Ferrer Theory
The Farrer hypothesis (also known as the Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre hypothesis) is the theory that the Gospel of Mark was written first, followed by the Gospel of Matthew and then the author of the Gospel of Luke used both Mark and Matthew as source material. This was advocated by English biblical scholars including Austin Farrer, who wrote On Dispensing With Q in 1955[2], and by other scholars including Michael Golder and Mark Goodacre.[3] The Farrer theory has the advantage of simplicity, as there is no need for hypothetical source “Q” to be created by academics. Advocates of the Farrer theory provide strong evidence that Luke used both the previous gospels (Mark and Matthew) and that Matthew predates Luke.[4]
The insistence on a missing source “Q” stems largely from an assumption that the author of Luke would not have excluded so much of Matthew if he had access to it as a source. However, the author of Luke recognized that there were many narratives before him. His prologue suggests the need, based on his close review of the witnesses, to provide an orderly account for the purposes of providing certainty about the things taught. This implies is that Luke excludes much of Matthew because Matthew largely got things wrong. Another objection to the Farrer Theory is that Luke is more abbreviated in some passages than Matthew and therefore Luke reflects a more primitive text. However if Luke intends to provide a concise and orderly account, it is more likely the case that Luke edited out “the fluff” from the passages in Matthew based on what he believed was most creditable and substantiated attestation of the evidence within his possession. The author of Luke’s expresses this motivation in his prologue:
| Luke 1:1-4 (ESV) | 1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. |
Primary arguments for believing that the author of Luke had access to both Mark and Matthew prior to authoring Luke are as follows:
- If Luke had read Matthew, the question that Q answers does not arise (the Q hypothesis was formed to answer the question of where Matthew and Luke got their common material based on the assumption that they did not know of each other’s gospels).
- We have no evidence from early Christian writings that anything like Q ever existed.
- When scholars have attempted to reconstruct Q from the common elements of Matthew and Luke, the result does not look like a gospel and would lack narrative accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection while including narrative accounts of about John the Baptist, Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the wilderness, and his healing of a centurion’s servant. The theoretical Q would not entirely be a sayings gospel but would be critically deficient as a narrative.
- The most notable argument for the Farrer hypothesis is that there are many passages where the text of Matthew and Luke agree in making small changes to that of Mark (what is called the double tradition). This would follow naturally if Luke was using Matthew and Mark, but is hard to explain if he is using Mark and Q. Streeter divides these into six groups and finds separate hypotheses for each.
- Farrer comments that “[h]is argument finds its strength in the fewness of the instances for which any one hypothesis needs to be invoked; but the opposing counsel will unkindly point out that the diminution of the instances for each hypothesis is in exact proportion to the multiplication of the hypotheses themselves. One cannot say that Dr. Streeter’s plea [for “Q”] is incapable of being sustained, but one must concede that it is a plea against apparent evidence”.
Again, The implication that the author of Luke had a copy of Matthew when writing Luke is that the material in Matthew must have deviated from the sound testimony of eyewitnesses and ministers of the word and that some of the material omitted from Matthew must have been erroneous
[1] Gundry, R.H. (1994). Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution (Second Edition). Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company
[2] Austin M. Farrer, On Dispensing with Q, in D. E. Nineham (ed.), Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot, Oxford: Blackwell, 1955, pp. 55-88,
[3] Wikipedia contributors, “Farrer hypothesis,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Farrer_hypothesis&oldid=980915501 (accessed October 9, 2020).
[4] Michael Goulder’s summary of the hypothesis in “Is Q a Juggernaut?”, Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996): 667-81, reproduced at http://www.markgoodacre.org/Q/goulder.htm
The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem
Mark Goodacre, Trinity Press International; 1st edition, 2002
Reminding us that Q is a hypothesis, not an extant ancient document, Goodacre’s sharply-argued book dismantles the shopworn case for Q and challenges us to think freshly about synoptic relationships. His alternative deserves serious consideration: Markan priority, combined with Luke’s use of Matthew as a source alongside Mark. For over a century Gospel scholarship has accepted a hypothetical document called Q as one of the major sources of the Synoptic Gospels. Scholars have pointed out that Luke’s knowledge of Matthew and Mark would enable one to dispense with Q. In The Case Against Q Goodacre offers a careful and detailed critique of the Q hypothesis, examining the most important arguments of Q’s proponents.
