Luke's Arrangements and Luke's Special Material

One of the challenges of studying the Synoptic Problem is also one of its joys. The more you stare at the Synopsis, and the more you think about the issues, the more you realize that there are important things that you have missed. This post is about one of those things. Why had I not noticed before that it would have been impossible for Luke to have retained Matthew's order of the double tradition ("Q") material given the huge amount of special Lucan material ("L") that the author wanted to add? 

Let me put the question in context, and then I'll try to explain it as clearly as I can. I tried this out in an online discussion group and had some good feedback, so I'd like to try it out here too, in the hope of getting some good feedback. And if the point still seems like a good one, I'll add it to the revised edition of The Case Against Q. 

Here's the story so far. One of the two primary arguments for the existence of Q is that some scholars cannot imagine why Luke would have rearranged the order of Matthew's non-Marcan material, so he must have found this material not in Matthew but in Q. The most influential version of this argument was made just over a century ago by B. H. Streeter who in The Four Gospels argued that Luke would have been a "crank" to have taken the double tradition material from its excellent Matthean contexts only to reinsert it into different, less appropriate contexts in his own Gospel. Q sceptics like me pointed out in response that Luke's behaviour is not only explicable but expected. His rearrangement of the material makes excellent sense in his Gospel, especially when we observe the way he treats Mark. Moreover, Streeter's argument is any case simply a value judgement, a statement of aesthetic preference for Matthew's order over Luke's. 

That's a quick summary of many pages of argumentation by me and others. But I realized recently that I had missed something really important. The way the argument is always framed by two-source theorists is in terms of Luke taking double tradition material from its Matthean locations and placing it somewhere new. So Streeter talks about where Luke "inserts matter also found in Matthew". He talks about how Luke would have had to "re-insert" sayings the Matthean sayings into a different context. 

Even if we work with this kind of model, where source material is simply slotted into specific contexts, new or old, the framing forgets something we know for certain about Luke: he has a huge amount of Special Lucan (L) material to incorporate into his Gospel. So on the Two-Source Theory, Luke combines the Q material with this new L material. On the Farrer theory, he does the same thing, but instead of getting the double tradition from Q, he gets it from Matthew. But here's the thing. Given that Luke has so much L material, how could he have integrated this L material into the Matthean contexts where he finds the double tradition? It's just not possible.

Let me illustrate. Matthew has the Lost Sheep parable in Matt. 18.10-14, in a teaching complex that is partially derived from Mark 9. Luke could have placed the Lost Sheep parable here, in his own chapter 9, just before the Central Section begins in Luke 9.51, but he does not.

He has it instead in Luke 15.3-7, nested in a fresh literary complex, with a themed opening about Pharisees and Sinners (15.1-2), pairing the Lost Sheep with the very Lucan Lost Coin (15.8-10), leading into the legendary Lucan Prodigal Son (15.11-37). 

Aside from the fact that it would be ludicrous to find Luke's new context for the Lost Sheep as having what Streeter described as "no special appropriateness", let's remember that as soon as you have double tradition material alongside L material, it makes using the Matthean location practically impossible. 

If Luke had used the Matthean location, he would have had to integrate his "Lost" parable context into his Luke 9, creating a massive discourse at just the point where Jesus is about to set off on the road to Jerusalem (Luke 9.51). 

In other words, it is not simply a question of where Luke "inserts" double tradition material. It is a question of what new Lucan material lies alongside it, and those decisions surely impact Luke's decisions about the placing of the material. The special Lucan material really matters when we are looking at Luke's location of double tradition material. It's key in seeing how Luke adopts and adapts the material he takes over from Matthew.

