Customer Reviews

THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM

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Farmer pulls out all the stops in his arguments against Mark being the first gospel.

First, he outlines how so many of the modern scholars came to the belief that Mark was the more primitive, and the first, of the gospels. It was in 1778 that Lessing first proposed that there was an original gospel, an 'Ur-gospel', that was based on oral accounts of the apostles.

In 1783 Griesback argued instead that "Mark was written later than Luke and was dependent on both Matthew and Luke" (p 8). As Farmer points out, "the chief merit of the Griesback hypothesis for all its adherents was its ready explanation for the phenomena of order...Mark was combining two Gospels between which there already existed a relationship of literary dependence" (p 69).

Farmer then proceeds to shred the arguments of the usual suspects who insist on the priority of Mark.

So, did Matthew correct Mark's colloquial Greek, as claimed by Streeter? Farmer insists "the secondary character of Mark's text is clear from the fact that in conflating Matthew and Luke...Mark has inadvertently maximized ...the circumstances which accounted for Jesus' incapacity" )p 150).

What about the favorite expressions? Farmer points out that "no favorite expressions of Mark are found in either Matthew or Luke" (p 158).

Farmer concludes Matthew was the first gospel, and "was evidently used extensively by...Luke (p 200).

Certainly the three Synoptics have some relationship to one another. The baffling question, which has certainly been argued since they were written, is what? Clement of Alexandria said "he had it from the elders that the Gospels with genealogies were written before the Gospels without them" (p 226). And by 95 AD Clement of Rome cited from Matthew, but not from Mark.

Farmer has also written a newer book on this same subject, which I highly recommend. It has even more cogent arguments for Matthew being the first gospel. The title is "The Gospel of Jesus: The Pastoral Relevance of the Synoptic Problem".

Those who are interested in Farmer's books because he is an orthodox Catholic scholar, will also want to read Jean Carmignac's "The Birth of the Synoptics" which talks about the Semitisms so often overlooked in Matthew. Also Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre and Michael Barber are more orthodox Catholic biblical scholars who have published books.

William Farmer presented a good alternative to the standard Mark, then Q, then Matthew, then Luke scenario. The case is not closed in the conservative community on Marcan Priority