Loading...I have now finished my short thread on the Synoptic Problem and here would like to provide some guidelines for additional reading for anyone who, well, just can’t get enough! These are books written by experts dealing with various aspects of the problem and its solution; I’ve indicated which ones are most suitable for beginners and non-specialists. This is taken from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (New York: Oxford University Press). The eighth edition was co-authored with Hugo Mendez.
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For Further Reading on the Synoptic Problem and Its Possible Solutions
February 16, 2025
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Conservative Christians tell us that early Jewish Christians were meticulous record keepers. Yet, these meticulous record keepers lost the original collection of some of their Lord’s most important sayings: “Q”.
Really?
Do they say that? Next time, ask them for some evidence from, say, the first Christian century. Or, say, the two centuries before and after.
Hello Bart
I was wondering would it be historically possible if people would have made up stories about the romans discovering the empty tomb not the women?
I”m not quite sure wht you’re asking. Is it whether someone in the ancient world could have invented a story that Romans found Jesus tomb empty (rather than the women)? Sure, people can invent any kinds of stories they want. I’m not aware that such as story ever was invented, but I can’t think of a reason it literally could not have been.
Dr. Ehrman,
The author of the Greek Gospels considered who was the Heavenly Father for Jesus during the reign of Augustus and Tiberius?
Hypsistos–God Most High
Zeus Hypsistos
Jupiter Optimus Maximus
Zeus/Jupiter Pater
Paul’s Speech in Athens (Acts 17:22-31) – Paul speaks to Greeks about an “Unknown God” and describes a single, supreme, heavenly Father-God, aligning with both Zeus Hypsistos and the early Christian idea of God.
If you asked a Roman citizen or a Hellenized Jew in Jesus’ time “Who is the Father-God in Heaven?”, the most common answer would be:
👉 Zeus Hypsistos (Greek)
or
Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Roman).
Janus Pater, the god of beginnings and transitions, was a “father” figure associated with thresholds. If Jesus’ Father was Janus, it would suggest an emphasis on spiritual passageways—life to death, old to new, past to future.
Matthew 7:9-11, to me, is a criticism of the God of Exodus. That is why I want to leave out Yahweh and possibly Iao Sabboth.
I’m positioning the Gospel’s Father figure in a more benevolent, non-violent light. Which deity might better match the characteristics of the Father in heaven, one that embodies love, generosity, and compassion rather than harsh judgment.
Zeus Hypsistos and Serapis could be the answer.
What do you think?
I don’t think any Jewish follower of Jesus would go that way, but in my boot Triumph of Christianity I point out that the pagan idea of the one greatest God who is alone to be worshpes (Theos Hypsistos) easily paved the way for paganst to understand Christian claims about God. Not so much Serapis.
Thanks Bart! I will have a look at the above sources
Have there been any genuine advancements on this front in the last few years? Where some new evidence comes to light or a new argument is made that many find convincing? I’ve read over a lot of Wikipedia articles and looked over the early Christian texts website, and of course I read about the supposed 1st century mark fragments.
Not much new, but a lot of insistence on the old iwth renewed vigor.
Dr. Ehrman: How do you explain the fact that Matthew and Luke add the very same five words to Mark’s story of Jesus being hit by the soldiers at his trial before the Jewish authorities, both using the Greek word for “hit”, a word which neither one of them uses in any other passage in their respective Gospels? Coincidence? Q didn’t have a Passion Narrative so they could not have gotten it from that source.
Mark 14:65 “Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!” The guards also took him and beat him.”
Both Matthew and Luke add to this Markan passage: “Who is the one who hit you?”
Matthew 26:67-68: Then they spat in his face and struck him, and some slapped him, 68 saying, “Prophesy to us, you Messiah![l] Who is it that struck you?”
Luke 22:63-64: “Now the men who were holding Jesus[j] began to mock him and beat him; 64 they also blindfolded him and kept asking him, “Prophesy! Who is it who struck you?”
Why would Matthew and Luke add the same phrase, in the same location, to Mark’s original story??
I think instances like these are particularly intruiging, and would be a much stronger argument for Luke using Matthew if (a) there were a lot more of them and (b) htere were scarcely any other explanations for them. They are pretty rare. Contrast, for example the massive verbatim agreements with Mark throughout Matthew and Luke that compel us to think Mark was the source, as opposed to thse places that stand out as exceptions to the rule that Matthw and Luke are independent of each other.