To illustrate further: the big criticism of Farrer's Luke is that he does not retain Matthew's marvellous Sermon on the Mount all in one piece. I and others have argued that this is a really problematic argument (e.g. The Case Against Q, Chapters 4, 5, and 6), but let us for a moment imagine that Luke had wanted to retain all 138 verses of Matthew's masterpiece in one place. Does this Luke not want to add his Friend at Midnight parable (Luke 11.5-8) to Matthew's "Ask, Seek, Knock" (Matt. 7.7-11 // Luke 11.9-13)? Does he not want to add the Rich Fool parable (Luke 12.13-21) to the "Consider the Lilies" (Matt. 6.25-34 // Luke 12.22-31) material? And so we could go on. Luke's Sermon would now have to be over 200 verses, and for an author who even cuts Mark's Parables discourse (Mark 4.1-34, a mere 34 verses) almost in half (Luke 8.1-18, 18 verses), I can't see that as viable. 

To be fair, I made a related point in The Case Against Q, Chapters 4 and 6, arguing that Luke's new locations for the double tradition material made good narrative sense, but what I had not seen so clearly was that this is not simply a question of the locations for the material. It is also a question of the impossibility of retaining the Matthean locations given that Luke has related special material that he wants to place adjacent to it, material that would expand the Matthean discourses, which are already massive, into monster discourses. 

A two-source theorist might say that this is a circular argument. Am I not just surmising that Luke wanted to place special Lucan material alongside the double tradition material because that is what he did? I don't think so. The point is that even on the two-source theory, Luke made the decision to place Q material alongside contextually relevant, narratively interesting L material. Farrer's Luke wants to do the same thing, but in his case, it necessitates recontextualizing Matthew's material, the very thing that Q theorists find so problematic.

I am surprised that I have only just realized this. I suppose it's in part because I was seduced by the two-source theorists' own rhetoric, which causes us to focus on where Luke "relocates" or "reinserts" material, without noticing the impact that retaining as well as adding would cause. 

Favourite Jesus Films 2025

It was great to be back in the classroom this spring after a sabbatical that itself followed several years as department chair, when classroom time is drastically reduced. As well as a graduate class on the Synoptics, one of my regular offerings, I taught my undergraduate course on Jesus in Film for the fourth time. It's a real joy to teach, but a huge challenge too, especially given the sheer volume of films that we could cover.

Each time I teach the course, I ask the students to vote on their favourite and least favourite Jesus films. There were fifteen students, and I asked them to vote for their three favourite Jesus films, not in ranked order (to make it easier). I also asked them for their least favourite film. Here are the results:

--

Favourite Jesus film: 

(1) Jesus of Montreal (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989): 10 votes

(2) Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006): 6 votes

     Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988): 6 votes

(4) Journey to Bethlehem (dir. Adam Anders, 2023): 5 votes

(5) The Chosen (dir. Dallas Jenkins, 2020-present): 4 votes

(6) The Gospel According to St Matthew (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): 3 votes

(7) Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965): 2 votes

    Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004): 2 votes

    Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979): 2 votes

    Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli): 2 votes

One vote: 

Mary Magdalene (dir. Garth Davis, 2018); The Nativity (dir. Coky Giedroyc, 2010); Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973), Mary (dir. D. J. Caruso, 2024)

--

Least favourites film:

(1) Godspell (dir. David Greene, 1973): 5 votes

(2) Karunamayudu (dir. A. Bhimsingh, 1978): 3 votes

(3) Shanti Sandeshem (dir. P. Chandrasekhar Reddy, 2004): 2 votes 

   Gospel According to St Matthew (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): 2 votes

   Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004): 2 votes

One vote: Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965) and Journey to Bethlehem (dir. Adam Anders, 2023)

--

I found the students' votes fascinating. Jesus of Montreal was a runaway winner, with two-thirds of the class voting for it. One of the biggest surprises was seeing how well Journey to Bethlehem faired. I have to admit that I absolutely love this film too, and I have been meaning to blog and podcast about it for some time. Other new films like Mary Magdalene and Mary also make the cut.

The Chosen is also in there, but it has the disadvantage of being the only film that the class did not watch in total. That was impossible! There's so much of it. Nevertheless, it's interesting that several people still voted for it. 

Films that we watched but that did not chart included King of Kings (1961), The Passion (BBC, 2008), The Nativity Story (2006), Young Messiah (2016) and all the documentaries we watched. 

As usual, Godspell got the bottom spot! I'm a little sad that Karunamayudu and Shanti Sandeshem were unpopular too, but we were so hampered by the lack of English subtitles for both. 

