Warring States Project
Synoptica

We here take up the Problem of the Synoptic Gospels, one of the most famous unsolved problems in all of philology, and the equally famous problem to which it is ancillary: the Historical Jesus. Our first contribution to the Problem is to redefine it:

• (1) We widen it. To the three Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, Luke), we add John, which often departs from the Synoptics, but is certainly related to them. We also consider the noncanonical Gospels, for hints about doctrinal development in other directions.
• (2) We acknowledge authorship. The writers of these texts are not scribes (Luke, for instance, is not a failed copy of Mark), but people with a point of view. Their theological tendencies and their preferred modes of expression are part of the situation.
• (3) We recognize text formation. One or more of these texts may be accretional rather than integral: the result of a series of authorial steps or gradual enhancements, rather than a the product of a single authorial impulse.

Relation to Traditional Text Criticism

The kind of protracted authorship envisioned in the last of these points may produce internal conflicts and inconsistencies which are not the result of scribal error, and do not show up as manuscript variants, since they occur before what we call Point P: the moment when the text has gone public and begun to be copied, and when the process of scribal corruption begins:

Authorial Zone (One Accretional Text) > POINT P > Public Zone (Many Manuscript Copies)

Changes during the authorial or formative stage can be detected by a process analogous to text criticism, but operating on a single text. Problems of directionality are judged by an extended Tischendorf principle: that reading (or that version of a story) is earliest from which the others can most readily be seen as derived. The Synoptic Problem is essentially a directionality problem, but now with a twist: if one of the Gospels is accretional, it may be both earlier (in its early portions) and later (in its later portions) than another. Then determining the directionality of one part of A (as against B) does not implicate all of A. The usual definition of the Synoptic Problem, which assumes that the texts are integral and thus can relate to each other in only one way, cannot cope with these complexities, if they happen to be present.

Scope

The NT texts, not just the Synoptic Gospels, are our best evidence for the early Christianity. We will ultimately consider most of them. The details of such an investigation are of technical interest for philology, and we undertake it here as a methodological exercise. The implications for the evolution of Christian doctrine are profound, but will be left for other investigators.

• Text Preliminaries
  • Western Non-Interpolations
• The Synoptic Problem
  • The 25 Possible Synoptic Theories
    • Limiting The Possibilities: The Mustard Seed
  • Synoptic Trajectories
  • Gospel Priority
    • The Sanders List of Passages Challenging Markan Priority
• The Gospels
  • Mark
  • Luke
    • The Fitzmyer List of Passages Displaced in Luke
  • Matthew
  • John
• The Conjectural Q
  • Inventory
  • Questions of Relative Age
• John the Baptist
• Paul
  • The Genuine Epistles
  • Acts

• Embedded Texts

  • The Philippians Hymn
  • The Baptist Origin Story
• The Teachings of Jesus
  • The Didache
  • The Epistle of Barnabas
  • The Epistle of James
  • The Gospel of Peter

• Synthesis

  • John the Baptist
  • The Historical Jesus
  • The Earliest Christianity
• Final Summary
• Apparatus
• Index
• Internet Links (in the Reference section)

More generally, the Project collaborates with other scholars at Conferences:

17 Mar 2007 / Contact The Project / Exit to Home Page