I have long had an interest in Roman history, particularly the period of the decline of the Republic and the rise of the emperors, roughly 130 BCE through the first century CE. As it happens, I'm also interested in the history of Christianity (or perhaps that should be Christianities), the origin of which involves an overlapping time period.
It was about 40 years ago that I took a college course on the New Testament (along with Herbie, with whom I used have to many animated, uh, discussions about religion; we both finally decided that we needed to know more so it seemed like the logical thing to do).
More recently I've devoured the writings of Bart Ehrman, whom I often refer to as my favorite New Testament scholar.
Anyway, one of the long-standing questions in New Testament scholarship is often called "The Synoptic Problem". Go ahead and Google it.
Briefly, this concerns the three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are called the synoptic (from Greek words meaning "seen together") gospels because they share so much of the same material; some passages are word for word identical. And yet there are also major discrepancies among them.
The gospel of John is not considered synoptic because it does not have any of the parallel passages that are found in the others; John is clearly the product of someone writing completely independently of the others.
So how to account for the similarities and the differences in Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Scholars have some up with various theories over the last couple of centuries, but one explanation, often called the "Two-Source Hypothesis" and involving a hypothetical document known as "Q" has become widely, although not universally, accepted.
It's certainly the one that I accepted.
Until today.
I've been listening to a fascinating and erudite series of podcasts, called NT Pod, by Mark Goodacre. Professor Goodacre talks about various issues involving the New Testament and Christian Origins in a lively, engaging, and accessible way.
Most of the episodes are relatively short, lasting ten minutes or less, but he has also included a few extended episodes, which are actually lectures from the New Testament course that he teaches at Duke.
Anyway, today I listened to his lecture on "Q", and it has absolutely shaken up my thinking on the Synoptic Problem.
Rather than try to summarize the problem, I recommend you give a listen to Professor Goodacre's NT Pod; not only does he dispense interesting bits of information about the New Testament, but he has an absolutely smashing British accent.
And he might be giving Bart Ehrman some competition as my favorite New Testament scholar.
