Studying the Synoptic Gospels

Sanders and Davies survey the entire field of Gospel scholarship.When they finish weighing and sifting the various theories andmethodologies, they come away with some striking conclusions.Although these conclusions do not always accord with the weight ofscholarly authority, they are always well-reasoned and well-defended.Sanders and Davies state the Synoptic Problem, and then analyze thevarious theoretical solutions. Then they address form criticism,redaction criticism, and Gospel genres. Finally they embark upon aquest for the historical Jesus.The analysis of the Synoptic Problemis particularly good. Each theory is studied in detail, its strongand weak points weighed and assessed, and a final judgmentpassed. They finally settle upon a modified form of the Goulderhypothesis, sometimes known as Mark without Q. Of the currentlyfashionable literature on the reconstruction of Q, they say:"This work is mostly of curiosity value, since it shows how far ahypothesis can be pushed despite its lack of fundamentalsupport."The middle sections on the various types of criticismand Gospel genre are not as good, the analysis being turgid andsometimes opaque, but they redeem themselves when they go questing forthe historical Jesus. They "cross examine" the Gospels,using four precise tests for historicity. The four tests put one inmind of the Jesus Seminar's "seven pillars of scholarlywisdom". The Jesus Seminar's seven pillars are not nearly aswell-conceived nor as well-applied as Sanders and Davies' four tests.The conclusions Sanders and Davies draw at the end of their quest areastonishingly circumspect when compared to the findings of mostcontemporary questers after the historical Jesus.