1 - Problems and assumptions

Summary

Far too much has already been written on the Synoptic Problem. General studies and detailed work on small portions of the question have accumulated year after year. At this stage the only justification for another monograph is either a contribution of overlooked or unrealized facts, or an examination of axioms which, through long and uncritical acceptance, have stood in the way of progress and have generated unnecessary paradoxes. A recent provocative and illuminating book has shown us how it was necessary in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth for many theologians and scripture scholars to believe that Mark was the first of the Synoptic Gospels. For Mark, they thought, contained less legendary material and less miraculous happenings; and if they were to remain Christians in a rational age, this was a Gospel in which they could more readily place their attenuated faith. Such details as the Infancy Narratives and the Resurrection Appearances must represent a mythologizing, theologizing or paganizing of the original primitive tradition.

The classical form of the orthodox doctrine that Mark is the earliest of the Synoptics and that Matthew and Luke have combined Mark with a second document, given the shorthand title Q (German Quelle), was provided by B. H. Streeter in his magisterial book The Four Gospels.