The Progressive Publication of Matthew

Index

1

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ALL ABOUT

An overview of the Progressive Publication of Matthew Hypothesis, with a presentation of the five basic propositions to which the evidence points.

The Synoptic Problem is an important matter. . . . When we recognize the solution to the Synoptic Problem to be a central building block in our understanding of how to answer questions about the trustworthiness of the Gospels and the distinctive theologies of each evangelist, we cannot help but appreciate its importance.

—Craig Blomberg

(advocate of Markan Priority),

in Black and Beck (2001, 40)

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION

This book is about the relationship between the first three Gospels in the New Testament. In the pages to follow I give you two good reasons why it is not worth your while to bother with this book—it is simply a waste of your valuable time. But I also give you a response to those reasons. And you might decide that the response is in fact better than the two good reasons, so that this book is worth looking at after all. But first of all, I need to clarify what I am discussing in this book.

The first three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—are often called the Synoptic Gospels or simply the Synoptics. The word synoptic means to look at or see together, that is, to compare things side by side. When you do this, you will immediately be impressed by two striking features about the Synoptics: their similarities, the things they have in common; and their differences, the places where they are unlike each other—and occasions where they seem to contradict each other.

These similarities are at times quite remarkable and cry out for explanation. There are places where two and even three Synoptics are identical, ranging from several words to entire sentences. Now when this occurs in a teaching that Jesus gave or a story that he told, then the explanation could simply be that this is indeed what was said (or reported) and thus the authors got it right—whatever their sources. But if it occurs in a piece of narrative, a description that some author has written, then this explanation is not adequate and we need to look for another. The most obvious one that comes to mind is that of a common source: either one Gospel copied from the other, or two of them used a third source, whether written or oral.

But the differences between the Synoptics are also at times quite remarkable and cry out for explanation. If one used another—if A used B—why does A change so much of B? By accident? To make a point? For correction? Because of some external consideration, such as a later church tradition or doctrine? All these possibilities and more have been advocated in the wealth of literature that discusses these matters. This issue is often called the Synoptic Problem, and these Synoptic differences are so great and so varied that a large number of solutions to the Synoptic Problem have been proposed to account for them.

The differences are of three main kinds: (1) differences of points of detail in the stories in which they are found; (2) differences of content in the stories overall, including some stories or units of material—called pericopes—found in only one Gospel, others in two, and still others in all three; and (3) where two or three of the Synoptics do contain the same pericopes, differences in Synoptic order, that is, differences in the sequence of events they record.

An explanation of Synoptic relationships (i.e., a solution to the Synoptic Problem) needs to address all these Synoptic features, and it will be—or ought to be—judged on the basis of its explanatory power. A proposed solution to the Synoptic Problem is valuable only to the extent that it can supply a convincing and satisfactory account of what we observe in these Gospels.

IS THIS BOOK WORTHWHILE?

There are two good reasons for not reading any further in this book. The first of these is that the Synoptic Problem was solved years ago so scholars in general agree on the solution. Thus G. M. Styler said (1962, 223), After a century or more of discussion, it has come to be accepted by scholars almost as axiomatic that Mark is the oldest of the three Synoptic Gospels and that it was used by Matthew and Luke as a source. This has come to be regarded as ‘the one absolutely assured result’ of the study of the Synoptic Problem.

The second reason for dismissing the issue is that it doesn’t really seem to matter anyway. We can just go on and read the Gospels and use them without bothering with any question of relationships between them. Since all three were inspired by the Holy Spirit, we can just take each one as it stands.

My response to the first reason is that the Markan Priority Hypothesis is widely accepted, not because it explains everything satisfactorily, but because it seems to do a better job than any other alternative. There are indeed many problems with Markan Priority as an explanation of the data and with the traditional reasons given in support of it—reasons going back to B. H. Streeter, who gave it its classic form in 1924.

It deserves to be noted that a substantial volume of literature exists—some from years ago and some of recent origin—that casts grave doubt on the validity of Markan Priority. The individual arguments for Markan Priority have all been tested, assessed, and rebutted by a variety of authors. A string of monographs and detailed studies has exposed the weaknesses of the grounds for the Markan Priority Hypothesis, which has difficulty in explaining observable Synoptic data apart from a resort to subjective opinion or dependence on coincidence. The snag is that while it is pretty easy to find holes in the case for Markan Priority, there have been similar holes in the other explanations that have been offered.

Styler himself recognized that the Markan Priority Hypothesis was not without its problems. But he holds firmly to Markan Priority because it has fewer problems than any other explanation. For example, Styler demolished the view of Bishop B. C. Butler (1951, 90–92), who contended that the order of writing is Matthew-Mark-Luke, and said about this view, Butler’s treatment of this leaves me quite unconvinced (ibid., 228). In summary, Styler wrote, "Our explanation of his favourite cases may be cumbersome; but his explanation of our favourite cases is incredible" (ibid.).

Styler concluded, Until some less incredible explanation is forthcoming, the natural conclusion that Mark is prior to Matthew will continue to hold the field (ibid., 231). In my judgment Styler’s analysis remains valid. Most scholars hold to Markan Priority with or without postulating another source designated Q to explain Matthew-Luke agreements. But this is not because they cannot see the problems with that hypothesis; it is because Markan Priority seems to hold up as a better explanation than any other alternative and can be said to cover more of the observable data.

If we are going to adhere to Markan Priority, honesty demands that we at least be aware of the flimsy and dubious nature of the foundation on which it rests. This book explains all the arguments known to me for Markan Priority and summarizes the rebuttal of those arguments that competent scholars have given over the years. The reader can then judge whether any objective, factual, valid support for this hypothesis remains. I also offer an explanation of Synoptic interrelationships that I believe answers all the problems that exist both with Markan Priority and the other hypotheses, and this explanation accords both with internal observable data and external evidence.

