Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §4.4
'source'). 73 The case is generally reckoned to have been firmly established for
German scholarship by H. J. Holtzmann in 1863 (when he was just 31), 74
though the case he made for Markan priority was less effective than has usually
been appreciated, and the full significance of Q was not grasped initially. 75 In
any case, English-speaking readers have generally depended on the much later
treatment by B. H. Streeter. 76
The basic considerations adduced by Holtzmann have remained more or
less the same since. 77 For the priority of Mark three features told in particular.
(1) The fact that so much of Mark appears also in Matthew and Luke: Holtzmann
reckoned that only thirty Markan verses do not appear in the other two Gospels.
(2) The order of episodes: when the three Gospels are compared, in each case
it appears that the Markan order is primary. (3) The form of the episodes: likewise
when the three Gospels are compared, again and again the Markan version
seems to be more primitive. For the existence of Q two features proved most significant.
(1) The principal fact that some two hundred verses in Matthew and
Luke are substantially the same or virtually identical, including some doublets
with sayings in Mark. 78 (2) Whereas the Q material has been grouped by Matthew
in several composite discourses, it is scattered through Luke. 79 Taken to-
73. F. Neirynck attributes the introduction of the term 'Q' into the debate on Synoptic
sources (as shorthand for the Logia source) to E. Simon in 1880 ('Note on the Siglum Q',
Evangelica II [BETL 99; Leuven: Leuven University, 1991] 474); see further D. Liihrmann,
'Q: Sayings of Jesus or Logia?', in R. A. Piper, ed., The Gospel behind the Gospels: Current
Studies on Q (NovTSup 75; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 97-116.
74. H. J. Holtzmann, Die synoptischen Evangelien: ihr Ursprung und ihr geschichtlicher
Charakter (Leipzig: Englemann, 1863). Holtzmann did not use the symbol 'Q' but referred
to the 'Logia' or 'Sayings collection' (Spruchsammlung). For the broader picture, see
Dungan, History 326-32.
75. J. S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings
Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000) 300-309.
76. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1924).
Streeter was building on the work of Oxford scholars, particularly J. C. Hawkins, Horae
Synopticae: Contributions to the Study of the Synoptic Problem (Oxford: Clarendon, 1898,
2 1909), and W. Sanday, ed., Studies in the Synoptic Problem (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), carried
on independently of the earlier German work (Holtzmann does not appear in any of their
indices, though Sanday was certainly familiar with Holtzmann's work).
77. For convenience I refer to Holtzmann's revised and summary treatment in his
Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in das Neue Testament (Freiburg: Mohr-Siebeck,
1886) 367-76.
78. For the documentation of doublets see particularly Hawkins, Horae Synopticae 80-
107.
79. Holtzmann expressed the point vigorously: 'What is more probable in itself: that Lc
deliberately shattered (muthwillig zerschlagen) the great structures and scattered the wreckage
to the four winds, or that out of his heaps of stones Mt has built those walls' (Lehrbuch 372).
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