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)
6 comments:
It is one thing to know the Synoptic Gospels themselves, another thing to know the events related in those Gospels from an independent source. How do NT scholars distinguish between these two scenarios?
I don't think there are extant relevant independent sources.
There might have been independent resources at the time the Gospels were written. No? It says at the beginning of Luke, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word”. Did the author have only Mark and Matthew in mind? How do we know?
(My apology if my questions seem combative. I’m not trying to argue either way, just wondering how scholars draw their conclusions from scanty evidence.)
Yes, there certainly could have been. How many, and how reliable, who knows?
How do you or other scholars make a case that Luke knew Mark and Matthew if he could have received similar materials from independent sources?
Well, it's not that easy to summarize the books and articles that deal with that question here in the blog, but I have tried to make as many resources available for free online, including quite a few podcasts on the topic.
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