But what about the second objection, that it doesn’t really seem to matter? Actually, it matters seriously, for several important reasons.

First, at the academic level this is a significant issue in New Testament research that has had a focus on Gospel scholarship for more than two centuries. If there is now a hypothesis propounded that has greater explanatory power than those offered so far, then it should be examined and assessed and a verdict given on its validity. All kinds of repercussions flow from the explanation one adopts for Synoptic differences. For example, certain variations of the literary interdependence hypothesis will push one toward giving the Gospels a late date, which in turn affects one’s approach to questions of authorship, which interacts with one’s assessment of how close in time the Gospel writings are to the events they record—which then becomes (for some scholars) a measure of their reliability.

In 2000 D. Black and D. Beck convened a conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary that gathered together (to quote the conveners) some of the world’s leading experts in the field of New Testament studies (2001, 13). The purpose was to assess the current state of scholarship relating to the Synoptic Problem. The papers presented at that conference have been published (2001) with the title Rethinking the Synoptic Problem, edited by D. A. Black and D. R. Beck. One point of consensus amongst the differing viewpoints expressed at the conference was the crucial nature of this issue in New Testament scholarship. C. Blomberg expressed this consensus when he wrote (Black and Beck 2001, 40) that the Synoptic Problem is an important matter. . . . When we recognize the solution to the Synoptic Problem to be a central building block in our understanding of how to answer questions about the trustworthiness of the Gospels and the distinctive theologies of each evangelist, we cannot help but appreciate its importance.

Second, at the practical and pastoral level, what are we to make of the Gospel accounts where they differ? For example, when Jairus the synagogue ruler came to Jesus, was his daughter still alive (though close to death), or already dead (Mark 5:23 and Luke 8:42 compared with Matt 9:18)? And regarding the rich ruler who came to Jesus, was he still young, or does his claim to have kept the commandments from the time of his youth indicate that he was young no longer (Matt 19:20,22 compared with Mark 10:20 and Luke 18:21)? Did Jesus encounter blind Bartimaeus when entering or leaving Jericho (Luke 18:35 compared with Matt 20:29 and Mark 10:46)?

When teaching from one of these stories, one can avoid these problems by simply choosing one of the Gospel accounts and ignoring the others. While considering two or three accounts of the same event, one could say that all of the accounts are quite independent—there was no literary copying at all, and the differences in the stories are exactly the kind that would be found between the accounts of any two (or three) witnesses of the same event. Fair enough, this complete independence view could account for the Synoptic differences, but what about the remarkable similarities of wording and pericope order one often encounters in the Synoptics?

When proposing that the accounts are independent, one has begun seeking an explanation for those similarities and differences. And this is exactly what this present book is about: examining the Gospel material and seeking an explanation that accounts for the observable data.

At the 2000 Synoptic Problem conference referred to above, there were three points of agreement among all participants: (1) the central importance of this issue, as already mentioned; (2) the Complete Independence view of the three Synoptics does not hold up in the light of the data we have; and (3) Mark is clearly the middle factor between the two major Synoptics, so that there are two basic hypotheses that correspond with the data: (a) Mark was written first and was used by Matthew and Luke (i.e., some version of Markan Priority); or Mark was written third and used Matthew and Luke as sources (i.e., some version of Markan Posteriority, or Markan Dependence on the other two Gospels). S. McKnight summed it up this way: Whether first or third, Mark is the middle factor. . . . We are reasonably confident that Matthew, Mark and Luke are related at the literary level and that it is highly likely that they are mutually dependent, however one might see that relationship or set of relationships (Black and Beck 2001, 76–77).

McKnight’s own position (ibid., 67) is that the so-called proofs of Markan Priority put forward by B. H. Streeter in 1924 are not decisive for Markan Priority as against Markan Dependence, and that either explanation is possible. The choice between them is to be made on the basis of probability. When weighing alternative explanations, he said, We are dealing with probabilities, not possibilities. I don’t rule out the possibilities. I only ask which is more probable (ibid., 86). McKnight’s assessment of the evidence brings him down on the side of Markan Priority, which by his own admission he maintained because of the balance of probabilities.

In fact, McKnight asked in 2000 (see Black and Beck 2001, 80, 83, 89–90, 95), as Styler did in 1962 (ibid., 232), Where is the more convincing alternative? I am offering, for your consideration, such an alternative to Markan Priority.

In putting this alternative forward, I draw attention to the way that scholars investigating the Synoptic Problem throughout the years seem to agree on the acceptance of one fundamental presupposition. They differ as to the order and interrelationship of the Synoptics; they differ concerning the nature, scope, contents, language, date, and so forth, of the sources, written and oral, lying behind the Synoptics; but they all seem to accept that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written (or, at least, were published) in some particular order, and the nature of the Synoptic Problem is to decide, on the basis of the evidence, what that order was.

This presupposition, regarded virtually as axiomatic, was stated explicitly by W. Farmer (1976, 199) in this way:

However important the part oral tradition and other written sources may have played in the composition of the Synoptic Gospels, the problem of determining which was written first, which second, and which third still persists. One of the three was written before the other two. One was written after the first, and before the third. And one was written after the other two.

But my question would be, Is this necessarily so? I suggest that the key to the Synoptic Problem lies in the recognition that one of the Gospels was written and published in stages, and that Gospel was Matthew. In other words, Matthew’s Gospel had its beginnings in a series of separate documents authored by the apostle Matthew over a period of some years, which thereafter were circulating independently in the churches before being edited and expanded by this same apostle Matthew into the Gospel we now have.

Thus the distinguishing characteristic of the position I am presenting is its proposal of the progressive publication of Matthew. To indicate this and to differentiate this hypothesis from others with which it partly agrees, I have referred to it throughout this book as the Progressive Publication Hypothesis.

