Books on the Synoptic Problem

From: Stephen Carlson (scc@reston.icl.com)
Date: Mon Oct 02 1995 - 15:40:50 EDT


In a cross-posting to B-GREEK, a reference was made to books attacking or
supporting the most widely held solution to the Synoptic Problem, viz. the
Two-Source Hypothesis (2SH). I'm asking this list for some books that
support the 2SH.

>From my initial survey of material on the Synoptic Problem, it seems
that only the opponents to the 2SH, especially the Neo-Griesbachians
(Farmer, Orchard, Riley), are really motivated to write books on this
issue. The 2SH proponents seem to have more interesting questions on
their minds, like form criticism of Q. (Other books on the Synoptic
Problem are next to useless: one "solution" asserts that Judas Iscariot
was the real author of Matthew and Jesus was captured by a UFO!)

I've looked at Kloppenborg's FORMATION OF Q, but he devotes little space
to a defense of that hypothesis, finding other questions more interesting.
Mack's THE LOST GOSPEL Q, written for popular consumption, pretty much
assumes Q as the (near-)certain result of scholarship.

I'm aware of B. H. Streeter's THE FOUR GOSPELS (1924), but my university
library does not carry it, and criticism of that work indicates: (a) that
most of his arguments are at best inconclusive (the Lachmann Fallacy),
and (b) that the purpose of the work is not to argue for the 2SH (or 4SH)
but to dispense with the Ur-Marcus theory of Holtzmann.

Two modern works are very good, but they are explicitly "neutral" on
the question: Bellinzoni's anthology, THE TWO-SOURCE HYPOTHESIS: A
Critical Reappraisal, which is out of print, and David Neville's
ARGUMENTS FROM ORDER IN SYNOPTIC SOURCE CRITICISM.

So what I'm asking is: if there are books out there defending the 2SH,
what are they?

Stephen Carlson

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