Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 80:320 (Oct 1923)
Article: The Synoptic Problem
Author: J. F. Springer

BSac 80:320 (Oct 1923) p. 539

The Synoptic Problem

J. F. Springer

For Christians, the importance of the Synoptic Problem centers upon the fact that a wrong solution is in course of acceptance, and that this wrong solution carries with it a lowered view of the character of the larger part of our record of the deeds and teachings of the Founder of the Christian religion. Everywhere in the world of New Testament scholars—I do not say, however, everywhere in the world of learned Christians—men are adopting the view that in Matthew we have a composite document derived from two or more prior writings, one of which was more or less identical with our Mark. This view is in fact part of the celebrated Two-Document Hypothesis. An immediate corollary to the assumption of a dependent Matthew is the conclusion that someone else than the Apostle Matthew must have been the author. An eye-witness would hardly have been a secondary writer.1

The Two-Document Hypothesis views Matthew and Luke each as derived, in large part, from Mark or a document nearly equivalent, and a hypothetical source consisting largely of discourses. Mark thus becomes the earliest of all these Synoptic Gospels. That his hypothesis has met with wide acceptance may be illustrated by the following excerpts.

“These phenomena of the Synoptical Gospels have given rise to a most protracted and intricate discussion, in which various theories, e. g. of original writings from which our Gospels are drawn, and of the priority of one Gospel or another, from which the rest

BSac 80:320 (Oct 1923) p. 540

were drawn, have been presented and thoroughly sifted. Fortunately, we are at the end of this sifting process, for the most part, and are in possession of its results. Tradition and internal evidence have concurred in giving us two such sources, one of which is the translation into Greek of Matthew’s Logia, or discourses of our Lord, and the other our present Gospel of Mark.” E. P. Gould, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Mark (1896), Introduction, p. xi.

“I am not going to give a history of the ebb and flow of modern criticism; it will be enough to say that the relative priority of Mark is now accepted almost as an axiom by the great majority of scholars who occupy themselves with Gospel problems.” F. G. Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (1906), p. 38.

“After 70 years of fervid debate, the fundamental proposition of this theory, Mark, the literary groundwork of Matthew and Luke, is now admitted. The second principle, Matthew and Luke independent combiners of Mark with another evangelic writing (Q) principally ma...