It is well worthwhile, then, to see if this new Synoptic hypothesis can do a better job of accounting for the observable data, to see if it has greater explanatory power than the other hypotheses. Indeed, I would contend that when this hypothesis is seriously examined, it will be seen that it meshes well with what we know of the situation in the early church and with the external evidence of church history, and that it explains all the observable data of the Synoptic Gospels.

I intend in this book to indicate how this hypothesis derives from several propositions, which I submit are abundantly supported by the evidence and which together offer the most convincing explanation of all the observable data. This is a new hypothesis in that it has not been presented before in this manner, with its components assembled and defended in these propositions. But almost all of these individual components have in fact been put forward and often advocated vigorously over the decades by competent Gospel scholars, as I have demonstrated in the following pages. My purpose here is to bring these components all together, to show how they interrelate, and to draw conclusions from them.

With this in mind, I have provided an outline of this hypothesis in the remainder of this chapter. I indicate the main areas of observable data with which it interlocks, so that its overall cohesiveness can be seen. Then in the following chapters I look in rather more detail at the evidence on which it rests. I indicate where and how it is superior to other hypotheses, including how it will explain what they do not. I examine several key Synoptic passages that are much more convincingly explained on this basis. I also show how it offers a simple answer to one of the greatest Synoptic enigmas: the order of pericopes in all three Synoptic Gospels.

THE FIVE PROPOSITIONS OF THE PROGRESSIVE PUBLICATION HYPOTHESIS

This section describes the five propositions on which this hypothesis rests. The first proposition is that Matthew responded to a growing need with initial written accounts of Christ’s life. In Jerusalem, the apostle Matthew produced, between the time of Christ and about AD 60, a series of short accounts of different episodes from the life and teachings of Jesus. Of all the eyewitnesses known to us, Matthew would have been preeminently the best qualified to produce written records of Christ’s life. As a former Roman customs official at Capernaum on the Great West Road, the main trade route from Syria and the East to the Mediterranean, he of necessity would have been fluent in Greek and Aramaic, and probably in Latin and Hebrew as well, and he would have been able to read and write—a far from universal accomplishment in those days. Many scholars have recognized these facts (see R. H. Gundry 1975, 174; J. N. Sevenster 1968, 176–91; and the references they give).

Shorthand had been in use for some time in the ancient world, and it would be a reasonable expectation that Matthew knew and used one of the available shorthand systems in his official taxation work. It is not unlikely that Matthew used these skills in making notes of Christ’s deeds and teachings at the time they occurred. The development and use of shorthand in the ancient world has been discussed by many scholars (e.g., E. J. Goodspeed 1959, 86ff., 108ff.; Gundry, ibid., 182; W. Hendriksen 1973, numerous places; B. Gerhardsson 1998, 148–56).

in this and similar passages means, of oral or written tradition: hand down, pass on, transmit, relate, teach (BDAG 762; of the many who point to both the oral and written implications of this word, see Creed 1953, 4; Ellis 1966, 63; Morris 1974, 66; re the implications of this word in Luke 1:2, see Newman’s Dictionary 132; TDNT 1968, 2:171; ISBE 1979, 1:916).

The alternative would be to say that, of the various documents Luke mentioned, none at all came from the apostles. Yet these were the very men who were chosen by Christ specifically to be his companions (Mark 3:13–14), and to whom he gave much of his teaching privately (for example, Mark 4:34). They alone would be in a position to record many of the details of what he said and did (John 15:15); they were those whom he designated as his witnesses (Luke 24:48; John 15:27; Acts 1:8).

It is highly improbable that the apostles would have had no connection at all with the production of the accounts of Christ’s life and teaching that began (as Luke said) to circulate, or, if it be acknowledged that some of these accounts did originate with the apostles, that Matthew had no part in their production.

The circumstances that would have given rise to the writing down of such accounts are easy to envisage. Jewish Christians from the churches of Palestine, coming up to Jerusalem for the feasts, would meet with the Christian congregation there and hear the preaching and teaching of the apostles (Acts 2:42; 6:2–4). All the first Christians were Jews or proselytes. As late as Acts 21:20 reference is made to the thousands of Jewish believers who are zealous for the law. In accordance with Judaistic practice, the Jewish Christians would go up to Jerusalem regularly for the feasts. In addition, Acts implies that traveling up to Jerusalem by Christians generally was frequent throughout this period (see 21:15–16).

Coming in many cases from congregations where there were few eyewitnesses to Christ’s life, and where there was a thirst for more information about him, these pilgrims would be eager to take home from Jerusalem a record of what they heard there. W. F. Albright and C. Mann referred to the relatively small number of people who had access to the facts of Jesus’ ministry, and they add that because of this and other factors they believe we must reckon with the desire to record the oral tradition at a comparatively early date (1971, 174ff.). So if a request were made for a written record of teaching that they had heard from the apostles, the logical member of the apostolic band to provide this for those who asked would be Matthew. Thus they went back to their churches with a written account of something Christ did or said: perhaps a few sentences of teaching or a lengthy story of a complete incident.

The first Christian congregations in Palestine would have included some who spoke Aramaic, and therefore material that was produced for them in this way would likely be in Aramaic. Papias’s information about the logia produced by Matthew (see Eusebius 1999, 3.39.16) indicates the existence of these Aramaic documents written by Matthew. In due course, in view of the number of Hellenist or Greek-speaking Christians in Palestine and nearby areas, there would have arisen a demand for similar material in Greek, and Matthew would soon have found himself asked to meet requests of this kind.

The second proposition is that these Matthean accounts would not be the only ones that began circulating since Luke said many have taken in hand to write (Luke 1:1). Other eyewitnesses would be motivated to take pen in hand in similar fashion and begin recording the teachings and deeds of Christ of which they were aware. We have the evidence of Luke’s prologue to tell us this was so. These accounts would also have been of varying lengths and written in either Aramaic or Greek. They would have circulated side by side with those already written by Matthew and doubtless side by side with oral traditions about Christ.

