page_title: Augustinian hypothesis
section_title: Augustinian Revival
hierarchical_section_title: Augustinian hypothesis / Augustinian Revival
caption_attribution_description: English: Book cover of John Wenham: Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke, 1992.
context_page_description: The Augustinian hypothesis is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matthew the Evangelist. Mark the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Mark second and used Matthew and the preaching of Peter as sources. Luke the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Luke and was aware of the two Gospels that preceded him. Unlike some competing hypotheses, this hypothesis does not rely on, nor does it argue for, the existence of any document that is not explicitly mentioned in historical testimony. Instead, the hypothesis draws primarily upon historical testimony, rather than textual criticism, as the central line of evidence. The foundation of evidence for the hypothesis is the writings of the Church Fathers: historical sources dating back to as early as the first half of the 2nd century, which have been held as authoritative by most Christians for nearly two millennia. Adherents to the Augustinian hypothesis view it as a simple, coherent solution to the synoptic problem.
context_section_description: The Augustinian position, and the similar Griesbach hypothesis, has drawn recent interest, especially from B. C. Butler, John Wenham, W.R. Farmer, and others as an alternative solution to the synoptic problem, and has been employed as a scholarly refutation of Marcan priority, the Q hypothesis, and the two-source hypothesis. Butler argued that accepting the priority of Matthew rendered it possible to dispense with the hypothetical Q document altogether, a position he supported by arguments concerning the inadmissibility of appealing to Q as a sound explanation of the cases where Matthew appears to be more original than Mark. Farmer argued that a modification of the Augustinian hypothesis, ordering Matthew-Luke-Mark, eliminated all reasons for the existence of Q, a position whose credibility was conceded by W.C. Allen and others.  Likewise it has been pointed out that differences between the Synoptic Gospels are as easily explained by differing purposes of the authors than by forced redactions or omissions due to ignorance.  Furthermore, against certain arguments that the “primitiveness” of the ideas within the Gospels is the determining factor in their literary interdependence, it is observed that defining "primitiveness" carries obvious difficulties.
caption: Book cover of John Wenham's Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke.
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