It's also striking that several films appear in both lists -- favourites and least favourites -- Gospel According to Matthew, Greatest Story, Passion of the Christ, and Journey to Bethlehem. It just shows how personal and emotional reactions to these films can be, and it made class discussions fascinating.

I hope to blog a little more about the course soon, and to think out loud about how to change it. 

The Fourth Synoptic Gospel

I have written a new book! I'm afraid it takes me a while, especially as I have been in university administration for some years. Even without that, it does not come easy, and I don't even write these massive books like my friends and colleagues write. This one is about John's knowledge of the Synoptics. 

I joke in the preface that it's the third part of my trilogy. The first part, The Case Against Q (2002), argued that Luke knew Matthew and Mark. The second part, Thomas and the Gospels (2012), argued that the Gospel of Thomas knew the Synoptics. This book argues that John's Gospel likewise used all three Synoptic Gospels. 

It's a joke because I had no plan at all, but rather followed the research wherever it led. My interest in Gospel interrelations helped me to see, I hope, some links between the Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptics that others might have missed. And this book is not a million miles away from that.

I argue in the new book that John's Gospel knew the Synoptics, presupposed their narratives, dramatically transformed them, and Christologically absorbed them. 

The Fourth Synoptic Gospel actually began as the Speaker's Lectures in Biblical Studies in Oxford in 2017. There are only seven chapters in the book, and four of the them are expansions of those lectures. I also tried my ideas out in multiple other forums, and I promise to acknowledge those in future blogs. 

I hope to blog and podcast about the book some more in the coming weeks. 

In the meantime, here are some links:

The Fourth Synoptic Gospel (Amazon)

The Fourth Synoptic Gospel (Eerdmans)

NT Pod Joy!

Earlier this week (NT Pod Woes!), I shared my deep frustration about my failure to get my podcast's website sorted. It had stalled on Spotify, and I tried all sorts of things to fix it, including a massive transfer over to WordPress. 

Well, I didn't give up. I tried a bunch of other things and at last, one of them worked. I hate to say it, but I got the tip in a very helpful conversation with ChatGPT, which suggested I try Feedblitz as a replacement for Feedburner, and it worked! Feedblitz does cost money, but it's worth it since it has fixed my big issue, and will help me to get back on track again, including setting up email followers again. I may even get some of the money back; I made the link there a referral (affiliate) link!

When I get the chance, I'll set up Feedblitz here too, and see if I can restore the possibility of following the blog by email. 

Anyway, if you're a Spotify user, here's where you can subscribe to my podcast:

NT Pod on Spotify

And that's not an affiliate link. I don't earn money from the podcast. Existing Spotify subscribers shouldn't need to change their subscription, by the way. Likewise Apple, Amazon and others: there shouldn't be any need to make adjustments (but please let me know if you have any problems, and we may be back to NT Pod Woes again!).

NT Pod Woes!

This follows on from my relatively optimistic post the other day on the NT Pod's birthday. You don't need to know any of this, but I thought that writing about it might be cathartic. Back in 2009, I made what turned out to be a terrible decision in choosing Google's Blogger (blogspot) to host my new podcast. I had already used Blogger for years here on the NT Blog, and Google was in the ascendant, so it seemed like a good idea. Alas, over the years, Blogger turned out to be a pretty poor option for podcasting. Feedburner actually fixed some of the issues, so you could take your Blogger feed, and burn a better feed in Feedburner, and for years, that helped. But then Google purchased Feedburner, and Feedburner has been sadly neglected.

My Blogger / Feedburner feed has hobbled along over the years, but has just about done the job, so I just stuck with it. Until Spotify came along. Most of my subscribers used to come through Apple Podcasts, but in recent years, Spotify has become a massive player in the podcast world. Several people asked me if I could get the NT Pod onto Spotify.

Well, I tried. I really tried. Spotify just hates Feedburner and Blogger, and try what you can, you just can't get Spotify to read their RSS feed properly. And I understand why -- Blogger is not really designed for podcasts, and Feedburner doesn't care any more.

