Talk:Synoptic Gospels

message: Please see Talk:synoptic problem#merge with synoptic gospels. --Otheus 14:05, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for Merger with [[synoptic problem]] 

message: What exactly do "conservative" and "liberal" mean in this context?  Liberal and conservative are only opposites for certain meanings of the words, and I'm not sure if those meanings are appropriate here.
: Do they mean politically conservative/liberal? (And if so, is this the US or European meaning of "liberal"?)
: Does it mean "traditional" vs "non-traditional / modern" (in which case, I'm not sure "liberal" is a clear enough or appropriate word to use).
: Or are these terms that have a specific meaning in Christian theology (in which case an explanation should be given or linked to).
Wardog (talk) 09:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Authorship according to conservative and liberal Christians" 

message: :"since the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas which attests to the sayings gospel genre" -
Something is unusual with the grammar of the italicized part. Please clarify/fix. E.g., according to the dictionary, I would write "attests gospel genre of the sayings" or "attests to the gospel genre of the sayings".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.69.71 (talk) 15:02, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear grammar 

message: The use of the possessive in the "Two-source hypothesis" section could be read as indicating a specific point of view. In any case, it is not clear what is meant by "our Mark", though presumably the intent is the gospel as presented in accepted versions of the the Bible.
KeithC (talk) 22:58, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Our Mark" 

message: I've removed the dating section entirely, as it is mostly a content fork of the section in Gospel with an eye toward pushing later dates. Maybe there's room for discussion of how the synoptic solutions influence the dating of the various writings, but that's not what we have now. Mangoe (talk) 14:31, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  On dating 

message: Per WP:EIGHT, we are supposed to cover material to the extent that our commonly accepted reference texts and disinterested secondary and tertiary sources cover it. There's no historical-critical support for the two-gospel hypothesis or for the other also-ran hypotheses listed. They should be given coverage due them, which means much less. The two-gospel hypothesis, in particular, is backed up only by two sectarian Christian references and doesn't deserve to be treated as a serious contender in the historical-critical arena. Leadwind (talk) 15:21, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  composition hypotheses 

message: Can the official gospels really be called "primary sources"? Wikipedia's own definition is "a document, a recording, or other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic". Mark was written at least a century after Christ's death, based on what we can only assume is oral testimony and the putative Q. The other gospels are mostly derivative of Mark.Gymnophoria (talk) 13:42, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You are offering a liberal view of Markan authorship. It could have been written shortly after the fall of Jerusalem. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 13:46, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The above debate is only somewhat relevant to the article text that says that the gospel is our "primary source for historical information about Jesus".  In this context, "primary" doesn't just mean "first" as opposed to "secondary", it also means "main" as contrasted to other sources such as Josephus.  Moreover, the argument that the "primary sources" are "oral testimony" is to suggest that newspaper accounts are "secondary" because the actual interviews conducted by the journalist are the "primary sources" or that books which are commonly considered "primary" by Wikipedia are actually "secondary" because the data or research notes on which they are based are the "primary" source.  If Gymnophoria wishes to propose text that emphasizes the meaning of "primary" in the sense of "main" as opposed to the quasi-technical definition used by Wikipedia's reliable source guideline, we can consider that.  However, I would suggest that the average reader will understand the current text to mean "main" and that most readers will not read in the sense of "primary" vs. "secondary" in the Wikipedia definition of the terms. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:00, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Primary Source" 

message: There needs to be some clarification in the double tradition section. The current section implies that the "sermon on the mount is "intact" as a complete unit in bout Mark and Luke. When in fact the "Sermon on the Mount" is only found "intact" in Mark and though, almost all the material is found in Luke it is broken up throughout most of the gospel.
I would propose the sentence to be reworked like this.  "It consists almost entirely of Jesus' sayings and teachings, most parables, and includes most of the text found in the Sermon on the Mount."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spicer5 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Double Tradition 

message: * Oral transmission (synoptic problem)
* Oral gospel traditions ‎
These two articles are looking badly sourced stand alone and outside the structure of better articles. Where should they be merged to? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:05, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Both have merge tags now. History2007 (talk) 08:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

text: You can't be serious when you equate the scholarship of James Dunn with being "badly sourced".  I suggest you study harder and come back when you know something about the subject. Ignocrates (talk) 15:29, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Heavens, No. I am not going to get involved in this topic. Have many other things to do, e.g. life.... Unwatching the page... History2007 (talk) 16:04, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

text: Ignocrates, yes I'm serious. any 1-man 1-source article by a 1-time contributor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Apocryphos is a problem is badly sourced, even when using a good source. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:56, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand your point, and I apologize for suggesting you are unlearned on the subject. However, it is not at all unusual for stubs and starter-articles to be under-sourced. We don't usually see attempts to merge them for that reason alone. Ignocrates (talk) 13:36, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Essays needing merging somewhere

