On this page, we will offer some recommendations of books that are useful for the reader in researching the so-called "Synoptic Problem".
David Alan Black, Rethinking the Synoptic Problem
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Every now and again you find a good bargain while out shopping. I was browsing through a Half Price Books store and found a copy of "Rethinking the Synoptic Problem" for 5$. I skimmed through it and saw that it had 5 essays in it written by some of the top New Testament Scholars. The contributors are Craig Blomberg, Darrell Bock, William Farmer (who unfortunately passed away before the publishing of this book), Scot McKnight, and Grant R. Osborne. For someone like myself who hadn't studied the Synoptic Problem that much I found it useful and informative. Craig Blomberg has the first chapter and gives a somewhat brief overview of the Synoptic Problem. He also states his position and why he accepts it. Darrell Bock then has the next chapter and gives a well written essay on Q, showing it to be plausible, but also carefully assigning the limit to Q studies. He even gives some well deserved criticism to scholars of the Jesus Seminar persuasion who try to force Q to fit their own personal beliefs. Dr. Bock says that at best Q can be discussed generally, but to speak of layers, and exact wording and so forth is a severe error.
Scot McKnight is next with an essay on the Oxford Hypothesis which supports Markan Priority. He gives a brief history of it, then shows the evidence he believes supports the hypothesis. Next up is the eldest and probably most knowledgable NT Scholar in this book in regards to the Synoptic Problem: William R. Farmer. Farmer is a supporter of the Greisbach Hypothesis, which more akin to J.P.'s theory on literary dependence among the synoptics. The Greisbach hypothesis states that Matthew wrote first, followed by Luke, then Mark conflated the two down into one shorter narrative. I found this the most intriguing of all essays simply because all I'd ever heard of were arguments for Markan Priority and Q, besides the articles here at Tekton. The final essay is one by Grant R. Osborne, who gives a response to each of the essays. He also briefly discusses the issue of there being zero literary dependence, but concludes that the evidence used to that position is vastly overstated.
I would give this book three thumbs up except for one thing: the price. It is rather short, at about 151 pages, and costs 16.99 at list price. I'd get this from your library or try to find it at a used book store, unless you can afford it. Other than that, it is a great book.
-Lee Foster
Mark Goodacre, Questioning Q
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Mark Goodacre has been a loud voice arguing against Q (though not Markan priority) for some time now, and this book is one of the latest fruits of his labor. The evaluation of resistance to dispensing with Q as being the result of "intractable intellectual inertia" [9] strikes a chord in me; as we have noted before, it seems that many accept Q (even Witherington) for no other reason than that it takes too much to look at the question afresh.
The essays in this book vary in their usefulness. Poirer's essay on how Q found its ground in a 19th century tendency to look for pre-synoptic sources offers a fascinating glimpse into why the idea has been so stubbornly persistent. Poirer offers as well a startling indictment that key promoters of Q (like Mack and Koester) are "lagging 50 years behind in their understanding of the Synoptic problem." [22] I'd like to say that isn't true, but our own investigations suggest as much, given that Streeter is still the source status quo for many such theorists, and that as Goodacre says, the real problem is that dispensing with Q requires scholars to "rethink redaction criticism at every step." [174]. Any volunteers?
Of the remainder, the quality of argumentation varies. I found most useful the essay by Perrin, which makes salient points about how difficult it is to argue that Matthew and Luke were consistent in their use of sources like Q; the "thought experiment" of Eve, in which he pretends that we have lost the Gospel of Mark, and using the principles of Q scholarship, tries to reconstruct it from Q, Luke and Matthew; and Olson's essay, which addresses Downing's attempt to defend Q on the basis of compositional methods.
Questioning Q is probably too technical for most readers, and is definitely not suitable as an introduction to the Synoptic Problem, but for those already into the matter in depth, it is in many places a refreshing change of pace and a very useful source.