The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament (6 page)

With respect to the Gospels, it can be said that the evangelists preserved the authentic
voice
of Jesus, even though their reports are not always
verbatim transcripts
of his exact words. The Pontifical Biblical Commission has acknowledged this by saying that the authors of the Gospels employed "different words to express what he said, not keeping to the very letter, but nevertheless preserving the sense" (
Sancta Mater Ecclesia
9). So the essence of Jesus' message is accurately expressed in the Gospels even though there are variations in the way each evangelist wrote it down.

(3) 
When it comes to reconciling Gospel accounts of the same event, it is important to distinguish between contradictory testimony and complementary testimony. One is dealing with contradictory testimony when two reports of a single occurrence are in direct conflict and cannot be reconciled. For example, if one author places an individual at a specific time and location, and another author places the same individual at a different location but at the exact same time, then it must be presumed that at least one of the witnesses is either lying or mistaken. Both cannot be true at the same time.

On the other hand, complementary testimony is non-contradictory. If two authors describe an individual engaged in two different activities at the same time and place, we need not conclude that either is lying or mistaken, for the situation may be more complex. Suppose one witness says that Jesus was "teaching" at sunrise, while another witness claims that he was "walking" to Jerusalem at that time. Neither of these activities makes the other impossible or even unlikely, for Jesus could have been doing both at the same time. Being complementary rather than contradictory testimony, both reports can be taken as an accurate description of reality. The challenge is to piece together a coherent picture of what took place in all its complexity.

(4) 
Attempts to reconcile disparate Gospel accounts must reckon with the fact that all historical writing is necessarily selective and incomplete. No one can record everything that takes place at a given moment in time, so a complete history of any event is strictly impossible. By the same token, a partial history of any given event is not thereby a falsification of the facts. An nonexhaustive report, mentioning certain details while omitting others, is not at all the same as an inaccurate report. Of course, it is sometimes the case that excluding facts can lead to a distorted or misleading account of events. But this is not always or necessarily so. Some facts may not be pertinent to the purposes of a particular author's account of an event, so excluding those facts does not falsify the account.

(5) 
Measuring the truth of the Gospels against other historical records of antiquity is a delicate and difficult matter. Whether from new archeological finds or from literary monuments long possessed, historical data sometimes present biblical interpreters with conflicting testimony about the past. These are the difficulties that often make headlines, with skeptics claiming that the story of the Bible (or the Catholic Church's interpretation of it) has been disproved by the facts of history.

Sensationalists who make such claims tend to overlook two important points. First, the facts of a given case are always bound up with one's interpretation of those facts. The objective evidence of historical and archeological study requires a subjective assessment of that evidence. The same is true with biblical interpretation. As a result, some of the contradictions said to exist between the Gospels and other ancient sources are, on closer inspection, more apparent than real. That is because some (or all) of the relevant evidence may have been given a faulty interpretation. Second, many interpreters are guilty of a methodological bias against the veracity of Scripture. Thus, when a contradiction is found between a Gospel passage and another historical document, the latter is often given the benefit of the doubt while the biblical testimony is declared erroneous. At the very least, it should be kept in mind that ancient writers, being fallible human beings, were prone to make mistakes and to experience slips of the memory, just as we are today. Only the Scriptures can be treated as absolutely reliable when properly interpreted.

(6) 
Finally, it must be said that humility and patience are called for when dealing with problematic passages in the Gospels. Humility is always essential when handling Scripture, for it is the inspired witness to God's love for us and the revealed record of his will for our lives. It is not our business to stand in judgment over the written word; rather, it is the word that stands in judgment over us. Likewise, patience is needed when wrestling with interpretive challenges and working toward solutions. Difficulties are not in the Bible by some oversight of God's Providence. They are opportunities to submit our minds to the mystery of his revelation and to trust that all things find their answer in him.