In the process of time the various churches would have accumulated a significant number of these short accounts and would have added to their own collections by exchanging copies with other churches around them. We know that this occurred in the case of Paul’s Epistles, and there is no reason that it would not have also happened in the case of documents containing incidents and sayings from the life of Christ to which Luke refers. In fact the prologue to Luke’s Gospel looks like a reference to the very situation that I have just outlined.

An obvious question may strike us. If there were circulating in the churches a host of short documents from the AD 30s to the 50s (as Luke indicates and this present hypothesis now elaborates), how would it happen that none of them survived for us now to find? First of all, none of the original New Testament documents has been preserved, meaning that every manuscript we possess is a copy of a copy. Why should any scribe have wished to copy some partial piece of text once the full Gospels of Matthew and Luke were published? The part would have been absorbed into the whole. Any Gospel segments we may yet find are almost certainly going to be parts of or extracts from the canonical Synoptic Gospels as we have them.

Second, suppose they aren’t. Suppose that some family possessing an original document had it copied and passed it down for several generations, and that a copy of that document were to come to light today. If that happened, how would we know? It would simply look like a section of the later Gospel into which it became incorporated. It is an interesting thought, and perhaps worthy of further investigation, whether any of the extant Synoptic Gospel fragments could be a copy, not of part of a complete Gospel, but of a pre-Gospel document of exactly the kind under discussion. If such were the case—if we had any such extract among the multitude of early extant Gospel manuscripts—how would we know? A section of such a document would look the same as a section of a complete Gospel.

The third proposition is that Luke collected his own material that he eventually incorporated into his Gospel. During his travels in company with Paul, Luke made notes of the various things said and done, and these, when written up, became the second half of his book the Acts of the Apostles. At some point he also formed the intention of investigating the period before his personal involvement. The opportunity for this came during AD 56 to 58, the years while he was in the Palestine area and Paul was imprisoned in Caesarea (Acts 24:27).

For this work, he was interviewing eyewitnesses and collecting the information that he used in writing the first half of Acts. Similarly, it was also his opportunity to prepare to undertake the second task: to write an account of the ministry and message of Jesus.

In the prologue to his Gospel he relates that he carried out a very thorough and careful investigation of everything connected with the life of Christ. Whatever documents were available to him, he collected at this stage, and perhaps he had begun collecting them even earlier. He took them with him to Rome, managing to keep them safe during his shipwreck on Malta on the way there.

There is widespread agreement with this understanding of the implications of Luke’s prologue that I have just given. The distinctive proposition that I am putting is that these documents that Luke collected did not (as some people would think) include Mark’s Gospel, for this book had not yet been written. However, among the eyewitness material to which Luke himself referred were numerous separate short accounts written by the apostle Matthew.

The fourth proposition is that the two major Synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke, were the first ones published. While Luke was on his way to Rome with Paul, Matthew was in Jerusalem producing further material where he then decided to issue a collected edition of his records of the deeds and teaching of Jesus. He used the basic outline of Christ’s life as his framework, but within this he made only a very limited attempt to assemble his material in the order in which the events occurred or the teaching was given. More frequently, the basis on which he arranged his material was topical rather than chronological. Given the different plan on which Matthew constructed his Gospel by comparison with Luke, it is not surprising to see particular events or sayings being placed differently in these two Gospels.

The evidence from an examination of Matthew’s Gospel indicates that Matthew, while compiling his material for his Gospel, used what he had previously written and rewrote it in Greek—as distinct from just translating it—in places that were originally in Aramaic. He also added some extra stories—including his opening chapters and his distinctive material in the Passion Narrative—and provided his program notes linking one block of material to the next.

Albright and Mann said, What we appear to have in Matthew’s gospel is a kind of teacher’s guide, a collection of blocks of material from the private instruction of Jesus to the inner circle, together with other material from public teaching, and the whole assembled in a rather loose chronological framework (ibid., 165). The place of publication of Matthew’s finished Gospel would have been Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Luke composed his Gospel while in Rome with Paul. He worked from the material he had collected in Palestine, completing and publishing it c. AD 60. (The case for this date is in the next chapter.) So did Luke see Matthew’s Gospel as a completed Gospel? No, he did not. The arguments that scholars have put forward against Luke’s use of Matthew’s Gospel are valid. But Farmer’s arguments that Luke knew Matthew, based on passages showing close identity between the two Gospels, are also valid.

Chapter 8 examines in detail the case for the proposition that Luke knew and used Matthew’s Gospel, which is central to the Two-Gospel school of Farmer and his supporters, and the evidence against it. Considered in its totality, this apparently conflicting evidence is accounted for by the explanation that Luke read and used the sections of Matthew that had been in circulation in the churches, which he had obtained while collecting information.

The evidence indicates that neither Matthew nor Luke saw the completed Gospel written by the other prior to publishing his own, and this points to the publication of both of them in the same year. So AD 60 would also be the publication date for Matthew.

Thus we come logically to conclude that material originally written by the apostle Matthew and circulated during the period between the time of Christ and AD 60 became incorporated independently in both the Major Synoptics, Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel, though neither of these writers saw the finished Gospel of the other before the publication of his own.

The fifth proposition is that Mark produced a special-purpose Gospel. Mark was not an eyewitness of the life of Christ, but (as Papias and other Fathers have told us) he was an associate of the apostle Peter, and he wrote his Gospel based on Peter’s preaching. The early church Fathers identify the writing of Mark as being c. AD 65 in Rome.

By this time also the Gospels of Matthew and Luke had begun to circulate among the churches, and Mark used them both as the basis of his Gospel. We can describe this Synoptic relationship as Markan Dependence: Mark’s Gospel was dependent on and derived from the other two. This means that Mark had three sources for his Gospel: what he heard from Peter, and the written Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is the purpose of this book to demonstrate that this is the explanation of Mark’s Gospel to which the evidence points.

