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Some Johannine ‘Herrnworte’ with Parallels in the Synoptic Gospels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

C. H. Dodd
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Extract

The question whether or not the Fourth Gospel is based upon the Synoptic Gospels has been discussed endlessly, and will no doubt continue to be discussed. The divergent conclusions which different critics draw from the same body of evidence (for it is seldom that really fresh evidence can be adduced) largely depend on their presuppositions. In particular, if the critic takes the view that the writings of the New Testament form a series of literary works in an orderly sequence of development, each depending on its predecessors and influencing its successors, even though some links in the chain may be lost, then wherever the contents of the Fourth Gospel coincide more or less with those of the Synoptic Gospels, he will be disposed, prima facie at least, to see an instance of a writer's use of written sources. Such was, in the main, the presupposition, even if not always the avowed presupposition, of nineteenth-century criticism of the Gospels, and it is by no means entirely abandoned. But the whole course which the investigation of the history and literature of primitive Christianity has followed in the period since the first world war has tended to weaken this presupposition. It suggests that the early Church was not as bookish a community as that, and it tends to emphasize the importance of oral tradition, not only in the dark years before any of the extant Christian writings appeared, but all through the New Testament period. It is not denied that in some cases New Testament writers were probably dependent on written sources, extant or lost, but it is no longer safe to entertain a general presumption that any coincidence of content is due to literary dependence. To prove such dependence some specific evidence is required—some striking or unexpected identity of language, for example, or some agreement in an apparently arbitrary arrangement of material. The question of the relation of John to the Synoptics needs to be closely re-examined from this point of view. In this article I propose to take, as specimens, four dominical sayings in the Fourth Gospel which have parallels in the Synoptics, and to ask whether, if there is no general presumption of literary indebtedness, the phenomena are such as to suggest indebtedness, or whether they rather point to independent use of a common oral tradition.

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 1955 , pp. 75 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1955

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References

1 I do not discuss the question, which text represents the original text of Matthew. If the shorter is original, the words might have been introduced to complete the balance of clauses, either because it is implied in the second clause of the second couplet, or by assimilation to John. But the longer text may well be original, and if John had a Synoptic model at all, it must have been the longer text of Matthew: vide infra.

1 Cf. Matt. vii. 9–10, Luke xi. 11–12, where the shorter text should be read in Luke, with B, 440, some O.L. MSS. and Syrsin. Here, as in the saying under discussion, there are three contrasted pairs, (a) bread and stone, (b) fish and snake, (c) egg and scorpion, of which Matthew has (a) and (b), Luke (b) and (c). The attempt to account for these phenomena on a theory of literary dependence, whether of Luke on Matthew or of both on ‘Q’, meets with little success. The most probable explanation is that the oral tradition transmitted a couplet with antithetical parallelism, and different branches of that tradition gave different pairs. (The Chester-Beatty text, which gives fish and snake, bread and scorpion, is probably a mere blunder.)

1 E.g. Deut. xxi. 15, Mal. i. 2–3 (Jacob chosen, Esau rejected), Ps. x1iv. (xlv) 8 (of moral choice), etc.

2 Matt. v. 43, vi. 24.

3 The verb φυλ́αττειν being an equivalent for in the sense ‘keep’, ‘preserve’, as opposed to άπολλύναι=‘lose’.

1 To be a disciple of Christ (Luke xiv. 26), or to follow him (Mark viii. 34), and to save or find one's Ψυχή, are not identical conceptions, but in this setting they are almost interchangeable, as the sequence in Mark show.

1 See my Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, pp. 396–8. And note that in the context of our present saying the address to the disciples as such is particularly pointed. The whole discourse begins with, and the relation thus established conditions all that follows. Yet the two propositions, and stand out as general statements, presupposing, as I shall argue, a traditional form.

1 I shall illustrate elsewhere the extent to which, in narrative pericopae also, the varying combination of traditional elements may account for differences which have often been put down to an ‘editor’ dealing with a literary source.

1 It is hinted at in John xv. 18 sqq. where the saying is cited in support.

1 See Strack-Billerbeck ad Matt. xvi. 19.

2 The question may be left open, whether such a person is conceived as a pagan professing conversion and applying for admission to the Church, or a Christian who has offended against the Christian law. The latter seems to us the more natural interpretation, but some patristic authorities interpreted the ‘power of the keys’ in Matt. xvi. 19 with reference to the admission or rejection of candidates for initiation, and in that case the authority to ‘bind’ and ‘loose’ should mean authority to admit and expel. In any case, the moment at which the precept of John xx. 23 comes into force is not the moment when the excommunication of an offender is in contemplation (cf. I Cor. v. 3–5), but the moment when a person is outside communion and the question of his admission (or readmission) is under consideration.