Sources of the Synoptic Gospels Part 7

With these sections von Soden contrasts the remaining parts of the Gospel, in which he finds not only much interruption of the primary narrative, but much interpretation, much allegorizing, much absence of actual situations, much reminiscence of Old Testament stories, much influence from Paul, and many reflections of the experiences of individual Christians and the Christian church.[57] No one can work thru this a.n.a.lysis of von Soden's without feeling that it is easy to distinguish between primary and secondary elements in the Gospel of Mark, and that von Soden has at least pointed out many of the junctures between these two.

The attempt of Wendling in his _Ur-Marcus_[58] is still more thorogoing.

The basis of his discussion is Mark's 4th chapter, where he considers the two strands most easily separated. To the original belong iv, 1-9, and vss. 26-33. Vss. 10-25 are later; they have been inserted mechanically, yet so as to respect the older text; they have no organic connection with the rest of the chapter, and even contradict its situation. Jesus is teaching from a boat (and other boats are with his); then suddenly, in vss. 10-25, he is alone with his disciples who ask him the meaning of the parable of the Sower. He gives his explanation, and again without any indication of change of situation he is in the boat surrounded by the other boats, with the people still on the sh.o.r.e, and the storm comes up and is stilled.

This little insertion (iv, 10-25) also contains theories of the writer, quite contradictory to those of the writer of other parts of the Gospel.

In other places, Jesus speaks to all the people in parables "as they were able to hear him"; he stretches out his hand over the mult.i.tude of his disciples and says, "These are my mother and my sisters"; he is the teacher of the crowd, who understand him better than his own family; there is nothing in his parables that needs explaining. But in this insertion (iv, 10-25) the theory of the writer is that the parables are "mysteries,"

enigmas, which not only need to be explained (by the allegorical method), but which are spoken for the express purpose of preventing the people from understanding. Without the key which Jesus gives, even the disciples do not understand them. The section is also marked by Pauline influences.[59]

Two clews are thus given, aside from interruptions in the narrative, by which the work of a second writer may be detected. He has the _Geheimnis-Theorie_ of the parables, and he has in thot and vocabulary reminiscences of the Pauline school. Applying these tests to another section which seems to interrupt the narrative where it stands, Wendling adds a second insertion--iii, 22-30. This is the section about the dispute with the Pharisees, which comes in inaptly between the introduction (iii, 20, 21) and the continuation (iii, 31) of the story of Jesus' family who have come to take him home. It seems to have been inserted in this place because the Pharisees also said "he hath a devil." By repeating in vs. 30 the ??e??? ?t? which he found in vs. 21, the redactor preserves for the continuation of the original story precisely the same connection it would have had without his interpolation; and by the use of the same words in vs. 22 he connects the interpolation with the opening narrative. His hand is seen in the superfluous repet.i.tion of words, especially of the subject, as in iii, 24, 25.[60]

To these two insertions should be added a third, iii, 6-19. The motives for it seem to be copied from narratives in other chapters. It consists (in part) of generalization and interpretation, both marks of the redactor's work. It also contains his _Geheimnis-Theorie_.

To these should be added i, 34_b_ ("he suffered not the demons to speak, because they knew him"), because of the presence in it of this same theory. Nor does i, 45, fit where it is; the connection without it is good; it also contains the favorite theory of the redactor that the more Jesus told people not to proclaim him, the more they did so, and the more he tried to seclude himself the more they found him.

To these again, on somewhat other grounds and not so securely, should be added the little groups of loosely strung logia which are found in vi, 7-11; viii, 34-ix, 1; ix, 40-50; x, 42-45; xi, 23-25; xii, 38-40; xiii, 9-13. The ground for a.s.serting these to be additions is that these logia are not closely connected in the pa.s.sages in which they occur, and that they share this characteristic with the similar group of disconnected sayings in the first and best attested interpolation, iv, 21-25.

