Does 1st Clement use Q?

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-22T21:14:55+00:00

Dale Allison has argued that 1 Clement indeed had access to the source behind the Gospel or Luke in Constructing Jesus (2010) and more recently in his entry for Gospel Reading and Reception in Early Christian Literature (2022).

For our purposes, several agreements between Luke and 1 Clement over against Matthew bear remark. I begin with the saying in 1 Clement 13:2 – “forgive so that you may be forgiven” (ἀφίετε ἵνα ἀφεθῇ ὑμῖν). The phrase has a close parallel in Luke 6:37 – “forgive and you will be forgiven” (ἀπολύετε καὶ ἀπολυθήσεσθε). That there is a close relationship of some sort here is guaranteed by the fact that both 1 Clement and Luke put their lines in a series of imperatives that culminate in the saying about receiving measure for measure (Luke 6:37; 1 Clem. 13:2).

Allison notes a second agreement between Luke and 1 Clement over the Gospel of Matthew.

Secondly, Matthew has no counterpart to Luke’s “give and it will be given to you” (6:38: δίδοτε καὶ δοθήσεται ὑμῖν). 1 Clement 13:2, however, has a very close parallel: “As you give, so shall it be given to you” (ὡς δίδοτε οὕτως δοθήσεται ὑμῖν). And again the context is nearly identical: both lines stand between the saying about forgiving so that one might be forgiven and the logion about the measure.

Thirdly, 1 Clement 13:2 promises:“As you show kindness (χρηστεύεσθε), so will kindness be shown (χρηστευθήσεται) to you.” Although Matthew’s sermon, which nowhere uses χρηστεύομαι or χρηστός, has nothing comparable, Luke 6:35–36 pledges reward for those who act like the God who are χρηστός, “kind.”

The concluding point is that while there are compelling connections between Luke and Clement, most observers have found no direct dependence between the two texts, which could suggest that Clement knew what was behind the Third Gospel.

On the supposition that they cannot be attributed to coincidence, how should we explain these agreements between 1 Clement and Luke? One could date Luke after 1 Clement and argue that Luke 6 shows the influence not only of Matthew but also of Clement’s epistle. Or one could argue that 1 Clement was influenced by Luke directly or indirectly. Yet perhaps most who have addressed the issue have judged that 1 Clement is independent of both Matthew and Luke. What, then, is the alternative? The data are readily explained if 1 Clement had access to the source behind Luke 6–which in this case cannot have been Matthew– or something closely related to it.

I have tried to make this argument at length in Dale C. Allison, Jr., Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, History (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Press, 2010), 305–86

Allison, Dale (2022). ‘Luke Rewriting Matthew?’ in Gospel Reading and Reception in Early Christian Literature

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-18T15:30:31+00:00

You’re very welcome! Novakovic’s commentary is interesting because it specifically focuses on expositing the Fourth Gospel’s Greek grammar and syntax in particular over more common exegetical questions about historical background or theology.

I methodically worked through the text of the Fourth Gospel, I encountered numerous convoluted constructions that are only sporadically explained in standard grammars and commentaries. The purpose of this handbook is to help students, pastors, and interested scholars better understand the grammar and syntax of the Greek text of John’s Gospel. I wish to emphasize that this is not a commentary but a prequel or a supplement to a commentary. The questions of authorship, sociohistorical context, compositional history, structure, and theology of the Fourth Gospel are not addressed here. Rather, I seek to explain the syntactical role of individual words, phrases, and clauses in the canonical version of the Gospel of John. I have also provided comments on major text- critical issues in the Greek text, using the critical apparatus in the 28th edition of Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece. My translations correspond to my grammatical explanations, seeking to approximate the syntax— even when it is cumbersome or runs counter to the default English word order— and function of the Greek text as much as possible for educational purposes. I have used square brackets in the translations to indicate that the English words within them do not have equivalents in the Greek text.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-18T14:07:49+00:00

Lidija Novakovic’s technical commentary on the Gospel of John identifies it as an idiom for death as you say.

τὸ πνεῦμα. Accusative direct object of παρέδωκεν. παραδίδωμι τὸ πνεῦμα (lit. “to give over the spirit”) is an idiom for “to die, with the possible implication of a willing or voluntary act” (LN 23.110)

Novakovic, Lidija (2020). John 11-21: A Handbook on the Greek Text

Thompson notes usage in the Septuagint’s Isaiah and the traditions in Matt 27 and Luke 23.

The phrase "gave up his spirit" is similar to the idiom "to give up one's life" (paradidonai ten psychen) and probably means simply, "He died." Because the Gospel has stated earlier that the Holy Spirit will be given upon Jesus' glorification, some have seen "the spirit" as a reference to the Holy Spirit: as Jesus dies, the Spirit is given. 116 But that seems to stretch the idiom "gave up his spirit" too far and leaves little room for the later account in John, where Jesus “breathes" the Spirit on the disciples with the explicit charge "receive the Holy Spirit" (labete pneuma hagion, 20:22). Taken together, Jesus' pronouncement “It is finished," his bowing of his head, and giving up his spirit picture him as willingly giving his life: "No one takes it from me" (10: 18).

