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Between Jesus And The Gospels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

Henry J. Cadbury
Henry J. Cadbury
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

A new and not unfruitful stage in the literary criticism of the gospels seems to be marked by the recent publication in Germany of three important books. For nearly a century the Synoptic problem has absorbed the attention of scholars. The fascinating riddle of likeness and difference in our first three gospels challenged them to find a solution. It became clear that this was a question of written sources, and for many minds the “two-document hypothesis,” that Mark and some other common written Greek material (Q) are embodied independently in Matthew and in Luke, has come to provide a working basis of investigation, although the categorical denial of this view by the Papal Biblical Commission makes it impossible for Roman Catholic scholars to accept it in its current form. There remain, however, the question of other Greek sources, as, for example, the sources for Mark's and for Luke's special material, and the question of the possibility of Semitic originals, on which no conclusion has been attained and on which perhaps more light may soon be expected from further studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 1923 , pp. 81 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1923

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References

1 Dibelius, M., Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, 1919Google Scholar; Schmidt, K. L., Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu, 1919Google Scholar; Bultmann, R., Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 1921.Google Scholar See also note at close of this article.

2 Schmidt, op. cit., p. 90.

3 Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 76 f.

4 Ibid., p. 17.

5 Op. cit., p. 213.

6 This is Bultmann's view, pp. 158–173, as distinct from the views of Schmidt and Dibelius noted above.

7 For instance, Mark 9, 35–50. See the interesting distinction of Augustine, quoted by Schmidt, p. 9, between the ordo rerum gestarum and the ordo recordationis. The fullest examination of the principle of memory by suggestion—Stichwortdisposition is the convenient German compound name for it — in the gospels is by a Catholic scholar (Thaddaeus Soiron, Die Logia Jesu, 1916), a fact which shows that in the realms that lie outside of the forbidden land of the two-document hypothesis Protestants will find among Roman Catholics welcome co-workers in retracing the growth of the gospels.

8 It is possible that even the name Jairus did not originally stand in Mark 5, 22, but was first introduced by Luke and came thence into most of the Mss. of Mark. It is not found in Daeffi in the Markan passage, and does not appear in Matthew.

9 For the sake of completeness mention should be made of two monographs on special phases of gospel “Formgeschichte” which came to hand after this article was in type: M. Albertz, Die synoptischen Streitgespräche; ein Beitrag zur Formengeschichte des Urchristentums, 1921; G. Bertram, Die Leidensgeschichte Jesu und der Christuskult; eine formgeschichtliche Untersuchung, 1922.