In i, 1-3, 14_b_, 15, the word e?a??????? arouses a natural suspicion. The same word also occurs in four other places (viii, 35; x, 29; xiii, 10; xiv, 9), all of which are in pa.s.sages which are suspicious upon other grounds; consequently with the three instances in chap. i, they are ascribed to the redactor.

With the exception of the interpolation in iv, 10-25, the section i, 16-iv, 33, appears to be a unit, and belongs to the oldest stratum. But with iv, 35, says Wendling, begins a new section, easily distinguished from that just mentioned. It copies the motives and the characteristics of other sections.[61] The writer is to be distinguished, however, not merely from the writer of the earliest stratum, but from the author of the insertions already identified. None of the criteria of the latter's manner appear in the section beginning at iv, 35. It shows no trace of Pauline conceptions, has none of Jesus' prohibitions to the demons, its _Heimlichkeit_ is of a different sort, and goes back to Old Testament exemplars. And since the insertion in iv, 10-25, presupposes the story of the storm on the lake in iv, 35-v, 43, this latter is older than the former. The writer of this section (iv, 35-v, 43) therefore stood between the writer of the original strand, and the evangelist or redactor. The last writer (Wendling calls him Ev) worked over the combined work of his two predecessors.

To the author who is intermediate between the first writer and the Evangelist, Wendling a.s.signs twenty-nine different sections, some of considerable length and some of only a verse or part of a verse. They are as follows: i, 4-14_a_; iv, 35-v, 42; v, 43_b_; vi, 14, 17-30, 35-44; ix, 2-8, 14-27; x, 46-xi, 10; xiv, 12-20, 26-35_a_, 36-37, 39-41_a_, 42, 47, 51-56, 60-62_a_, 63, 64, 66-72; xv, 16-20, 23, 24_b_, 25, 29-30, 33, 34_b_-36, 38, 40-43, 46-xvi, 7_a_, 8--about two hundred verses or parts of verses in all.

The contributions of the author of the Gospel are more extensive than those of his predecessor. They comprise i, 1-3, 14_b_-15, 34_b_, 39_b_, 45; ii, 15_b_-16_a_, 18_a_, 19_b_-20; iii, 6-19, 22-30; iv, 10-25, 30-32, 34; v, 43_a_; vi, 1-13, 15, 16, 30-31, 45-viii, 26, 30_b_-33_a_, 33_c_-35, 38-ix, 1, 9-13, 28-50; x, 2-12, 24, 26-30, 32_b_-34, 38-40, 45; xi, 11-14, 18-25, 27_a_; xii, 14_b_, 32-34_a_, 38-44; xiii, 3-27, 30-32, 37; xiv, 8, 9, 21, 35_b_, 38, 41_b_, 57-59, 62_b_; xv, 39, 44, 45; xvi, 7_b_, in all about two hundred and seventy verses or parts of verses.

This leaves to the original writer the following sections: i, 16-34_a_, 35-39_a_, 40-44; ii, 1-15_a_, 16_b_-17, 18_b_, 19_a_, 21-iii, 5, 20, 21, 31-iv, 9, 26-29, 33; vi, 32-34; viii, 27-30_a_, 33_b_, 36, 37; x, 1, 13-23, 25, 31-32_a_, 35-37, 41-44; xi, 15-17, 27_b_-xii, 14_a_, 14_c_-31, 34_b_-37; xiii, 1-2, 28-29, 33-36; xiv, 1-7, 10, 11, 22-25, 43-46, 48-50, 65; xv, 1-15, 21, 22, 24_a_, 26-27, 31-32, 34_a_, 37, in all about two hundred and twelve verses or parts of verses.[62]

Wendling calls the writers of these three strands M1, M2, and Ev. Printing the text of M1 and M2 without rearrangement, but with the omission of all matter a.s.signed to Ev, he finds them to make a continuous story, well connected and without breaks. Whether M1 alone makes such a story, he is in doubt; and therefore as to whether M2 found M1 as a connected discourse, or himself first a.s.sembled the sections of it in connection with his own additions, the same doubt exists. The pa.s.sion-story of M1 by itself seems to be a connected account; it may therefore be a.s.sumed that so much of M1 was found by M2 as a whole and in its present order.

