Jesus' Activity in the Gospels: "only some three weeks"?

There is an idea attributed to B. H. Streeter (1874-1937) that attempts to articulate how much time Jesus' narrated ministry, in the canonical gospels, actually takes up. He is reported to have said that the action described in the gospels, with the exception of the Temptation story, would actually only occupy about three weeks. The point he is apparently making is a good if rather obvious one -- that what is narrated about Jesus' life in the Synoptics and John, even if it is were all historical, amounts to the tiniest fraction of Jesus' life. 

But did Streeter actually say this, and if so, when and where? I have been searching for the origins of the idea, and the earliest reference I can find is the following:

"They [the gospels] are extremely brief - B. H. Streeter once cal­culated that, apart from the forty days and nights in the wilderness (of which we are told virtually nothing) everything reported to have been said and done by Jesus in all four gospels would have occupied only some three weeks, which leaves the overwhelmingly greater part of his life and deeds unrecorded."

This is from Dennis Nineham, "Epilogue", in John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977), 186-204 (188-9). I can't find the idea that he attributes to Streeter in any of his written works, and Nineham himself does not reference it, so is Nineham reporting an oral tradition? As far as I can tell, Nineham himself did not learn directly from Streeter. Although Nineham did go to Oxford, he was too young to have met Streeter -- only 16 years old when Streeter died in a plane crash in 1937.

On twitter, Brandon Massey speculated that Nineham might have picked it up from his teacher, R. H. Lightfoot, who perhaps reported this as a Streeter comment, which I think sounds quite plausible. 

It is also possible that the "three weeks" comment is a mis-remembered or mis-applied distortion of something that Streeter actually said. What is making me wonder here is that Streeter does in fact talk about "three weeks" in a related context:

Now of the last journey to Jerusalem, and the events of Passion Week, Mark presents a clear, detailed, and coherent account; and this, dealing with the events of, at the outside, three weeks, occupies about one-third of the whole Gospel. The rest of the Gospel is clearly a collection of detached stories as indeed tradition affirms it to be; and the total number of incidents recorded is so small that the gaps in the story must be the more considerable part of it. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (London: Macmillan, 1924), 424).

And if Streeter thought that Mark's Passion Narrative occupied "three weeks", could he also have maintained that "everything reported to have been said and done by Jesus in all four gospels would have occupied only some three weeks"? So we are now at at least six weeks, and there is clearly a contradiction here, unless the oral tradition also forgets the "three weeks" of the Passion Narrative.

Chasing down oral traditions is notoriously difficult since they only survive, before and outside of oral / aural recordings, in the writings in which they are represented, but this case provides an interesting analogy to first century Jesus research. Nineham's comment in 1977 is at least forty years removed from when the historical Streeter may or may not have made these remarks, rather as Mark is at least forty years removed from what he reports about Jesus, whose actual lifetime contained a great deal more activity than is reported in (pseudo?)-Streeter's "three weeks". 

B. H. Streeter and Lewis Carroll

I am grateful to a friend who drew to my attention to a connection between B. H. Streeter (1876-1937), famed for his contributions to Gospels scholarship, and Charles Dodgson, better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll.

After a little searching, I found this interesting tidbit in the Oxford Magazine for February 13, 1901, under "Queen's":

ADDISON SOCIETY: The Rev. B. H. Streeter (hon. member) read a paper on "Alice and Her Wonderland," on Thursday.

I wonder if the paper survives?  My friend tells me that Streeter also read the paper to the Addison Society in 1925, and that he had composed it as an undergraduate, while Dodgson was still alive.

Burnett Hillman Streeter by John Court

The latest Expository Times (Volume 118, no. 1, October 2006) is announced today and it includes a most enjoyable piece on the life of B. H. Streeter:

Burnett Hillman Streeter (17th November 1874–10th September 1937)
By JOHN M. COURT

Abstract: B. H. Streeter was one of the most distinguished of his generation of English New Testament scholars who wrote the standard work on the sources of the four Gospels, in which he drew heavily on German scholarship but also introduced ideas of his own. He was an academic and a churchman, a canon of Hereford Cathedral who was also attracted to Moral Rearmament.

I'm afraid that access is only to subscribers and subscribing institutions, but if you get a chance, do give it a read. It prevents a vivid, rounded picture of the man and his achievements and has several nice little anecdotes in there too, for example:

A personal impression of Streeter, on a visit to Cambridge, is contained in this anecdote by Christopher Evans. He describes how in 1931 he was

reading an essay to Hoskyns at a supervision on a Saturday morning when there was a knock on the door and Hoskyns said ‘Just a minute, Evans. You are about to see the largest pair of feet in the Church of England. Come in Streeter.’ He had come to preach on the Sunday, a terrible sermon because he said ‘Er’ every other word. I counted fifty and then gave up.

I was also amused by the following:

In support of his interests he travelled widely, with extensive tours of China and Japan, as well as visits to India and the USA. He never went to Jerusalem; he commented: ‘I don’t think my faith’s robust enough to go there. It was hopeless in the time of Christ and it has degenerated ever since!’

The only thing that slightly spoilt my enjoyment of the article was the following comment, which I thought unnecessary:

On the internet it is this work [on the Synoptic Problem] which still receives prominent documentation, as on the Stephen C. Carlson web pages dedicated to the Synoptic Problem:

The magnus (sic.) opus of B. H. Streeter, this book is responsible for firmly establishing the 2 Source Hypothesis in the English speaking world. A must-read for its influence and rhetoric, even if its main arguments have been shown to be fallacious.

Such a sweeping and somewhat illiterate judgment would have offended Streeter greatly; a more balanced assessment of his Synoptic work can be seen below.

Stephen Carlson's comment (which is not referenced) is of course "sweeping" in that it is a sentence in part of an Annotated Bibliography, which is necessarily succinct. The notion that it is "illiterate" will strike anyone who knows Carlson's work as particularly unfair. If that characterization is to do with the "magnus" typo, then I think it is an odd overstatement, especially as the typo is not present where Streeter's magnum opus is discussed in context (Two-Source Hypothesis).

But with that odd sentence aside, it's a super article and I am most grateful to John Court for a fine appreciation of the great man.

On-line Streeter, The Four Gospels

On Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson notes this remarkable development:

B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of the Origins (London: Macmillan, 1924)

It's not just a straight transcription but a very nicely produced on-line edition by someone called Paul Ingram. The internet continually has the ability to surprise one on a daily basis. Just one comment at this stage: though the edition is beautifully hyperlinked, what would help enormously would be the original page numbers too for referencing purposes.

Update (30 September): I've now added to the New Testament Gateway: Synoptic Problem: Books and Articles page.

Getting Streeter right

Stephen Carlson helpfully puts me right on Streeter on the Minor Agreements (see Goulder on the Minor Agreements); the view that τίς ἐστιν ὁ παίσας σε; were original to Mark 14.65 was apparently not Streeter's view, at least not in The Four Gospels. He followed Turner and anticipated Neirynck in arguing that the words were interpolated into Matthew from Luke. Since Stephen is quoting the 1926 edition, I'll double check my Streeter when I'm next in the office just in case (I mainly blog from home). But Streeter did originally hold a different view; I recall also that Tuckett changed his mind on this one, I think as a result of Neirynck's article on the topic, but this is another one that I need to look up.