Mark is the shortest Gospel, and yet Mark’s account of any given pericope is almost always the longest. Exceptions are in places where Mark omitted teaching or speeches that Matthew or Luke (or both) included at certain points, or where Mark gave this teaching in part only. Mark’s greater pericope length is because he conflated Matthew and Luke and added a plethora of further points of detail not to be found in the other two Gospels but drawn from his third source, what he had learned from Peter.

Mark consists almost entirely of action stories that show Jesus healing, performing miracles, engaged in conflict with his opponents, and so on. Jesus’ teachings in Mark either arise out of these situations or are illustrative of the teaching aspect of Jesus’ ministry, and in any case they are always related directly to one or more of the main themes of Mark. In his Gospel, Mark did not assume the post-Easter faith, as do Matthew and Luke. Mark traced the journey of the disciples from doubt and disbelief, and he aimed to take his readers and hearers on that same journey. His Gospel is an evangelistic tool—a resource book for evangelists—aimed at introducing Jesus to the interested outsider. It was intended to be used as a source book in evangelistic preaching, and even to be read aloud wherever people gathered.

So Mark had a specific linguistic program and purpose in view. While skillfully conflating the accounts of Matthew and Luke, Mark transformed their more literary wording into clear, simple, everyday language (the language of conversation and preaching), changed some of their vocabulary into the vernacular used by his hearers, and rendered the whole into simple, straightforward sentences. In fact (as Streeter himself has most perceptively noted, 1924, 163), Mark worded his Gospel in the colloquial spoken Greek of the Roman Empire.

Mark was quite consistent in producing his Gospel. He included material in Matthew and Luke that was in accord with his themes, and he excluded the rest. Mark’s Gospel sets out the kerygma being preached to unbelievers. It is pure kerygma, while Matthew and Luke are combinations of kerygma and didache. Mark’s Gospel climaxes with the cross and with the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God—which Mark does not teach earlier (more on this point later). His motivation in producing his Gospel was exactly the same as that of those Christians today who publish extracts from Scripture in modern speech for use in evangelistic outreach. Like those who do this today, Mark knew that the rest of the Gospel story was readily available in the church for those who became interested.

It is straightforward to explain the order of Mark’s Gospel. First, in accordance with his intention to produce a Gospel containing the deeds rather than the teachings of Jesus, Mark therefore adopted a framework that avoided the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain, and Luke’s central teaching section (Matt 5–7; Luke 6:17–49; 9:51–18:15). This Markan framework consists of two parts: he followed the order of Luke’s Gospel to Mark 6:14, Herod’s comment about Jesus; and thereafter the order of Matthew’s Gospel.

Second, into the Lukan part of his framework he added four sections from Matthew: Mark 1:16–20; 3:22–35E; 4:30–34; 6:1–6. Into his Matthean framework he added four short sections that he drew from Luke, consisting of material not paralleled anywhere in Matthew. These are Mark 6:30–31; 9:38–41; 11:18–19; 12:41–44E. These insertions were placed into Mark’s Gospel at the same point at which they occurred in his source (respectively, Matthew or Luke).

The figure that is customarily given for unique verses in Mark is usually 50 to 56 verses, but I have found on my count that the equivalent of 155 verses of Mark (or 23.5%, just under one quarter of the Gospel) consists of material that could not have been derived from either Matthew or Luke, because it is simply not there. To state this data in the Markan Priority way, these verses consist of Markan material that was not then used either by Matthew or by Luke in their respective Gospels. This comprises for the most part a wealth of small but vivid details not found in Matthew or Luke, details that had lodged in Mark’s memory from the preaching of Peter and with which he enlivened his stories.

CONCLUSION

I submit that all of the difficulties, problems, and inadequacies of the Markan Priority view are met completely by the Progressive Publication Hypothesis (including Markan Dependence) as I have outlined it. I contend that there is nothing inherently improbable in any part of this hypothesis, while it is in accord with all the known facts and is compatible with the external traditions about authorship. It provides a framework within which it is readily possible to explain all the observable phenomena of the Synoptic Gospels.

This view that I am putting forward has no need of Q. We can recognize all the material in Matthew and Luke that shows evidence of a common literary source as having been based upon documents written by Matthew and progressively circulated over the years. These documents were among all those collected by Luke (to which he refers in his prologue) and that he utilized in writing his own Gospel.

This hypothesis shares with Farmer’s Two-Gospel school the belief in Markan Posteriority, that is, Mark’s Gospel was written third and used Matthew and Luke as sources. But apart from this one similarity, it is a very different approach. In particular, contrary to the Two-Gospel school, I find the evidence to be strongly against the idea that Luke ever saw Matthew’s Gospel in its final form. There are many sections of Luke’s Gospel that can be accounted for only on the basis that Luke had not seen Matthew’s Gospel.

The Progressive Publication of Matthew Hypothesis is not dependent on coincidence, or unproven assumptions, or circular arguments, and it involves a minimum of subjective assumptions. It meets fully the various criticisms that have been leveled in the past against other forms of the Markan Posteriority or Griesbach explanation.

This hypothesis accounts for the interrelationship among the three Synoptic Gospels solely in terms of the three men known to us from the New Testament—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—without hypothesizing other authors in order to account for this interrelationship. But it also recognizes and encompasses the role of the other eyewitnesses/writers, together with Luke’s own investigations, to whom and to which Luke referred in his prologue. And it rests also on the well-attested tradition in the early church Fathers that Peter’s preaching stands behind Mark’s Gospel.