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Online Book: http://www.markgoodacre.org/Q/
First Impressions
In this widespread new fascination with Q, there is a feature of its history and profile that is increasingly being played down, for not only has Q changed from a “source” into a “Gospel,” but also it is forgetting its origin as a hypothesis, indeed a derivative hypothesis, the function of which was to account for the origin of the double tradition material on the assumption that Matthew and Luke were redacting Mark independently of one another. Many books and articles on Q now fail to mention this key element in Q’s identity, dispensing with the word “hypothesis” and treating Q simply as part of the established literature of early Christianity. (p. 3)
It is likely that many of the undergraduates who read books like this will assimilate the views without having time to check elsewhere for details about what “Q” might be. Q is simply added to the student’s armory without encouraging any thinking about the matter. (p. 4)
Setting in place the cornerstone, priority of Mark
For while it is difficult to pinpoint the dates for any of the Gospels precisely, what evidence we do have points generally in the direction of a date no later than 70 for Mark, but clearly post-70 for both Matthew and Luke. Indeed one might almost say that this view approaches consensus, a consensus that emerges not simply because scholars have already made up their mind about Markan Priority but also because of certain clues in the texts. (p. 23)
William Farmer describes “the Q material” as “simply writings that Luke copied from Matthew but that Mark did not incorporate into his work,” (p.29)
While arguments about Mark’s profile and the issue of additions, omissions, and the relationship between them, might prove to be helpful in the attempt to establish Markan Priority, one of the things that has remained frustrating for many Synoptic scholars is the lack of a category in which one can point clearly to activity that irreversibly establishes that Matthew and Luke both used Mark’s Gospel.
(…)
Examples include Matthew’s account of the Cleansing of the Leper (Matt 8:1-4 // Mark 1:40-45 // Luke 5:12-16), in which Matthew’s location of the incident after the Sermon on the Mount leads to an introductory verse not paralleled in Mark, “And when he had come down from the mountain, many crowds followed him,” Matt 8:1, something that is simply not consonant with Matthew’s virtual agreement with Mark later in the same pericope, “And Jesus says to him, ‘See that you do not say anything but go, show yourself to the priest,’ ” Matt 8:4, cf. Mark 1:44. The private location taken for granted in Mark’s account provides the setting for the command to silence. Matthew’s different setting, characteristically introducing “many crowds”, makes the command to silence an absurdity. Moreover, such commands to silence are much more rare in Matthew than they are in Mark. In other words, it seems that Matthew has rewritten the introduction to the pericope in accordance with its new setting in the narrative, using characteristically Matthean language, but subsequently he has produced incoherence as a result of editorial fatigue, whereby he falls into docile reproduction of Mark. (p. 40-42)
There are, in other words, some elements that give the game away, vestiges of Matthew’s and Luke’s literary source, Mark, telltale signs of their dependence on that Gospel. (p. 43)
Reason and rhetoric
Tuckett observes, when introducing “Traditional Arguments for Q,” that “the standard arguments used to defend the Q hypothesis” are “mostly of a negative form, claiming that Luke’s use of Matthew seems very improbable. ” This is the heart of the disagreement between Q theorists, on the one side, and Q skeptics, on the other. While there is agreement on the question of Matthew’s and Luke’s use of Mark, paths divide when it comes to asking whether this use of Mark was independent or not. In this chapter we will begin to look at the arguments adduced for the lack of contact between Matthew and Luke., the lack of contact that necessitates Q. Such arguments are far from conclusive. (p. 47)
Forms of these four arguments-from Luke’s alleged lack of Matthean additions to Mark in triple tradition material, Luke’s lack of M, his arrangement of incidents, and alternating primitivity-have been used with different degrees of emphasis on repeated occasions over the last century or so. All these are essentially negative arguments, pressing the case for Q by attempting to eliminate the primary alternative, Luke’s use of Matthew. (p. 66)
Q = (Matthew minus Mark) divided by “Luke-pleasingness” (p. 69)
