An authoritative account of the life and work of Johann Jakob Griesbach.

In 1776 Johann Jakob Griesbach of Jena published as a separate volume his Greek Synopsis of Matthew, Mark and Luke, previously issued as part of his critical edition of the Greek New Testament. He was in fact the first to establish the Synopsis as a fundamental tool of New Testament research. He was perhaps even more important for his text-critical studies, and for what is still called the Griesbach Hypothesis of the literary dependence of Mark on both Matthew and Luke. The editors of this volume have brought together a selection of the papers presented by a distinguished international group of biblical scholars at the Griesbach Bicentenary Colloquium held in Munster (Westphalia) in 1976. This collection provides an authoritative account of the life of Griesbach, and of his work and its continuing influence in the fields of the Greek Synopsis, the Synoptic Problem and text criticism of the New Testament.

Featuring more than two hundred in-depth articles, a comprehensive resource introduces the principal players in the history of biblical interpretation and explores their historical and intellectual contexts, their primary works, their interpretive principles, and their broader historical significance.

The fascination with literary dependency in the most popular approaches to the synoptic problem has been built upon a faulty presupposition: that oral tradition is incapable of producing the word for word verbal agreement found in the synoptic accounts. Recent research in the area of oral tradition has shown that this is not the case, but we still rely on increasingly complicated literary models to explain the relationships between the Synoptic Gospels. This book engages in comparative analysis of Old Greek quotations found in more than one of the Synoptic Gospels, along with the material that surrounds these quotations. The resulting conclusions indicate that oral sources may better explain the similarities and differences found in the Synoptic Gospels, and that we ought to reexamine our foundational presuppositions in order to craft a better model for understanding the origins of the Synoptic Gospels. The hope is that the reader will join the author in seeking to better understand these books that include the climax of the greatest story of all time: the true story of people marred by sin, and their creator who seeks after them as he redeems all things to himself.

This volume addresses the Synoptic Problem and how it emerged in a historical context closely connected with challenges to the historical reliability of the gospels; questions the ability of scholarship arriving at a compelling reconstruction of the historical Jesus; the limits of the canon; and an examination of the relationship between the historical reliability of gospel material and ecclesial dogma that was presumed to flow from the gospels. The contributors, all experts in the Synoptic Problem, probe various sites and issues in the 19th and 20th century to elaborate how the Synoptic Problem and scholarship on the synoptic gospels was seen to complement, undergird, or complicate theological views. By exploring topics ranging from the Q hypothesis to the Markan priority and the Two Document hypothesis, this volume supplies extensive theological context to the beginnings of synoptic scholarship from an entirely new perspective.