A Response to Robert A. Derrenbacker, Jr.

by William R. Farmer

Robert A. Derrenbacker's review of Beyond the Q Impasse: Luke's Use of Matthew, Trinity Press International, 1996, in the Toronto Journal of Theology 14/1 (1998), deserves a considered if not comprehensive response. In no sense is this response intended to be comprehensive. It is rather a focused response aimed to further the collegial dialogue for which Derrenbacker is clearly calling.

First, attention should be given to Derrenbacker's concluding observation: "...this work is a welcome contribution to Synoptic Problem research.... Advocates from all perspectives should eagerly anticipate the second part of the Research Team's project, a redactional analysis of Mark's conflation of Matthew and Luke." (p. 88)

The fairness of these observations will be appreciated by many if not all who have read with care Beyond the Q Impasse. Yet, when it is noted that these words of affirmation are closely associated with the immediately preceding words: "Certainly many Synoptic scholars will disagree to some extent with the Research Team's conclusions and method," it is clear that Derrenbacker's commendation of the book is tempered by his awareness of "certain fundamental aspects" of the Research Team's method which constrain him to demur from giving this book his full endorsement. In short, there are certain as yet unanswered questions to which Derrenbacker draws his reader's attention. The purpose of this response is to attempt to answer these methodological questions. For they turn out to be recurring misunderstandings that serve to cloud contemporary discussion of the Synoptic Problem.

Before addressing these misunderstandings it is important to underline the basically positive evaluation Beyond the Q Impasse receives in Derrenbacker's review. After correctly noting that the bulk of the Research Team's work encompasses a "pericope-by-pericope" analysis of Luke's use of Matthew, Derrenbacker states: "Clearly, there is much to be commended about this work, not the least of which is the great need that this book addresses—that is, a detailed explanation of Luke's use of Matthew on the 2GH" (p. 85). He goes on to write: "In addition, the Research Team's work is to be complimented for its detailed analysis of Luke, from the Gospel's redactional theme through its structure to its (hypothetical) relationship to other sources" (p. 85-86). Every Synoptic source critic, he writes, can thank the Research Team for its "contribution to the source-critical discussion" (p. 86).

After such sincere praise, it is all the more important to give careful attention to the critical grounds on which Derrenbacker rests his reservations concerning important methodological considerations.

The first of these reservations has to do with the Research Team's methodological procedure of discussing the question of Luke's use of Matthew without reference to Mark. Derrenbacker has a point when he insists that Mark does exist and that it cannot be ignored. In a discussion of Beyond the Q Impasse that took place at the SNTS Synoptic Problem Seminar in 1997, Mark Goodacre raised the same objection. At the same meeting, however, Reginald Fuller was at pains to defend the decision of the Research Team on this point. One year later when Derrenbacker raised the same objection at the 1998 SNTS meeting, it was Christopher Tuckett this time who defended the Research Team's method. Both Fuller and Tuckett based their rejection of this objection on the methodological ground that the proper place to discuss the text of Mark, when testing the 2GH, would be in a study of the text of Mark wherein an attempt would be made to explain "pericope-by-pericope," how Mark used Matthew and Luke.

In the light of this ongoing discussion, it may be helpful to draw attention to certain considerations that will serve to clarify the methodological point at issue. The Research Team's decision to focus on the task of explaining Luke's use of Matthew without reference to Mark was not meant to deny that Mark exists today, nor to deny that it existed in antiquity, but only to take valid account of that point that on the 2GH, Mark had not yet been composed when Luke was being written, and on that hypothesis, could not have exercised any compositional influence on the evangelist Luke. The methodological point to be underscored is that Mark does not come into the picture when Synoptic scholars undertake to explain Luke's compositional use of Matthew on the 2GH. Under those circumstances, to discuss the relationship of Luke to Mark while demonstrating Luke's use of Matthew, at best would have diverted the reader's attention from the main task at hand, and at worst could have led to methodological confusion.

Derrenbacker, however, is right to draw attention to the fact that before Synoptic scholars can fairly make up their minds on the Synoptic Problem, they will need to take into account, pericope-by-pericope, the relative merits of explaining Mark's relationship to Matthew and Luke on alternate hypotheses. This means that after the Research Team's volume on Mark is available, Synoptic scholars will then, but only then, be in a position to test the relative advantages of the 2GH vis-à-vis other hypotheses. In fact, Derrenbacker shows himself to be not in disagreement with this point when he concludes his review with a reference to an eager anticipation of the Research Team's work on Mark (p. 88, emphasis added).

