Frequently Asked Questions (4)
Larry Hart
The following questions and responses (divided into four separate posts) are related to podcasts 19-24 on Larry’s Inklings. If you prefer listening to reading the questions and answers you can find them as audio on Larry’s Inklings (Podcasts 25-28).
Q) What is the synoptic problem? Does it have any good solutions?
A) The Synoptic Problem is not a problem in the sense of an unwelcome or hurtful difficulty to be dealt with, but rather a problem in the way that a math question in a textbook is a problem. As you probably know, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called “the Synoptic Gospels” because they can be “seen together” (syn-optic). They can even be easily arranged in three parallel columns and read together. There are, however, some important differences in their wording and in the order in which they place stories and events. But sometimes they are very close in their wording. So, scholars who spend their days and nights wondering about such things pose the question: “What is the relationship between these three Gospels, what accounts for their similarities and differences.” They want to know things like: “Are they so similar in some instances because they were all dependent on the same oral tradition or maybe some other written source? Or are they somehow dependent on each other? Can we determine which was written first and which was written last; that is, can their priority be established like a geologist determining which rock formations are the oldest and which the youngest? That’s the Synoptic Problem; or, I would say: “That’s the Synoptic Question.”
Explaining the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels begins, according to scholars, by observing that Matthew and Luke have a lot of material they share with one another as well as with Mark. Scholars, therefore, hypothesize what is known as “the priority of Mark”––that Mark was written first, and then Matthew using Mark as a source wrote his Gospel. Finally, Luke also relying on Mark and adding material unique to him, wrote the third Gospel. One reason for claiming the priority of Mark’s Gospel is that where the wording of a text in Luke may differ from that of Matthew it will agree with Mark, and where Matthew may differ from Luke he will retain the wording in Mark. Scholars believe this indicates that Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a common source in writing their Gospels.
It is also argued that since Mark is the shortest of the Gospels and does not include material found in Matthew and Luke it is more likely that Matthew and Luke expanded upon Mark’s material than that Mark edited down Matthew and Luke. In short, it is argued that it makes more sense to say that Mark wrote a Gospel before Matthew wrote his that didn’t contain a story about Jesus’s birth and infancy than that Mark chose to delete the story despite its being there in Matthew.
So that’s the Synoptic Problem or Question, and its most accepted solution or answer according to both conservative and liberal scholars who conclude that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source in writing their Gospels. That is a reasonable guess; although, there is no way of being absolutely certain.
Q) I keep reading about the Q sayings, but I am not sure what is meant, or its relevance for Scripture study.
A) This is a good follow up question to the last one. In answering that question, I noted that most scholars believe Matthew and Luke used The Gospel According to Mark as a source in writing their Gospels. There are a number of other things, mainly sayings of Jesus, which Matthew and Luke have in common but which do not occur in Mark. Sometimes the wording of these sayings shared by Matthew and Luke is so close as to be nearly identical, suggesting that there was another source other than Mark, a second source that Matthew and Luke used. The word for “source” in German is “Quelle,” and so when scholars want to refer to this second source they simply say “Q”––the first letter of “Quelle.”
No one knows whether Q was a part of the general oral tradition about Jesus, whether it was a person or persons Matthew and Luke both interviewed, whether it was something more like notes or perhaps a brief letter or letters they both had access to, or whether it was something more like the gospels they themselves wrote––The Gospel According to Q if you will. All of these are, in whole or part, possibilities. None can be proven or disproven. It may be that the whole thing is as simple as Mark having been written first, Matthew using Mark, and Luke relying on Matthew while adding material he himself had discovered.
Non-confessing scholars like to believe that Q was an actual written document that they can reconstruct by analyzing Matthew and Luke. In fact, so they claim, they cannot only reconstruct it but can determine its various literary layers and describe the imagined community in which it was written. Quite a feat for a document that exists only in the imagination.
Non-confessing scholars like to think that Q was an actual document, a Gospel like the Four Gospels of the New Testament, because that would, in their estimation, discredit the Christian faith. Their logic runs like this: Q, in so far as it is possibly found in Matthew and Luke, is for the most part, not entirely but for the most part, a compilation of Jesus’s sayings. Maybe the first gospels to be written were like that––made no great claims like, Matthew, Luke, Mark, or John, as to Jesus’s identity or deeds––no story of any unusual circumstances surrounding his birth, no resurrection, no post Easter appearances, and no ascension. Maybe they were just scrolls of Jesus’s sayings like, “Love your enemies, and do good to those who persecute you.” Or, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” However, even if tomorrow a team of archeologists excavating Caesarea Philippi in the Golan Heights found a perfectly preserved copy of only Jesus’s sayings (no actions or events) which could be scientifically dated to 40 C.E. my question would be: “So what?” We know from Luke that numerous attempts were made to provide an account of Jesus. My personal assumption is that someone may very well have recorded only the sayings of Jesus; and for all we know someone else composed a scroll to which they gave the title: “The Movements and Actions of Jesus From His Baptism to the Hill of Golgotha.” What would be disconcerting is a scroll purporting to be quotations of Jesus claiming he said things that contradict what he says in the canonical Gospels: “Truly, truly! Violence is sometimes the solution.” Or, “Be aggressive! Loving your enemy and turning your cheek does not work.” The whole matter is obviously more complicated than I have stated it here, but basically that’s what I think about Q. For something more comprehensive I would suggest reading Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin, Questioning Q.
Q) What do you mean by reading Scripture for formation rather than transformation?
A) I am not sure what more or differently I can say from what I have said or written many times. So, I will be very brief. To read for information is to read for facts, for mental apprehension, for intellectual mastery. We live under the illusion that if we can know enough about an object, an idea, a doctrine, a process, a person, or even God, we can manage it to make things better, safer, more secure, less fearful, happier for ourselves. We may even mean well in this desire to control matters. We may sincerely believe if everyone would do what we think best everyone would be much happier. And so, we read the Bible, or listen to sermons, or buy the latest self-help book for information that will give us the ability to manage life and manage it well.
To read for transformation is a kind of deep listening––listening openly and honestly for what God may have to say to us. It is not so much an attempt to extract a spiritual meaning from the text as it is an openness and willingness to let its meaning emerge within us. It requires a kind of contemplative attitude, a spiritual surrender rather than trying to dominate the text––a love and trust for the Holy Spirit’s work in us. Not everyone seems to have the spiritual capacity for this, but if you want to explore the difference between reading for information and reading for spiritual formation a little further, I suggest M. Robert Mulholland’s book Shaped By the Word, as well as Watchman Nee’s What Shall This Man Do?