The Puzzle of the Gospels by Peter Vardy & Mary E. Mills

Author:Peter Vardy & Mary E. Mills [Vardy, Peter & Mills, Mary E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317455004
Google: _83KBgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 27290540
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1995-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Source criticism

The aim of source criticism is to uncover earlier stages in the development of texts within the gospels. This approach rests on the theory that there existed shorter written pieces of work which were brought together by the different gospel writers. If, then, it is possible to work back to arrive at these original sources one can come closer to the original accounts of Jesus and these can then be more effectively assessed. (To introduce some technical language, the search for earlier texts is often described as seeking for the Proto-work or the Ur text or the Vorlage. There is no need to be confused by these terms, however, as they all refer to the prior documents which underlie the present books.)

A ‘shorthand’ way of describing source criticism is to look on it as a ‘scissors and paste’ exercise. In other words, the attempt is made to identify the pieces that have been ‘stuck together’ to form the gospel we now have available to us. Identifying the individual pieces is intended to bring scholars closer to the original texts of the gospels. The source critic assumes that coherent narratives have been woven together to form the existing texts and the aim is to recover the original narratives.

An example may illustrate the procedure. If one looks at Matthew’s gospel, a great deal of the text is also found in Mark. If Mark comes before Matthew (see Chapter 11), then Matthew has used Mark as a source and has shaped this material for his own purposes. There is other material in Matthew which is shared with Luke but is not found in Mark. This material seems to be a collection of Jesus’ sayings and it can be argued, therefore, that this is a second major source for Matthew’s ideas. There are no existing copies of this text in its original form so it has been called simply ‘a source’ and is described as ‘Q’ (from the German Quelle). Most of Matthew’s gospel, therefore, can be accounted for by two sources – Mark and ‘Q’.

In this context the term ‘source’ refers to a written source which can be deduced as underlying an existing gospel. However, the word is sometimes used more generally to describe short snatches of material incorporated in the four gospels. These would not have been whole texts in themselves but more isolated extracts, perhaps passed down orally. One line of recent scholarship on ‘Q’ has come to see this not as a single source but rather a set of shorter material all of which may not have been used by Matthew and Luke.

The pioneer of New Testament source criticism was J.J. Griesbach (1745–1812) who recognized the differences between John and the other three gospels. He saw that Matthew, Mark and Luke have much in common and that the four books could not be harmonized into a single account. More recently, B.H. Streeter (1874–1937) wrote The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins which became the classic treatment of the sources of the Synoptic gospels even though some of the ideas were disputed.

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