The Main Solutions 31
The Main Solutions
While the number of solutions to the synoptic problem is proportionate to the amazing amount of research and imaginative thinking that has been devoted to the matter, 18we may single out four main options.
Common dependence on one original Gospel. In 1771, the German writer and literary critic G. E. Lessing argued that the relationships among the Synoptic Gospels could be explained if they had independently used one original gospel written in Hebrew or Aramaic. 19This proposal was adopted by others and received modification at the hands of Eichhorn, who postulated the existence of several lost gospels as the sources for the Synoptic Gospels. 20The proposal has not met with much favor in the twentieth century, although C. C. Torrey argued a form of it in 1933. 21Common dependence on oral sources. Shortly after Lessing had proposed an "Ur-gospel” as the solution to the synoptic problem, the German critic J. G. Herder argued that dependence of the Synoptic Gospels on a relatively fixed oral summary of the life of Christ explained the data better. 22This approach was expanded and defended at length by J. K. L. Gieseler in 1818. 23The view was more popular in the nineteenth century than today, 24but it continues to be argued by a few scholars. 25Common dependence on gradually developing written fragments. The important and controversial theologian F. Schleiermacher suggested that several fragments of gospel tradition existed in the early church and that these gradually grew until they became incorporated into the Synoptic Gospels. This thesis is no longer argued in this form but remains significant as the first to argue that Papias’s "logia” (see Eusebius, H.E.
3.39.16, and the discussion below and in chap. 1) refers to one of these fragments—a collection of the sayings of Jesus. 26Interdependence. The last basic solution to the synoptic problem maintains that two of the evangelists have used one or more of the other gospels in constructing their own. Without necessarily denying the use of other sources, now lost, advocates of this view argue that only borrowing at the final literary level can explain the degree of similarity among the Synoptic Gospels. This solution to the synoptic problem has been urged from early in the history of the church (e.g., Augustine; see below) and commands almost universal assent among contemporary New Testament scholars—and with good reason. While the ability of first-century Jews to transmit traditions with a remarkable degree of accuracy must not be minimized (see the discussion of form criticism above), it is unlikely that the degree of agreement in the Greek text such as is illustrated above can be explained by recourse to oral tradition alone. 27Robert Stein draws attention to Mark 13:14 = Matthew 24:15 in this regard, where each of the evangelists directs a parenthetical remark to the reader. 28Moreover, as quoted above, Luke makes clear that he, at least, used written sources in writing his gospel (Luke 1:1-4).
The hypothesis of a Semitic-language Ur-gospel encounters the same difficulty in explaining the remarkable agreement in the Greek text of the gospels. What is the likelihood that independent translators would come up with exactly the same wording in so many places? To be sure, we could propose a large Greek Ur-gospel as the source for all three gospels. But this hypothesis has three serious drawbacks. First, we would have expected so major a literary product in Greek to have been mentioned somewhere in early Christian literature, but it is not. Second, it is harder to explain the genesis of the three Synoptic Gospels if so significant a text already existed. And third, viewed as a comprehensive hypothesis, this theory has difficulty explaining the differences among the Synoptic Gospels.