Questioning the Feasibility of the Major Synoptic Hypotheses: Scribal Memory as the Key to the Oral–Written Interface

Abstract

Instead of blurring the oral and the literary media in antiquity (R. Bultmann and B. Gerhardsson) or dividing them with unsatisfying principles (J.D.G. Dunn), this article follows recent scholarship on orality to explore the mechanical operation of ancient scribal memory as the oral-written interface. In so doing, I argue that the agreement of order between the Synoptic Gospels is characteristic of memory-based utilizations of written texts and does not necessarily indicate the scribes’ visual contact with those texts. It is, rather, the very high degree of verbal agreement that indicates Matthew’s frequent visual contact with Q 10–11 and 12–13 throughout the gospel, even when following Mark’s narrative sequence by memory. This approach explains the infrequent micro-conflations on the Two Document Hypothesis (2DH) with a more mechanically probable procedure, and so strengthens the argument that the 2DH is more feasible than the Two Gospel Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis.

FH Luke’s ‘Unpicking’: Some Observations on Francis Watson’s Recent Analysis (2018) and the Extent of the Phenomenon

“… 4. The number of studies simply presupposing the 2DH remains very high. Here, I list only the notable post-2000 publications dedicated to demonstrating and developing the hypothesis: Foster 2003; Kloppenborg 2003, 2007, 2015, 2019; Downing 2004, 2017; Derrenbacker 2005, 2011; Burkett 2009; Kirk 2011a, 2011b, 2016, 2017; Tuckett 2018; Chang 2019. …”

“… 48. As Eve (2021) has now done for the FH. For the role played by memory in ancient source-utilization and in relation to the synoptic problem debate, see especially Derrenbacker 2011; Kirk 2011a, 2016, 2017, 2018; Goodacre 2017; Chang 2019; Eve 2021. …”