Before getting underway, I thought it might be helpful to write up a statement of principles, to show how we should approach a solution to the synoptic problem. The next few posts will state these principles, with a summary at the end. The principles themselves are fairly simple, but a slightly detailed explanation of them could prove illuminating. Hopefully it won't prove too boring :) and at any rate it will be over with soon enough. I won't be going in to too much detail; just enough to explain where I'm coming from, and why I think my solution is the best.
New Testament source-criticism is a notoriously thorny area of research, and the number of possible relationships among the gospels is potentially bewildering. One minute it seems as though one gospel must serve as the source of a particular pericope; the next minute that same gospel seems clearly to be derivative in another pericope. As Stephen Carlson has pointed out, there are potentially thousands of possible solutions to the synoptic problem--and, as long as one is willing to continue positing hypothetical intermediary sources to solve one problem or another, the number of solutions is technically limitless. I have found it very important, therefore, to use a set of rules or guiding principles to limit the choices available. It then becomes important to make sure these rules are not arbitrary--we want the best solution to the synoptic problem, not just any solution.
We will therefore be proceeding according to two principles: skeptical or critical reasoning, and empirical evidence. That is, we will do as little theorizing as possible, and when we do, we will base our theories, and decisions about those theories, on the assumption that the NT authors had normal powers and frailties of cognition, and made their own decisions for typically human reasons. We will then demand, and provide, evidence for those theories and choices, based on the relevant evidence available to us, mostly in the form of textual evidence.
In this way we hope to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, to scholars hopefully both religious and secular. In short, we will be avoiding apologetics, whether faith-based or anti-faith based. And not just religious apologetics, but also historical apologetics--we must approach the subject of NT history with a completely open mind. We're dealing with the realm of legend and myth, and the supernatural (and this is entirely true whether or not you are a believer--think of all the literature that the churches deem apocryphal), and there is nothing else to be done than to admit that the stories could contain truth, or they could all be false. There is no way to know ahead of time, so we must let the texts guide us, and not the other way around. (ETA: I should add that I am only interested in investigating natural events; I leave the supernatural to faith. I am interested in what we could reasonably expect to be historical events, what we could expect to have naturally occurred, just as in any history. Anything else is a question of religious faith, and so I put non-natural events in the realm of story. Story can include history, but not necessarily. We'll discuss this in the next post.)
These principles should also take us towards two goals that are common among scientific explanations: depth and scope. These principles are hallmarks of good science, and hence should also serve as hallmarks of good knowledge in general. It would be a mistake, of course, to assume that the methods of the natural sciences are entirely appropriate for study of the humanities, but because natural science is so good at acquiring knowledge, I think we can fruitfully apply relevant aspects of it to humanistic studies. We can't apply it wholesale, because the humanities are not quantified in the way that the natural sciences are (though sometimes they can in fact be quantified). Nevertheless, certain hallmarks of good science are not used because they are principles of science; they are used because they are principles of reason, and so can be used for both scientific reasoning and humanistic reasoning. Depth gives us insight into more fundamental, underlying causes or reasons for things, and scope gives us understanding of a more broad range of phenomena than we previously had. This is what we are after in synoptic studies: we want to know why the gospels take the form that they do, and we want our understanding to be complete, to cover all the phenomena--all the gospel pericopes, for example, or all the apocryphal gospels as well, and so on.
So: critical reasoning and empirical evidence, with depth and scope as a goal. Call this "evidence-based reasoning" in general.
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