In my last blog I discussed oral tradition and its place in the gospel accounts. It is clear that the authors of the gospels used the oral tradition of that time in their composition of the gospels. However, there also seems to be something more involved in the writing of the gospels than oral tradition. It seems that there is also a literary source that the gospels share in common. In other words, the authors of the gospels copied material from the same written source.
One of the signs of this in the gospels is the editorial comments that the gospels share in common. I have already discussed these editorial comments in my previous blogs. These interruptions in the stories seem to indicate that an author was involved in the tradition and not just a speaker. Consider, for example, the editorial comment found in Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14—“let the reader understand.” This editorial comment is addressed to a “reader”, not a hearer. If the authors of the gospels were copying from an oral tradition they would have said “let the hearer understand.” Thus, there is a literary source that is being copied. I believe that the other editorial comments shared by the authors point the evidence in the same direction.
Other evidence for a literary source is the similarity of order shared by the gospels. In other words, the gospels share a similar order of events (for examples see my previous blog). I will perhaps argue in a later blog that the oral traditions were not memorized in an order. But for now, I will just say that scholars who study the period of oral tradition (i.e. form critics) believe that oral traditions were not memorized in an order. So because the gospels show a similarity of order, this indicates a literary source was involved. In order for the gospels to show a similarity of order, they would have to copy a written source that had that order.
Other evidence for a literary source is the similarity of misquotations of the Old Testament in the gospels. In some cases, the authors will quote a verse from the Old Testament that slightly disagrees with the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. Matthew, Mark, and Luke will all agree in their quotation against both of these Old Testament texts. In an oral tradition, someone would have fixed the misquotation. Once it is written down, the misquotation gets “concreted.” So the misquotation must have come from a literary source. Thus, Matthew, Mark and Luke copied from a literary source. For examples of this see Mark 1:3 and parallels, and Mark 12:30 and parallels.
So it seems from this evidence that the similarities between the synoptic gospels come from the authors copying a common literary source. In the next few blogs I will discuss the nature of this literary source.
