instead that much of this internal evidence is more suggestive of common oral and written tradition than of direct literary dependence of Matthew upon Mark. As Kloppenborg (2000) has noted, there are many logically possible solutions to the Synoptic problem, but only a few that assume a credible editorial process by which the Evangelists could have produced their results. It remains for us to show that our alternative to the conventional Two-Source Hypothesis is compatible with at least one historically credible process by which Matthew might have produced his Gospel, without direct or indirect dependence on written canonical Mark.
If we are to favor historical evidence over form critical evidence in upholding Matthaean priority, we should not ignore the historical evidence when positing possible sources of the canonical Gospels. The earliest historical testimonies about the composition of the Gospels universally point to the preaching of the Apostles as their ultimate source. They consistently identify Matthew as the first and most esteemed Gospel. Many also affirm that a Hebraic version of this Gospel, or at least a part of it, existed from an early date. Mark is usually said to have based his Gospel on the preaching of Peter, though it is unclear exactly when or where he wrote it.
Consistent with the testimony of St. Irenaeus, we might postulate that Matthew wrote his Gospel, or an early edition of it, after Peter and other Apostles left Jerusalem, so as to preserve their preaching. Mark did the same, probably in Italy, at some unspecified date, either shortly before or after the martyrdom of St. Peter. Papias uses the same term logia to describe the content of both Hebraic Matthew and Mark, so we have no grounds for supposing that the first edition of Matthew was a sayings
Gospel.
The external manuscript evidence confirms the historical witnesses in their universal attestation of Matthaean priority without exception. Even heretical groups held a special esteem for Matthew’s Gospel. Some say this Gospel was first written in Hebrew or Aramaic, while none say it was first written in Greek. Our fragmentary knowledge of the content of Hebraic Matthew is relatively late, by which time there were more or less orthodox and heterodox editions. Its length was not much less than that of canonical Matthew, so it is unlikely to have been a mere sayings
Gospel.
Following Lord (The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature,
1978), as well as historical testimony of ancient practices, it seems implausible that any Evangelist would use several documentary sources and paste them together. This documentary hypothesis is further contradicted by the often weak degree of verbal correspondence between Gospels. It is practically certain that much of the double and triple tradition material is the result of common oral tradition, not written. On the other hand, we have identified several blocks of material with a high degree of verbatim similarity, indicating a commmon written source. The identity and use of this source remains to be postulated.
If the written source shared by Matthew and Mark is not canonical Mark, it is either an earlier edition of one of these two Gospels, or a source written by a third party. While the latter possibility cannot be eliminated, it is completely unattested, which would be astonishing for an early written source covering such a broad portion of the Gospel. Such a source, if authentic, should have been as highly esteemed as Matthew. Thus we postulate that this source was in fact an earlier edition of Matthew. The existence of such an edition is strongly implied by the testimony of Papias, though the exact nature of this first edition is unclear. It was variously interpreted or translated, so the uneven degree of verbal similarity between Matthew and Mark in the written-sourced portions might be attributable in part to variations among copies of this Ur-Matthew. Another possibility is that one or both Evangelists (the authors of canonical Matthew and Mark) relied on oral recitations of Ur-Matthew, which would again account for uneven frequency of verbatim similarity.
Alternatively, the shared written source might have been an Ur-Mark. It is unlikely to have been canonical Mark, for if Matthew had that source at his disposal, we would be at a loss to account for his frequent refusal to follow Mark in sequence or verbal content for many blocks of material, instead resorting to oral tradition. The blocks of oral
material covering Marcan semantic content suggest that Matthew did not have canonical Mark as a source. The existence of an Ur-Mark, though not impossible, is unattested. If the common written source of Matthew and Mark could be proved to have been written by Mark, we would again have Marcan priority in a broad sense.
The supposition that Mark used Ur-Matthew is not incompatible with historical testimony, if it is assumed that Ur-Matthew was likewise based on the preaching of Peter, and that it was recited orally. The only mild difficulty is that it must be supposed to have reached Italy within twenty years or so. Supposing instead that Matthew used Ur-Mark, we should likely have to date Matthew quite late and doubt its apostolic authorship, contrary to all historical testimony. Thus this supposition does more violence to historical evidence than ours, and should not be adopted unless internal evidence strongly indicates it.
While we cannot decisively reconstruct the shared written source of Matthew and Mark, we may at least set some parameters demanded by the internal evidence. We have found that the textually-sourced portions of double tradition may be smaller than generally reckoned. The unusual phrases
shared by Matthew and Mark are not clear signs of literary relationship, but may just as well be examples of the metonymic markers
noted by J.A. Draper in oral traditions. Similarities in sequence do not always imply literary dependence, for oral traditions could also be organized in a libretto or other aid to preaching, which, instead of recording complete text, simply provides a key phrase reminding the reader of an oral pericope. R. Horsley suggests Q may have been such a libretto, which would account for the shared sequence of Matthew and Luke of verbally dissimilar content. Likewise, much of the Matthew-Mark double tradition may be orally derived text.
