Loading...I’ve begun blogging on the “Synoptic Problem,” the problem of why Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar in so many ways (many of the exact same stories, often told in the same sequence, and even in the very same words), and yet so different (often in wording, sometimes in sequence, etc.). The solution virtually everyone accepts is that there is some kind of copying going on.
The first step is to see if one of them was copied in part by the others, and based on long examinations of all the evidence, the vast majority of scholars have come to agree Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark that they copied as the basis for their accounts. They each changed it in places, moving a story to another place, rewording sentences either a little, or a lot, etc.. But Mark was first and the others copied most of it.
I should point out that Matthew and Luke almost certainly didn’t have the same *copy* of Mark. And the copies they each had may well have differed in places (since the different copyists would have made different mistakes and changed things in some places differently). Moreover, there is no telling whether either of their copies was *exactly* like the wording of Mark that we have today based on still later copies. It is also possible that the copies of Mark that Matthew and Luke each had AGREED in some wording of Mark that DISAGREES with the copies we have! Isn’t the Synoptic Problem fun?
For this post the big question is: What makes scholars think Mark was first and copied by the others? Here’s how I explain it in the simplest terms I could must in my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings 7th ed. (Oxford University Press).
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Great essay, Professor.
Thanks.
Dr Ehrman I have a question regarding Mark’s Gospel. Is Mark 12:25 in oldest Manuscripts, if it is so, How can we interpret it? Thank you for your time.
YEs, it’s definitely in all the mss and is almost certainly original. Jesus is saying that in the kingdom of God there will be marriage because everyone will be eternal and there will be no need for babies. Angels don’t make babies because they are eternal objects. Those who enter the kingdom will not be married either and will not make babies.
I learned so much from this post. The idea of Mark as a template that Matthew and Luke fit material around that isn’t clearly chronological really cinched the argument for me. After all what weird motivation would Matthew or Luke have to selectively scramble the order non-markan stories in two different ways, especially if they didn’t have access to Mark. Perhaps Mark, if he was a condenser, specifically eliminated material of dubious chronology. But if he was that fastidious then why did he amplify the shared material? Markan priority makes so much sense in comparison.
Why not think that Luke copied from Matthew, rather than, using a Q source? I’m guessing one answer would be Matthew used a source for The Lord’s Prayer and Beatitudes, but Goodacre has pointed out that Luke uses Matthean language in several places of his gospel, so maybe he copied from Matthew.
I’ll be dealing with that soon!
Hi, Bart.
I’ve know you have Christian believers on your blog, and people who have lost their faith and are happier because of it. My question is, have you seen readers who have lost their faith and are unhappy about it?
In fact, I’d like to address this question to all blog members: if Bart’s writings have caused you to lose your Christian faith, are you happy or sad about it?
I don’t think I’ve known anyone who lost their faith and genuinely wished they had it back. I know many that miss the comfort that it brought, and the Christian fellowship they no longer have. But I don’t recall ever hearing someone who wanted to return to faith. Those who do simply return to faith. My view is that no one should ever lose their faith because of biblical scholarship. The kinds of things I say, think and teach in terms of scholarship are pretty much the things I said, thought, and taught when I was still a Christian believer.
Still a practicing Christian (to quote Woody Allen in Annie Hall: “I need the eggs”), but ceased finding the Resurrection and Ascension plausible well over a decade ago, and a year or so before I read Jesus before the Gospels, my first foray into Ehrman’s works. Once I understood how human love and compassion could have an evolutionary origin, I was able to let go of the concept of God as a necessary being. Haven’t regretted my choice. I enjoy Church much better not worrying about hell or the salvation of others. Since I respect others’ Christian beliefs I still speak “Christian” with them and they’re none the wiser that I left the Lord’s Army long ago.
I’m probably all screwed up.
I don’t walk any differently from 15 years ago, but am probably full of hypocrisies.
Today, Someone asked me when the last time I went to Church?
Oct 13, 2019. HongKong was in bad shape due to the riots, yet that church didn’t want me there as I was messy from a transPacific flight. I just think Prudes.
& if USA Christian Church’s do intercede & repent … I doubt that.
