The Making of the Synoptic Gospels: Exploring the Ancient Sources

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are similar but different due to various approaches, including testimonies, written fragments, a common exemplar, and modifications. Modern scholarship favors the proto-gospel hypothesis, which proposes that the evangelists independently translated a proto-gospel from Hebrew into Greek, enriching it with oral testimonies and written fragments.

Format: Hardback
Length: 300 pages
Publication date: 31 July 2024
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are remarkably similar yet distinct, prompting scholars to explore various theories to explain their similarities and differences. Four main approaches have been proposed: the evangelists tapped into testimonies about Jesus, drew from written fragments, used a common exemplar, or modified each other's work. While the first three approaches have historical support, the fourth approach, which suggests that the synoptists independently translated a proto-gospel from Hebrew into Greek, has gained dominance in gospel scholarship without reaching a consensus. In this study, Paul A. Rainbow reclaims the discarded proto-gospel hypothesis of early modern critics and offers a fresh reading of traditions recorded by Papias in the early second century CE. He challenges the Utilization hypotheses by proposing an historically nuanced hypothesis of a proto-gospel, which the three evangelists independently translated into Greek and enriched with oral testimonies and written fragments available to them.

ISBN-13: 9781009485371