Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§4.4 The Flight from Dogma
the die had been cast. 69 The differences between John and the others, which had
previously been glossed over, could no longer be ignored. It was no longer possible
to treat all four Gospels on the same level. If the first three Gospels were historical,
albeit in qualified measure, 70 then such were these differences that John's
Gospel could no longer be regarded as historical. Over the next hundred years the
character of John's Gospel as a theological, rather than a historical document, became
more and more axiomatic for NT scholarship. 71 Like the miracles of Jesus,
though not quite so decisively, the Fourth Gospel had been effectively knocked
out of the quest.
b. The Two-Document Hypothesis
The excision of John from the historical source material allowed attention to focus
more fully on the other three Gospels. The degree of similarity between
these three made their combined contrast with the Fourth Gospel all the more
noticeable. It was already appreciated that the considerable overlap of material
allowed the three to be set out in parallel and looked at together — hence their
common designation as 'Synoptic' (looked at together) Gospels and the title of
a book which sets out the three in parallel as a 'Synopsis'. 72 From early centuries
it had been assumed that the canonical order of the Gospels was also the
historical order, that Matthew was the earliest Gospel, and that Mark had been
able to use Matthew, and Luke to use both. But now the urge to find the earliest
source or sources for the life of Jesus and the more careful examination of the
Synoptic parallels resulted in a crucial conclusion: that in and behind the Synoptic
Gospels lay not just one but two primary sources; (1) Mark was the oldest
of the three Synoptics and was used by both Matthew and Luke; and (2) Matthew
and Luke also used a second source, consisting principally of sayings of
Jesus (which came to be designated Q, presumably from the German Quelle -
H. P. Liddon, who, in his 1866 Bampton Lectures, The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ (London: Rivingtons, 2 1868), expounds 'Our Lord's Divinity as witnessed by his
consciousness — St John 10.33' (Lecture IV); cf. also B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According
to St. John (London: Murray, 2 1881). And see Schweitzer, Quest 1 218-19 = Quest 2 185-87.
69. Schweitzer also notes that 'toward the end of the 1870s the rejection of the Fourth
Gospel as a historical source was almost universally recognized in the critical camp' (Quest 2
503 n. 21).
70. Baur recognized that each Gospel had its own Tendenz (Kümmel, New Testament
137-39).
71. Baur's demonstration that the Synoptics are superior as historical sources to John
'belongs to the abiding results of New Testament research' (Kümmel, New Testament 139).
72. First used by J. J. Griesbach in 1776 (see Kümmel, New Testament 74-75 and n. 88).
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