Since I was never called & I never screwed anybody up! though I pounded & still wait at the door.
just thinking of alll those pastors, Sunday school teachers who mistaught or no longer believe what they then taught.
I realize you pretty much reject Papais as the idiot portrayed by Eusebius, who tried to disceredit anyone suspected of expressing anything counter to his orthodoxy. However, If we understand the descriptions of Papias’s Mark and Matthew correctly, it is very concievable that they could be the sources of our Gospel of Mark. Mark, a writting of the explioits of Jesus, and Matthew as a collection of “Secret Sayings” of Jesus to be inturpreted. I say “secret” as the only such listing of just sayings of Jesus is Thomas which lables them as such. Additionally Mark and the other synoptics infer that much of Jesus’s teachings were as secrets in which to understand. Mark portrays the most secrecrative of Jesus. Thus very logical that all lists of Jesus’s saying were consdered “secret{ requiring a Gnosis to understand.
Therefore I find most logical, that the Author of our Mark, used Papia’s version of Mark, then created his theology from the Hebrew/Aramaic Matthew of Papias.. Then it was Known as the Gospel of Mark. Later, our Matthew and Luke used this Mark as the base structure of their Gospels.
What problems does this line of thougt create? (other than not discrediting Papias)
I’ve never called Papias an idiot, or thought he was. Why would you say that?
Correct you never use the term “idiot”. However, the way you express Eusebius’s version of Judas’s death attributed to Papias, then later repeated by Apollinaris of Laodicea and Oecumenius when discussing the validity of his Matthew and Mark gospels painting (like Eusebius) Papias of not high intelligence. That is the takeaway I have when hearing you describe Papias and I’m pretty sure others take it that way too,
Until I looked up Irenaeus’s writing about Papias painting Papias as trustworthy even with chiliasm belief, I was of the impression (from you) that Papia’s was some sort of blithering idiot… Since reading Irenaeus’s accounts I totally discarded the story of Judas as portrayed by Eusebius as a vengful act of retrobution of a heresy against the orthodoxy.
If you really don’t think he is some sort of idiot, then when describing him and his gospels, you may want to make clear that the Judas story is either made up or a gross exageration attributed to him by those who believe he was heretical.
I’m not singling you out at all. Many other scholars portray Papias the same way in how they recite that Judas death story.
OK, let me be explicit. I don’t think Papias is an “idiot” any more than anyone else who passes on traditions that are exaggerated and not historcal. And those two choices about what his Judas story are not the only possible ones. You too can think of other options, other than he made it up or it was falsely attributed to him.
In my research, I cannot find a repeating of that Judas story until the 4th century 200 years after Papias. So it seems the “tradition” began then, and not in the preceeding 200 years of early christianity. Historically I would not really consider it an “Early Christian” tradition, but rather a “tradition” of denigrating those deemed guilty of heresy of the 4th century Orthodoxy under Constantine going forward.
It does have historical context as 4th century tradition, but I just don’t find any historical value to it in the earlier history dating the gospels or emerging theology, other than to show how the 4th century Orthodoxy created such stories against perceived heresy.
My point is that not only is the description of Judas not historical, but the tradition of the story is not historical until the 4th century.. There could be thousands of options in how that particular story was formed from, but they are not relevant. What is relevant is the proper placing of the story in the historical timeline..
Am I missing earlier dates of this story to put the tradition close to the time of Papias?
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying, but I *think* you’re confusing the source of information that Papias narrated the story (the fourth-century Apollinarius) with the idea that the story was first created or repeated in teh fourth century. Apollinarius is not narrating the story per se; he is saying that it was found in the writings of Papias. He explicitly attirubtes it to the fourth book of Papias’s Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, and he is generally assumed to have access to the book. So he is a source of information of what Papias said, not someone making up the story himself or stating it as something that happened.
I love the Gospel of Mark.
I recently read this:
Back in the olden days, another group of God’s people (the Jews) would make regular pilgrimages to their place of worship – Jerusalem. As they traveled, the initial small groups from the distant corners of the nation grew larger and larger, with groups merging and other individual and families added along the way.
