Synoptic Gospels

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The Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the New Testament in the Bible. The synoptic gospels often recount the same stories about Jesus, though sometimes with different details and lengths, but mostly following the same sequence and to a large extent using the same or similar words. The term synoptic is derived from a combination of the Greek words συν (syn = together) and οψις (opsis = seeing) to indicate this relationship. The similarities among these three books are great enough that scholars have labeled the question of their textual relationship the "synoptic problem". The more common view among scholars is the two-source hypothesis, which holds that Luke and Matthew derive partially from the earlier Mark, and partially from a hypothetical source which they call the "Q document". There is, however, no consensus, and some scholars favor Matthew as the source for Mark (see Augustinian hypothesis).

The fourth canonical gospel, John, does not share the same textual relationship as the other three and thus is not classified as synoptic.

Views about the dating of all four Gospels vary greatly, from about 60–70 AD until the end of the first century, though some scholars argue for an earlier date for Matthew.

[edit] Contents

The synoptic gospels tell the story of Jesus, proclaiming him the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah (Christ), the judge of the future apocalypse. The synoptic gospels start either with Jesus' birth or baptism and conclude with the empty tomb and resurrection appearances, though the autograph of Mark may have been cut short at the empty tomb (see Mark 16). In them Jesus cures diseases, exorcises demons, raises the dead, forgives sins, displays dominion over nature, knows the secret thoughts and past of others, speaks "with authority", calls God his own Father and says that the Father had handed over to him "all things".

[edit] Interpretations

Already the early Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century) had devised a scheme that enabled scholars to find parallel texts; but a synopsis in the modern understanding did not come into existence until the 18th century through the labours of Johann Jakob Griesbach. The relationship between the texts is the subject of the Synoptic Problem, which essentially seeks answers to the question of why the texts are quite so similar as they are, at times using exactly the same wording and mentioning the same sequence of events, despite the fact that other intervening events must have existed when something doubtless happened, even if they were mundane things like Jesus sleeping, or people gossiping about him.

Griesbach used it to study and demonstrate a dependence of Mark and Luke on Matthew, a hypothesis that, while going back on the earliest traditions of the Church which held to the Augustinian hypothesis, in refined forms has been gaining supporters among scholars since the beginning of the 20th century. The majority of their colleagues, however, on internal evidence are proponents of the modern hypothesis of the priority of Mark.

Furthermore, the two source hypothesis argues that Matthew and Luke used a lost source referred to as the Q Manuscript, although this hypothetical document has not been found or identified amongst early Christian texts. A few scholars have suggested that this hypothetical text may have some similarity with the ancient noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. While supporters say that the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas supports the concept of a "sayings gospel," Mark Goodacre argues that Q, as reconstructed, has a basic narrative structure and is not simply a list of sayings.