A tremendous amount of New Testament scholarship has proceeded upon the assumption of Markan Priority. The very existence and extent of this body of scholarship tends by itself to create an inertia resistant to the suggestion that we may need to think again about the one absolutely assured result of the study of the Synoptic Problem (Styler 1962, 223; cf. Streeter 1924, 157). In this connection there is food for thought in the words of V. Taylor (1966, 76) about other Synoptic research (which he rejected), words that I find quite opposite in relation to Markan Priority (which he accepted): There is no failure in Synoptic criticism, for, if we reject a particular suggestion worked out with great learning and ability, we are compelled to reconsider the evidence on which it is based and seek a better explanation, knowing that a later critic may light upon a hypothesis sounder and more comprehensive still. That, I suggest, is how we should regard the idea of abandoning the hypothesis of Markan Priority, in the light of the case I present for the Progressive Publication of Matthew’s Gospel.

This chapter provides the outline of the Synoptic explanation to which I find the evidence points. The remainder of this book considers in more detail the grounds of support to be adduced for these five propositions—and, in looking at the data, this book also compares the explanatory power of this hypothesis with the alternative hypotheses that have been put forward.

There is a possible misunderstanding of this fivefold thesis that I wish to guard against. The last thing that I would want to suggest is that I consider the Gospel writers to have been no more than compilers who assembled a collection of previous documents, or even editors who carried out the task of editing such material. They were indeed in every sense authors, with an aim and a purpose in their work. The evaluation of their purposes, their interests, and their theology is a valid exercise. But in their writing, their authoring, they drew upon documents that they had at hand.

2

ONE LEG TO STAND ON

This chapter demonstrates how the Progressive Publication of Matthew Hypothesis is based on known first-century evidence.

Matthew has written a collection of statements made by Christ which may have been only single proverbs or extended ones, or most probably both. Papias’ expression simply cannot mean anything else. . . . The Gospel of Matthew embraces this collection. . . . [T]he reason it bears the name is because it is based on this work by Matthew.

— F. E. D. Schleiermacher in 1832,

cited by H. H. Stoldt (1980, 48)

[W]ith admittedly varying degrees of probability, yet without relapse to airy speculation, it is still possible to trace the use by the evangelists, notably Mark and Luke, of short tracts telling of the ministry of Jesus, such as would be required by individual missionaries sent out by the primitive Christian centres, Jerusalem and Antioch. For their work the single pericope with its isolated and often anecdotal character would scarcely be adequate. On the other hand we are not postulating circumstances where the full Gospel story is needed for sustained reading or for liturgical usage. The stage here envisaged was no doubt early. Probably even in the late thirties, and certainly by the early fifties of the first century, shorter tracts of the type postulated would have become the normal type of Christian propagandist literature.

—Wilfred L. Knox (1957, 2:139)

INTRODUCTION

This chapter demonstrates how the Progressive Publication of Matthew Hypothesis is based on known first-century evidence. The Progressive Publication of Matthew Hypothesis has two interdependent legs on which it stands.

First, between the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry and about AD 60 the apostle Matthew produced numerous short accounts of events and teachings from the life and ministry of Jesus, some in Greek and some in Aramaic, which circulated independently in the church. Some of these documents were collected by Luke and incorporated into his Gospel material, and Matthew subsequently issued a collected and expanded edition of his own material. This is the specific leg of the Progressive Publication of Matthew Hypothesis that accounts for the writing of the two Major Synoptics in the church.

Second, Mark’s purpose in writing his Gospel was to meet a specific need in the church by producing a special-purpose preacher’s edition of Gospel material. He did this c. AD 65 by drawing on three sources: (1) Matthew and (2) Luke, the two Major Synoptics that were by then available in the church; and (3) his own recollections of the preaching of the apostle Peter. This leg of the hypothesis can be termed Markan Dependence, in contradistinction to Markan Priority.

This chapter examines the support for the first of these two legs of the Progressive Publication of Matthew Hypothesis. But first we need to consider what scholars have said regarding attitudes about writing in the first century, and what bearing this issue may have on further examinations.

THE ROLE OF WRITING IN THE NEW TESTAMENT ERA

Significant differences exist regarding the assumed background for the writing of the Gospels. For example, some writers have drawn attention to the use of writing in the world of the first century, in both Jewish and Greek cultures, while other scholars have stated that the Jews were oriented against recording material in writing, and have found in this an explanation for the oral period, the gap that they believe lasted several decades between the events in the Gospels and the writing of the Gospel accounts.

The witness of history does contain evidence that there was a preference among the Jews and in the early church for the oral account rather than the written record, the living witness in preference to the impersonal book. Thus the Aramaic translation of the Jewish Scriptures and their commentaries on these Scriptures were transmitted orally for a period of time running into centuries. The books and articles by Riesenfeld and Gerhardsson (see bibliography) are carefully documented accounts of how this was done and why it was preferred. There is some evidence for this same kind of attitude in the early church.

Thus Papias, in a well-known comment (Eusebius, 3.39.4; Maier 1999, 127), indicated that he much preferred to have the comments of a living witness to merely reading about the deeds and sayings of Jesus. Eusebius quoted Papias about reports of what had been said by the disciples of the Lord and their immediate followers: For I did not think that information from books would help me as much as the word of a living, surviving voice. (We will say more about Papias’s comments later in this chapter.) But it is an error to take this evidence as indicating either that there was a low level of literacy in the Roman Empire in the first century, or that there was a general antipathy towards writing itself. The evidence indicates the opposite of this.

From the classical periods of Greece and Rome there is an abundance of literature of every kind that shows that writing—and reading—were normal activities for the populace in general. Reading and writing were standard skills taught to the young in schools. When Hellenistic culture was spread throughout the Middle East in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great, this included not merely the spoken but also the written use of the Greek tongue. Recent evidence of this has been the papyrus finds in Egypt, which include numerous documents written by ordinary people in the course of their normal lives: shopping lists, accounting records, and an overwhelming wealth of business and private correspondence. The latter includes letters between businessmen and their agents and representatives, and letters between family members, close friends, and casual acquaintances. It is possible to see a close parallel between the ease and frequency with which people in first-century society would make written notes or write letters and the situation in our own society today.

