The Competition

The major competition with my Hyper-Synoptic Solution is, of course, the Farrer Hypothesis:

The other leading theory, the Two-Source Hypothesis (2SH):

has too many problems, most notably:

1) the Major and Minor Agreements.

There are other problems as well, such as:

2) the odd narrative parallels, like the temptation, and the centurion's servant.
3) the other narrative parallels, particularly at the beginning, like the the genealogy and the birth narratives.

In addition, the fact that:

4) Goulder admittely had some success linking various Lukan periocopes to Matthean ones

could also be argued as evidence for the Farrer Hypothesis, or at least as a problem in need of an explanation.


But the Farrer Hypothesis has its own related problems:

1a) The odd differences in details in GMt compared with GMk

Compare, for example, GMt's highly abbreviated account of the healing of Jairus' son (even leaving out the name of Jairus, when GMt usually tries to include such details), with his account of the walking on the water, which closely mirrors the account in GMk.

2a) The odd narrative omissions in Luke, most notably the Great Omission
3a) The other narrative changes, like the different genealogies and birth narratives

As well as the fact that

4a) Goulder often fails to find explanations for Lukan edits of GMt and GMk, and must resort to the ad hoc explanation of "muddle".


There is the additional question of:

5) What about GJn?

GJn has extremely notable similarities to GMk, in terms of some specific pericopes and their order (the feeding of the 5000 and the walking on the water, for example), as well as the passion narrative (which despite numerous unique edits and additions, still basically follows GMk's order from the arrest in the garden onwards.) Yet GJn departs significantly from GMk in its earlier chapters, most notably placing the temple incident at the beginning of the gospel, rather than the end, an entire year before the cruicifixion. It is also striking that GJn does not include a eucharistic meal at the Last Supper. And there are also hints of GMt and GLk here and there in GJn, which are inadequately explained by the author of GJn using all three synoptics; why would he be so selective in picking and choosing his material from all three--and if he were using all three, why would he deviate so significantly from them in the Galilean ministry chapters?

So the implicit hypothesis for all four gospels, based on the Farrer model, looks something like this:

We could dub this the "Extended Farrer Hypothesis" or even the "Hyper-Farrer Hypothesis".

The 2SH, too, I suppose, has its own version of the synoptic-GJn relationship:

But as noted above, these models generate several important problems when attempting to derive GJn directly from canonical GMk.


Most of those problems are solved by the Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis (HSH), which proposes not only that there was a predecessor to GMk equivalent to the Secret Gospel of Mark (SGM), and that there was indeed a "Q" source, but that it was a full-fledged gospel that derived from the SGM. The HSH solves the above problems as follows:

1+1a) GMt is not just using GMk, but also GHeb, which used an earlier version of GMk (i.e. SGM). This is similar to the Farrer Hypothesis, but shifts the Matthean source for GLk back one level, explaining both the Major/Minor Agreements (explanation: GLk and GMt shared a source that was Matthean) as well as the different details (GMt and GLk added different redactions to their shared Matthean source).

2+2a) GLk is using the same sources as GMt, but is making different choices about which gospel to prefer and when (between GHeb and GMk), and is also influenced by the proto-Gospel pG.

3+3a) GLk and GMt are basing their birth narratives, genealogies, and temptation sequences off of the Q-gospel (i.e. GHeb). Probably this source had its own somewhat simpler birth narrative and genealogy that both GMt and GLk adapted and used for their own purposes. The temptation sequence was probably contained in the source in a version very close to the Matthean-Lukan versions, since they closely resemble one another.

4+4a) Where GMt and GLk used the same ideas from GHeb, they show parallels in their pericopes. Where they independently innovated, they do not. They also combined GHeb with GMk in different ways. Hence GLk's "muddle" is just Lukan invention, not related at all to Matthean invention.

5) GJn used not GMk, but rather GMk's source: SGM. This explains the similarities between GMk and GJn, but also their significant divergences. GJn also used SGM's own source (a source GLk likewise used, but in different ways), explaining some of the apparently "primitive" featurs of GJn.