SYNOPTICS
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SYNOPTICS
■or. They form together a literary problem, — the
Synoptic Problem, as it is called, — the existence of
[vhich was practically unknown to the ancient eccle-
siastical writers. In point of fact, St. Chrj'sostom
ind St. Augvistine are the only Fathers who have for-
mulated views concerning the mutual relation of the
Synoptic Gospels, and the writers of the Middle Ages
lo not seem to have taken into account these pa-
tristic views which, after all, were far from affording a
complete solution of that difficult question. Subse-
- iuent leading scholars, such as Grotius, Rich, Simon,
Le Clerc, had little more than a suspicion of the aroblem, and it is only in the course of the eighteenth century that the scientific examination of the ques- tion was actually started.
Ever since the last quarter of that century, the dis- cussion of the origin of the mutual relationship be- tween the first three Gospels has been carried on with jreat ardour and ingenuity especially in Germany. ris might well be expected, the supposition that these jospels are so like one another because their respec- tive authors made use of each other's writings was irst tried, and in settling the order, that in which the Synoptic Gospels stand in the canon first found fa- i-our. As fresh investigations brought new facts to light, new forms of h>'pothesis sought to satisfy the ■acts, with the gradual result that the domain of pos- sibiUty well-nigh appears to have been measured out. Numerous and conflicting as the successive attempts it solution have been, their history shows that a cer- tain progress has been made in the discussion of the Synoptic Problem. The many relations of the ques- tion have come into clearer light, and the data for its solution have been revealing themselves while mere 1 priori views or unsound inferences have been dis- carded.
III. Solutions of Ihe Synoptic Problem. — All at- tempts at assigning the cause of the resemblances and differences of the first three Gospels admit of being [;lassified under three general heads, according as the relationship of the Synoptics has been explained by appealing to: A, oral tradition; B, mutual depend- ence; or C, earlier documents.
A. Oral Dependence. — The h>-pothesis of oral tra- dition impUcs that before our Gospels arose there were no written records of Christ's ministrj', or at least none which was used by the Synoptists. It asserts that these Evangelists have drawn from narratives of sayings and deeds of Jesus which eye-witnesses of His public life handed on by word of mouth, and which gradually assumed a greater or less degree of fixity with constant repetition. According to this theory, the resemblances between the first three Gospels can be easily accounted for. The sections common to all are explained by a cycle of teaching probably formed in Jerusalem, actually made up of incidents and dis- courses connected with Christ's life from the baptism af John to the Ascension (cf. Acts, i, 21, 22), and faithfully preserved with regard to order and language by the trained retentiveness of Eastern memories. In like manner, the differences of the Synoptic Gos- pels are easily explained. Sections are found only in two, or one, of the Gospels because the bond estab- lished between the narratives was at times modified to suit the various circles of the hearers, and other differences in order or wording are due either to pre- vious variations in oral tradition or to the personal initiative of the several Evangelists who fixed it in writing. This theorj- of an oral Gospel, handed on fven,-where in very similar form, was enunciated by Herder, and chiefly elaborated by Gieseler and A. Wright. With differences in detail, it has been ad- mitted by a large number of Cathohc exegetes (Schegg, Haneberg, Friedlieb, Kaulen, Comely, Knabenbauer, Meignan, Pillion, Fouard, Le Camus, Felt en), and by manj' Protestant scholars (Credner, Guericke, De Wette, Ebrard, Lange, Hase, Wetzel,
Thompson, Westcott, Godet, etc.). It undoubtedly
points to a vera causa in the spread of the Gos-
pel, and cannot be wholly left out of account in an
endeavour to explain the origin of our written records
of Christ's Ufe. One of its claims to acceptance is that
it dispenses with the unseemly supposition that any
of the Evangelists made wholesale use in their own
Gospels of written records composed by others, and
nevertheless did not reproduce them with greater
fidelity. Appeal is also made in favour of this
theorj', to its simplicity, and to its aptness to account
for the resemblances and the differences exhibited by
the Synoptics.
By itself, however, the hjTJothesis of oral tradition can hardly be considered as an adequate solution of the Synoptical problem. First, it does not satis- factorily ex-plain the selection of the material in- cluded in our first three Gospels. Oral tradition had undoubtedly preserved much more than the Synop- tics record, and of this the Evangelists themselves were fully aware (Matt., xi, 21 ; x.xiii, 37; Luke, x, 13; John, xxi, 2.5; etc.); whence then does it come that the framework of the Synoptic narrative is practically the same in all the first three Gospels, that it consists very largely of the same events and the same dis- courses, and gives no account of Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem, that is, of His ministry' in the verj' place where the oral tradition is generally supposed to have been formed?
Secondly, the hypothesis of oral tradition does not account for the general identity of order noticeable in the Synoptics. The order of St. Mark is, as it seems, the fundamental order, and it can hardly be said to have been known simply as an oral tradition to St. Matthew and St. Luke, else the sequence of its sec- tions, when additions were made by these two Evan- gelists, would not have remained as little altered as it has. Again and again, the thread of the common order is resumed at the point at which it had been left. On the supposition of a written source to which St. Matthew and St. Luke had recourse, this is natural enough. But if they depended on memorj-, the natural effect of the working of the laws of asso- ciation, would be that when some fresh incident or some part of Christ's teaching was recalled, the old order would be disturbed more or less extensively than we notice it to be.
Thirdly, the verbal relationship between the Greek Gospels is not satisfactorily explained on the hy- pothesis of oral tradition. This oral tradition was primitively in Aramaic, and the coincidences in the Greek with regard to rare words, irregular arrange- ment of the sentence, etc., cannot be explained by supposing that our Gospels are independent transla- tions of one and the same Aramaic oral tradition. It is true that in order to account for these coincidences in the Greek, the early formation of an oral Greek tradition which would more or less be the counteriJart of the Aramaic one, and which would have been di- rectly utilized by our Evangelists, has been postu- lated by many advocates of the theorj' under review. But it remains verj- doubtful whether such oral Greek tradition would really explain the coincidences in cjuestion; and it is quite certain that it would not sat- isfactorilj' account for the variations in Greek wording of such important passages as the words of the insti- tution of the Holy Eucharist, of the Lord's Praj'er, of the Beatitudes, of the title on the Cross, etc. Lastly, there are historical proofs of the existence of written documents at the time when our Sj-noptics were writ- ten (cf. Matt., x-xiv, 15, 16; Mark, xiii, 14; Luke, i, 1), and the most natural supposition is that our Evan- gelists availed themselves of them. In fact, many phenomena disclosed bv the attentive study of the first three Gospels render the supposition so probable, not to say neiiessary, that several advocates of the hjTJothesis of oral tradition (Eckermann, Fillion, Le