Then as they proceeded along the final leg (which began at the base of the mountain upon which Jerusalem sat), the group would join together in singing the Psalms of Ascent (Ps 120-134), recounting the blessings and protection that the Lord had provided, and the joy of belonging to Him.
Question: do you or other blog members know if this is accurate?
Sounds to me like someone’s makin’ it up. You might want to see if they give a reference to an ancient soure that ays such a thing?
Nope, no source.
I think you’re (unintentionally) creating a false dichotomy by the way you mention the minor agreements in your third and fifth paragraphs under “Patterns of Agreement,” as if there are mostly large unmistakable passages of double tradition and everything else is mostly tiny minor agreements. And granted, I know you’re trying to simplify to explain, but this simplification I think distorts things.
Streeter recognized six passages causing his theory of Q enough problems that he labeled them Mark-Q overlaps. These had too many similarities between Matt and Luke to ignore, even though it corresponded to a passage in Mark. And others could be included such as the Boy with Seizures in Mk 9:14-29//Mt 17:14-21//Lk 9:37-43, places where Luke follows Matthew closer than Mark but it’s not merely sayings of Jesus.
There’s a wide spectrum with Matt-Luke agreements, anything from large, nearly pure double-tradition passages (Preaching of John the Baptist in Mt 3:7-10//Lk 3:7-9) to tiny minor agreements scattered throughout the Passion Narratives. And many medium-sized agreements in between, often in the midst of a passage in Mark. Matt-Luke agreements come in all shapes and sizes throughout the Synoptics. I think that’s a problem for Q.
My view isthat the preaching of John the Baptist can’t be an argument against Q, since Matthew and Luke know the narrative of JB from mark and the sayings of JB from Q and it’s hard to imagine where *else* they would put them! As to the overlaps, yup, they exist. But there are lots or ways to explain them as parallel traditions, just as there are other doublets without Q (feeding 4000/feeding 5000). More than that, there are all sorts of imponderables that no one can possibly put into the equation, including ealry copyists altering Matthew and Luke into conformity, prior to our existing mss (so that they then agree in spots in sayings) and, even more, the question of WHAT the copies of Mark available to matthew and luke looked like. It’s a mistake to think they had Mark exactly as we do, just as it’s a mistake to think we have them as they wrote them! All sorts of problems that we simply can’t solve because of the absence of evidence. That’s why Metzger used to call Q the “least problematic solution.” It still has problems, but less than non-Q!disabledupes{0b428c1be6fcb115be1adb669a4e63c8}disabledupes
Dr. Ehrman, what do you make of Eta Linnemann’s theory? She turned from normal scholar to fundamentalist, denies there is a Synoptic Problem in the first place, and explains the agreements of the Synoptics as a case of 3 authors making independent use of a common stock of oral tradition. Curiously, the fundamentalists who rely on her often fail to realize that many Christian scholars, sympathetic to her fundamentalist tendencies, are not convinced, and continue to advocate for literary dependence in some fashion, usually the Two-Source hypothesis. Sorry if I missed another post where you address Linnemann.
I don’t deal with her; she certainly took a very strange turn…
Thanks. Critical Edition of Q has a great history of the whole Q idea. Interesting how it originated as “logia” (Λ) as a sayings source, but it’s had to morph into this amorphous thing that included far more than just Jesus’ sayings to account for the Matt-Luke agreements. Fwiw, I think there are less problematic questions if Luke simply used Matthew, and he started following Matthew pretty closely for some things like the preaching of JBapt and the temptations.
But it looks like Luke was trying to be deliberately different than Matthew, with different birth and resurrection stories. And it’s almost laughable that Luke has a big early sermon that begins with beatitudes and ends with a Parable about Houses on Rock or Sand. But the sermon is not on a mountain. It’s on a plain, of all places. And Luke’s genealogy looks intentionally different from Matthew’s. I’m not sure how someone could write a genealogy more different than Matthew’s without knowing Matthew’s. Luke’s is different in almost every possible way: going back to Adam, going in reverse, having more generations, replacing the royal line from Solomon with an obscure son of David, placing the genealogy 3 chaps into the book,etc.
