The investigation of the literary relations between the first three gospels is not a mere exercise in literary criticism. It is a necessary prolegomenon to the reconstruction of that original and particular history which underlies the New Testament writings. All modern New Testament study rests upon the remarkable achievement of the scholars of the last generation, who discovered the solution of the synoptic problem. It had long been recognized that the first three gospels present an intricate literary puzzle. The striking similarities, not only of wording, as for example in the Healing of the Paralytic (Mk.ii.1‑12; Mt.ix.1‑8; Lk.v.17‑26.), but also of the order of incidents, especially of the order of incidents where a particular order is of trivial importance, as for example the series of episodes recorded in Mark x.13‑34, and appearing in Matthew xix.13‑xx.19 and Luke xviii.15‑34. Such identity of order cried out for some explanation other than that three evangelists wrote three independent narratives. In short, after a long succession of tentative solutions that were proved inadequate, certain general agreements have been reached. The authors of the first and third Gospels had the gospel of Mark before them as they wrote. What is common to all three gospels is due to the dependence of Matthew and Luke upon Mark. Matthew and Luke also made use of another document or documents, now lost, which explains the presence in their gospels of almost identical material that is absent from Mark. Lastly, each had access to further material of which the other was apparently unaware.
The general agreement among modern scholars that this is not only an adequate explanation, but indeed the only adequate explanation of the highly intricate and complex literary problem presented by the synoptic gospels, is a monument to the skill and patience of the scholars of the last generation. Attempts have, of course, been made to go beyond what has been called the fundamental solution, but these have secured no general agreement. Some have held that the lost document of which Matthew and Luke made use was the work referred to by a writer in the middle of the second century, named Papias, who said that the apostle Matthew arranged in order the sayings (of Jesus) in the Hebrew (? Aramaic) language. Some have attempted to reconstruct the lost document. Others have supposed that it is possible to detect the presence behind the first and third Gospels of other documents from which Matthew and Luke extracted their special material or even to discover an earlier document which Mark incorporated in his gospel. But these and many other hypotheses concern only the specialist, because they go beyond the clear evidence of the existing documents. Nothing can be built upon theories that remain wholly unproven.
The modern scholar is thus thrown back upon the fundamental solution, and with this he must work when he passes on from the literary analysis of the documents to attempt to reconstruct the original history. He has, however, no right to complain of what has been achieved by his predecessors.
In the first place, immediately it is recognized that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a literary source, it becomes obvious that they must have selected his work because they attached peculiar importance to it. Further, since both Mark and their own gospels (which. incorporate Mark) are still in existence, it is possible to, make a minute examination of what changes, additions, rearrangements, and omissions they made in rewriting, Mark. Their 'redaction' should reveal the reasons that led them to alter what Mark had written. Where the words of a story are changed or a discourse is enlarged, where a series of parables is rearranged or an incident is omitted, their editorial tendencies may be detected and defined. The very fact, for instance, that both Luke and Matthew supplemented Mark shows that they were not satisfied that Mark was in itself complete for their purpose. Accordingly it should be possible to define quite precisely the purpose of each evangelist by noting carefully how he treated his Marcan source, which fortunately still exists.
But it is not only by comparing these two gospels with Mark that the tendencies of their authors may be detected. Now that it is agreed that much of their non‑Marcan material was known in a more or less identical form to both of them, it should be possible to gain a good deal of information from a comparison of the different ways in which they handled and ordered this non‑Marcan material. And finally, the manner in which each evangelist introduced his special material into his narrative should provide corroborative evidence as to their particular aims and interests.
In the second place, the critical historian, who bases his work upon the literary analysis, is not operating simply with three gospels. He has in his hands four great blocks of material, and he is also presented in addition with two editors, whose interests he can to some extent detect. The four blocks of material are the gospel of Mark; the matter common to Matthew and Luke, but absent from Mark; that which is recorded by Matthew only; and that which is recorded only by Luke. The two editors are named Matthew and Luke from the traditional titles of their books. This division of the material cannot, it is true, be altogether rigid, because at any given point what is technically, according to the literary analysis, special Matthaean or special Lucan material may originally have been a section of a ‑lost document which they both knew, but which one or other of them omitted. Or again, what may seem to be material to which Matthew or Luke had special access may have originated in the process of editing, and may have had no previous existence. In spite, however, of these qualifications, it is possible to distinguish behind the gospels of Matthew and Luke four independent strata of tradition concerning Jesus of Nazareth, and, in addition to these strata, it is possible also to disentangle the actual editorial interests of the evangelists which presumably reflect opinions current in the primitive church, and do not spring entirely from their own independent prejudices.
