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THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELSGraduate Program in Pastoral Ministries

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THE CRITICAL STUDY OF THESYNOPTIC GOSPELS

Class 1

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Outline

§ Orientation to the Courseú Syllabus, website, workbook, readings, library

§ The Bibleú What it is and where it comes fromú How scholars build the Bibleú The New Testament

• How Our Texts Circulated• The Fluidity of the Canon

• A Timeline of the Christian Gospels

§ Principles of Catholic Biblical Interpretation

§ The Lives of Mark

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ORIENTATION TO THE COURSEThe Synoptic Gospels

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Syllabus

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Website

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SynopticWorkbook

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Books

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Camino

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Library

Workbook, pp. 34-35

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CATHOLIC BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION

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Impact of the Protestant Reformation(1517–1648)

§ Reformers in Europe protested the teachings, rituals and structures of the Catholic Church

§ They sought to base all three on scripture alone; they considered subsequent developments aberrations

§ Since everyone needed access to scripture, and since the Catholic Church and its Latin translation were suspect, Protestants

² translated the Bible into the vernacular(s)

² encouraged everyone to read it, not just the clergy

² resulting in diverging interpretations of scripture

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The Catholic Response(1517–1948)

§ Some reforms of teachings, rituals and structures were undertaken, but scripture reforms were resisted until the 20th century

§ Catholics asserted that scripture was not the only locus of revelation, but that God continued to guide the Church through its tradition

§ With regard to the Bible, the Catholic Church

² Retained the Bible in Latin; the first translations into the vernacular were based on the Vulgate rather than the original languages

² This naturally discouraged everyone but clergy and scholars from reading it

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The Watershed: 1948(Divino Afflante Spiritu, Pope Pius XII)

In this letter, Pope Pius XII encouraged a fresh approach to the Bible, articulating 5 principles of Catholic biblical interpretation:

² The Bible should be translated into the vernacular from the original languages

² Preference should be given to the “literal sense” of scripture, that is, the historical context and the meaning of the words in that context

² For that reason, we should also pay attention to the literary form and genre of biblical texts and their ancient Near Eastern counterparts; the Bible is not sui generis

² The interpretation of the Bible has never been unanimous

² But the Bible is still inspired: it contains the revelation and self-manifestation of God, but also the human response

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Dei Verbum Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Vatican II

Article 11“The Bible teaches firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

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Dei Verbum Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Vatican II

Article 12“…the interpreter of sacred Scripture in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writer really intended and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.”

• Literary forms

• Historical circumstances of the time of writing

• Customary and characteristic patterns which people in that period employed in dealing with each other

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WHAT THE BIBLE ISAND WHERE IT COMES FROM

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What the Bible Ista biblia = the books

Where it comes from…

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≠

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TEXT

APPARATUS

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HOW SCHOLARS BUILD THE BIBLE

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How Scholars Build the Bible

§ They gather all the available manuscripts evidence

§ They compare every overlapping verse

§ If verses differ, they have to make a judgment aboutwhich version is earliest

§ They create a composite text verse by verse in the original language

§ This is translated for readers today

§ New manuscript discoveries are folded in

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Eugene Ulrich

Chief Editor of the biblical Dead Sea Scrollsmanuscripts

At work in the scrollery of the Rockefeller Museum, East Jerusalem

October 1995

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4QSamuelaCol. 10

(1 Samuel 10:27 + addition – 11:2)

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New American Bibleofficial Catholic translation in U.S.

1970

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Ulrich Dissertation1978

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New RevisedStandard Versionofficial liberal Protestant Bible

1991

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MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERIES

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Manuscript Discoveriesof the 20th Century

Oxyrhynchus1895–1930

50,000+ fragmentary Greek mss,some of them Christian

Nag Hammadi1945

13 books with 52 separate “tractates” —4th century copies of earlier gnostic works

The Dead Sea Scrolls1947–1955

900+ fragmentary mss of the Jewish Bible, apocrypha and sectarian texts

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The Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1 (1QIsaa)

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Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments bought from the Bedouin

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The Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 (11QPsa)

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Part of the “Thanksgiving Scroll”from Cave 11 (11QHa)

Part of the same scroll,under normal (left) and

infrared (right) light

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Scholars separating the scrolls manuscripts in Jerusalem

Fragments of Exodus that belong to the same manuscript (4QpaleoExodm)

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A reconstructed column of the Exodus manuscript

Published version,with some missing text filled in

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The New TestamentHow Our Texts Circulated

§ The “Bible” we know didn’t exist in antiquity

• It was too big to fit existing book binding technologies, except in a few rare cases

o Of 5,300+ extant NT mss, only 61 contain the entire NT

o Most of the remaining 5,239+ mss indicate that books were bound in the following groupings:

v 4 gospels v Paul v Acts & the catholic epistles v Revelation

v Of these, only 6-8 contain the entire Bible

v And only four of these complete Bibles date to the first

500 years of Christian history

More than half of all continuous-text Greek copies of NT writings

are the Tetraevangelium—the four gospels

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The New TestamentHow Our Texts Circulated

§ The “Bible” we know didn’t exist in antiquity

• The four “complete” Bibles include books we don’t and sometimes lack books we have (due to lacunae)

Codex Sinaiticusmid-300s

Codex Vaticanusc.350

Codex Alexandrinus400s

Ephraimi Rescriptus500s

• 15 x 14 inches

• most of the LXX (incl.apocrypha)

• entire NT + Epistle of Barnabas + Shepherd of Hermas

• 10.6 x 10.6 inches

• most of LXX (incl.apocrypha, but gaps inGenesis, Psalms)

• entire NT (but gaps: Hebrews, Pastorals, and Revelation)

• 12.6 x 10.4 inches

• entire LXX (incl. apocrypha) + Ps 151 + 3–4 Maccabees +14 odes

• entire NT + Epistles of Clement + Psalms of Solomon

• 10.2 x 12.6 inches

• entire LXX (incl. apocrypha; though much is lost)

• entire NT

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Codex Vaticanusca. 350

This manuscript of the Gospel of John lacks the story of the woman caught in adultery.

Here is where you’d expect it to be —right after chapter 7.

But this manuscript goes right from the end of chapter 7 (a controversybetween Jesus and the Pharisees)to John 8:18 (“And Jesus spoke to them, saying: ‘I am the light ofthe world’”).

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THE LIVES OF MARK

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The Lives of Mark

c.30 CEJesus dies

65–75Gospel

composed

c.130Papias

75-90Matt & Lkcopy Mk

Peter’s scribe

TODAY

400Augustine

Matthew’s summarizer

200Origen

Spirit’spen

1555John

Calvin

1863Heinrich

Holtzmann

reporter

1901WilliamWrede

1919-1945M. Dibelius

R. Bultmann

1956Willi

Marxsen

theologian

scissors & paste man

redactor & author

1970s-80sRhoads & Michie

TolbertDonahue

narrator

Mark

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Exercise for Next ClassWorkbook pp. 43-44

§ Mark episode breaks in Workbook version of the Gospel of Mark

§ Look for causal connections between episodes; mark repetitions of words and scenes to identify these links

§ Note awkward syntax, grammar or theology in the margins

There’s no paper to write; this is an in-Workbook exercise

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