The restriction of orally-sourced Gospel material to sayings is unsupported by research of oral traditions. Lord found that the unit of composition in oral tradition is a block of narrative, not an individual saying, and that sayings are always incorporated into such blocks. Sayings are preserved in isolation (within a narrative block), not in sets, so a pure collection of sayings would be highly uncharacteristic of oral tradition. Thus the Gospel of Thomas is a literary project, as is any other sayings Gospel.
Once it is admitted that there is oral tradition in the canonical Gospels, this cannot be confined to sayings. Oral traditions are always narratives.
Oral traditions contain proverbs, story riddles solved by a wise answer, poetry, parables, and well-told accounts of important figures. All of these but poetry are found in the Gospels. In oral tradition, proverbs admit no flexibility, not even a word. Verbatim recall is required only for proverbs and key punch-lines. Oral historians may freely change the non-essential order of scenes within a story, so there is no primitive
order. Thus, even if the sequence of pericopes were fixed by a libretto or other written aid, oral historians would retain the freedom to change the non-essential order of scenes within a pericope. In fact, we find all these features in the blocks we have identified as oral,
so they do not require a written source.
Names cannot be changed in oral tradition, so the substitution of Levi/Matthew would be a deliberate editorial decision by one Evangelist. Yet we found in general that Matthew’s use of names, particularly Simon versus Peter, is much more irregular than Mark’s, and likely the more primitive. Thus Mark is more likely to have been the later editor, though less primitive does not always mean later.
When we eliminate all the parts of the Matthaean-Marcan double tradition that may be plausibly attributed to oral tradition alone, we are left with:
John the Baptist, Baptism of Jesus (Mk. 1:2-11, Mt. 3:1-17)
Call of the Disciples, Teaching in Synagogue at Capernaum (Mk. 1:16-22, Mt. 4:18-22, 7:28-29)
Cleansing of Leper, Healing of Paralytic, Call of Levi/Matthew, Controversies with Pharisees, Man with Withered Hand (Mk. 2:1-28, Mt. 8:1-4, 9:1-17, 12:1-14)
Feeding of 5000, Walking on Water, Healings at Gennesaret (Mk. 6:32-56, 14:13-36)
Feeding of 4000 (Mk. 8:1-10, Mt. 15:32-29)
Peter’s Confession, First Prediction of Passion,If any man would come after me, Transfiguration (Mk. 8:27-9:10, Mt. 16:13-17:9)
Crossing Jordan into Judea, Divorce and Celibacy, Blessing the Children, Rich Young Man, Rewards of Discipleship, (Third) Prediction of Passion, Precedence Among Disciples (Mk. 10:1-31, Mt. 19:1-30, 20:17-28)
Cleansing of the Temple (Mk. 11:15-17, Mt. 21:12-13)
Question about Authority, Wicked Husbandmen, Tribute to Caesar, Question about Resurrection (Mk. 11:27-12:27, Mt. 21:23-46, 22:15-33)
Synoptic Apocalypse, excluding first and last pericopes (Mk. 13:3-32, Mt. 24:3-36)
Foretelling Betrayal, Last Supper, Peter’s Denial Predicted, Gethsemane, Jesus Arrested (Mk. 14:18-52, Mt. 26:21-56)
Jesus on the Cross, Death of Jesus (Mk. 15:27-39, Mt. 27:38-54)
In Mark, this covers 4,588 words or 41% of his Gospel. Supposing that both Mark and Matthew used the same written source for these 44 pericopes, they could have used the editorial method attested by Philo, following a single written source and interweaving oral traditions, for both Evangelists preserve the same sequence of this written source.
Is it credible that such a written source should exist? It forms a coherent narrative, save its gap between the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus, presents a representative sample of the works and teachings of Christ, and covers all the major events of his ministry. Possibly it did include a more complete Passion narrative, but we cannot confirm this because at least one Evangelist opted to use oral tradition here. This could be considered a collection of reports
(logia) about Christ. The only pre-Synoptic written Gospel with any attestation is the supposed logia of St. Matthew, written in Hebrew and haphazardly translated into Greek, according to one possible interpretation of Papias. Matthew and Mark must have been working from a shared Greek text, not Hebrew, in order to account for their shared word choices.
The ultimate source of this first written Gospel, be it authored by St. Matthew or someone else, would be apostolic preaching. If Mark’s Gospel really were based on the preaching of Peter, then the same ought to be true for this important written source. This written Gospel would have been about 650-700 lines in length, if we compare with early stichometries of Mark, much too short to have been the so-called Gospel to the Hebrews. It may antedate the departure of the apostles from Jerusalem, if it was to be known in Judea, Italy and Greece by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
The non-survival of this first edition of the preaching of Peter is best explained by its replacement by a later edition, which included many more sayings, teachings, miracles and a fuller Passion narrative, effectively putting much of the oral tradition into fixed form. This later effort was done reluctantly, drawing either directly from oral tradition or possibly from a libretto used by preachers to recall oral pericopes.