It is a very strange and almost unaccountable fact that the older critics, having accomplished the literary analysis, and having with extraordinary skill achieved the solution of the main problems presented by the literary analysis, seem to have exhausted their critical faculties. For either, ignoring the further critical problems raised by it, they hastened at once to reconstruct the Jesus of history, or else, stopping short at this point, they doubted the ability of the critical method to achieve any historical reconstruction whatsoever.
Thus the critical method was suspended, as it were, in mid air.
But their own critical work demanded that an even more critical procedure should follow. The critic is not free, having
accomplished the literary analysis, to select this or that element in the tradition, and to pronounce it true to the original
history; nor, conversely, to discard this or that element as due to the imposition upon the original history of Christian faith,
or of primitive Christian superstition. Still less can literary criticism be indulged in as though it had no historical
implications. Unless historical reconstruction is undertaken, the older critical method is rendered completely sterile.
Nevertheless, the transition from literary analysis to historical reconstruction demands an increasingly critical procedure.
The literary analysis has clear implications for the historian.
He has been provided with a means of checking the editorial interests of Matthew and Luke and the purpose, which holds together
the structure of the Marcan narrative.
Mark gave the material a clear significance.
Matthew and Luke gave to it a significance that was even clearer.
If these three men adopted entirely different explanations of the ministry of Jesus,
some disturbance must have complicated the course of the transmission of the story.
But if they agree in the main significance of the history they record,
their agreement must at least be taken seriously,
even though that significance may be repugnant to modern ideas.
But this is not all.
It is now possible to check the procedure, not only of the editors, but even of Mark himself.
For although all three may agree in the significance they ascribe to the ministry of Jesus, modern criticism is not at their
mercy.
Literary analysis has disentangled, and so revealed, four blocks of primitive Christian tradition.
These can be analysed separately, then in conjunction with each other,
and then set over against the known aims and interests of the final editors.
In this way it may be possible to check and discount any editorial bias,
and to determine the sense of the tradition that lay behind the editors.
If there be no discoverable unity in the various strata,
and if the editors be found to be imposing their ideas upon a chaotic material;
then the historian will be forced to own himself baffled, and must content himself with describing tendencies of faith and
controversy in the primitive church.
The Jesus of history will have escaped from his knowledge in the midst of the variegated life of the early Christians. If the
editors be found to be imposing their ideas upon a recalcitrant material it may be possible to recover the Jesus of history in
spite of editorial misrepresentation. But if, on the other hand, analysis should reveal a steady unity of direction: if the four
great blocks of material show a general agreement, and the editors are found to be mainly engaged in exposing a significance
already contained in the material that they are handling, then, however awkward the result may be, it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that this unity of direction was set in motion, not by the creative faith of the primitive church, but by the teaching
and actions of Jesus of Nazareth.
There can be no advance in the interpretation of the New Testament until this work be done upon the basis of the older literary analysis. It must be also remembered that the conclusions to which this work leads have implications not only for the reconstruction of the original history, but also for a proper judgement upon the work of St. Paul and of the author of the Johannine writings. They affect, in fact, the treatment of the whole of the New Testament, and consequently of the history of Christianity in the first century. Did the Christians progressively lose touch with the actual original happening in Palestine, and was there a gulf fixed between the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of the primitive church? Or did the primitive church bear on the whole correct witness to the significance of what occurred in Palestine, and was its faith securely grounded upon that witness?
(In theory there is a third possibility. It used to be maintained that the original Christian gospel was a Christ‑myth, which was subsequently clothed with flesh and blood, so that the clear, historical figure of Jesus is the outcome and not the cause of the development of Christian thought and experience, and the incarnation of Christ is the history of the Church. This possibility cannot be considered in an historical study since on this assumption the Jesus of history would become a proper subject for historical investigation only at the, Last judgement.)
The literary analysis and the fundamental solution of the synoptic problem involve therefore a further historical investigation, equally critical and equally rigorous.
The most accessible analysis of the synoptic gospels, bringing out the four distinct strata of the material, is to be found in Dr. Streeter's The Four Gospels, Chapters VII and IX., London, 1924.