Given that I am at last trying to invest some more time in the podcast (new episode!), I decided that I really should get the existing configuration sorted in planning for the future (and you can still hear some of that optimism in the post from last week). After many, many, many hours working on this, I am beginning to think that a neat solution is impossible. 

My first idea was to try to port over all the Blogger content to RSS.com, but they could not process all of the Blogger content, and it was a no-go. So I tried WordPress. They have a dedicated tool to redirect blogger content, and it seemed to work. I was very encouraged. I did a bit of a redesign in WordPress, and moved the hosting all to my own new subdomain. OK, the redesign needed work, but the tech side seemed to be working. 

Happy with where things were, I tried submitting the new WordPress feed to Spotify. They rejected it. No "author" or "email" attributes in the new feed. So I worked out how to add those, and pinged them again. Still no good: you have no "enclosures" in your feed, they said. Somehow, the port over from Blogger had not included any of the enclosures.

More research. It turned out it was virtually impossible to automate all those "enclosures" (the actual audio files). I'd have to add them manually to the RSS feed. By this point, I was getting better at manipulating RSS feeds in WordPress, using a plug-in called All-in-one SEO, and after a lot of experimentation, I worked out not only how to add the enclosures, but also how to add the "length" of each episode, something that is impossible to do in Blogger or Feedburner, and which really improves the feed. 

I manually added the relevant enclosures to every episode (going back to Ep. #83; I wanted to see if this fix would work first), and had to find the length of each ep., again manually, and added it all in (in bytes -- that's how it's done in enclosures in RSS). The RSS feed validated, and I felt like it was an Alleluia moment. I submitted the new beautiful feed to Spotify and guess what? 

More problems. Now Spotify was only showing seven episodes, eps. #83-89. I got in touch with their support team for the umpteenth time and they told me that there were problems with the "GUIDs" in the feed, the "Globally Unique Identifier". More research; more googling. Even more difficult than the previous issues. Why does no one else on the internet seem to have these issues? Perhaps because they were sensible enough not to choose Blogger for their podcast back in 2009. 

So where do we go from here? Pretty close to giving up and going back to the status quo, but the difficulties here are that it does not solve the Spotify problem, and I'm stuck with a poor option, on Blogger, for the longer term future. 

I still have a couple of things to try, and it's not impossible that I could still fix everything, but my optimism is waning. If the worst comes to the worst, I may simply have to stick with Blogger with all its issues, and simply begin a fresh podcast on Spotify, and submit it directly, beginning from ep. 110. 

In the process, I've learned a huge amount about the tech of podcasting. When I attempted to switch to the new feed on Apple podcasts, it eliminated every episode except those that were appearing on the new WordPress feed. And do I really want an RSS feed that goes on for 50 pages?

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that I had dedicated the time to recording several new episodes. Hey-ho. 

This post is mainly for my own catharsis. Somehow writing about these things helps. I really should not have abandoned this blog for so long! 

The Latest NT Pod News on Its 16th Birthday

 

It's the NT Pod's birthday! I released my first podcast 16 years ago today. There 109 episodes so far, though there are a few more "extended episodes" too from when I was numbering those differently. I actually wish I'd done far more episodes. The day job gets in the way more than I would like, and there are always more pressing and less enjoyable things to do. Occasionally, I prophesy a resurrection, only for the podcast to go back on hiatus. 

Well, recently I have been working hard to get it relaunched properly. I'm in the middle of porting all 16 years' worth over to WordPress, with a new URL, but I want to make sure that it's working properly, and that those subscribed through Apple, Amazon, etc., won't notice any difference, and that new episodes will arrive on time in the same place. The biggest headache that I am having is with Spotify, which has stopped picking up the feed altogether since ep. 107. Once I have everything sorted out, I'll do a proper relaunch. 

In the mean time, the last episode I mentioned here was NT Pod 104: The Synoptic Translation Problem. Since then, there have been five more episodes:

NT Pod 105: What is Translation Inertia? 