If one were to prove that this first edition was written by Mark rather than Matthew, one should show that there is distinctively Marcan style in the parts of canonical Matthew that use this source. We saw in Part V that there is scant evidence that Matthew copied Marcan style in Marcan redactional
material, but perhaps Matthew had access to the source of canonical Mark, which was also written by St. Mark. Yet we have already seen in Part V that Matthew does not generally follow distinctively Marcan redactional
syntax, even when examining all sections of the double tradition, both textual
and oral
pericopes. Both kinds of pericopes have verses of source
and redactional
material, though the notion of redaction is properly inapplicable to oral tradition. Matthew’s non-imitation of Marcan double participles, though he uses such syntax elsewhere, even gives evidence against dependence on Mark.
Conceivably, there is distinctively Marcan syntax in Marcan source
content, which is followed by Matthew only in those sections and not elsewhere. Yet we are not justified in calling this syntax Marcan
unless we also find it in distinctly redactional
Marcan material. Otherwise any attempt to prove that Matthew depended on Ur-Mark on the basis of style would rely on circular reasoning.
Mark’s use of Ur-Matthew may have been mediated by oral recitation. Oral and written tradition existed in parallel until the mid-second century, continually informing each other in a manner that need not be strictly linear. Mark himself gives several signs that he favored oral modes of composition, consistent with his reported reluctance to write the Gospel. The absence of a sayings collection in his Gospel is actually a sign that he esteemed oral composition, not that he disdained it. His repetitious phrases, the so-called doublets, of which one or the other or both halves may be found in Matthew and Luke, are strongly characteristic of oral tradition.
Canonical Matthew is a much more literary endeavor, though it relies on oral tradition for much of its content. Ur-Matthew, by contrast, may have used more of an oral mode of composition, as the main literary
sections of Matthew (the infancy narrative, the Sermon on the Mount) may not have been in it. More insight into this question might be obtained if a distinctive style for this source could be identified. The identification of style might also address the question as to whether canonical Matthew, no less than Ur-Matthew, may have been written by the Apostle of that name. Without any extant writings of St. Matthew with which to compare, the question of authorship cannot be verified decisively on the basis of internal evidence alone.
A non-literary nature for the first written Gospel would be consistent with the general reluctance of early Christians to commit the oral Gospel to writing. The subapostolic witnesses attest to their esteem for oral tradition and their preference for it over writing. St. Mark, by some early accounts, wrote the preaching of St. Peter only after much pleading. St. Paul, who spent his life preaching the Gospel, surely knew and recited at least some of the oral tradition, yet practically none of it is in his writings, an evidently deliberate omission. The act of writing did not add authority, but it did provide fixity to the verbal content of the oral Gospel, which continued to exist side by side with the written Gospel. Authority came from the Apostles, who alone had the authority to interpret the Old and New Covenants. Even our early date for Ur-Matthew (c. AD 42) would be over a decade after the earthly life of Christ, consistent with this reluctance to commit the Gospel to writing.
The oral Gospel tradition was less egalitarian than the informal controlled
traditions observed by Bailey, and thus more formal.
Precedence was given to apostles, bishops, elders and eyewitnesses for the preservation and recitation of tradition. Due to the higher literacy among Jewish Christians, we find more signs of textual
thinking in some of the oral Gospel, which again complicates the problem of trying to identify a style and mode of composition for Ur-Matthew.
We cannot prove that canonical Matthew was written before Mark, only that it was independent of Mark, and has as much claim to primitivity as Mark, keeping in mind that more primitive
does not always mean earlier, and that the notion of a primitive
version is inapplicable to oral tradition. The early consensus that Matthew was the first Gospel
may have been based on the date of the first edition rather than the second. Yet there is no external or internal evidence that compels us or strongly inclines us to deny that even canonical Matthew was written before Mark.
We have not shown that Matthew is independent of Luke. If Matthew were literarily dependent on Luke, that would also impugn Matthaean priority. Matthaean dependence on Luke is a minority opinion, as it is a difficult thesis to sustain, but we will address it in a second volume, discussing the composition of the Gospel of Luke and its relation to Matthew.
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The Living Voice: Scepticism Towards the Written Word in Early Christian and in Greco-Roman Texts,in: The Bible in Three Dimensions, eds. D.J.A. Clines, S.E. Fowl, S.E. Porter (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), pp.221-47.
Oral Tradition,in: H. Wansbrough, ed. Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series 64 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), p.19.
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Ancient literacy and the function of the written word in Roman religion,in Humphrey, ed., Literacy, pp.35-58.
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Probabilities as to the So-Called Double Tradition of St. Matthew and St. Luke,in Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), p.99.
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Jesus said to them,A New Coptic Papyrus Fragment. Harvard Theological Review, 107 (2014), pp.131-159.My wife.
The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literaturein: W.O. Walker, ed. The Relationships Among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (San Antonio: Trinity Univ. Press, 1978), pp.33-91.
Memory, Fixity and Genre in Oral Traditional Poetriesin: W.O. Walker, ed. The Relationships Among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (San Antonio: Trinity Univ. Press, 1978), p.453.
Verbal context and memory span for meaningful material.American Journal of Psychology, 65 (1952), 298-300.
Priorités et dépendances dans la tradition synoptique,Recherches de Science Religeuse (1972) 60/4: 535-36.
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Appendix A: Verbal Comparison of Parallel Synoptic Pericopes
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