And books, though extremely expensive by today’s standards, were widely circulated and widely read. Alexandria was renowned for its library with volumes on every conceivable subject of interest in the ancient world. Carl Sagan has an interesting comment about this library (1980, 20):

The heart of the library was its collection of books. The organizers combed all the cultures and languages of the world. They sent agents abroad to buy up libraries. Commercial ships docking in Alexandria were searched by the police—not for contraband, but for books. The scrolls were borrowed, copied, and then returned to their owners. Accurate numbers are difficult to estimate, but it seems probable that the Library contained half a million volumes, each a handwritten papyrus scroll.

In addition to formal books and informal notes, writing was used in ancient society in the same ways as it is today: for gravestones and inscriptions on tombs, for notices and announcements (e.g., the inscriptions on the walls of the temple, and Pilate’s inscription about Jesus above his head on the cross, John 19:19–20).

People immediately and automatically turned to writing whenever the situation required it. Thus the Tribune Claudius Lysias wrote a formal letter to Governor Felix about Paul’s case to accompany Paul (Acts 23:26), and it was taken for granted that a written explanation would also accompany Paul when he was sent to Rome (Acts 25:26).

There was no antipathy towards writing in Christian circles. Papias’s comment quoted above indicates his enjoyment of meeting people who had themselves known Jesus or the apostles and early Christian leaders; it certainly does not mean that he was opposed to the use of written records as such. After all, we know what he said about the matter because he himself wrote it down!

The clearest evidence for all this is the New Testament itself. Paul resorted promptly and unhesitatingly to writing a letter when he had something to say, and so did the authors of the other New Testament epistles. It is not possible to maintain that this was something he did only when he had no alternative open to him. On at least three occasions Paul sent a trusted colleague with the letter, so if he had regarded the writing of a letter as a matter of last resort, only to be employed when no one was in a position to take his message, then the Epistles to Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians would not have been penned. For Tychicus took these three letters in person, and thus could have delivered Paul’s message orally instead of taking a letter, if Paul had had a negative attitude to the use of writing. Rather, Tychicus took each of Paul’s letters and verbally added his own further comments to it when he arrived at his destinations. Thus Paul said, Tychicus will tell you all about my affairs; he is a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts (Col 4:7–8). Ephesians 6:21–22 has an almost identical comment. The bearer of the letter would supplement Paul’s letter with additional information of his own, but Paul did not think that an oral message delivered by his colleague to those Christians was preferable to his sending a message in writing.

This background data becomes relevant to our present investigation because of the common suggestion that the Gospels were written quite late, after a gap of many decades from the events they describe, this delay being due to the antipathy of the Jews and the early Christians to the use of writing for their message. This argument claims that only when the last of the eyewitnesses and their immediate followers were passing away did some men see the need to overcome this antipathy and—with some measure of reluctance but under the necessity of the situation—to sit down and compose the Gospels that have come down to us. The background data of the first century shows that such a picture of the situation in the early church is not an accurate one.

It is also inaccurate to claim that writing was acceptable in Hellenistic culture but not in Jewish culture, for at least three reasons. First, Paul, the most prolific of letter writers, was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and there is not the slightest evidence that he found writing about the gospel an un-Jewish thing to do. Second, if this comment were valid, it would not in any case have affected the writing of a Gospel by Luke, who arguably was a Gentile, and those who hold this viewpoint do not also normally regard Luke as the earliest Gospel to be written. Third, the Jewish church leader James had the exact same attitude. His letter is considered by most scholars as one of the earliest of the New Testament epistles, and when he wished his judgment at the Jerusalem Council to be circulated to the churches he sent representatives to report that judgment and he also recorded it in writing and sent a written letter with them (Acts 15:19–23,30–31). This is similar to what Paul did in regard to Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians, as noted above.

Thus all the evidence shows that Christians in the early church were quite ready to accept the use of writing for recording and conveying their message, and there is no evidence at all that gives any grounds for believing that they had any kind of objection to its use. There is consequently no justification for the suggestion that the first Christians would have been slow and reluctant to set down in writing the details of the life and teachings of Jesus.

While all this is true of formal writings, it is even truer of informal, private notes. Gerhardsson’s account of the transmission of oral tradition within Judaism shows that this was accomplished by means of a form of written mnemonics akin to shorthand. That is to say, the Jewish tendency towards oral transmission did not preclude the use of written notes but in fact required it.

A consideration of all these factors reveals the very extensive use of oral transmission by the Jews for their traditions. This practice has implications for the consideration of the transmission of the Jesus traditions during the so-called oral period, as shown in the research and writings of Gerhardsson. But it also prevents us from adopting an unbalanced view of the first-century situation by over-exaggerating this so-called antipathy to written accounts to the point of accepting without justification the belief that the early Christians would have had strong feelings against making any written record of the deeds and sayings of Jesus, feelings that would have required a lengthy passage of time and exceptional circumstances to overcome.

Even if such an attitude had existed in the Jewish section of the church (and the evidence is against this), it would certainly not have influenced the Greek-speaking church—and the New Testament was written in Greek! Moreover, the same Jews who are thought to have had such an attitude also had and venerated their own written Scriptures, the record of God’s revelation of himself by speaking to humanity.

) of Jesus’ deeds and sayings would have been made by eyewitnesses at or immediately after the time of occurrence. These private notes would then pave the way for and provide the core for the subsequent fuller writing down of the sayings and deeds of Jesus by the apostle Matthew and other eyewitnesses. The evidence for this is considered next.