NT Pod 106: NT Introductions & Johannine Communities with Hugo Méndez

NT Pod 107: Why Do We Translate New Testament Names the Way We Do?

NT Pod 108: The Jesus / Joshua Problem

NT Pod 109: The Last Supper (2025)

Episodes 105, 107 and 109 continue the theme begun in 104 on problems with Bible translation. I have at least one more episode to come on that theme. The most recent episode is my review of a recent Jesus film, and I have a couple more coming on that theme too. 

I have also begun exploring the idea of recording NT Pod Shorts over on my Youtube Channel. So far they are mainly hot takes on recent Jesus films like The Chosen: Last Supper but I am hoping to do more of these in the coming weeks and months. 

What, Exactly, Did Josephus Write About Jesus? Guest Post by Stephen Goranson

What, Exactly, Did Josephus Write About Jesus? (That Is, If He Did Mention Jesus)

Guest Post by Stephen Goranson

Two new books address this question, whether Flavius Josephus, who wrote Antiquities of the Jews, or Judean Antiquities, in about the year 94 of the first century CE, mentioned Jesus of Nazareth. This most famous portion of his book eventually came to be called the Testimonium Flavianum, often abbreviated as the TF. Both books conclude that Josephus did indeed mention this Jesus, though they arrive at that conclusion via somewhat different paths. They significantly differ as to exactly what Josephus wrote about Jesus, as far as we can tell, which may have been partially altered in later manuscripts. Though all available manuscripts of Josephus’ book include the passage about Jesus, there are at least three different camps of thought that interpret this fact: either Josephus wrote it all, or nearly all of it; or Josephus wrote something, but the Jesus section was considerably rewritten and expanded; or Josephus wrote none of it, because it was all added, fully interpolated, later.

The new books are:

Daniel R. Schwartz, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Judean Antiquities, Books 18-20, edited by Steve Mason (Leiden: Brill, 2025)

Followed soon after by

T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025). An open access download is freely available here:

https://josephusandjesus.com/

Schwartz updates and elaborates on what is the current mainstream view, that Christians added text to the original description, to make it more complimentary.

Schmidt argues that the extant text is practically all by Josephus. But Schmidt includes two restored brief omissions--later subtractions, not additions—that he now retrojects here from later translations from the Greek. Put together, in context, the Schmidt-proposed text originally was not complimentary. It was just a report, not a commendation. As such, it would not have been especially useful to early Christian writers, so arguments from silence before Eusebius may mislead. Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea, though, may well have learned from the Antiquities 18 section, in the manuscript version available to him, circa 245-249 CE, that Josephus was not a Christian (see his Commentary on Matthew 10.17 and compare Against Celsus 1.47). 

Both Schwartz and Schmidt argue against the view, held by Ken Olson and others, that Josephus did not include Jesus at all, and that such was totally a later Christian addition, maybe by Eusebius. What would Josephus do? Analyzing this question involves checking what else Josephus wrote, to see if the TF suits his work or stands out as foreign to him. See, e.g., K. A. Olson, “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum,” pages 97-114 in Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations (Cambridge: Harvard UP for the Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013).'

Schwartz’s mandate, as part of a Josephus series edited by Steve Mason, was to translate and comment on Antiquities books 18 through 20. Antiquities 18.63-64 [3.3], in surviving manuscripts, mentions Jesus and then--note this--later, 18.116-119 [5.1], John the Baptist; Antiquities 20.197-203 [9.1] mentions James, the brother of Jesus.

Schmidt’s mandate was to focus on evaluating the history of scholarship on the question whether and how Josephus mentioned Jesus. And to make new contributions. Schmidt surely provides the most thorough account ever of the reception history of the Josephus TF text and its setting.

