Trajectories
At this point, we leave the traditional three-Gospel definition of the Problem and broaden it to include the Gospel of John and certain early portions of the Acts of the Apostles.
There are certain developments in early Christian doctrine which seem very likely to have run in one direction rather than another. These developments thus provide strong evidence for the relative age of the Gospels which display them.
For example, It is the tendency for all movements to aggrandize their founding figures, and we may thus expect that the figure of Jesus will receive increasing respect, and be given increasingly higher status, in successive Gospels. So also with Jesus's mother Mary. So also, in the political sphere, with the perception of the center of the Jesus movement, and the location of the appearances of the risen Jesus, as located in Galilee or in Jerusalem. And as the role of Jesus increases, that of his precursor John the Baptist may be expected to diminish. As John himself is made to say in Jn 3:30, "He must increase, but I must decrease."
Not every imaginable doctrinal contrast will serve as a valid trajectory. We know from the letters of Paul that certain issues were not a matter of simple evolution, but were contested at the same time among rival factions within the early Church, the most conspicuous of these being the question of the relation of the new movement to Judaism. It is quite imaginable that two different Gospels written at the same time might advocate opposite sides of this question. Such issues are not likely to yield a useful relative-date result, and we have ignored them accordingly.
- The Aggrandization of Jesus
- The Role of John the Baptist
- The Baptism of Jesus
- The Message of Jesus
- The Magnification of Mary
- Appearances of the Risen Jesus
The tendency of this evidence is to establish as highly probable the directionality
- Mark > Matthew > Luke > Acts > John
This agrees with the three-Gospel solution which we had earlier come to suspect in examining the three parallel versions of the Mustard Seed passage.
It has been claimed that other passages show an equally strong tendency in another direction, and thus refute the Priority of Mark. We will next examine some of these.
25 Sept 2005 / Contact The Project / Exit to Synoptica Page