PROPOSITION 1: MATTHEW RESPONDS TO A GROWING NEED

Initial Written Accounts—Tracts, Fragments, and Fly-Sheets

The idea that there were written sources of some description behind our canonical Gospels has a long history. This idea is widely accepted, irrespective of which Synoptic Gospel is considered to be the first written. Thus T. H. Robinson, an advocate of Markan Priority, stated (1960, ix):

[W]e have no certainty as to the literary processes of the church till we find a book known to us to-day as the gospel according to Mark. . . . Working, no doubt, on material already to hand in written form, at least in part . . . 

This idea of written sources has surfaced in numerous different forms, usually being attached to whichever view of Synoptic interrelationship the particular writer espoused.

Much of the later speculation about these documentary sources looks back to comments made by the church Father Papias that Eusebius preserved. The early church Fathers were not very much interested in the order in which the Gospels were written, or in their interrelationships. Eusebius (3.39.15–16; Maier 1999, 127–30) informed us that Papias (c. 110) referred briefly to the writing of John, Mark, and Matthew, but not in a way that gave any information about order of writing, or the slightest hint of any interrelationship. Eusebius recorded Papias’s comments about Mark, and then what Papias wrote about Matthew: "These things are related by Papias concerning Mark. But concerning Matthew he writes as follows: ‘So then Matthew wrote the oracles [ta logia] in the Hebrew language, and everyone interpreted them as he was able.’"

I consider what Papias said about Mark at a later point, but now the focus is on his reference to Matthew’s writing ta logia in Hebrew (or Aramaic). Initially, this was taken in the eighteenth century (particularly in Germany) to refer to a kind of Proto-Gospel. B. Reicke comments (Orchard and Longstaff 1978, 52):

[T]he Proto-Gospel Hypothesis . . . stems from a remark of Papias implying that Matthew had compiled the logia in Hebrew (Eusebius, History 3.39.16). Following this, Epiphanius and Jerome held that there was an older Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, and claimed that it had reappeared in the Hebrew or Nazarene Gospel of the Syrian Judaeo-Christians. This theory was taken up in 1689 by Richard Simon in Normandy, the pioneer of New Testament text criticism. He asserted that an old Gospel of Matthew, presumed to have been written in Hebrew or rather in Aramaic and taken to lie behind the Nazarene Gospel, was the Proto-Gospel.

When the hypothesis of Markan Priority gained favor, the logia became the forerunner of the concept of Q as the source for material common to Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. But the idea of logia written by Matthew in Hebrew/Aramaic during the time prior to the existence of the Gospel that now bears his name is a concept totally independent of any attachment to the Markan Priority Hypothesis. It can well be taken as referring to (primarily teaching) material written by Matthew and subsequently incorporated (in Greek translation) into the Gospels of Matthew and Luke totally without reference to whether any of that common material became included in Mark.

Reicke described the Fragment Hypothesis (ibid., 52, 72):

[T]he Fragment Hypothesis had been conceived in 1783 by Johann Benjamin Koppe in Göttingen. He assumed the existence of a number of shorter and longer accounts in Hebrew and Greek no longer accessible, but which had been used by the Synoptists. . . . He preferred to regard the Synoptic Evangelists as dependent on a plurality of earlier sources, like those alluded to in Luke 1:2. More exactly he supposed that Matthew, Mark and Luke had collected longer and shorter reports, spread among the Christians in oral and written form and moulded into narratives, speeches, parables, sayings of Jesus and other categories. By his assumption of several fragmentary sources Koppe anticipated the so-called Fragment Hypothesis propagated by F. Schleiermacher in 1817; and by his reference to categories first developed in oral form he anticipated the inauguration of form criticism by M. Dibelius in 1919.

D. Dungan comments (1999, 323) further concerning Koppe that he brought "out a publication in 1782 denouncing the idea that there had been any direct literary utilization by the canonical authors of each other’s writings. Koppe insisted that the Preface to the Gospel of Luke was proof that the canonical Gospels were based on earlier Greek and Hebrew narratives. Dungan went on to say (ibid., 325–26), The University of Berlin New Testament scholars W. M. L. De-Wette and Friedrich Bleek adopted the emerging consensus that both Luke and Matthew had made independent and differing use of a mass of earlier written and oral sources."

Kümmel (1972, 84) comments, Schleiermacher in 1817 . . . advanced the suggestion that a collection of the sayings of Jesus that goes back to the apostle Matthew had been incorporated into this Gospel as an important component. Stoldt (1980, 48) reports that, in a discourse published in 1832, Schleiermacher made these comments about the Papias quotation concerning the logia written by Matthew in Hebrew: "Matthew has written a collection of statements made by Christ which may have been only single proverbs or extended ones, or most probably both. Papias’ expression simply cannot mean anything else."

In more recent times, other authors have concluded that there is evidence for documents behind and incorporated into our canonical Gospels. In his 1906 Jowett Lectures, F. C. Burkitt (1911, 62–64) considered this question and decided that the Eschatological Discourse in Mark xiii once circulated, very much in its present form, as a separate fly-sheet. The following year W. C. Allen discusses in his commentary on Matthew the question of the sources for Matthew and Luke and in particular this proposal, The two Evangelists drew from independent written sources. He then comments (xlvii):

It is quite unlikely that when these editors drew up their Gospels S. Mark’s writing was the only written source before them. So far as S. Luke is concerned, he distinctly implies that there were many evangelic writings. And indeed nothing is in itself more probable than that sayings, parables and discourses of Christ should have been committed to writing at a very early period. Not, of course, necessarily for wide publication, but for private use, or for communication by letter, or for the use of Christian teachers and preachers.

There are numerous scholars who emphasize the oral period of tradition transmission. They carefully argue their position and question the existence of such early written material. But it must be asked whether it is possible to be so certain that all the early sources of the Synoptic Gospels were oral, not written. During the 1950s, extensive work in this