“UNSCRAMBLING THE EGG WITH A VENGEANCE”? Luke’s Order and the Sermon on the Mount
The consensus view has always had difficulty with one of the most important pieces of evidence, Luke’s preface, in which the third evangelist tells Theophilus what he believes he is doing: he is writing in order (Luke 1:3). The mystery for two-source theorists has been why Luke should so stress this writing in order, alongside a mention of the “many” (Luke 1:1) who have undertaken to write before him, for on this standard theory Luke’s order is, essentially, simply Mark’s order plus Q’s order; there is little special about it, and certainly nothing to justify the rather marked emphasis. The Q theory has, however, become a mind-set, and many have got used to the idea that Luke faithfully preserves the order of both Mark and Q, so much so that this supposition gets bound into the arguments against the opposing positions. But analogies from Luke’s use of Mark, attention to the distinction between narrative and sayings, and recognition of the role the priority of Mark may have played for Luke himself, go a long way toward clarifying and explaining Luke’s reordering of Matthew. Streeter misleads the reader in speaking of “meticulous precision,” “utmost care,” “tear[ing] every little piece” and so on. As soon as Luke is committed to following the Markan order, there is simply no question of attempting to follow the Matthean order in the same way. The one excludes the possibility of the other: Matthew’s double tradition material appears in the context of a reordered Mark, a reordering that is not congenial to Luke. In any case, such a perverse, scissors-and-paste Luke, anachronistic and implausible enough to have convinced many of the existence of Q, is not at all necessary to seeing how Luke might have used Matthew. More important than anything else discussed so far is the observation that Luke is one of the great literary artists of the New Testament, an observation all too easily lost when one spends too long dwelling on the old-fashioned, narrowly source-critical focus of Streeter and those in his legacy. For Luke’s purposes, as everyone acknowledges, were quite different from Matthew’s. If Luke is attempting to write a connected narrative with plausible biographical development, then it follows that Matthew’s structure with its five great thematically linked edifices, built into his restructuring of Mark, will simply not do. One might almost say that the real perversity is not this believable Luke, who skillfully and creatively incorporated elements of Matthew and Mark into the first volume of a grand-scale, sequential narrative, but the Luke of the Q theory, who is criticized for writing a Gospel with a different order from Matthew, and then excused for doing so by allowing him the defense of loyalty to a source that no one has ever seen. (p. 103-104)
HOW BLESSED ABE THE POOR? Source-Critical Reflections on the First Beatitude in Matthew, Luke, Thomas and Q
I would draw attention to the sheer prevalence of the view that Luke’s “Blessed are the poor” is more original than Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and its place as a textbook example of the argument that sometimes Matthew, Sometimes Luke will have had the more original form of a Q saying, one of the pillars of the standard case for Q. While there are problems with the underlying assumptions and general logic of that argument, his chapter has focused on the attempt to demonstrate that in this one famous case, Luke’s dependence on Matthew is plausible, and that it is at least as strong as the notion that they independently edited Q. The standard view, that Matthew “spiritualized” a Q beatitude better represented in the Lukan version, does not pay adequate attention to any of the following points:
1. A blessing on the poor coheres with one of Luke’s most insistent themes, a theme standing at the agenda-setting outset of Jesus’ public ministry, when he announces the fulfillment of Isaiah 61 in his sermon in Nazara (4:16-30). The theme resonates throughout Luke’s Gospel, which, as every introduction tells us, is the Gospel of the underdog.
2. The beatitude in Luke has a related woe (6:23) that forms a typical example of Lukan eschatological reversal in which the poor are blessed and the rich condemned, a theme introduced in the Magnificat (1:46-55) and repeated often, most notably in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (16:19-31 ), which might be described as a kind of narrative version of Luke’s first two beatitudes and woes, contrasting hunger and satisfaction, now and in the kingdom of God.
