Archaic Christianity

This morning I read through the 14th and 15th chapters of the Protoevangelium of James (abbreviated Prot. Jas. by the SBL Handbook of Style, btw...). There was one difficulty and I found a few interesting things. For context, chapter 14 is Joseph's inner dialogue on what he's going to do about the mysteriously pregnant Mary. Chapter 15 is Annas the scribe's discovery of a big (ὀγκωμένην) Mary and the scandal that brings up.

Since it was New Year's Eve, I did what everybody else does on this great holiday. I went to the library (at DTS) and did some research. I was looking at the new books (I always do) and saw a new volume of the Oxyrhynchus papyri had been published. I took a gander and saw that it had four new papyri in it. Major cool...

Reicke begins his book The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels with a chapter which briefly details the history of the discussion of synoptic relations. It seemed to be just fine, but the meat of his argument did not begin until chapter two.

I have commented on the book Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels here and here. This brief discussion will be my last on this book for a while, I imagine. My reading of the chapter on the Two-Gospel Hypothesis (2GH) is my last in the book as I have already skipped ahead and read the gospel Independence view and the Two-Source/Four-Source/Markan Hypothesis (MH) view.

I discussed before my opinions on the independent view of synoptic gospel composition a couple days ago. I have continued my reading in the book (Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels) and have moved on to the discussion of the Markan hypothesis, the two-source/four-source hypothesis.

Here are my next steps in solving the synoptic problem for myself:

1. Read Bo Reicke's The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels to get a better grasp of the Independent theory of solving the synoptic problem.
2. Next is Rethinking the Synoptic Problem ed. by Black and Beck. This book has defenses for both the two-document hypothesis (Markan priority) as well as the Griesbach hypothesis (Matthean priority).
3. Next I'll begin taking notes and applying principles to actual gospel pericopes. Eventually you have to move on from reading people's books to actually checking the data yourself...

So I have been reading Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels (edited by Robert Thomas) lately. If you don't know, this book is a debate book, with one chapter arguing for Markan priority, one for Matthean priority, and one for independent composition, with different writers ...