Historical Critical Method 2 - The Two Source Theory

Before returning to the question of the development of the solution to the "Synoptic Problem," I wish to digress for a moment to mention a scholar whose work will have profound implications only many years after his death. That scholar is David Friedrich Strauss who published his Life of Jesus Critically Examined in 1835. Strauss challenged the idea that the Gospels had a reliable historical framework to them, which all scholars believed at the time, even those scholars who rejected the supernatural elements as having any historical credibility. Strauss maintained that not only the obviously supernatural elements (such as the miracles, the virginal conception of Jesus and his resurrection) have no claim to be historical facts, even the supposedly historical material is "mythical." Interestingly, Strauss was not a theological skeptic on Jesus, even if he was a complete historical skeptic. Strauss did not repudiate or deny the value of traditional Christian doctrine. He only made the point that, in his opinion, it could not be based on historical data gleaned from the Gospels. Strauss' stark historical critical stance is that the whole story of Jesus' life is told by pious believers who were more interested in using the Gospels to demonstrate the messiahship and divine sonship of Jesus than to produce an unbiased historical report. Therefore, pious exaggeration should be suspected, and the dividing line between the historical and the unhistorical is impossible to discern.

Furthermore, Strauss interpreted the unique character of the Gospel of John as being most likely due to the theological creativity of the author and having little historical value. These ideas were not well received in their time. But they got much traction in the 20th century. You will discover that, in more recent years, many Jesus scholars have built their careers on the basic premises laid down by Strauss so long ago.

Back to the "synoptic problem." After Griesbach produced his "synopsis" and the furor over the publication of Strauss' Life of Jesus died down in Germany, it was Heinrich Holtzmann who came up with a proposed solution to explain the literary interrelationships of the first three Gospels. In 1863 Holtzmann published his The Synoptic Gospels in which he argued for the priority of Mark. That is, that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark's Gospel in the composition of their own Gospels. Furthermore, to explain the similarities (parallels) between Matthew and Luke, Holtzmann proposed a common written source used by both of them, but unknown to Mark. This source was simply called the "source," which is the word "Quelle" in German, and has been known ever after simply by its first letter, "Q."

Holtzmann also proposed that scholars not look for written sources behind Mark Gospel, but that they look for oral traditions that lie behind the stories of Jesus recounted in Mark's Gospel. This latter suggestion became the impetus for significant developments in the historical critical method in the first half of the 20th century (see Form Criticism in the next post). This move also (by implication) moves away from traditional notions of Gospel authorship, and by placing several layers of development between Jesus and the written Gospels, removes any likelihood that someone who knew Jesus had a direct hand in the composition of any of the Gospels.

Holtzmann's basic proposal of a two source theory with Mark and Q has become accepted truth in modern critical biblical scholarship. The theory of "Markan priority" is rarely questioned and any scholarly questioning of it is almost never taken seriously in modern scholarship. This is true even though there are other ways to construe the relationship between the Gospels.

What (I think) really sealed the deal for the two source theory was that Holtzmann commissioned a studious pastor by the name of Albert Huck to compose a new synopsis of the first three Gospels in which Markan priority was assumed and Mark was the framework for the organization of the order of the Gospel episodes and passages, according to the way that Holtzmann had divided and arranged them in Holtzmann's book. So in Huck's synopsis (sometimes called a "Gospel parallels") the Gospel of Mark is placed in its original order, with the corresponding passages from Matthew and Luke placed in parallel columns on either side of Mark, so they can be compared at a glance. Huck's synopsis quickly became the academic standard and was reprinted in its original form until the middle of the 20th century, and even after that, every synopsis of the first three Gospels has used Huck's arrangement of the passages. The pervasiveness of the Holtzmann/Huck arrangement of Gospel episodes/passages in any modern synopsis makes it difficult for any student or scholar who has studied it to envision an alternative theory.

I think the reason that Holtzmann's "two source theory" has been so widely accepted by modern critical scholars is that it follows the evolutionary model of moving from the simple to the complex, in that the shorter and simpler Mark and Q preceded the longer and more complex Mathew and Luke. The fact that something seems more likely to us to move naturally from simple to complex, rather than the other way, is due (I believe) to the influence of Darwinian thinking on American culture as a whole. But I digress. The work of Holtzmann and Strauss will become the basis of the historical critical method in Gospel scholarship in the 20th century.