17.7.24

Synoptic Musing II

This is another attempt to illustrate my current thoughts on a possible ‘solution’ to the Synoptic Problem.

This is understandably a tangled web, but this must necessarily be the case given the number of documents in question: a minimum of nine primary texts, at least one gospel hypothesized by many scholars of Marcion, a growing Pauline corpus, and the various hypothetical ‘traditions’ utilized by those other texts. I also have the thought that the content of these documents was not entirely fixed until well near the end of the second century CE, and even after. Modifications continued to be made to these texts long after their respective ‘publications’, often with the intention of harmonizing their contradictory details or idiosyncrasies: changes were made to Thomas to align with Matthew; John was altered to fit alongside Luke; etc.