Four Important Insights or Keys for Understanding
the Sources and the Interrelationship of the Synoptic Gospels

By Robert L. Lindsey, PhD

Introduction       Key 1     Key 2      [ Key 3 ]     Key 4

The Third Key: Luke’s Sources

The idea that while writing his gospel, Luke consulted two principal sources, I regard as the third key. Once I identified Luke as the first writer of the synoptic gospels, I also concluded that he had employed as one of his two principal sources an older and longer text. This older and longer text represents the basic source known to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In other publications I have referred to this basic source as the Reorganized Scroll (RS), but here I will call it the Anthological Text (ANT) (footnote 14)

Luke also knew a second shorter source, which may be thought of as having been excerpted from the older, longer source. In other words, the shorter source was based upon the older, longer source. I have referred to this shorter, secondary source in other places as the First Reconstruction (FR). Here I will use the same designation, but abbreviate it differently as the RCT (for Reconstructed Text). Each of the synoptic evangelists had access to the ANT, while Luke alone knew the RCT.

Luke’s repeating of material in the form of aphoristic sayings led me to these assumptions about the nature of his two principal sources. Scholars call a unit of material that appears twice in any one of the synoptic gospels a doublet. Most doublets are found in either Luke or Matthew and are, therefore, called Lukan doublets or Matthean doublets. Doublets are caused when a writer consults two sources with overlapping content. Here, we are focusing on Lukan doublets.

In Luke chapters 8 and 9 we find two lists of short, pithy sayings. Later in his gospel, namely chapters 10 through 18, Luke repeated these sayings, but here they are embedded in longer units of Jesus’ teachings. Therefore, I concluded that the two lists of sayings in Luke 8 and 9 originated from the RCT. The writer of the RCT simply saw them in the ANT, where they appeared as part of larger teaching units. He excerpted, collected, and grouped the sayings together in his composition, which seems to have been some sort of abridged proto-gospel. Using both the ANT and the RCT, Luke then copied the sayings twice, thus producing doublets in his text. We will discuss this in more detail later.

To conclude this introduction to the third key, I will review briefly my proposal for how the synoptic tradition developed. Sometime in the middle of the second century AD, Papias, who served as the bishop of Hierapolis, wrote, "Matthew recorded the sayings [of Jesus] in Hebrew, and everyone translated them as he was able." Papias’ words were quoted and preserved for posterity by another Bishop named Eusebius (footnote 15). I suspect that Papias was writing about the disciple Matthew who recorded the life and teachings of Jesus. Therefore, the first step in the development of the synoptic gospels was the disciple Matthew’s Life of Jesus written in Hebrew (footnote 16).

The proto-gospel which Papias described fell into disuse and eventually vanished from history, but not before it had been translated rather literally into Greek. The original Hebrew Life of Jesus and the subsequent translation into Greek had an authentic chronological skeleton around which the story of Jesus was told. I think that the narrative units of teaching material contained in these two texts, the Hebrew original and its translation into Greek, generally followed a certain pattern in structure, which accurately portrayed Jesus’ style of teaching in public. The pattern contained this sequence of events: 1) an incident in public; 2) a teaching capitalizing on the incident to make a point; and 3) two parables (footnote 17) to illustrate and emphasize the primary focus of the teaching.

The writer of the ANT used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Life of Jesus. He saw the pattern in the Greek translation and decided to rearrange its material more or less according to literary form. Reworking a given teaching narrative, he separated the incident from the teaching and the pair of parables. He then placed the incident along with others at the beginning of his composition. Basically he excerpted from the Greek translation one incident after another and transcribed them to form the first section of his scroll. Then he excerpted the teaching sections and transcribed them in the middle of his scroll. Lastly, he added the parables as the third section of his scroll.

Thus, the scroll by the writer of the ANT had a three-fold structure: 1) a collection of incidences; 2) a collection of teachings; 3) and a collection of parables (footnote 18). The writer of the ANT was responsible for the Life of Jesus losing its authentic chronological skeleton. He produced a text that was less a typical Hebrew-style narrative and more a series of short stories followed by a collection of teachings and a second collection of parables. When Matthew, Mark, and Luke began their work, they faced the formidable task of trying to restore some sort of logical chronological sequence to the story line.

Luke, however, apparently had in his possession a second source whose writer had attempted some sort of chronological reconstruction. This second source was the RCT, which itself had been based on the ANT. Among other things, the RCT represented an attempt to restore some sense of continuity to the story, which had been lost when the writer of the ANT arranged the materials that he included in his composition according to the three anthological groupings.

As I mentioned, the ANT was a fantastic source for learning about the historical Jesus. The most Hebraic passages of the synoptic gospels stem from the ANT . In approaching the gospels critically, I am foremost interested in isolating where in Matthew, Mark and Luke material from the ANT may be recovered. Material from the ANT percolates up through the synoptic tradition primarily in Luke in the triple tradition passages (especially chapters 10-18), in Matthew in the triple tradition passages where his wording deviates from Mark, and in the Matthean and Lukan double tradition passages.

Consulting the ANT as his primary source and attempting to give some sort of logical, chronological skeleton to his new composition, the writer of the RCT faced a major editorial challenge. Moreover, his editorial activity also included the introduction of certain new ideas. Traces of this person’s editorial activity find expression in Luke’s gospel, because in organizing the layout of his gospel, Luke relied upon the RCT as a guide. Two of the new ideas that have greatly complicated the exegetical efforts of New Testament commentators are the "Messianic Secret" and the equating of the parousia with the kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God) (footnote 19). The RCT should be envisioned as a text secondary to the ANT. Its reworked material from the ANT spawned the Lukan doublets and introduced through Luke into the synoptic tradition theological ideas which did not originate with Jesus.

Finally, I will call attention to Luke 1:1-3: "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught." Note that the Greek word kathexsaes has been translated here as "consecutive order." (footnote 20) Luke seems to be describing a situation where there had been a number of stories written about Jesus. Moreover, it seems that confusion had been generated by a disruption in the "consecutive order" of the story. What I have been describing above about the development of the synoptic tradition dovetails nicely with what Luke said in his prologue.

______________________________

Footnote 15  See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History III 39, 16. For further discussion, see J. Frankovic, "Pieces to the Synoptic Puzzle: Papius and Luke 1:1-4," Jerusalem Perspective no. 40 (September-October 1993), pp. 12-13.

Footnote 16  Note that this means that the disciple Matthew could not have written our gospel we call Matthew. Rather, our present gospels, including the Gospel of Matthew, are indebted to the account recorded by the disciple Matthew.

Footnote 20  Walter Bauer, William Arndt, and Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 5^th rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979), p. 368.