I thought I'd finally put this post up--I wrote it last fall as part of my ongoing exploration of the role that the Signs Gospel plays in the Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis, but got busy with other things and it's been sitting for a while. But I'd like to explain how the Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis relates to the study of the Gospel of John, so I've revised this post and here it is.
The HSH, at least with regards to the role of the Signs Gospel, does fit into a previously-established tradition of Johannine scholarship, though this tradition is perhaps not a mainstream one. The Signs hypothesis in general (that is, that there was a source for the Gospel of John that contained a sequence of symbolic miracles called "signs") is not universally accepted, and indeed one might argue that it has never been mainstream opinion. I wanted to explain that I am aware of this, but that there is nevertheless an ongoing thread in Johannine studies that does assume the existence of a Signs document (of some sort or other), even one that relates to the Gospels of Mark and John in the way that I claim it does.
I'll present this as a more-or-less chronological study of the concept of a Signs source in the history of New Testament criticism.
The HSH, at least with regards to the role of the Signs Gospel, does fit into a previously-established tradition of Johannine scholarship, though this tradition is perhaps not a mainstream one. The Signs hypothesis in general (that is, that there was a source for the Gospel of John that contained a sequence of symbolic miracles called "signs") is not universally accepted, and indeed one might argue that it has never been mainstream opinion. I wanted to explain that I am aware of this, but that there is nevertheless an ongoing thread in Johannine studies that does assume the existence of a Signs document (of some sort or other), even one that relates to the Gospels of Mark and John in the way that I claim it does.
I'll present this as a more-or-less chronological study of the concept of a Signs source in the history of New Testament criticism.
A Brief History of Scholarship on the Relation of GJohn to the Synoptics