3. The narrative critic will be sensitive to both the audience anu the narrative context of this beatitude in Luke, which is addressed to “disciples,” who, in Luke, have “left everything” (Luke 5:11, 5:28) to follow Jesus. Since in Luke poverty appears to be a prerequisite for discipleship (14:33 ), we will hardly be surprised to see the disciples blessed as “the poor”
4. Arguments for Matthean posteriority, based on alleged tensions between Matthew 5:3 (“poor in spirit”) and 11:5 ( ” …evangelize the poor”), and on the analogy of “hungering and thirsting for righteousness,” are unconvincing further, the idea that Matthew is “spiritualizing” his source does not take seriously the evidence for the meaning of the term both in Qumran literature and in its context in Matthew.
5. The argument that the Gospel of Thomas provides an independent witness to the primitivity of “Blessed are the poor” is weak.
Since consensus positions in biblical exegesis are difficult to come by, it is indeed an inconvenience to have a question mark placed over one usually thought to be so solid, not least on a topic conducive to a desire to reconstruct a primitive Christian tradition in which the poor are congratulated and the complacency of the rich is challenged. In such circumstances: one can only say that it is right to challenge injustice and to fight against poverty, then it is right to do so regardless of any attempt to derive extra legitimacy from the dubious reconstruction of the precise wording of a saying m a hypothetical document. (p. 150-151)
NARRATIVE SEQUENCE IN A SAYINGS GOSPEL: Reflections on a Contrast between Thomas and Q
As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, one of the exciting things about the discovery of Thomas was the light it appeared to shed on Q. I think that the initial excitement was right; Thomas does indeed shed light on Q, but not in the way that many first thought. Rather than corroborating the existence of the document by providing another, better example of a text in the same genre, it shows us by means of a clear contrast with itself precisely what Q is and always has been. For while Thomas’s genre is appropriately described as Sayings Gospel, that is a work in which eternal life is constituted solely by listening to and correctly interpreting the words of the living Jesus, with no interest in history, geography, or narrative, Q is something quite different. Its similarity to Thomas is the relatively superficial one that it is largely constituted by sayings material; it is its difference from Thomas that provides us with the clue about Q’s true nature, that what we have here is no more and no less than the material extrapolated from comparison between the non-Markan elements common to Matthew and Luke. (p. 185)
Epilogue
Q stands as a monument that reminds us of many of the advances made in biblical scholarship over the last 150 years. In an age less amenable than ours to the literary creativity of the evangelists, Q helped to establish the reality of Markan Priority and played a key role in helping us to forge the tool of redaction criticism, the tool which in the end, ironically, plays a part in dispensing with it. (p. 189)
The synoptic problem: a way through the maze
Mark Goodacre, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2004
Possibly the greatest literary enigma in history, the Synoptic Problem has fascinated generations of scholars. Yet the Synoptic Problem remains inaccessible to students, soon tangled up in its apparent complexities. But now Mark Goodacre offers a way through the maze, with the promise of emergence at the end, explaining in a lively and refreshing style what study of the Synoptic Problem involves, why it is important and how it might be solved. This is a readable, balanced and up-to-date guide, ideal for undergraduate students and the general reader.
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ENTERING THE MAZE
Viewing material in Synopsis has given birth to the Synoptic Problem.
The Synoptic Problem is the study of the similarities and differences of the Synoptic Gospels in an attempt to explain their literary relationship. (p. 19)
Farrer claims that if it can be shown to be plausible that Luke knew Matthew as well as Mark, then the Q theory becomes superfluous to requirements—one can ‘dispense’ with Q. But Farrer only wrote the one article on this topic. Michael Goulder, originally a pupil of Austin Farrer, has become the key advocate for this theory, devoting two books and many articles to arguing the case with vigour.'” Over the years, the theory has gathered a handful of prominent supporters. (p. 22)
Scholars use the Synoptic Problem in an attempt to solve historical puzzles.