message: The page Oral transmission (synoptic problem) is in effect a discussion of part of the development of the Synoptic Gospels. Not a well sourced or great discussion, but in principle that is what it is. It makes sense to trim it and merge in here. History2007 (talk) 08:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It should be summarized here for sure, but I don't know about a merge now. Might it be better to merge with the other "oral" article mentioned above? There's a bit of a suspicion it might be copyvio (perhaps from the last source used). The whole thing popped up from a "draft" by an editor who has not edited again. Especially near the end it reads like a lecture. Johnbod (talk) 16:36, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge of Oral transmission (synoptic problem)

message: (User:SlothMcCarty, Nov. 2003)
So, I found this start-class article in rather poor shape, saying relatively little about the synoptic gospels themselves and serving as a dumping ground for material on synoptic theories, often with borderline POV issues. I appreciate the work of the many editors who have contributed to it, and would like to largely preserve that work either here or in the articles on the respective theories. However, I think the time has come for a rewrite. 
Let me propose some principles that I have tried to follow, and which I hope future editors will also follow:
# Focus first on the synoptic gospels, not on the synoptic problem (though, yes, Synoptic problem redirects here, and I agree the two are so intertwined as to belong in a single article). Assume that many readers are just interested in what is known and how scholars approach the synoptics, and not in unsettled arguments and speculation about the synoptic problem. 
# However, neither is this the place for in-depth descriptions of the four canonical gospels together or individually, except as they pertain to the group of synoptics and their relationship. 
# Prefer sources that deal principally with the synoptic gospels and the synoptic problem itself, and do so in a relatively balanced way. (Most would agree that Goodacre, himself a Q-skeptic, does a fine job of exactly this, so I have used his work extensively.) 
# Nomenclature
#* Marcan/Lucan, rather than Markan/Lukan. I know many English-language scholars use the latter, but IMHO it's just wrong. You never see Matthewan or Matthaian, do you? (Oh, but there's Matthaean vs. Matthean....)
#* Try to be consistent and rational about capitalization, even though we're in a gray area. (Not that I care enough about it to argue for one way or another.)
#* Ben C. Smith, following Stephen C. Carlson, suggests some standardization of the nomenclature, which I am eager to embrace, despite its relative novelty:
#** Use theory to describe a complete solution (e.g., two-source theory) and hypothesis for an individual fact under consideration (e.g., Marcan priority hypothesis). 
#** Systematically name theories after the (usually) two sources used by the posterior gospel(s), starting with the one responsible for the triple tradition. This is in contrast to the literature's tendency toward eponymous nomenclature (Farrer, Griesbach, etc.) or haphazard structural nomenclature (four-document ≈ two-source ≠ two-gospel, wtf?). 
#** Nevertheless, names more common in the literature must be at least mentioned. 
# Acknowledge that the two-source theory is the prevalent one among scholars—even its opponents admit that—but avoid language that presumes it—or, for that matter, Marcan priority—as a fact. Even documentary interdependence is not unquestionable. 
# Individual theories, if worth more than the barest mention, have their own pages. That is the proper place for "arguments", "criticisms", etc., since they are after all theories. Such material attracts a lot of churn as editors play POV tug-of-war in their struggle to be both neutral and thorough. Try to keep such destructive "churn-magnets" separate from this main article. 
# Nevertheless, the undisputed facts and observations underlying such arguments are fair game, as are the fundamental foci of controversy. For example, Q arises from the attempt to explain the double tradition in light of Marcan priority, so we should at least explain what the double tradition is and why we single out Matthew-Luke overlap rather than Mark-whatever overlap. Further, we explain that the existence of Q and Marcan priority are each points of controversy that separate one theory from another.
# We do need a "Theories" section to list, link to, and briefly describe at least the "notable" theories—meaning those with numerous modern adherents, those still being actively discussed in the literature, and perhaps any of major historical significance (Augustinian, maybe Ur-Mark etc.). 
#* A label (linking to the respective main article) and a diagram pretty much cover what we want to say here. We don't even need references, since the linked article will have plenty. 
#* Theories tend to have a lot of variants. "Mine is just like yours except I posit a proto-Luke...." These belong in the theory's main article, not here. (In particular, the 4SH is not worth tabulating, though it is worth mentioning in History). Basically everything with the same core structure among the synoptics (even if arrived at by two contradictory theories) should get lumped together under one theory (or perhaps I should say, model). For example, the recent "Progressive publication of Matthew" is structurally a revival of the de Wette hypothesis, which is roughly a variant of Griesbach, so it need not be tabulated here.
#* Such a list is a magnet for minority theories. Accept that future editors will want to add them, and provide a template (I mean a pattern, not a Template) to follow that will keep such addenda concise and unintrusive. Still, unless the Büsching hypothesis makes a surprise comeback (fingers crossed!), I expect most new minority theories to actually be variants of the big ten or so already listed.
--SlothMcCarty (talk) 10:31, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for all your great work.  The illustrations alone a great effort, on top of all the other numerous improvements to the page. --HectorMoffet (talk) 09:08, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite

message: The image should change “Double Tradition” to “Luke and Matthew” for consistency, as the other two are not labeled as such. Cali Boy 09 (talk) 03:56, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change image