In any event there are lots of possible explanations, and I don’t know what the best one is. But several things to consider:
1) Our earliest manuscripts that has both Matthew and Luke at this point date from around 375 CE, that is, about three hundred years after the Gospels are both put int circulation. One of the most common alterations scribes made in their manuscripts of the Gospels over time wsa “harmonizatoin,” where a scribe would take words from one Gospel and put them in the other or would change words in one of them to coincide with those in another. That is very common later. Was it common earlier? Almost certainly. It’s possible that, say, our fourth century copy of Luke was a copy of a manuscript from 30 years, 90 years, 120 years earlier that had put Matthew’s familiar words into Luke, as happened so often throughout the ms tradition later (or that Luke originally had the words and a scribe of Matthew added them).
2) It is a mistake to think that Matthew and Luke had the exact *same* copy of Mark, that is, that Matthew’s copy was worded exaclty like Luke’s copy. In fact I’d say that is oh so highly unlikely. And it’s equally unlikely that the copy each of them had is exactly like any of the copies we now have, or like all the copies we have a particular verse when that verse is worded the same in all our copies. Since we don’t know what Matthew and Luke’s copies of Mark looked like, we can’t say whether in some places their copies of Mark both had a form of Mark that we no longer have. See what I mean? The words could have been in their copies of Mark but disappeared before the earliest copies of Mark that we have were made, whether they were originally in Mark (one option) or not (another option).
3) It’s also possible, of course, that since storytellers among the Xns would have frequently told the accounts of his passion before Mark, Matthew, and Luke wrote them down, that this line (Who struck you?) was commonly repeated widely, and Matthew and LUke had both heard it and stuck it in as appropriate.
I”m not saying that one of these *has* to be the answer, but I am saying that a five-word agreement of this kind (a) ABSOLUTELY has to be considered when deciding Synoptic relations but (b) In itself is not strong enough to overturn the very large difficulties that accrue (not just a five-word agreement or two, or ten) if we think Luke copied Matthew.
It’s not at all weird, by the way, that Matthew and Luke would put the words in the same exact place in their narratives if they didn’t find them in Mark. I don’t see this as a strong argument. This is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus is struck while being mocked, so it doesn’t seem there would be anyplace else to put it, or at least this is the one sensible place to put it.
Also, I don’t think we can say Q was lacking a passion narrative. We don’t know what Q did not have; by definition we only know what he *did* have, since the definition is the material found in Matthew and Luke not found in Mark; what we call Q could have had lots of other stuff. It would simply be stuff that either Matthew did not copy, or Luke did not copy, or both of them did not copy.
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There are MANY more examples! Such as:
Mark: [John the Baptist] proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me …I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Matthew: “I [John the Baptist] baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I. …He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.“
Luke: John [the Baptist] answered them all, “I baptize you with[b] water. But one who is more powerful than I will come. …He will baptize you with[c] the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
The easiest explanation is usually the most likely: Luke followed Mark’s sequence of events because it was the established Jesus Story; he added Matthew’s “fresh” embellishments where he thought best for HIS theological purposes.
And if your solution to Mark 14:65 is to say that later scribes cleaned up the three Gospels to make their stories harmonize, why on earth did these scribes forget to correct Matthew’s omission that Jesus had been blindfolded?? Mark says Jesus was blindfolded when the soldiers hit him. Matthew says nothing about Jesus being blindfolded. Without informing the reader that Jesus was blindfolded, Matthew’s embellishment to Mark’s story makes no sense! If Jesus can see who is hitting him, he does not need to prophesy the identity of his assailant! Matthew got sloppy.
Luke combined Mark’s core story (the only Jesus Story in town, for several decades) with Matthew’s fantastic embellishment…but…remembered to mention that Jesus was blindfolded. Matthew was a brilliant, very imaginative, story teller. Luke was more thoughtful and much more clever. Luke couldn’t correct Matthew’s gospel’s omission in Mark’s scene. He could only correct Matthew’s mistake in his gospel. Any later scribe worth his salt, with access to all three gospels, who was attempting to harmonize this pericope, would have corrected Matthew’s glaring omission. He/they didn’t.
More evidence that Luke had access to Matthew’s gospel!
What did “G Campbell Morgan” preach of the similarities of Matthew’s sermon on the mount & Luke’s Sermon on the Plain?
It was a frequent message & preaching of Jesus!