Schwartz’s volume, then, offers more on the general context of who Josephus was, and what were his methods and his intended, largely Roman, audience in writing Antiquities, especially in book 18, which was not the best-organized portion of the work. The series editor, Steve Mason, has often written about the audience Josephus wished to persuade in his apologetic presentation concerning the history of his Judean people. Given that Josephus was familiar with Jerusalem and Galilee and Rome, he would have known that some of his readers had heard about Jesus and were curious about his place in history. If the population estimates by Rodney Stark, in his 1996 book, The Rise of Christianity, are even ballpark accurate, then by 94 CE, there may have been over 50,000 current Christians. (Neither book cites Stark.) Because the Schwartz volume conveniently includes book 20, it also addresses the account of James, brother of Jesus and whether it, too, mentions Christ. More could be said, in both books, about the spelling, Chrestus, good, in some accounts, such as Tacitus.

Both books are well produced results of excellent scholarship. A major difference is in the means of access. The Schwartz volume, available only in paper, is expensive. The Schmidt volume is available in paper and also digitally, so it is easier to browse before deciding whether to fully read. If a visit to a library or an interlibrary loan scan is required to consult Schwartz, be sure to include, at a bare minimum, pages xvii, 9, 75-77. 91-94, and 305-306, though, of course, preferably all of it, including Bibliography and Indexes.

The Schmidt book, given its focus, is the more important one for this question, even though, unfortunately, given the dates of publication, it makes only slight use of the Schwartz volume.

Schwartz, understandably, dedicated his volume to the late, great scholar and gentleman Louis H. Feldman, who was so generous with his learning (including to me, in correspondence), but, for example, Schwartz’s bibliography, though it is fully 32 pages long (!), has nine by Feldman, but missed one important publication, Feldman, Louis H. “On the Authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum Attributed to Josephus.” In New Perspectives on Jewish- Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger, edited by Jacob Schacter and Elisheva Carlebach, 13– 30. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism 33. (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

The Schmidt volume may occasionally tilt towards excessive respect of Josephus. For example, we read that Josephus had, from his youth, an excellent memory; at least, he says so in his Life! Schmidt (143) duly recognized that as “likely self-aggrandizement,” but somewhat undercuts that by adding what a productive author he was. More skepticism might be called for when Josephus claimed to know all about the Essenes. His timeline just does not add up; he was not a full Essene initiate, not a reader of the pesharim. It is interesting that Josephus mentions John the Baptist after Jesus--a mistake—but with no connection to Jesus, so having in this case a non-Christian source? (Compare Mandaeans.) 

Schmidt shows convincingly that Josephus knew specific people who either knew Jesus or at least knew of him. On the other hand, wondering whether Josephus had access to written official records of the trial of Jesus seems a vanishingly-small possibility.

Any new scholarly treatment of Josephus on Jesus must properly address both books’ insights as well as their debatable assertions.

This is merely a preliminary note and a recommendation of two books. Congratulations to both authors. Learned reviews will follow in due course, as well as a dedicated session in the SBL meeting in November in Boston.

The Aseneth Home Page: Revised and Relaunched

Back in 1999, when I was working at the University of Birmingham, I taught a course on Joseph and Aseneth. And those were the days when I was enjoying handcoding websites. I had already got a website on Q online, which later morphed into The Case Against Q Website, and I was developing what became The New Testament Gateway, as well as other things. So it seemed natural to attempt a website on Joseph and Aseneth, all the more given that it was a very manageable undertaking.

In 1999, there were only a handful of Aseneth-related things available online, and I could be exhaustive. But I didn't want to have an Aseneth website without a text, so I asked David Cook and Oxford University Press if I could have permission to use the translation that appears in Sparks's Apocryphal Old Testament.

I attempted to check in on the site over the years, but like a lot of my websites, they became ever more time-consuming as my time became ever more limited. So it languished. Until now:

The Aseneth Home Page

Viola Goodacre took the content from the original site and completely redesigned it, and using WordPress so that it would be easier for me to edit in the future. I have spent a lot of time in recent weeks adding in new content. I eventually gave up trying to have an exhaustive bibliography, but the bibliography is now three times as long as it was, and I think I have at least all the major books and monographs. I have revamped the Resources page since most of that 26 year old content had vanished, and many great new resources have arrived. 

I hope you enjoy the new site. It is at a new URL, but I have set up a redirect from the old URL (had to remind myself how to do that!) so old links should still work. Please send in your suggestions for things that I've missed.