Part 15 (1/2)

Over against these pa.s.sages may be placed others where the change, if any, and whether made unconsciously or for reasons of style or with conscious tendency, would seem to be in the other direction.

1. In the Parable of the Vineyard, Matthew xxi. 37, ”My son.” Luke xx.

13, ”My beloved son.” Mark xii. 6, ”He had yet one, a beloved son.”

2. Matthew x. 42, ”A cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple.”

Compare Mark ix. 41, ”In name because ye are of Christ.”

3. Luke xxiii. 47, ”Certainly this was a righteous man.” Mark xv. 39, ”Truly this man was the Son of G.o.d,” or ”a son of G.o.d.” Matthew xxvii.

54 follows Mark.

4. (According to Bousset) Mark's abbreviation of Q in iii. 27 makes it appear that it was Jesus who bound the strong man, instead of G.o.d.[283]

283: ”Kyrios Christos,” p. 49.

5. Matthew xiii. 55, ”Is not this the carpenter's son?” Compare Luke iv.

22, ”Is not this Joseph's son?” Mark vi. 3, ”Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” Belief in the Virgin Birth is perhaps safeguarded by Mark.

6. Mark x. 45, ”The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, etc.”

Here Bousset sees a dogmatic working over of Luke xxii. 27, ”I am among you as one that serves.”[284] Matthew xx. 28 follows Mark.

284: ”Kyrios Christos,” p. 9, note 1.

So far as tendency to Christological heightening is concerned, critics of the school of Bousset are now especially severe against Mark. It appears that ”Luke's Gospel in the Pa.s.sion history has preserved a series of primary traditions over against Mark.”[285] Holdsworth finds a number of secondary elements, mostly stylistic, in Mark where the three Gospels have a common narrative. Among these are the vivid touches of the second Gospel, considered to be ”distinctly secondary features,” the fuller descriptions in many instances, and the use of the noun ”gospel”

not found at all in Luke although the verb is used, and not found in Matthew in its absolute sense.[286]

285: ”Kyrios Christos,” p. 44.

286: ”Gospel Origins,” pp. 118 f.

Taking, then, the present state of opinion as to the relation of our Mark to the other Gospels, we see that while in general the ”priority of Mark” is in some sense defended, yet the relation between any given pa.s.sage in Matthew or Luke and its parallel in Mark may be variously construed. When Matthew, for example, deviates from Mark, this modification according to current theories may arise (1) from the first Evangelist's fancy or his dogmatic tendency, and will in either case be historically worthless. It may arise (2) from reliable oral tradition, and in this case be as worthy of credence as the Markan source. It may be derived (3) from the source Q, but may be for some reason omitted by Mark, whose knowledge of Q is a.s.sumed. The deviation in Matthew may (4) have been found in a proto- or deutero-Mark, but have been omitted in his final edition. The difference in this case between Matthew and Mark is no greater than that between two editions of the same work.

The point to be emphasized is that, in the present state of opinion upon the Synoptic problem, the difference of one Evangelist from another does not in itself invalidate the testimony of either. The Synoptic problem, while primarily a literary problem, is indeed ”fraught with momentous issues which the Church, and not scientific criticism only, is concerned to face”;[287] but in the present state of the discussion, the fact that Matthew adds to or modifies the narrative of Mark does not necessarily place the Matthean modification upon a lower plane of credibility than the Markan statement. The Matthean modification may be an exact copy of an earlier edition of Mark, or may be derived from one of Mark's sources, Q, or may be taken from that stream of oral tradition coming from ”eye-witnesses and ministers of the word,” which Luke in his preface evidently regarded as the touchstone of historical truth, whatever his use of written sources.

287: H. L. Jackson, in ”Cambridge Biblical Essays,” 1909, p. 432.

Pa.s.sing over the vexed question of Q, we may observe that the acceptance of Harnack's early dating of the Acts and Luke would further complicate the two-doc.u.ment theory. He agrees that Luke was written before the Acts, and the Acts before Paul's trial at Rome was decided; further that Mark is one of the sources of Luke, and that Mark was written at Rome.

”Tradition a.s.serts no veto against the hypothesis that Luke, when he met Mark in the company of Paul the prisoner, was permitted by him to peruse a written record of the Gospel history which was essentially identical with the Gospel of Mark given to the Church at a later time.” Perhaps, he intimates, ”Luke was not yet acquainted with Mark's final revision, which, as we can quite well imagine, Mark undertook while in Rome.”[288]

The priority of Mark, under this supposition, is left hanging by a slender thread. It is highly probable that Luke gathered the material for his work (and a great part of it was certainly independent of Mark) while in Palestine, and if he did not see Mark's Gospel, or a rough draft of it, until he was in Rome, it is improbable that the Markan doc.u.ment was his primary and princ.i.p.al source, as the two-doc.u.ment theory a.s.serts.

288: IV, p. 93; ”Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels,”

p. 133.

Whatever the literary foundation of the two-doc.u.ment theory, it cannot be said to have led to any very important historical results. Those who regard the portrait of Jesus in Mark as historical see in the portrayal of Matthew and Luke only a difference in the _nuances_ of the narrative.

On the other hand, those who cannot accept the picture drawn by the First and the Third Evangelists are equally unable to accept that given to us by Mark. The criticism of the sources, in its usual form, has not revealed to us a Jesus who is more historical than the Jesus of any of the Synoptists; and it is necessary to pursue the quest in the more problematical region of ”sources of sources.” In this process Mark is found to be as little historical as the other Synoptic Gospels, or even as the Gospel of John.

The ”dissonances of the Evangelists” appear to be left practically where they were before the present movement in Synoptic criticism began. They remain what they always have been when one Gospel is compared with another, and are neither softened nor made more acute by any certain results which have been reached in the study of the Synoptic problem.