The chief and common source from which the Synoptists derived their Gospels was undoubtedly the living apostolic tradition or teaching which is mentioned by Luke in the first order. This teaching was nothing more or less than a faithful report of the words and deeds of Christ himself by honest and intelligent eye-witnesses. [894] He told his disciples to preach, not to write, the gospel, although the writing was, of course, not forbidden, but became necessary for the preservation of the gospel in its purity. They had at first only "hearers;" while the law and the prophets had readers. [895]
Among the Jews and Arabs the memory was specially trained in the accurate repetition and perpetuation of sacred words and facts. [896] The Mishna was not reduced to writing for two or three hundred years. In the East everything is more settled and stationary than in the West, and the traveller feels himself as by magic transferred back to manners and habits as well as the surroundings of apostolic and patriarchal times. The memory is strongest where it depends most on itself and least upon books. [897]
The apostolic tradition or preaching was chiefly historical, a recital of the wonderful public life of Jesus of Nazareth, and centred in the crowning facts of the crucifixion and resurrection. This is evident from the specimens of sermons in the Acts. The story was repeated in public and in private from day to day and sabbath to sabbath. The apostles and primitive evangelists adhered closely and reverently to what they saw and heard from their divine Master, and their disciples faithfully reproduced their testimony. "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching" (Acts 2:42). Reverence would forbid them to vary from it; and yet no single individual, not even Peter or John, could take in the whole fulness of Christ. One recollected this, another another part of the gospel story; one had a better memory for words, another for facts. These differences, according to varying capacities and recollection, would naturally appear, and the common tradition adapted itself, without any essential alteration, to particular classes of hearers who were first Hebrews in Palestine, then Greek Jews, proselytes, and Gentiles.
The Gospels are nothing more than comprehensive summaries of this apostolic preaching and teaching. Mark represents it in its simplest and briefest form, and agrees nearest with the preaching of Peter as far as we know it from the Acts; it is the oldest in essence, though not necessarily in composition. Matthew and Luke contain the same tradition in its expanded and more matured form, the one the Hebrew or Jewish Christian, the other the Hellenistic and Pauline type, with a corresponding selection of details. Mark gives a graphic account of the main facts of the public life of Christ "beginning from the baptism of John unto the day that he was received up," as they would naturally be first presented to an audience (Acts 1:22). Matthew and Luke add the history of the infancy and many discourses, facts, and details which would usually be presented in a fuller course of instruction.
Written Documents.
It is very natural that parts of the tradition were reduced to writing during the thirty years which intervened between the events and the composition of the canonical Gospels. One evangelist would record for his own use a sketch of the chief events, another the sermon on the Mount, another the parables, another the history of the crucifixion and resurrection, still another would gather from the lips of Mary the history of the infancy and the genealogies. Possibly some of the first hearers noted down certain words and events under the fresh impressions of the moment. The apostles were indeed unlearned, but not illiterate men, they could read and write and had sufficient rudimentary education for ordinary composition. These early memoranda were numerous, but have all disappeared, they were not intended for publication, or if published they were superseded by the canonical Gospels. Hence there is room here for much speculation and conjectural criticism. [898] "Many," says Luke, "have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us." [899] He cannot mean the apocryphal Gospels which were not yet written, nor the canonical Gospels of Matthew and Mark which would have spared him much trouble and which he would not have dared to supersede by an improved work of his own without a word of acknowledgment, but pre-canonical records, now lost, which emanated from "eye-witnesses and ministers of the word," yet were so fragmentary and incomplete as to justify his own attempt to furnish a more satisfactory and connected history. He had the best opportunity to gather such documents in Palestine, Antioch, Greece, and Rome. Matthew, being himself an eyewitness, and Mark, being the companion of Peter, had less need of previous documents, and could rely chiefly, oil their own memory and the living tradition in its primitive freshness. They may have written sketches or memoranda for their own use long before they completed their Gospels; for such important works cannot be prepared without long continued labor and care. The best books grow gradually and silently like trees.
Conclusion.
We conclude, then, that the Synoptists prepared their Gospels independently, during the same period (say between a.d. 60 and 69), in different places, chiefly from the living teaching of Christ and the first disciples, and partly from earlier fragmentary documents. They bear independent testimony to the truth of the gospel. Their agreement and disagreement are not the result of design, but of the unity, richness, and variety of the original story as received, understood, digested, and applied by different minds to different conditions and classes of hearers and readers. [900]
The Traditional Order.
There is no good reason to doubt that the canonical arrangement which is supported by the prevailing oldest tradition, correctly represents the order of composition. [901] Matthew, the apostle, wrote first in Aramaic and in Palestine, from his personal observation and experience with the aid of tradition; Mark next, in Rome, faithfully reproducing Peter's preaching; Luke last, from tradition and sundry reliable but fragmentary documents. But all wrote under a higher inspiration, and are equally honest and equally trustworthy; all wrote within the lifetime of many of the primitive witnesses, before the first generation of Christians had passed away, and before there was any chance for mythical and legendary accretions. They wrote not too late to insure faithfulness, nor too early to prevent corruption. They represent not the turbid stream of apocryphal afterthoughts and fictions, but the pure fountain of historic truth.
The gospel story, being once fixed in this completed shape, remained unchanged for all time to come. Nothing was lost, nothing added. The earlier sketches or pre-canonical gospel fragments disappeared, and the four canonical records of the one gospel, no more nor less, sufficient for all purposes, monopolized the field from which neither apocryphal caricatures nor sceptical speculations have been able to drive them.
Exoteric and Esoteric Tradition.
