The Synoptic Problem Part 1: Introduction
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- Опубліковано 17 кві 2023
- In this video, I give a broad overview of the Synoptic problem and its relevance to Christian apologetics. I explain what the problem is supposed to be and I offer a survey of some of the most commonly proposed solutions to it. This video sets the stage for a thorough critique of the arguments for Markan priority and a two-part positive case for Matthean priority.
Sources:
The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze - Mark Goodacre
The Synoptic Problem: Four Views - Stanley E. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer (eds)
Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels - Robert L. Thomas (ed)
The Two-Source Hypothesis: A Critical Appraisal - Arthur J. Bellinzoni, Jr (ed)
The Case Against Q - Mark Goodacre
Redating Matthew, Mark, & Luke - John Wenham
The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis - William R. Farmer
The Progressive Publication of Matthew - B. Ward Powers
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David, I like the word puzzle rather than problem. Very good insight.
I prefer "The Synoptic Pattern".
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Great job. Looking forward to the rest.
I finally get a comment from the premier McGrewpie apologists on one of my videos! 🤩
@@faithbecauseofreason8381😅
Excellent work as usual, brother… Can’t wait for the rest of the series.
I do have two questions:
1. What about Christ statement that the spirit would give them remembrance of the things that he said?
John 14:26 (NASB95) “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
2. As far as the similarities in translation, is it not a possible scenario that one person was responsible for translating all three Gospels into Greek?
@All Things Christian
1. I'm sure that the Holy Spirit did bring the teachings of Jesus to the memories of the apostles as they were writing the Gospels. But Jesus never promised that the Holy Spirit was going to bring his teachings to their memories verbatim. And if that is the explanation one tries to appeal to for verbatim agreements, then they have to stare down a lot of the issues that I raised in my response to Farnell (i.e. why did the Holy Spirit choose to bring only some of Jesus' teachings to their memory verbatim instead of all of them?).
2. I guess this is logically possible. But it seems unlikely. In the first place, we have no reason to think that the Gospels of Mark or Luke were ever translated to begin with (there's a chance that Matthew was). And we also don't have any reason to think that a single person was involved with all three of the synoptic Gospels. And it's dubious that it explains verbatim agreement in any case because it doesn't really tell us why the translator didn't translate everything verbatim. Remember, it is the differences as well as the agreements that needs to be explained.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 excellent points.
Outstanding introduction to the Synoptic problem.
Since none of these are viable explanations for what we see a new explanation is needed. I look forward to the rest of the series.
Thank you.
I am wondering are you able to articulate why, at the very least, Markan priority has no viable explanatory power?
@@paulallenscards Every Biblical scholar I am aware of agrees that the Eucharist first appears in 1st Corinthians and then virtually word for word in the Greek in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. The question never asked is "How did Mark or either of the other Synoptics authors get a hold of 1st Corinthians?
The only possible solution to the Synoptic Problem I see is to apply the Documentary\Supplementary hypothesis that is currently in vogue with the Torah to it.
1st Corinthians 11:24 When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me.” 25 In the same way he also took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me.”
Mark 14:22 As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed, he broke it, and gave to them, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body.” 23 He took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them. They all drank of it. 24 He said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.
Matthew 26:26 As they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks for[a] it, and broke it. He gave to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 He took the cup, gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, “All of you drink it, 28 for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins.
Luke 22:19 He took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in memory of me.” 20 Likewise, he took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Shalom
I think this is excellent and the channel is underrated. I’ve done my own analysis of this issue, but with a slightly different approach. I’ve come to the same conclusions as this and it’s hard to avoid. It frustrates me that so many just concede Markan Priority given how weak the arguments are…
Proposing that Matthew, not Mark, was the first Gospel written, John Wenham offers a fresh look at an intractable problem as well as an interesting perspective on the inner workings of the early Christian church. Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem by John Wenham (Author)
It's cited in the video
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Great. Blessings.
man this was great, the only problem is how long my "to read" list gets when I watch your videos. lol
I am expensive friend to keep around 😅
Great video! Do you know any scholars who hold to the gospels not being anonymous?
Yes. See my video "Who Wrote the Gospels? The Case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John". I cite numerous scholars who reject the idea that the Gospels were ever anonymous and I critique scholars who make the opposite claim.
You forgot the Lukian Priori view held by the Jerusalem School. Personally, I affirm the Two-Gospel hypothesis, I do think that if one is going to represent the landscape of the solutions to the Synoptic Problem/Riddle, that they must layout all of the solutions given.
I didn't forget it. My intention was never to lay out the entire landscape of options with respect to the Synoptic problem. I was simply laying out the major options (in the past and in the present) in order to give viewers a feel for the issues in a relatively short, introductory video. The Jerusalem School is a fringe perspective which has never been considered a major player in Synoptic research. This is why I did not mention it.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 k, fair enough.
Nice introduction, well done.