Further, since the work of Ev in the pa.s.sion-story is so slight, it is to be a.s.sumed that the combination of M1 and M2 in this story was more carefully done than in many other parts, and also that for this part of the gospel history Ev possessed very few traditions which had not already been embodied in M1 + M2. This would agree with the natural a.s.sumption that the earliest part of the gospel tradition to be carefully treasured would be that relating to Jesus' death, and that it was only later that the attempt was made to preserve with equal care the story of his whole public career.

When one remembers the fine-spun a.n.a.lyses of the historical books of the Old Testament, which, long ridiculed for their elaborateness, have finally been accepted by most scholars, one hesitates on this account alone to p.r.o.nounce an adverse judgment upon Wendling's theory. Yet his a.n.a.lysis certainly seems over-elaborate. It is a great advantage to be able to distinguish the more obvious work of the redactor from the earlier doc.u.ment upon which he worked. All students will feel this with reference to chap. iv, and the advantage in chap. iii is perhaps only less great.

Still more welcome is the a.s.signment of vi, 45-viii, 27, to the redactor.

The great stumbling-block of this section is its feeding of the four thousand, so obviously copied from the feeding of the five thousand. That one and the same author should have written both these accounts has seemed strange to many readers. But this duplication is as easily disposed of upon von Soden's theory as upon Wendling's. Von Soden's a.n.a.lysis into two strata (without the a.s.sumption of two writers) is much simpler than Wendling's a.n.a.lysis into three, with three writers. Wendling's theory is more secure where it goes with von Soden's, and less convincing where it goes beyond it.

Some distinction has in any case to be made between the final writer of the Gospel and the earliest tradition upon which he worked; and Wendling has indicated the criteria which such a distinction must employ. Von Soden's division of the Marcan material into a Petrine and a later source amounts to the same thing. The two critics do not differ greatly about the pa.s.sages they regard as secondary. Von Soden's Petrine narrative does not differ greatly from Wendling's M1 + M2. But the line of demarkation between M1 and M2, and Wendling's reasons for drawing this, are not as self-evident as the line which Wendling and von Soden agree in drawing between the earlier doc.u.ment, or source, and the work of the Evangelist.

CONCLUSIONS OF VON SODEN AND WENDLING COMPARED

A tabulation of the results discloses the following agreements and disagreements between von Soden's Petrine narrative and Wendling's M1+M2.

Von Soden i, 4-11, 16-20, 21-39 ii, 1-28 Wendling i, 4-14a, 16-34a, 35-39a, 40-44 ii, 1-15a, 16b-17, 18b, 19b

Von Soden iii, 1-6, 13-19, 21-35 iv, 1-9, 21-32 Wendling 21-28 iii, 1-5, 20,21, 31-35 iv, 1-9, 26-29, 33, 35-41

Von Soden vi, 6-16 viii, 27-38 Wendling v, 1-42, 43b vi, 14, 17-30, 33-44 viii, 27-30a, 33b, 36, 37

Von Soden ix, 1 32-40 x, 13-45 Wendling ix, 2-8, 14-27 x, 1, 13-23, 25, 31, 32a, 35-37, 41-52, xi, 1-10

Von Soden xii, 13-44 xiii, 1-6 Wendling 15-17, 27b-33 xii, 1-14a, 14c-31, 34b-37 xiii, 1-2, 28-29

Von Soden 28-37 Wendling 33-36 xiv, 1-7, 10-20, 22-35a, 36-37, 39-41a, 42-56, 60-62a

Von Soden Wendling 63-72 xv, 1-38, 40-42, 46-47 xvi, 1-7a, 8

The comparison shows Wendling's a.n.a.lysis to be much more complex than von Soden's. This results from his separation of his groundwork into two strands. It also shows that Wendling a.s.signs considerably more to M1 and M2 than von Soden to his Petrine source. This Wendling can afford to do, since he supposes two doc.u.ments instead of one. The matter a.s.signed by von Soden to the Petrine source is in part a.s.signed by Wendling to M1 and in part to M2. E.g., i, 4-11, is a.s.signed by von Soden to the Petrine source, and by Wendling to M2; but i, 16-39, is a.s.signed to the Petrine source, and (with the exception of two parts of verses) to M1. The pa.s.sage ii, 1-28, is a.s.signed by von Soden to the Petrine source, by Wendling to M1 (again with exception of a few parts of verses). Of the one hundred and seventy-seven verses a.s.signed by von Soden to his Petrine source, up to and including xiii, 37 (after which he so a.s.signs nothing), Wendling a.s.signs about one hundred and twenty-four to his M1, and only ten to M2.

Tho he a.s.signs some verses to M1 which von Soden does not give to the Petrine source, and omits some (a.s.signing them to the redactor) which von Soden does so a.s.sign, up to xiii, 37, the M1 of Wendling agrees very closely with the Petrine source of von Soden. The material a.s.signed to M1 and M2 after xiii, 37, is about equally divided between them. Wendling makes no claims for the Petrine origin of his M1 or M2, but after these are subtracted from the whole Gospel there is a smaller amount left for the work of his redactor than remains after the Petrine source is subtracted. Since Wendling distinguishes between two sources and the work of the redactor, and von Soden only between the Petrine tradition and other matter, this result also is what would be expected.

The relatively great agreement of the results of these two investigations seems to prove that it is possible to distinguish an earlier and a later tradition in the Gospel. Beyond this, the difference between von Soden and Wendling is that the former makes no a.s.sertions concerning the ident.i.ty of the final editor with the writer who recorded the Petrine tradition, while the latter a.s.serts that the redactor is quite another person than the writer of either M1 or M2. Is this latter position of Wendling's susceptible of proof or disproof?

Perhaps the simplest criterion, and the one to be most safely applied, is that of vocabulary. Sir John Hawkins compiled a list[63] of forty-one words which he regards as characteristic of Mark. Do these words occur indiscriminately in M1, M2, and Ev, or are they confined some of them to M1, and some to M2, and some to Ev? Or is there sufficient difference in the frequency with which these words occur in the three strata to justify the a.s.sumption of three different authors, and especially that Ev was distinct from the writers of the two doc.u.ments? If not, the division between earlier and later material in Mark may still stand, but it may have been one and the same writer who put the whole Gospel together out of these earlier and later materials.

Characteristic of Mark[64] is the historic present. Hawkins finds one hundred and fifty-one examples of this use in Mark against seventy-eight in Matthew (twenty-one of these taken from Mark),[65] and four in Luke. Of these one hundred and fifty-one historic presents in Mark, forty-nine occur in pa.s.sages a.s.signed by Wendling to M1, sixty-nine in M2, and thirty-three in Ev.

Of the peculiarly Marcan words, some prove nothing in this connection.

??a??????? is used only by Ev (seven times); but since Wendling uses the presence of this word as a criterion of Ev's work in six out of the seven pa.s.sages where it occurs, this adds nothing to the proof. ??a??? is used once by M1, twice by M2, and not by Ev. But since Ev adds no story of a dumb man, he has no occasion to use the word. (He does add a story of a stammering man, where he uses the word, ????????.) ???sa, used once by M2 and three times by Ev, signifies little; since the three uses in Ev occur in the same pa.s.sage, and this pa.s.sage is a copy of the pa.s.sage in M2 (the feeding of the mult.i.tudes). St???? occurs three times, all in M1, but this also signifies nothing, since no pa.s.sage in which it could occur is a.s.signed to M2 or Ev. ??p??e??a? is used twice each by M1 and M2, and seven times by Ev; but since five of these seven occurrences are in the same pa.s.sage, they cannot establish any particular fondness for this word on the part of Ev as against the other two. ??sp??e??a? looks a little more favorable for Wendling's hypothesis, since it is used once by M1, twice by M2, and five times, in separated pa.s.sages, by Ev. ????a?t??, found three times in M1, four in M2, and three in Ev; ?p? a????e?, three times in M2 and twice in Ev; d?da??, used three times by M2 and twice by the redactor, and f???, five times used by M1, eight times by M2, and twice by Ev, do nothing toward establishing a distinct vocabulary for any one of the three. Only two words, d?ast????a?, used four times by the redactor in four different chapters, and not by M1 or M2; and ???a??a?, used only by M2, four times in three different chapters, point in the direction of distinct vocabularies. But the absence of the third of these words can certainly, and of the second probably, be accounted for by the subject-matter.

There is here practically no evidence of distinct vocabularies. Even if there were, it would be fully offset by the use of words having no necessary connection with any particular subject-matter, and therefore equally likely to occur in any part of the Gospel. Five such words are the adverbs e????, p????, p????, ????t?, and ??p?. Of these, the first (Mark's most characteristic word) is used seventeen times by M1, fifteen by M2, and ten by Ev. Considering the relative amounts of narrative matter ascribed to the three, this usage seems to indicate an equal fondness for this word among them. The second (p????) is used ten times by M1, eight times by M2, and nine times by Ev; the third (p????) is used adverbially three times by M1, six times by M2, and three times by Ev; the fourth (????t?), twice by M1, twice by M2, three times by Ev; the fifth (??p?), once by M1 and four times by Ev.

Characteristic of Mark also is his use of the imperfects ??e?e? and ??e???. They are found fourteen times in M1, fifteen times in M2, and twenty-one times in the pa.s.sages ascribed to Ev.

Of the forty-one verses listed on p. 246 as standing in both Mark and Q, thirty-four are in pa.s.sages a.s.signed by Wendling to Ev. This would seem to tell in Wendling's favor, since the last writer who had a hand in the making of the Gospel of Mark would naturally be the one most likely to make use of Q. Three verses, however, occur in pa.s.sages a.s.signed to M1, and four in M2. This would indicate that all three writers, besides having the same favorite words, were acquainted with and made some use of Q. The item of the relation of the various writers to Q, however, has little or no significance; since it is the sections having the greatest amount of logian matter and the least narrative, that are a.s.signed to Ev.

The c.u.mulative effect of these considerations is very much to the discredit of Wendling's a.s.sumption of three different writers for our Gospel of Mark. It cannot, to be sure, disprove that a.s.sumption; but it at least shows a lack of proof where proof would be most easily found and most convincing.

MATTHEW AND LUKE USED OUR MARK AS A SOURCE

Even if Wendling's a.n.a.lysis had been capable of substantiation on linguistic grounds, his division of our Gospel of Mark into three strands from three different authors would not help us toward an Ur-Marcus lying behind our Gospels of Matthew and Luke. For Matthew or Luke or both of them follow Mark in all the transpositions, dislocations, and other misarrangements of his Gospel. Whether these features stood in the original Mark or not, they evidently stood in the Mark used by Matthew and Luke.

Matthew and Luke also used a Mark which contained the story of Jesus in the same order given by our present Mark. Tho both of them deviate from this order for a.s.signable reasons, one or the other of them is found following it all the time. If these deviations go back to an Ur-Marcus, there must have been one Ur-Marcus in the hands of Matthew and another in the hands of Luke.

THE HYPOTHESIS OF A PRIMITIVE MARK SUPERFLUOUS; SIMPLER EXPLANATIONS

Can the verbal agreements of Matthew and Luke as against Mark, or their deviations from him without apparent reason, be explained upon any simpler hypothesis than that of Ur-Marcus? It appears to the writer that they can.