Besides the common Galilaean tradition for the people at large which is embodied in the Synoptic Gospels, there was an esoteric tradition of Christ's ministry in Judaea and his private relation to the select circle of the apostles and his mysterious relation to the Father. The bearer of this tradition was the beloved disciple who leaned on the beating heart of his Master and absorbed his deepest words. He treasured them up in his memory, and at last when the church was ripe for this higher revelation he embodied it in the fourth Gospel.
Notes.
The problem of the Relationship of the Synoptists was first seriously discussed by Augustin (d. 430), in his three books De Consensu Evangelistarum (Opera, Tom. III., 1041-1230, ed. Migne). He defends the order in our canon, first Matthew, last John, and the two apostolic disciples in the middle (in loco medio constituti tamquam filii amplectendi, I., 2), but wrongly makes Mark dependent on Matthew (see below, sub. I. 1). His view prevailed during the middle ages and down to the close of the eighteenth century. The verbal inspiration theory checked critical investigation.
The problem was resumed with Protestant freedom by Storr (1786), more elaborately by Eichhorn (1794), and Marsh (1803), and again by Hug (a liberal Roman Catholic scholar, 1808), Schleiermacher (1817), Gieseler (1818), De Wette (1826), Credner (1836), and others. It received a new impulse and importance by the Leben Jesu of Strauss (1836), and the Tübingen school, and has been carried forward by Baur (1847), Hilgenfeld, Bleek, Reuss, Holtzmann, Ewald, Meyer, Keim, Weiss, and others mentioned in the Literature (p. 577). Starting in Germany, the investigation was prosecuted also in France, Holland, England, and the United States.
It is not easy to find a way through the labyrinth of the Synoptic question, with all its by-ways and cross-ways, turns and windings, which at first make the impression:
"Mir wird von alle dem so dumm,
Als ging mir ein Mühlrad im Kopf herum."
Holtzmann gives a brief history of opinions (in his able work, Die Synopt. Evang.) down to 1863, and Hilgenfeld (Hist. Krit. Einl. in das N. T, pp. 173-210) down to 1874. Comp. also Reuss (Gesch. der heil. Schr. N. T., I., §§ 165-198, 6th ed., 1887), Holtzmann, Einleitung, 351 sqq., and Weiss, Einl., 473 sqq. The following classification of theories is tolerably complete, but several overlap each other, or are combined.
I. The Inspiration hypothesis cuts the gordian knot by tracing the agreement of the Synoptists directly and solely to the Holy Spirit. But this explains nothing, and makes God responsible for all the discrepancies and possible inaccuracies of the Evangelists. No inspiration theory can stand for a moment which does not leave room for the personal agency and individual peculiarities of the sacred authors and the exercise of their natural faculties in writing. Luke expressly states in the preface his own agency in composing his Gospel and the use he made of his means of information.
II. The Interdependency hypothesis, or Borrowing hypothesis (Benützungshypothese) holds that one or two Evangelists borrowed from the other. This admits of as many modifications as the order in which they may be placed.
1. Matthew, Mark, Luke. This is the traditional order defended by Augustin, who called Mark, rather disrespectfully, a "footman and abbreviator of Matthew" (tamquam pedissequus et breviator Matthäi, II., 3), Grotius, Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, Hug (1808), Hilgenfeld, Klostermann, Keil. Among English writers Townson and Greswell.
Many scholars besides those just mentioned hold to this order without admitting an interdependence, and this I think is the correct view, in connection with the tradition hypothesis. See below, sub V. and the text.
2. Matthew, Luke, Mark. So first Clement of Alexandria (Eus., H. E., VI. 14), but, without intimating a dependence of Mark except on Peter. Griesbach (in two Programs, 1789) renewed this order and made Mark an extract from both Matthew and Luke. So Theile (1825), Fritzsche (1830), Sieffert (1832), De Wette, Bleek, Anger, Strauss, Baur, Keim. The Tübingen school utilized this order for the tendency theory (see below). Keim puts Matthew a.d. 66, Luke, 90, Mark, 100.
Bleek is the most considerate advocate of this order (Einleitung in das N. T., 2d ed., 1866, 91 sqq., 245 sqq.), but Mangold changed it (in the third ed. of Bleek, 1875, pp. 388 sqq.) in favor of the priority of a proto-Mark.
3. Mark, Matthew, Luke. The originality and priority of Mark was first suggested by Koppe (1782) and Storr (1786 and 1794). The same view was renewed by Lachmann (1835), elaborately carried out by Weisse (1838, 1856; Hilgenfeld calls him the "Urheber der conservativen Markushypothese "), and still more minutely in all details by Wilke (Der Urevangelist, 1838; but he assumes numerous interpolations in the present Mark and goes back to a proto-Mark), and by B. Weiss (Das Marcusevangelium, 1872). It is maintained in various ways by Hitzig (Johannes Markus, 1843), Ewald (1850, but with various prior sources), Ritschl (1851), Reuss, Thiersch, Tobler, Réville (1862), Eichthal (1863), Schenkel, Wittichen, Holtzmann (1863), Weizsäcker (1864), Scholten (1869), Meyer (Com. on Matt., 6th ed., 1876, p. 35), Renan (Les Évangiles, 1877, pp. 113, but the Greek Mark was preceded by the lost Hebrew Matthew, p. 93 sqq.). Among English writers, James Smith, of Jordan Hill (Dissertat. on the Origin of the Gospels, etc., Edinb., 1853), G. P. Fisher (Beginnings of Christianity, New York, 1877, p. 275), and E. A. Abbott (in "Encyclop. Brit.," vol. X., 1879, art. "Gospels") adopt the same view.