…
The Synoptic Problem asks interesting historical questions about the Gospels and their place in the development of Christianity. (p. 27)
EXPLORING THE MAZE: THE DATA
Some stress, then, needs to be placed on Mark as the middle term if one is to understand the interrelationship of the Gospels. It is a striking phenomenon and it is this issue that provides the most useful starting point in attempting to solve the Synoptic Problem. Now that it is time, then, to turn from describing the data to accounting for it, let us look first at the most common way to account for Mark as the middle term: the theory that his was the first Gospel to be written and that it was used by both Matthew and Luke, the theory known as the Priority of Mark. (p. 55)
MARKAN PRIORITY
If one assumes Markan Posteriority, the relationship between the supposed omissions and additions does not make for a coherent picture of Markan redaction. The addition of banal clarificatory additions is not consonant with the generally enigmatic, ironic tone of Mark’s Gospel. It is more likely that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, a work of brutish genius, which was subsequently explicated by both Matthew and Luke. (p. 65)
The most decisive indicator of Markan Priority is evidence of editorial fatigue in Matthew and Luke. It seems that as Matthew and Luke rewrote passages from Mark, they made characteristic changes in the early part of pericopae, lapsing into Mark’s wording later in the same pericopae, so producing an inconsistency or an incoherence that betrayed their knowledge of Mark. (p. 76)
Markan Priority has caused scholars of the historical Jesus to pay special attention to his accounts. In historical Jesus research, Mark is therefore of key importance. Nevertheless, it also needs to be noticed that literary priority is not everything, and reflection on parallel Synoptic accounts sometimes leads to the observation that Matthew and Luke may have interacted not only with Mark but also with oral traditions as they composed their Gospels.
The theory of Markan Priority encourages fruitful investigation of the origin of the Gospel genre. It is plausible to think of Mark as the first author to compose a gospel, gathering together the traditions at his disposal and subordinating materials about Jesus’ life to a narrative focused on the Passion, so stamping his book with a stress on a Pauline theology of a suffering messiah. (p. 98-99)
Q
Q is the name given to an hypothetical source commonly invoked to explain the existence of the Double Tradition. Mark and Q are Matthew and Luke’s ‘two sources’ , hence the term the Two-Source Theory. (p. 107)
The case for Q depends largely on the prior assertion that Matthew and Luke are independent of one another. Thus arguments in favour of Q are often, in effect, arguments against the primary alternative, Luke’s direct use of Matthew. (p. 109)
THE CASE AGAINST Q
The Farrer Theory affirms Markan Priority but suggests that Luke also knew and used Matthew, which enables one to dispense with Q. (p. 123)
The standard arguments for existence of Q appear to be inadequate—indeed close consideration of them in each case leads us directly to the plausibility of Luke’s use of Matthew (p. 156)
There is direct evidence for Luke’s use of Matthew, evidence that on the whole has been ignored or explained away (p. 158)
EMERGING FROM THE MAZE
As Luke, like Matthew, attempts to fix Mark, he utilizes many of Matthew’s own materials to do the job, especially the rich quarry of sayings material. But not for Luke are huge monologues like the Sermon on the Mount. He is attempting to write a plausible, sequential narrative of ‘the events that have been fulfilled among us’ (1.1) and this means avoiding Matthew’s wooden structures, instead choosing to interweave deeds and sayings and to create a feeling of movement and progress, a progress that is not halted until, at the end of his second volume (the Acts of the Apostles), Paul is in Rome. (p. 165)
The advantage that the Farrer Theory has over its rivals is that it can provide a strong reason for the genesis of each of the Synoptic Gospels. The Synoptics turn out not only to provide source material for one another, Mark for Matthew and both for Luke, but also to be catalysts for one another, Mark for Matthew and both for Luke. Mark makes good sense as the first Gospel; Matthew makes good sense on the assumption that it represents a reaction against, and to some extent an embracing of, Mark. Luke makes fine sense on the assumption that it imitates but also improves on Matthew, utilizing some of his very material. By contrast, the other major theories have difficulties here. (p. 165)
