Archaic Christianity

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:

I recently had a birthday. My first and favorite gift was the new edition of the Apostolic Fathers. Buy it. Read it. Love it. Everybody else in the blogosphere or the B-Greek list seem to love it as well. Important texts very nicely printed and bound.

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 (all evangelicals) defending the different viewpoints. I've been focusing on just the question of dependence, i.e., were the gospels written entirely independently or did Matthew use Mark, or Mark Matthew, etc. That question has to be answered before one can move on to other questions like Markan and Matthean primacy, or the existence of Q. I am defaulting at the moment to dependency because that makes most sense to me in light of what I see in my gospel synopsis, but I am going back to review this to make sure I am not wrong. The answer to this question determines so much else in gospel studies.

As noted on the Bibleworks Blog, Oxford University Press is having a big sale on Amazon. You can get the Oxford Latin Dictionary or LSJ for as cheap...

Welcome to the blog. I have decided, once again, to split my blogging of tech and biblical studies. I did this briefly for a while but did not like the split. I am, after all, one person. Shouldn't I just have one blog?