Book Reviews

The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze, Mark

Goodacre (Sheffield Academic Press 2001), 178 pp, £14.99 pbk

The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the

Synoptic Problem, Mark Goodacre (Trinity Press International
2002), x + 228 pp, $30.00 pbk

Mark's Gospel- Prior or Posterior? David J. Neville

(Sheffield Academic Press 2002), xiv + 388 pp, £65.00 hbk

Most concerned accept that our first three Gospels are interrelated
by literary borrowing; and most of these, that 'Matthew' and 'Luke'
independently used Mark and a sayings collection, 'Q'. In disagree-
ment on that, Goodacre (following Austin Farrer and Michael
Goulder) is convinced that Luke used Mark and Matthew, and there
was no Q. And Neville (following [ohan Griesbach and William
Farmer) thinks it more likely that Luke used Matthew; and Mark,
writing last, used both (so, again, no Q). But does it matter? It does
for those with a religious commitment (so, Neville); for those con-
cerned with critical responsibility (both); and for those who enjoy a
good argument (Goodacre).
Neville begins by showing how some traditional arguments (espe-
cially from relative order) are now widely and rightly agreed to be
ambiguous. Only detailed exposition may be persuasive, and so his
main contribution comprises a careful survey of a number of pericopes.
First Luke 3.1-5.11, where Luke seems clearly secondary, and yet it is
then urged - often persuasively - that the argument as to which of the
other two appears dependent runs now one wa~ now another. Then
we have a discussion of Matthew 4.23-9.35, where Neville finds the
balance tips, but only just, in favour of Mark using Matthew. That is
followed by a suggested rationale for Mark's 'rearrangement' of both
the others between 1.21---6.13. Neville and Goodacre would both agree
that reconstructions must compete at this level.
The contrary conclusion is argued in both of Goodacre's books
(the earlier being an admirably clear student introduction), with the
well-rehearsed arguments against Mark being third: allowing
Mark's intention to curtail, nonetheless, why should he omit appar-
ently congenial matter, and add possibly embarassing items, and
seem theologically and historically more primitive? Perhaps the
most cogent point is 'the phenomenon of editorial fatigue' (e.g.
Matthew at 14.1-9 forgetting to correct 'king' the second time).

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Book Reviews

The case against Q is argued at greater length in the later study. It

includes an occasional disagreement with Goulder's 'mechanical'
exegesis, to which Goodacre prefers a deeper appreciation of Luke's
actual achievement: he was able to produce a narrative sufficiently
worthwhile to warrant changing order and wording in his sources.
That narrative validity can even be illustrated by film-makers' simi-
lar rearrangements of Matthaean matter. The 'plot' some find in Q,
affording it plausible coherence, can be seen to depend on Matthew;
but it also shows Q as imagined is unlike any contemporary 'say-
ings' collection. And there are the occasions where Matthew and
Luke do signally coincide in detailed disagreements with Marean
wording (the 'minor agreements'), indicating collusion; as well as in
the 'major agreements' of the material otherwise assigned to Q.
The trouble with Goodacre, but also with most of his interlocutors
on either side, is that they almost all seem to imagine the evangelists
in a cultural and technical vacuum ('nothing to match', Problem 31).
Here Neville is better - in so far as he includes (Ch. 5) a discussion
of contemporary compositional conventions (including pioneering
studies of minel). The fact is that any of our writers imagined
using the other two has to be imagined first at a number of points
doing very difficult and quite unprecedented 'unpicking' (for
instance, at the baptism and temptation of Jesus). And not only so,
but the one coming third has then to reject any agreements in his
predecessors, actually preferring clear divergencies, clean counter to
evidenced contemporary preference and his own practice with a
single source. Unfortunately Neville deploys only my broader dis-
cussion, misreading the detail (pp. 134-8), rendering it indecisive.
Both scholars are right in their supposition that any potential first-
century author faced with any two of our Gospels might well have
decided to plunder them to construct a preferred third; yet that third
would almost certainly have emerged unlike anyone of ours in its
relation to the other two.
Mark, Q, Matthew and Luke remain, in the cultural context, the
best solution.

F. Gerald Downing
Adlington, Lancashire

From Hebrews to Revelation: A Theological Introduction,

Lewis R. Donelson (Westminster John Knox Press 2001),
v + 161 pp, £12.99 pbk

The texts that follow the Pauline epistles in the New Testament
canon are not a random collection of 'add-ons', eclipsed by the

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