Augustinian hypothesis
The Augustinian hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, then Mark, then Luke, and each Evangelist depended on those who preceded him. This position is in the closest agreement with the church father testimony to the gospels origins.
Scholars consider the two strongest defenders of the Augustinian Hypothesis in the twentieth century to be B.C. Butler and John Wenham.
B. C. Butler wrote The Originality of St. Matthew: A Critique of the Two-Document Hypothesis.
John Wenham wrote Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem which some scholars find has persuasive arguments for the Augustinian view and believe is based on sound historiography. [1][2] Wenham wrote regarding the book of Matthew: "The [Church] fathers are almost unanimous in asserting that Matthew the tax-collector was the author, writing first, for Hebrews in the Hebrew language: Papias (c. 60-130), Irenaeus (c. 130-200), Pantaenus (died c. 190), Origen (c. 185-254), Eusebius (c. 260-340), Epiphanius (c. 315-403), Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-86) and others write in this vein. The Medieval Hebrew gospel of Matthew in Even Bohan could be a corrupted version of the original. Though unrivaled, the tradition has been discounted on various grounds, particularly on the supposed unreliability of Papias, from whom some would derive the whole tradition." (John Wenham, Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke (1991), p. 116).
Historian David Hackett Fischer considers historical immediacy to be one of the key determinants of historicity and the church father Papias is a very early source in regards to testimony that the Matthew wrote his gospel first. Papias wrote the following:
I will not hesitate to add also for you to my interpretations what I formerly learned with care from the Presbyters and have carefully stored in memory, giving assurance of its truth. For I did not take pleasure as the many do in those who speak much, but in those who teach what is true, nor in those who relate foreign precepts, but in those who relate the precepts which were given by the Lord to the faith and came down from the Truth itself. And also if any follower of the Presbyters happened to come, I would inquire for the sayings of the Presbyters, what Andrew said, or what Peter said, or what Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I considered that I should not get so much advantage from matter in books as from the voice which yet lives and remains." (Eusebius (III, xxix).
According to Irenaeus, Papias was "a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp , a man of primitive times," who wrote a volume in "five books" (Against Heresies 5.33.4; quoted by Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 3.39.1). Polycarp is considered to not tolerate any deviation from the traditions of Christianity and he often asked his readers to turn back to the faith delivered to Christians from the beginning. [3] In Ephesus, Polycarp was a disciple of the Apostle John, who appointed him to be Bishop of Smyrna. [4]
Dr. John Robinson, the prominent liberal theologian surprised the academic community with scholarship that advocated views which are complimentary to the Augustine view which are compatible with a early dating of the gospels. Although Robinson was liberal theologian, he did challenge the work of his liberal academic colleagues. Specifically, Dr. Robinson examined the New Testament's reliability because he believed that very little original research had been completed in this field in the period between 1900 and the mid 1970's. After he concluded his research he wrote in his work Redating the New Testament that past scholarship was based on a "tyranny of unexamined assumptions" and an "almost willful blindness." Robinson concluded that New Testament was written before 64 A.D. Robinson concluded that there is no compelling evidence and little evidence of any kind that anything in the New Testament reflects knowledge of the Temple's destruction which occured in 70 A.D. C. H. Dodd in a frank letter to Robinson wrote: "I should agree with you that much of the late dating is quite arbitrary, even wanton, the offspring not of any argument that can be presented, but rather of the critic's prejudice that, if he appears to assent to the traditional position of the early church, he will be thought no better than a stick-in-the-mud." [5] Other subsequent works (including Wenham's cited earlier) called for redating of some or all of the gospels were written as well by such scholars as Claude Tresmontant, Gunther Zuntz, Carsten Peter Thiede, Dr. Eta Linneman, Harold Riley, Bernard Orchard, as well as others scholars. [6]. Dr. Eta Linnemann, who studied under the liberal scholars Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Fuchs, rejects the Q document hypothesis and denies there is a Synoptic problem (ideas associated with a late dating of the Synoptic gospels). [7][8]
Dr. Robinson also concluded that Matthew's Gospel was written as early as A.D. 40, the book of James was penned by a brother of the Jesus Christ within twenty years of Jesus’ death, that Paul authored all the books that bear his name, and that John, the apostle, wrote the fourth Gospel. Dr. Robinson believed the result of his investigations argued for the rewriting of many theologies of the New Testament.[9] [10].
John MacArthur in his work The MacArthur Study Bible which was very well received by conservative Christian scholars argues a number of lines of evidence advocating the Augustinian hypothesis in his introduction to the Gospel of Mark.
Other views
As mentioned earlier, the Augustinian hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, then Mark, then Luke, and each Evangelist depended on those who preceded him. However, there are other views and many scholars reject the historical testimony of the early church father Papias and other lines of evidence that the Augustian hypothesis scholars advance (see: Other views regarding which Gospel was written first).
External Links
Pro Augustinian hypothesis:
Arguments against competing hypothesis to the Augustinian view: