The relationship between Paul and the Jesus tradition is one of my pet interests that I try to keep up with. Among the numerous articles and books written on the subject, one of the finest articles in my opinion is by Dale Allison— “The Pauline Epistles And The Synoptic Gospels: The Pattern Of The Parallels.” New Testament Studies 28 (1982): 1-32. Allison argues that there is a recognizable pattern to some parallels between Paul’s letters and Synoptic traditions. Various connections in Paul’s writings are not randomly scattered through the Gospels, but are connected to well-defined sections which are generally considered to be early blocks of Jesus tradition. The sections in question are: Luke 6:27-38; Mark 9:33-50; and Mark 6:6b-13 (w/ synoptic parallels). The argument is, then, that Paul knew of early Jesus tradition which existed in identifiable collections, collections reflected (as collections) in the synoptic Gospels.

My interest in this article and connecting it to the synoptic problem lies with the Luke section which Allison discusses. If one were to look at Luke 6:27-38 and its parallels in Matthew, you will notice that Matthew spreads these sayings out, while Luke has it in one concentrated section.

Hopefully, you can see where I’m going with this. We have Alison’s argument that Paul knew of at least three concentrated collections of Jesus material, collections that are presented as collections in Mark and Luke. Yet, the parallels to the Lukan collection are spread out in Matthew. If one accepts the Farrer theory, then how can this be? We would have to believe that Luke collected scattered sayings in Matthew and arranged them into a collection that just so happens to already be known as a collection by Paul— quite the feat! Accepting the two-source theory for the synoptic problem eliminates this conundrum (so does the argument for Matthean posteriority btw). Matthew, Luke, and Paul all knew of this tradition, Luke is the only one who kept it as an integrated whole and placed it in his Gospel.

If we can draw a historical connection between the author of Luke and Paul, then it is possible that Paul was the originator of this collection preserved in Luke— but this is just speculation.

I am very interested to hear what other bloggers think about this, particularly Mark Goodacre who usually blows my arguments out of the water

Cheers!

I really enjoy blogger-cooler discussions when they happen amongst the biblioblogs, the latest being a discussion on Q (see here).

I confess I haven’t read a ton on this subject, though I intend to. I also have stated that I still lean to the existence of Q.

This weekend’s discussion has coincided with a presentation that I am preparing on the gospels as eyewitness tradition. I’m basing my presentation on Bauckham’s work Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. While preparing my keynote, a thought hit me that I thought I’d put out there. It may have been stated elsewhere and I’ve just not seen it.

Papias says regarding the gospel of Matthew:
“Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.”

Now, I’m no Papias scholar but I know the general discussion regarding this passage: NT scholars either flatly say its incorrect, or we surmise that Matthew may have taken notes in Hebrew/Aramaic which later came into the Greek gospel of Matthew. Bauckham has taken the former view with some further nuance.

Now, Mark Goodacre in one of his posts discusses the verbatim agreements between Matt and Luke and says this is indicative of a literary connection ? not just a connection to an oral source. Obviously, his conclusion is that Luke used Matthew.

Now the idea that struck me is that the Farrer theory can actually allow us to take Papias’ words at face value in a way that the 2-source theory cannot. The 2-source theory has to assert that Matthew was written in Greek, which leads to the assertions about Papias’ comment mentioned above. But, if there was no Q, then there is nothing holding us back from believing Matthew was originally written in Hebrew/Aramaic as Papias said. The only thing we would then assert is that the original Semitic gospel of Matthew was soon after translated into Greek. The Greek version was the one used by Luke.

I find this thought intriguing. Has any scholar actually asserted this already? Are there any negatives to this idea? I’d appreciate any discussion on it.