The second and perhaps more important methodological point that calls for clarification is Derrenbacker's objection to the claim that the 2GH enjoys an advantage over the 2DH in that it does not require the existence of a hypothetical source called "Q." This claim is indeed a serious methodological claim made by adherents of the 2GH. It is a claim that is generally granted, even if reluctantly, by leading proponents of the 2DH. Franz Neirynck, for example, protests against any modification of the 2DH that further increases the need for hypothetical sources, as for example in Albert Fuchs' Deutero-Marcus Hypothesis. From Neirynck's perspective one could say to Derrenbacker: "If you agree, as you seem to do, with the authors of Beyond the Q Impasse, that Luke, in parts of his Gospel not paralleled in other Gospels, made use of other sources, and that these sources are "hypothetical," because we do not actually have them, the 2GH would still enjoy an advantage over the 2DH, because the 2DH would then require one to postulate all the hypothetical sources required on the 2GH plus the additional major hypothetical "Q" Source. It is to be stressed that the hypothetical "Q" Source is not required on the 2GH nor on any hypothesis that recognizes that Luke probably knew and used Matthew (e.g. the Austin Farrar/Goulder Hypothesis). The insistence of 2DH adherents that Matthew and Luke were composed independently of one another is essential to the theoretical basis for belief in a "Q" source.

Once scholars agree on Luke's literary dependence on Matthew, the need for "Q" is obviated. For in that case a simpler solution for the so-called "Q" material in Luke is to acknowledge that Luke took this material from his major source, Matthew. It should be observed that Derrenbacker's novel argument that "Q" is less "unknown" than the other hypothetical sources in Luke, on the grounds that "Q can generally be readily reconstructed based on the double tradition material shared by Matthew and Luke," is a non-sequitur (because of the circular reasoning involved), since it begs a central question under dispute, namely that Matthew and Luke "are independent from one another" (p. 87). This argument also is disputed by the evidence that can be drawn from a study of the literary characteristics of Luke as defined by scholars like Harnack and Cadbury, both of whom are in this instance hostile witnesses, since both held to the 2DH. Cadbury identified certain literary characteristics which he characterized as non-Lukan. The Greek texts of the parables of Jesus unique to Luke contain such "non-Lukan" literary characteristics, and thus constitute evidence in support of the hypothesis that the evangelist Luke copied the texts of these parables from a pre-existing source in Greek. At the same time, according to Harnack's reconstruction of "Q" in The Sayings of Jesus, 1908 (translation of Sprüche und rede Jesu: die Zweite Quelle des Matthäus und Lukas, 1907), the Lukan texts of the so-called Q tradition are peppered with what Harnack regarded as Lukan characteristics. This led Harnack to conclude that the Lukan form of the Q tradition often represented a Lukan version of the Q material secondary to that of the Matthean parallels. Cadbury's comprehensive study of Lukan characteristics in The Style and Literary Method of Luke supports Harnack's work at this point, and the subsequent study by J.G.F. Collison, "Linguistic usages in the Gospel of Luke" (Ph.D. Diss., SMU, 1977, University Microfilms International, 1984) further supports the work of Harnack and Cadbury in this matter. The prospect of close cooperation between adherents of the 2DH, the 2GH and the Austin-Farrar Hypothesis, growing out of conversations that took place during the SBL meeting in Orlando, 1998, in settling on the criteria for determining the literary characteristics of the evangelists, bodes well for an eventual agreement on how best to evaulate the import of the abover referenced works of Harnack, Cadbury and Collison for solving the Synoptic Problem.

It is the stated purpose of Beyond the Q Impasse, to demonstrate that Luke used Matthew. Derrenbacker is at pains to praise the work of the Team, and it is important to note that he is careful to characterize the "difficulties" to which he draws attention as "apparent weaknesses" (p. 88 emphasis added).

Finally, it is to be noted that the four appendices in the form of charts located in a pocket attached to the back cover of Beyond the Q Impasse are not mentioned in Derrenbacker's review. This is important since they play an important probative role in the Research Team's demonstration that Luke used Matthew. It was precisely the evidence set forth in these charts that was singled out by Mark Goodacre in his response to Beyond the Q Impasse at the 1997 SNTS meeting, as providing strong grounds for concluding that Luke did know and make use of Matthew.

The only possible point where Derrenbacker might conceivably have meant to include a reference to these four important appendices is found in a paragraph where he refers to the inclusion in the book of "explanatory excurses." His own words indicate that his best judgment on the work of the Research Team works against the major premise of the novel argument he is propounding: "Often the Research Team provides helpful explanatory excurses. Synoptic tables are frequently included to illustrate how and where Luke is utilizing Matthew" (p. 85, emphasis added).

It is possible, however, to read Derrenbacker at this point as not at all having the charts in question in mind. On this reading, readers of Derrenbacker's review will not have been as well served as they might have been, in that major objective evidence for some kind of compositional dependence of Luke upon Matthew, indicated in these charts, is left unmentioned.