4 ms·

Wikipedia has a neat table of "notable synoptic theories" with diagrams like the one in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels#Theories ht

Wikipedia has a neat table of "notable synoptic theories" with diagrams like the one in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels#Theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels#Theories

panick21_ 2y ago
The problem with all of these is they act as if these works came into being fully formed at time X. Any real solution has to overcome that and start to think as these text are in motion.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  That's much more true for the new testament than the old. The main four books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) emerged in such a condensed time frame with such similar structure and content it's very difficult to reason about the genesis of them outside of comparisons to each other. This gets even more complicated when you realize that names are re-used and authors likely intentionally made use of pseudonyms, so it's very hard to draw conclusions of authorship from third-party sources. By the time historians start to mention it Christianity had been wildly popular for centuries. However, much of the historiography dealing with authorship—including the research done by many distinct churches—absolutely treats them as the product of time and multiple contributors. I think there's a tendency to view the simplest narratives as representative because those are the narratives that tend to propagate the widest and fastest, but it's just not representative of what serious scholars think.
- cxr 2y ago
  They aren't assuming that, and it's weird that you would claim they are. Where do you get this? Those in the field of textual criticism are well aware of the existence of "variant texts"—those "textual witnesses" (documents) that differ for various reasons from the sources they were copied from.
mhuffman 2y ago
Also this youtuber[0] is extremely good at visually (and verbally) describing current scholarly understandings of this. Similar (but different) to 3blue1brown in that way. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ

panick21_ 2y ago

The problem with all of these is they act as if these works came into being fully formed at time X. Any real solution has to overcome that and start to think as these text are in motion.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
That's much more true for the new testament than the old. The main four books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) emerged in such a condensed time frame with such similar structure and content it's very difficult to reason about the genesis of them outside of comparisons to each other. This gets even more complicated when you realize that names are re-used and authors likely intentionally made use of pseudonyms, so it's very hard to draw conclusions of authorship from third-party sources. By the time historians start to mention it Christianity had been wildly popular for centuries. However, much of the historiography dealing with authorship—including the research done by many distinct churches—absolutely treats them as the product of time and multiple contributors. I think there's a tendency to view the simplest narratives as representative because those are the narratives that tend to propagate the widest and fastest, but it's just not representative of what serious scholars think.
cxr 2y ago
They aren't assuming that, and it's weird that you would claim they are. Where do you get this? Those in the field of textual criticism are well aware of the existence of "variant texts"—those "textual witnesses" (documents) that differ for various reasons from the sources they were copied from.

mhuffman 2y ago

Also this youtuber[0] is extremely good at visually (and verbally) describing current scholarly understandings of this. Similar (but different) to 3blue1brown in that way. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