More on Farrer

For a brief time, I thought that something like the Farrer hypothesis must be correct: the Major/Minor Agreements were too knotty to solve with the Two-Source Hypothesis. But that introduced its own problems; the Lukan "muddle" that Goulder used as an explanation was too blatantly ad hoc to take seriously. Lukan omissions and innovations seemed too great to explain if he really had nothing more than GMt and GMk in front of him. And the realization that we couldn't stop with the Synoptic Problem, but also had to explain the relationship of GJn with the synoptics, further led my thinking away from over-simplistic explanations like the Farrer Hypothesis.



In fact, there was a further realization: not even the Synoptic-Johannine Problem covers the phenomena. We also have the apocryphal gospels to explain. We can't simply assume they were late derivates of the canonical gospels; instead we must demonstrate whether they were or not. Thus, the Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis was born. And it turned out that adding some of the apocryphal gospels into the Synoptic Problem, as sources of the synoptics, rather than derived from them, solved myriad phenomena that have been plaguing New Testament scholars for centuries.

And for a long time, I had strongly suspected that "Q" must have been a full-fledged gospel, with a Galilean ministry and a Passion Narrative. Realizing that GHeb and GPet testified to that very gospel was a breakthrough.

So while the Farrer Hypothesis is the only plausible alternative to my Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis, I don't think it can ultimately be defended. I regard it as noble opposition, and recognize its strengths. On the face of it, it seems like a simpler solution. But it requires so many ad hoc additions, so many claims of unknown "traditions", both written and oral, so many arbitrary choices on the part of the gospel authors And in a sense it is too simple--it's explanation for the composition of each gospel is too pat, amounting to nothing more than: each author wrote a whole, complete gospel, from beginning to end, with nothing more than 0, 1, or at most 2 sources written sources at hand as input. Everything else--everything!--is dismissed as either authorial idiosyncracy or as tradition, without surviving evidence. I am certainly not saying each author had their own idiosyncracies, or that there were not traditions, both lost and unwritten. But to assign anything not present in one of the canonical gospels to these categories is to violate the best canons of knowledge and scholarship: evidence and parsimony. It is in fact more complex to assign phenomena to unexplained, ad hoc phenomena like authorial quirks and oral traditions, than it is to try and find an alternative solution--like written sources that we actually have evidence for. Until now, few realized we had those sources, which is why they had to resort to ad hoc explanations. But I hope to show this strategy is no longer possible. There is a better explanation, and the Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis is it.

Let me also say this: one thing that acts to further the acceptance of the Farrer Hypothesis, if I may say so, is that it is defensible within the framework of orthodox Christianity--"orthodox" in the sense of theologically benign, compatible with ecumenical, post-Nicene Christian theology, tradition, and scholarship. There is nothing really wrong with this. The Farrer Hypothesis, plus faith, may in fact be a completely adequate explanation for most people of the form and content of the gospels.

However, that faith cannot be used as a scholarly argument against the HSH. If one wishes to make a faith-based argument against my hypothesis, so be it. There are faith-based channels for scholarly criticism. But that has to be kept separate from the true academic debate, which is, again, based on evidence and reason, shared by believers of all creeds, but not faith. Faith has its proper place, and that is where it belongs.

The Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis is, in fact, neither supportive of orthodox belief, nor against it. In fact I personally think it is largely compatible with that faith, though that is not the HSH's purpose. The HSH's purpose is to uncover the truth of history. Beyond that, there is ample room for faith. There is also ample room for disbelief. The HSH is a neutral position between faith and unbelief in the traditional story of the gospels. I don't intend it as anything more than that. I think that a believer can add faith to the HSH to convert it, so to speak, to an orthodox theory--perhaps the canoncial authors were divinely inspired, but the pre-canonical authors were not. Perhaps GHeb used an authentic sayings source that dates back to the pre-70CE era. Perhaps GJn used an equally authentic source for its discourses. I make no claim about these things either way. But an unbeliever could make their own set of assumptions: no gospel author was divinely inspired, there are no authentic sayings traditions, lost writings, or oral sources. That is not my business. I am presenting a non-religious, academic argument about the written sources of the gospels. Nothing more, nothing less. The reader can see what he wants to in it. He can use it for his own purposes. Maybe it will strengthen his commitments; maybe it will weaken them. Who am I to say what it should do?