I don’t see how Luke’s major differences from Matthew in the birth and resurrection stories would show that he was deliberately trying to be different. That presupposes the conclusion. I don’t think I’d say that the accounts of Paul’s conversions in Acts show that Luke was deliberatly trying to be different from Paul in Galatians.
I should’ve worded my comment better. I think Sermon on Plain seems to be a deliberate difference to Matt’s on a mountain. And Luke’s genealogy looks intentionally different.
Luke’s resurrection appearances could simply be avoiding backtracking to Galilee, since Luke-Acts is showing the good news progressing from Galilee to Jerusalem to Jud-Sam to Rome.
But to me, it’s almost uncanny that Luke does so many of the same things Matt does to Mark, but noticeably different. Regarding Peter at CP, Matt adds the big affirmation of Peter (Matt 16:17-19) to cast Peter in a better light. Luke also casts Peter in a better light, but in a different way, by omitting Peter’s rebuke (Mark 8:32-33).
Same with Passion Narrative. Matthew accentuates Jesus’ innocence with 3 new episodes (Judas’ regret/death; Pilate’s wife’s dream; Pilate’s handwashing). Luke also accentuates Jesus’ innocence, but in 4 completely different ways than Matthew (Pilate 3x states Jesus’ innocence, Antipas sends Jesus back as if innocent, crucified criminal expresses Jesus’ innocence, centurion states he’s innocent).
It looks like Luke is deliberately avoiding repeating Matthew, and Luke doesn’t want to promote Matthew. But Luke likes many of the things Matthew added to Mark, but Luke tells these things in completely different ways.
The issue is what counts as evidence for a *difference* being a *deliberate change* instead of simply a different version. What demonstrates it as a deliberate alteration? If I tell a version of an event and someone else tells a different version, how would you decide whther one of us used the other and deliberately changed it, wihtout simply assuming that’s the case?
It’s kind of the same in textual criticism. How do we know if a variant reading is a deliberate change? Often it’s the cumulative effect of similar kinds of differences in the same text, such as what Epp found in Bezae. Same with Luke compared to Matthew (and Mark). If we see repeated kinds of the same changes, it’s the cumulative effect that points to deliberate changes.
Regarding the birth, Luke’s shepherds function in the narrative much the same way as Matt’s magi. And Luke-Acts doesn’t like magoi in Acts 13:6-8.
Comparing magi in Matt and shepherds in Luke:
Outsiders arrive from elsewhere to attest the birth of Jesus (magi from east; shepherds from their fields)
Initially, the outsiders experience something unusual (Matt: star; Luke: angels)
This unusual experience announces the birth of a very great person (Matt: newborn king of Jews; Luke: Savior Christ Lord)
The outsiders locate the baby (Matt: scribes inform magi of Bethlehem; Luke: city of David, manger)
“Great joy” is expressed (Matt 2:10; Luke 2:10; note: in all the gospels, only Matthew and Luke have this phrase, and only regarding Jesus’ birth and resurrection; cf. Matt 28:8; Luke 24:52)
The outsiders express adoration and worship (Matt: magi worship; Luke: shepherds glorify and praise God)
The outsiders return back from where they came (Matt 2:12; Luke 2:20)
So yes, plenty of differences between Luke and Matt, but if Luke didn’t know Matt, it’s uncanny how similar the shepherds function compared to Matt’s magi. Just my 2c.
Sorry if this is a bit off topic or something you’ve dealt with already, but I had rightly or wrongly believed that traditionally Matthew was considered to have been the first gospel. I’ve wondered if this is because the original Matthew was indeed the first and a jewish gospel. I seem to remember one of the church fathers having said the Hebrew’s had a “judaized” version of Matthew or something like that. Could it be that there was a Hebrew Matthew that has now been lost and the Matthew (borrowing extensively from Mark) that we have now was simply named after that one to lend it more credibility?
Up until modern biblical scholarship it was thought to be first, largely because Augustine thought Mark was a condensed version. But since the 19th century the great majority of scholars have agreed it was Mark, and it’s not much disputed these days.