Relationship among the Synoptic Gospels
   One of the great enigmas of biblical scholarship concerns the relationship among the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For the first eighteen centuries of Christian history, theologians made every effort to harmonize these Gospels with each other and with the Gospel of John in order to defend their testimony against charges of inconsistency and internal contradiction. Modern times, however, have witnessed a shift in focus, with much research now devoted to investigating the
sources
utilized by the evangelists and the probable
sequence
in which their Gospels were composed.

Today the effort to understand the relationship among the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is known as the Synoptic Problem. These three Gospels are called "synoptic" because their contents, order, language, and narrative structures are remarkably similar, making it easy to arrange the Gospel texts in parallel columns and examine them side-by-side (the Greek
synopsis
means "view together"). The "problem" is how to explain the similarities and differences among them. The first question is whether a dependence on oral tradition can sufficiently explain these phenomena, or whether it is more likely that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are interrelated at a literary level. Most scholars maintain that a literary relationship best explains why the Synoptic Gospels are so similar. Thus, studies of the Synoptic Problem typically seek to determine which of the three Synoptic Gospels was written first, second, and third, and which evangelist(s) relied on the work of his predecessor(s).

Proposing a reasonable solution to the Synoptic Problem requires a painstaking analysis of the internal data of the Gospels, an evaluation of the external testimony of Christian tradition, and a convincing explanation of how the Gospels came together to reach their final form. Numerous solutions have been put forward to explain the Synoptic Problem, but four main proposals have attracted most of the attention among scholars over the last two centuries.

(1) 
The Augustinian Hypothesis.
The first detailed examination of Gospel parallels was undertaken at the turn of the fifth century by St. Augustine, who maintained that the order of the Gospels in the canon (Matthew-Mark-Luke-John) represents the order of Gospel composition (
Harmony of the Gospels
3, 1, 2). On this paradigm, Matthew wrote his Gospel first, then Mark wrote an epitome or summary of Matthew, and then Luke wrote his Gospel by combining elements of Matthew and Mark with further traditions he had collected. Few scholars favor the hypothesis today, yet this was the dominant view of Christian scholarship until the nineteenth century.

Support for the Augustinian order of composition is claimed on several grounds.
(a)
Before the time of St. Augustine, this sequence was asserted by Origen of Alexandria (cited in Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
6, 25, 3-6) and seemingly also by St. Irenaeus (
Against Heresies
3, 1, 1). Likewise, the most common arrangement to appear in the ancient codices (large volumes in which the Gospels were bound together under one cover) was Matthew-Mark-Luke-John.
(b)
Early Christian writings that say nothing about the order of Mark and Luke are nevertheless unanimous in claiming that Matthew was the first Gospel to be written.
(c)
It has been said that the Jewishness of Matthew's Gospel favors its priority in the sequence of Gospel composition. In other words, it is difficult to imagine that a Gospel written for Gentiles (such as Mark or Luke) would have appeared before one that addressed the needs of Jewish Christians living in Israel. Historically, the Church's mission in Palestine was well underway before its mission to the Gentiles even began.
(d)
Several passages in Matthew, noted for their pronounced Semitic features, arguably represent the most primitive form of the tradition about Jesus preserved in the Gospels. One example is the exchange between Jesus and Peter in Mt 16:17-19, a passage that exhibits antithetical parallelism, Aramaic wordplay, and traditional Jewish idioms. The parallel passages in Mark and Luke are much abbreviated, apparently eliminating these Semitic features to make the exchange more intelligible to a Gentile readership.
(e)
Though most modern scholars think Mark was written before Matthew and that Matthew made an effort to resolve ambiguities that he found in Mark, there are places where the opposite sequence appears to be more probable. Perhaps the most obvious example is Jesus' response to Caiaphas regarding his messianic identity. It is hard to believe that Mark preserves the original wording of the reply when he records Jesus saying "I am" (Mk 14:62) and that Matthew later changed this to read "You have said so" (Mt 26:64). In all likelihood, Matthew has preserved the actual wording of Jesus' affirmation, and it was Mark who paraphrased his response to bring out its meaning more clearly.