Thanks for watching
Couldn't the so-called "ur-gospel" simply be early fragments and drafts of Matthew and Luke (and possibly even writings of Mark) that were circulated through letters and other correspondence between the early church?
These sources don't have to necessarily even be "lost", as they could be preserved among the various scroll fragments that we have, identified as portions of manuscripts of the texts. Although most of them being lost seems reasonable, considering the early church would have preserved texts by meticulously copying them on scrolls and compiling them into larger codexes: they wouldn't have thought that they were "losing" proto-Luke, because they were preserving it in canonical Luke and saw nothing wrong in incorporating parts of Matthew into canonical Luke.
In other words, neither Matthew and Luke has to have been "first": each one could be "prior" in some sense to the other, each being published progressively in bits and pieces.
Another possibility is simply that the versions we have of each gospel that survive could be versions that were compiled posterior to the publication of all three. There could have been a proto-Matthew, proto-Mark, proto-Luke and maybe other fragments (sayings gospels etc), and the canonical-Matthew, canonical-Mark, canonical-Luke that are passed down follow mostly the original content while incorporating and being influenced by the other proto-versions of the gospels.
In other words, the versions that we survive of Matthew, Mark and Luke could be later versions that in some sense are each "fan edit" versions of the gospels incorporating some elements from the other already published gospels.
This would only make sense: it was very expensive to copy texts, so it would stand to reason that when someone is creating a new text, they would either redact it for some specific purpose, or compile together other sources to expand it for the obviously purpose of having a more complete testimony of material.
Interesting video. Do you plan to make some video about presp again in the future or did you decide to move on from this topic?
I've already done two videos on presup
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Yes, I watched them and found them quite instructive. But I said "again."
@Cosmology, Philosophy and Pharmacology perhaps someday. I would like to show why Anderson and Welty's argument from logic doesn't work (though that's not exactly a presup argument) and why the problem of the one and the many doesn't argue for the Trinity (contra Van Til). But I'd have to lay a lot of metaphysical groundwork defending my own positions on propositions and abstracta first.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 That sounds very interesting. I hope you'll do that one day!
I kind of believe the Augustinian theory with one caveat, I believe there was also a Q-gospel that was oral & never committed to paper.
Q is typically understood to be a written source which is supposed to explain the verbatim agreements between Matthew and Luke
I actually thought you abandoned this channel for some reason.
No, just took a break due to some life changes
Synoptic problem nearly made me lose my faith (along with other modern scholarship) thanks to you and others.
Are you saying that you nearly lost your faith thanks to me and others?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 punctuation not my strong point 😅
I would like to direct your attention to another hypothesis, Matthean Posteriority with Markan Priority, as advocated for by Robert K. MacEwen or Alan Garrow. The main argument is that Matthew has the best systematic order of the synoptic gospels: Mark and Luke would have to take that order apart to write their gospels. It makes more sense that Matthew took their gospels and put his own order into the material.
. . . You argue against Markan Priority, which is the dominant scholarly opinion today - I will have a look at your video against it. (Q is a widely taught hypothesis, but it is not dominant.)
I'm familiar with this position. My cohost on my Christian Evidentialism podcast actually takes this perspective. I didn't mention it here because it's still held by only a small minority of scholars.
Please don't go on the route of the two-gospel hypothesis. Markan Priority is very clear from an analysis of the Greek text and the patristic sources actually don't say that our canonical gospel of Matthew was written first.
In my next video, I will argue that Markan priority is not anything like clear from an analysis of the text.
There is a problem
Perhaps the supposition that Jesus wasn't speaking Greek is simply wrong. Many hellenized Jews spoke Greek. Jesus was probably one of them.
Possible, albeit not probable. But even if we assume this, that doesn't explain why there isn't always verbatim agreement.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I'm not entirely sure the concept of a "verbatim quote" existed in Jesus' day. It seems to me from reading the Bible that the authors were mainly interested in conveying the ideas, rather than the exact spoken words, at least mostly. But Peter Williams does give some evidence Jesus spoke greek.
@uncensoredpilgrims but in point of fact we do have substantial portions of verbatim agreement among the Synoptics. If one does not think that there is literary dependence among the Synoptics, then some other account of these verbatim agreements is needed.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Just to be clear, I'm not really opposed to the idea of some pre-existing material to the Synoptics. Could be the gospel in Hebrew that Papias said Matthew originally penned. I haven't watched through your whole series yet, so I don't know if that's the view you hold or not.
First
Second.
Seven hundred and thirteenth.
And Jesus prayed, "My Gun, my Gun, why have you forsaken me?" (Smith 15:16 and Wesson 27:46) Thanks to the Trump-Republican-Jesus cult I've been shown the true love of Gun.
Not sure what this has to do with the video...
Rejecting a religion because you don’t like republicans is pretty silly.
Seems motivated by prejudice and tribalism.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 there are people who are crazy, that's common