This monograph provides a "comprehensive history of the various arguments focusing on the order of pericopes in the Gospels to ascertain their original sequence of composition." - Editor's Foreward.
This major work promises to move scholarship forward as the first approach to systematically look at the synoptic problem by employing textual criticism.
The similarities and difference of arrangement and order of episodes in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke have always been one of the major critera for resolving the Synoptic Problem. How important, and how reliable are arguments based on such considerations, and where might they lead? Here Neville reviews these issues in detail, explaining the significance of his conclusions for understanding the literary relationships among the three Synoptics gospels, and particularly for the competing theories of Markan priority (the standard two-source hypothesis) and Markan posteriority (the Griesbach hypothesis).
For a long time mainstream gospel scholarship has assumed that the so-called Q material (the "double tradition") in Matthew and Luke represents a document or tradition that was almost exclusively orientated towards the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, with little interest in a narrative about him. This book argues, on the contrary, that the narrative material in the double tradition existed from the very beginning within a coherent Jesus narrative that ran from his baptism to his passion. Far from being inserted by Matthew and Luke into the framework of Mark, the double tradition is structured on the very same narrative framework as the Gospel of Mark (a framework that predates Mark). Conventional dichotomies in gospel origins, the historical Jesus, and the history of early Christianity are thus drawn into question.
The problematic literary relationship among the Synoptic Gospels has given rise to numerous theories of authorship and priority. The primary objective of Rethinking the Synoptic Problem is to familiarize students with the main positions held by New Testament scholars in this much-debated area of research. The contributors to this volume, all leading biblical scholars, highlight current academic trends within New Testament scholarship and updates evangelical understandings of the Synoptic Problem.
The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.