Roland

I am currently involved in a LONG discussion with someone at another site about the independence and/or interdependence of the Synoptic gospels. I was explaining to him the generally accepted argument that Mark came first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark, plus the document Q. Pretty bland stuff actually. Then he came up with a counter scenario that I had never heard of before. I just thought I'd run it past you all and see if he has a leg to stand on with his view of how it all came together or whether he's just making it all up as he goes along. I must say he caught me off guard with it. Here goes:

Alex: Well, Roland, according to our most reliable historical evidence, Matthew was the first gospel written, in Aramaic. This first proto-Matthew draft came in very early - in the 40s or 50s perhaps and was written in Judea, by the apostle Matthew (Levi) exclusively for the Hebrews, to try to convince them that Jesus of Nazareth was their long promised Messiah. This proto-Matthew gospel contained what scholars today call M and Q and little narrative.

Some years later (probably during the 60s) Mark (Paul and Peter's missionary companion) wrote His gospel perhaps while in Rome, completely independent of Matthew, and based on Paul's first-hand eyewitness. His gospel gained popularity amongst the gentile nations and quickly became accepted as official scripture there.

Some years later, perhaps a disciple of Matthew, took the proto Matthew gospel and incorporated many of the narratives from the now widely accepted Gospel of Mark into a finalized version of a Greek Gospel of Matthew we have today. So why would Matthew (a suppossed eyewitness) need 2nd hand info from Mark? Because Mark is based on the first-hand eyewitness testimonies of Peter. And remember, Peter, along with brothers James and John were the 3 disciples who were part of Jesus' smaller ring who got to witness many of the things Matthew and the other disciples did not witness (see the Transfiguration, healing of Peter's mother in law, raising of young girl from the dead, the passion narratives in the Garden....). So hence the dependence of Matthew on Mark, yet the primacy of Matthew.

Wallener

The argument loses me right there. Judaism has never been any conception or formulation of "Messiah" that is compatible with being nailed to a tree.

Diogenes the Cynic

The argument is completely full of crap on every level.

1. There is not a shred of evidence for an Aramaic or Hebrew Matthew. It is entirely a Greek composition. It uses Greek source material and the Septuagint. Alex is probably citing Papias' claim that Matthew wrote a sayings Gospel in Hebrew but no such gospel has ever been found.

2. No way was Matthew written in the "40's or 50's." Seriously, where is this guy getting this stuff? Matthew is dependant on Mark and quotes Mark's Little Apocalypse. This means that Mark knew about the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the fact that Matthew copied Mark puts him at least a few years after that.

3. GMatt was not written by an apostle. It's too late, in the wrong language and too dependant on secondary sources. The "proto" Matthew claimed by Alex is a figment of his imagination. There is no such document.

4. Mark was not written by a secretary of Peter's and is not remotely based on any Petrine memoirs. It's is almost purely a literary creation based on the Hebrew Bible, a possible sayings tradition and Mark's own imagination.


In short, there isn't a single claim made by Alex which is supported by either literary or historical evidence and almost all of it is directly contradicted by the evidence that does exist.

Roland

Diogenes - First off, thanks for the response. Second, I am sure you are right when you say Alex is basing his claim on Papias' comment. So how are we to interpret Papias' statement? Is he lying, is he confused, has he been misquoted? Since he is practically the only early church person to even mention the writing of the gospels, I can see why evangelical types like Alex, in the absence of anything else, would put great credence in what he says. And how do the rest of us counter this successfully?

Roland

The interesting thing here is how Alex covers all his bases. He proposes that Matthew first wrote a "proto" gospel in Aramaic - with "little narrative" - as Papias indicates, then LATER a disciple of Matthew used Mark and Q to write the more thorough, narrative-based Gospel of Matthew we have today. In this way, he is able to establish the truth of Papias' statement, give primacy to Mark, acknowledge the existence of Q, AND keep the original authors all at the same time.

I'm just wondering if this is the common explanation among evangelical purists as to how the gospels came about.

Chris Weimer

Matthew was written as a polemic against the Jews. Why else would he damn them at the end of the gospel. Matthew's narrative was written to show the Jesus-Moses comparison where Jesus (Moses) frees his people (Hebrews; cf. 1:21) from sin/Judaism (slavery). The Judaism-Sin comparison is dual, and probably initially inherited from Mark, mostly as an expansion on the passion narrative, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, to explain why the Jews were decimated. In fact, as Moses was initially an Egyptian (well, after the massacre, that is), so too is Jesus supposed to be a Jew at first. He preaches for the Jews only, and bases a lot off the Tanakh (mostly Septuagintal readings). But the schism occurs when his own people betray him (complicated Jesus-King Moses-Killing parallels - both an attack against his own people) and thus Jesus is freed from the bonds himself and then becomes the leader of his new people.

Jedi Mind Trick

I’m certainly not the scholar that many here are, but here are some of my thoughts.


All this, I assume, is speculation derived from Eusibius’ mention of what Papias said that one ‘John the elder’ said. So this is speculation upon hearsay thrice removed. I think I read where Eusibius didn’t regard Papias as a very reliable source even though he quotes him. Also, Papias allegedly didn’t put much stock in the written accounts as he did the oral traditions. So, this is all very, very weak….


As the Diogenes mentioned, Mark knew about the cataclysm of 70CE, so it must have been written during or just after that. And if it was written by John Mark, Peter’s alleged companion ---Source for this one is, I believe, again John the Elder, via Papias, via Eusibius--- then why does John Mark treat Peter so poorly? Mark is not kind to Peter….

Perhaps a disciple of Matthew? Perhaps is not an argument…
Widely accepted Gospel of Mark? Why create Mathew if Mark is widely accepted?

I thought we were talking about a supposed disciple of Mathew drawing upon an alleged Aramaic Mathew and Mark. Alex is being achronistic and confusing his argument.

And all of this we get from the sources in question….

Diogenes the Cynic

No one knows what Papias was talking about. We actually don't even have Papias' own word, we have Eusebius quoting Papias. The possibilities are that Papias made it up, that Eusebius made up a fake quote or that one or both of them was mistaken. It's also conceivable that there really was a sayings Gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew but that it's no longer extant and it would not be Canonical Matthew.

Once you remove Mark and Q from Matthew all you have left is pretty much the Nativity and the Resurrection. Mark is an original composition, not a redaction or a copy of any prior sayings gospel and has no eyewitness testimony in it. A proto-Matthew just isn't a possibility.

S.C.Carlson

Aside from the maximalist attempt to conserve as much as possible of the traditional statements of gospel authorship (which is a non-starter in contemporary Biblical criticism), the scenario basically boils down to a proposal that Q also contained the so-called M material, which Matthew retained and Luke did not.

I'm not aware of any scholar who has seriously proposed that Q contained M too as a solution and worked out its implications.* Given the current state of the art in Q scholarship, however, such a proposal would have a difficult time fitting in with current approaches to reconstructing Q. Generally, Luke is now thought to be a better witness to Q's order and vocabulary, which would tend to preclude the unity of Q and M.

On the other hand, there have a number of attempts to combine Q and L with varying degrees of plausibility, most notably by B. H. Streeter and Vincent Taylor in the 1920s and 30s. Despite the Q+L idea having more going for it than Q+M, even that idea has run out of steam.

Stephen Carlson

* I have a web page outlining the various different solutions to the synoptic problem that have been proposed, so if someone is aware of a scholarly publication that actually argues that Q also contained M, I'd really like to know.

John A. Broussard

Well said. Only the argument that both of these ancients were divinely inspired can ensure that their written words were a hundred percent accurate copies of some original document.