A certain number (tho no one can say exactly what proportion of the whole) of the agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark may be allowed to be accidental. Many of them, like the subst.i.tution of e?pe? for ???e?, or of an occasional d? for Mark's invariable and monotonous ?a? or the subst.i.tution of a common for an uncommon word (like ????? for ???att??) require no explanation.

_Agreements_ of Matthew and Luke _in their omissions_ from the Marcan narrative do not stand upon the same plane with the agreements in _subst.i.tutions_, and may all be accounted for on the ground of accident, or by the same desire on the part of both writers to be more concise, or to avoid anything derogatory to Jesus or the apostles; or by some other similar motive at work separately in the minds of the two later evangelists. It is only the agreements in corrections and subst.i.tutions that require accounting for. I believe these can be explained chiefly on two grounds:

1. It is not necessary to a.s.sume that Matthew and Luke both worked upon the same identical copy of our Mark. If they used two copies, these two would not be expected to agree absolutely with each other in the wording of every pa.s.sage. This would account for some of the slight deviations in the wording of either Matthew or Luke where the other agrees with our present Mark. These two copies that Matthew and Luke used may neither of them have been the original (since in both of them the conclusion at least was gone); or at least not the original in its original form. One of them may have been a copy of the original, and the other a copy of this copy.

Or they may both, as Sanday argues, have belonged to a type later, and not earlier, than our present Mark. This would account for the agreements, and for such deviations as have not already been accounted for, or cannot be accounted for, by the known literary peculiarities of Matthew and Luke.

Since the text of Mark that has come down to us is more corrupt than that of either Matthew or Luke, various words in which Matthew and Luke now agree against Mark may have stood in the text which both of them used, and may later have dropped out, before the copy was made to which our present texts go back. Or the two copies of Mark, a.s.sumed above, may both have been made from the original copy which Mark made with his own hand. Upon this supposition even, they would not always agree, and so deviations in Matthew and Luke from Mark, and occasional agreements in such deviations, would be explained. Or these agreements may be explained, as is obvious in many instances, by the working of similar motives in the minds of Matthew and Luke, even a.s.suming them to have made their extracts from one and the same copy, or from two practically identical copies, of Mark.

Dr. E. A. Abbott, in his _Corrections of Mark_ (London, 1901) gives an exhaustive list of the deviations from Mark in which Matthew and Luke agree. Many of these are such as to suggest that Matthew and Luke used not an Ur-Marcus, but a text of Mark later than the one that has come down to us. E.g., in twelve instances Matthew and Luke agree in supplying the subject or object which our Mark omits. In fifteen, they agree in correcting abrupt constructions, supplying a connecting word. In thirteen (exclusive of ???e?) they agree in correcting Mark's historic present. In twelve they agree in replacing Mark's relative clause or his subjunctive by a participle. In twenty-three they agree in subst.i.tuting e?pe? for ???e?. In thirty they agree in the use of d? for ?a?. It is not impossible that Matthew and Luke, independently bent on improving Mark's style, have accidentally agreed in making these same improvements in the same places (especially since there are other improvements of the same sort in which they do not agree). But it is a much simpler and more adequate hypothesis, that they both used a text of Mark in which these corrections had already been made.

Yet even of this text they probably did not use the same identical copy.

And as the copy used by one or both of them may have been two or three removes from the text from which it started, many changes may have crept into the copy used by one of them, not contained in the copy used by the other. This would account alike for the agreements in deviations from our present Mark, and for the fact that these corrections are not all of them found in both Matthew and Luke. This last item is further accounted for by the freedom of Matthew and Luke in making their own corrections in the copy that lay before them.[66] Allowance should also be made for the fact that we cannot be sure that we have yet recovered the true text of either Matthew or Luke.[67]