An Inquiry Into The Preference For Oral Tradition Over Literary Solutions To The Synoptic Problem Through An Analysis Of The Verbal Agreements In Matthew And Mark

The fascination with literary dependency in the most popular approaches to the synoptic problem has been built upon a faulty presupposition: that oral tradition is incapable of producing the word for word verbal agreement found in the synoptic accounts. Recent research in the area of oral tradition has shown that this is not the case, but we still rely on increasingly complicated literary models to explain the relationships between the Synoptic Gospels. This book engages in comparative analysis of Old Greek quotations found in more than one of the Synoptic Gospels, along with the material that surrounds these quotations. The resulting conclusions indicate that oral sources may better explain the similarities and differences found in the Synoptic Gospels, and that we ought to reexamine our foundational presuppositions in order to craft a better model for understanding the origins of the Synoptic Gospels. The hope is that the reader will join the author in seeking to better understand these books that include the climax of the greatest story of all time: the true story of people marred by sin, and their creator who seeks after them as he redeems all things to himself.

Synoptic pericopae is a reliable indicator of literary borrowing by the Synoptic Evangelists. In Oral Tradition and Synoptic Verbal Agreement, T.M. Derico presents a critical assessment of that claim through a consideration of the most recent empirical evidence concerning the kinds and amounts of verbal agreement that can be produced among independent performances of oral traditions.

New Testament scholars routinely claim that verbal agreement among parallel Synoptic pericopae is a reliable indicator of literary borrowing by the Synoptic Evangelists. In Oral Tradition and Synoptic Verbal Agreement, T. M. Derico presents a critical assessment of that claim through a consideration of the most recent empirical evidence concerning the kinds and amounts of verbal agreement that can be produced among independent performances of oral traditions.

This groundbreaking study poses a solution to what one scholar has called "one of the most difficult research problems in the history of ideas"—the Synoptic problem. The phenomenon and mystery of three similar but different Synoptic Gospels has for centuries challenged some of the best minds of academia and the church. How can we explain the differences and similarities among Matthew, Mark and Luke? Which Gospel was written first? To what extent did the Evangelists depend on oral tradition, written sources or each other? John Wenham courageously opposes the reigning two-document theory-that Mark was the first Gospel, with Matthew and Luke independently using Mark and a lost source of sayings of Jesus labeled Q. Through careful argument and analysis, he seeks to defend an alternative theory that satisfactorily accounts for what he argues is some degree of structural dependence but nevertheless a surprising degree of verbal independence among the Synoptics. This brave new revisioning of the writing of the Synoptics redates Matthew, Mark and Luke prior to A.D. 55. Insightful and provocative, Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke offers a fresh look at a hard problem as well as an interesting perspective on the inner workings of the early church. It is a book to be reckoned with—and sure to stir up scholarly controversy.

The fascination with literary dependency in the most popular approaches to the synoptic problem has been built upon a faulty presupposition: that oral tradition is incapable of producing the word for word verbal agreement found in the synoptic accounts. Recent research in the area of oral tradition has shown that this is not the case, but we still rely on increasingly complicated literary models to explain the relationships between the Synoptic Gospels. This book engages in comparative analysis of Old Greek quotations found in more than one of the Synoptic Gospels, along with the material that surrounds these quotations. The resulting conclusions indicate that oral sources may better explain the similarities and differences found in the Synoptic Gospels, and that we ought to reexamine our foundational presuppositions in order to craft a better model for understanding the origins of the Synoptic Gospels. The hope is that the reader will join the author in seeking to better understand these books that include the climax of the greatest story of all time: the true story of people marred by sin, and their creator who seeks after them as he redeems all things to himself.

Spoken words process knowledge differently from writing. What happens when speech turns into text? In reappraising literary scholars' propensity to trace Jesus' sayings back to the assumed original version, the author argues that in the oral medium each rendition of a saying is the original. Orality works with multiple originals, rather than with single originality. In what may be the most extraordinary thesis of the book, Kelber argues that the written gospel is related less by evolutionary progression than by contradiction to what preceded it.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul takes you on a journey through the Synoptic Gospels and the Epistles providing a new solution to a literary puzzle that has vexed biblical scholars for over two-hundred years--The Synoptic Problem. When the Synoptic evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke sat down to write their gospels did they have copies of some of the epistles? This book examines the Synoptic Gospels, Hebrews, and Paul's Epistles finding many intriguing similarities, suggesting that the Synoptic evangelists used extensive parts of the epistles to weave into their stories of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. David Oliver Smith then compares these epistle-based passages to the theoretical lost gospel Q and finds that a large portion of what many New Testament scholars consider to be contained in Q may have its inspiration in the Epistles.