(2) 
The Two-Gospel Hypothesis.
This solution to the Synoptic Problem proposes the order Matthew-Luke-Mark. The claim is that Matthew wrote first, that Luke wrote second, drawing upon Matthew and other sources, and that Mark wrote third, producing an abridged conflation of Matthew and Luke. The Two-Gospel hypothesis was originally known as the Griesbach hypothesis

after the scholar who developed it in the late eighteenth century, Johann Griesbach. The Two-Gospel hypothesis remains a minority view today, but it has enjoyed a surge of academic interest beginning in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Supporters of this hypothesis argue their case along several lines.
(a)
The universal tradition that Matthew wrote first is claimed in its favor, as is a statement from St. Clement of Alexandria (quoted in Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
6, 14, 5-7), who says that the two Gospels having genealogies, namely Matthew and Luke, were "written first" (though the verb in question can also mean "published openly").
(b)
Those arguments which support the priority of Matthew to Mark (noted above as
c, d,
and
e
) also offer support for this view.
(c)
Placing Mark third is said to account best for the fact that his Gospel parallels Matthew and Luke when Matthew and Luke run parallel to each other and that Mark typically runs parallel either to Matthew or Luke in places where Matthew and Luke diverge from one another. Thus, as a matter of compositional policy, Mark almost never departs from his predecessors when they agree, nor does he go his own way when his predecessors lack parallel accounts, for he always follows one or the other.
(d)
Proponents note that literary features characteristic of Mark's Gospel occur with far less frequency in Matthew and Luke (e.g., the use of the historical present tense to describe past events and the widespread use of adverbs such as
euthus,
"immediately", and
palin,
"again"). It is easier to explain this phenomenon if Mark is placed third rather than first or second in the order of composition.
(e)
Luke is said to have made several passes through Matthew's Gospel, each time gathering up material that he wished to arrange and present in a different way. Many of the sayings of Jesus found in both Matthew and Luke were not repeated a third time by Mark, who wished to focus more on the Lord's actions than on his teachings.

(3)
The Two-Source Hypothesis.
This solution maintains that Mark's Gospel was the first to be written and that Matthew and Luke made independent use of Mark as their primary source of information about the life of Jesus. In addition, because Matthew and Luke have roughly 230 verses of material in common that are not found in Mark, many scholars contend that a second source document, comprised mainly of Jesus' sayings, was also utilized by Matthew and Luke (called Q, an abbreviation for the German
Quelle,
meaning "source"). Though no Q document has survived from antiquity, it is argued that the substance of Q can be reconstructed from the material shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. Along with the source documents Mark and Q, Matthew and Luke allegedly had other traditions at their disposal as well, usually designated M and L. Developed in the nineteenth century and further refined in the twentieth, the Two-Source hypothesis (also known as the Marcan priority or Oxford hypothesis) is the most widely accepted solution to the Synoptic Problem in modern scholarship.

Supporters claim that several observations are best accounted for by the Two-Source hypothesis.
(a)
Mark writes in a rough and heavily Semitic Greek, whereas Matthew and Luke write in a much smoother and more idiomatic Greek. Given this phenomenon, it is more likely that Matthew and Luke polished and improved the language of Mark than that Mark diminished the more elegant diction of his sources.
(b)
Statistical analysis indicates that more than 80 percent of Mark's Gospel is paralleled in Matthew, and more than 50 percent is paralleled in Luke. It is thus easier to account for Matthew and Luke writing after Mark, since they had so much more to say, than to envision Mark summarizing what was already stated in Matthew and Luke.
(c)
Advocates argue that one can readily explain why Matthew and Luke made editorial adjustments to material taken from Mark (called "redactions"), but it is not so clear why Mark would have changed material drawn from Matthew and Luke. Especially mysterious is Mark's omission of the infancy narratives along with much of the teaching of Jesus that appears in Matthew and Luke.
(d)
Proponents hold that Matthew and Luke either omitted or clarified certain details about Jesus that readers of Mark would likely find embarrassing, confusing, or hard to explain (see, e.g., Mk 6:5; 10:18). According to the argument, it is difficult to explain why Mark would have introduced these features into his Gospel if he were following Matthew and possibly Luke.