Farrer's hypothesis

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The Farrer Hypothesis assumes that the Gospel of Mark was written first. The Gospel of Matthew was written using Mark as a source. Finally, Luke wrote his gospel with knowledge of Mark and Matthew.

The Farrer hypothesis or Farrer Theory , also Farrer- Goulder - hypothesis or Farrer Goulder- Goodacre called hypothesis is a proposed solution to the Synoptic problem . It goes back to the English theologian Austin Farrer . The theory is that of the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Mark was written first, followed by the Gospel of Matthew, and finally the Gospel of Luke . It does without the assumption of a “ source of sayings ” (collection of Jesus' words, usually called “Q” for short).

Farrer wrote On Dispensing With Q in 1955 , which dealt critically with the current two-source theory, as it was prominently represented by Burnett H. Streeter 30 years earlier. According to Farrer, the two-source theory depends entirely on the fact that one does not believe or want to believe that Luke knew the text of Matthew, because otherwise one would naturally assume that one is dependent on the other and not determine that both depend on another source.

The Farrer theory has the advantage of simplicity: it gets by with the existing Gospels and does not require hypothetical sources. It is mainly represented by British Bible scholars. Farrer's proposal has been adopted and developed on various occasions, notably by Michael Goulder ( University of Birmingham , 1927-2010) and Mark Goodacre ( Duke University , North Carolina).

Farrer's arguments

In his paper On Dispensing with Q (1955), Farrer explained that it is not necessary to postulate a source of logic Q if the evangelist Luke was familiar with the Gospel of Matthew. Farrer's reasoning consists of the following four points:

1. The Q hypothesis was set up to answer the question of the origin of the common texts in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke in the event that the two Gospels are independent of one another. If, on the other hand, Luke knew the Gospel of Matthew, the question that Q is supposed to answer is obsolete. The assumption of an independent source would be e.g. B. justified if texts that appear together in Matthew and Luke differ greatly from one another, but put together would result in an independent work with a beginning, main part and an end. This is not the case with Q.

2. There is no reference in the early Christian scriptures that such a thing as 'Q' ever existed.

3. The attempts by scholars to reconstruct Q from the material shared by Matthew and Luke result in a source that does not look like a gospel:

3a. Although many scholars originally thought 'Q' was a gospel in proverbial form, i.e. a collection without narrative elements, all alleged reconstructions of Q include the stories about John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus and his temptation in the desert, and the healing of the servant of Captain. If a proverb like Q had been written as a kind of handbook of the teaching of Christ, it would have to keep adding significant narrative elements and showing an interest in the symbolism of the Old Testament.
3b. Even so, the reconstructions of Q contain no account of Jesus' death and resurrection.
3c. In the earliest Christian scriptures, there is a heavy emphasis on the elements that the purported Q leaves out: Jesus' death and resurrection.

4. Some scholars have tried to overcome the problems associated with Q by pointing out that the actual content of Q is not known. They did so, although the same problems could be overcome if only one accepted Luke's acquaintance with the Gospel of Matthew.

Counter arguments

Farrer's second argument was weakened by the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas (Thom Ev). The ThomEv is a collection of sayings probably from the 2nd century. It was first published in English in 1959, four years after Farrer's book.

Against Farrer's first and fourth arguments, Streeter put forward five arguments why the Gospel of Luke could not possibly be based on the text of Matthew, to which Farrer again countered as follows:

  • Luke would not have left out some of the Matthew texts because they are so impressive.
Farrer replied that he left them out because they did not fit his overall literary structure.
  • Luke sometimes kept a more primitive version of a text that can also be found in Matthew.
Farrer criticized the assumption that one could identify the "more primitive text version" - e.g. B. fit the “blessed the poor in spirit” well with the theology of Matthew, but for Luke it was natural to drop the element “in spirit”, since this fits his concern for the materially poor.
  • Luke follow the order of Mark, but not that of Matthew.
Farrer asked back why he should have done the latter: "Is it surprising that he builds his plan on the foundations of Mark and breaks out materials from Matthew to erect his building?"
  • Luke used the Markin material less well than Matthew.
Farrer replied that this may be the case, but that Lukas would not be the first to produce a less artful result. The message that Luke wanted to convey was the decisive aspect for the arrangement of the texts.
  • Luke used the texts within the same Mark sections as Matthew.
Farrer pointed out that Luke took them out of a Mark context and reproduced them in a different place. In Luke 10–18, he reassembles the didctrinal pieces so that they highlight the points that he wanted to highlight, often by putting together sayings of Jesus that were not previously related. This could have been done with the intention of creating some kind of Christian Deuteronomy , just as it has been argued that the Gospel of Matthew should take the form of a Christian Pentateuch .

The 'Minor Agreements'

The most notable argument for Farrer's hypothesis are the many passages where the text of Matthew and Luke agree with each other, but differ slightly from the text of Mark: the so-called "minor agreements" ("minor agreements"). This comes naturally when Luke used the Matthew and Mark texts, but is hardly explainable when he used the Mark text and Q.

The key question here is if Matthew and Luke had taken over the corresponding sections from Mark, why did they decide against Mark in an almost identical way in large numbers and in the same way? So that, in many cases, the same sentences or parts of the sentence were left out of the Mark text. The result was literal correspondence between Matthew and Luke when taking over scenes from the Mark text, which differ from Mark in exactly the same way for the two authors. If Matthew or Luke had copied from Mark, the wording of Mark would also have been changed in different ways, by omitting or adding texts. However, apart from accidental exceptions and a few subsequent harmonizations by other editors, such changes should never be the same for Matthew and Luke if neither of the two knew the other's text. A distinction is made between two forms of minor agreements :

  • a negative form, these are the same omissions
  • a positive form, these are common different formulations than with Markus and words or word usage beyond Markus.

Streeter divided the minor agreements into six groups and made a hypothesis for each group to explain the agreement. Farrer's comment on this:

His [= Streeter's] argument has its strength in the fact that he only has to refer to one of his hypotheses a few times; but the opposing attorney will relentlessly point out that the decrease in the number of individual cases for each hypothesis corresponds exactly to the multiplication of the hypotheses. You can't say that you can Dr. Streeter's plea could not support it, but it must be admitted that it is a plea against the evident evidence.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DE Nineham (ed.): Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of RH Lightfoot. Oxford 1955, available at Archivlink ( Memento of the original dated February 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ntgateway.com
  2. ↑ Burnett H. Streeter: The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins. London 1924
  3. ↑ Austin M. Farrer: On Dispensing with Q . In: DE Nineham (Ed.): Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of RH Lightfoot. Oxford 1955, pp. 55-88.
  4. ^ A. Guillaumont, Henri-Charles Puech , Gilles Quispel , Walter Till , Yassah `Abd Al Masih (Eds.): The Gospel According to Thomas. EJ Brill and Harper & Brothers, Leiden 1959
  5. ^ Karl Jaroš : The New Testament and its authors. An introduction. (= UTB. 3087 Theology, Religion). Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-3087-6 , p. 40
  6. ↑ Gerd Häfner : The synoptic problem The synoptic problem and the two and the two sources. Summer semester 2013, p. 6 at www.kaththeol.uni-muenchen.de [1]