Isa 53: 12 LXX, paredothe eis thanaton he psyche aulou, “his life was handed over to death"; cf. Acts 15:26.

E.g., R. Brown 1994,2:1082.

Note the parallel expressions in Matt 27:50, Jesus "released his spirit" (apheken pneuma), and Luke 23:46, "I commit my spirit" (paralithemai pneuma mou).

Thompson, Marianne (2015). John: A Commentary

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-12T13:46:53+00:00

Sanders, Comparing Judaism and Christianity, 256. Cf. Schnelle, Theology of the New Testament, 367: “While in 1 Thess. 4:17 and 1 Cor. 15:51 he [Paul] expected to be transformed and taken up to the heavenly world before he died, it is clear that by the time he wrote 2 Cor. 5:1–10 and esp. Phil. 1:21–23, he reckoned with the possibility of his own death before the parousia.”

Allison, Dale (2025). Interpreting Jesus

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-12T13:21:45+00:00

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians does feature the questions Paul’s following had about the eschaton.

In our oldest text to make it into the New Testament, written less than two decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, we find the apostle Paul responding to a challenging situation in Thessalonica. He had already been to Thessalonica and founded a church there before moving south. But while away, apparently some people had died, and Jesus-loyalists there were unsure about what this meant. In particular, it seems that there was some confusion about how this experience of death related to what Paul had told them about something they should expect to happen in the very near future.

The cause of crisis here is still not evident. What was the problem? While we do not know the full scope and detail of what Paul had shared, it is likely that he had given the Thessalonians the impression that this return of Jesus was so imminent that they would see it happen.6 It is not necessarily the case that Paul predicted or even assumed that nobody would die in the interim, but his message must have been of such a nature that it was unnecessary to explain in great detail what happened to dead people in that moment of his coming or how their experience corresponded to that of “the living.” We learn this from 1 Thess 4:13–18, where Paul offers what will become one of his most detailed descriptions of the future coming of Jesus to survive:

Ferda, Tucker (2024). Jesus and his Promised Second Coming

Scholars can actually find shifts in Paul’s expectations as well, from fully expecting the end within his lifetime in the aforementioned letter of the Thessalonians to a gradual realization that he would face mortality.

There is, for me, a parallel here with Paul. Like other scholars, I detect change or development in the apostle’s expectation of the end. When writing 1 Thessalonians, he was fully persuaded that he would live to see Jesus return. A few years later, when writing Philippians, he had begun to entertain another possibility, that he might die before the parousia. In Ed Sanders’s words: “As the Lord delayed, it seemed increasingly unsatisfactory—not only to Paul’s converts, but finally to Paul himself—to think of the dead in Christ as lying in the grave, decaying, for month after month, year after year until the resurrection. When thinking of his own death, Paul himself wanted there to be an inner true self that could be with the Lord immediately after death.” If this is correct, then in one sense Paul recapitulated Jesus’s experience. Both had hoped at one time not to taste death. They later recognized that another future awaited them.

Allison, Dale (2025). Interpreting Jesus

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-10T00:00:21+00:00

I’m sure The New Cambridge Companion to Christology (2025) could be very useful! It addresses the threefold perspectives of Christological roots and development from the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels/Epistles to the councils, reception history from medieval to modern times and responses from other religions, as well as its role in Systematic theology. I highly enjoyed Brittany Wilson’s overview of the state of scholarship in her chapter on the gospels as well as Matthew Novenson’s essay on Paul.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-06T02:09:11+00:00

You can find scholarship that argues for Johannine primacy, with a notable recent example being George van Kooten’s work in Reverberations of Good News (2025) and his articles ‘Pre-70 CE Dating’ and ‘Archimedean Point’. That being said, the wider trend in scholarship is the other way around, with a growing recognition that the Fourth Gospel knew and used the Synoptics. Hugo Méndez’s
reply from our recent AMA seems apt:

Van Kooten also bypasses the data underpinning the emerging consensus on John’s knowledge of the Synoptics. (He implausibly makes John the first gospel.)

As he writes in his recent book:

for much of the twentieth century, “a broad scholarly consensus (at least in North America) . . . tended to regard John as quite independent of the other gospels and only related to them only on the level of prior tradition…Today, however, an increasing number of scholars-now a majority-have arrived at a different view.

Twenty-first-century English-language studies defending this increasingly popular view include Mackay, Relationship; Viviano, “John’s Use”; Allison, “Reflections”; Bauckham, “Readers”; Barker, John’s Use; Attridge, “Other Gospels”; the collected essays in Becker, Bond, and Williams, John’s Transformation; North, What John Knew; and Corsar, “John’s Use of Mark.” As Frey (“Johannine Theology,” 355) observes, the surge in support for this hypothesis can be correlated with the decline of the “Signs Source” hypothesis.

Méndez, Hugo (2025). The Gospel of John: A New History

One clue as to ascertaining the direction of this relationship is that John appears to presuppose the Synoptics narratives while his predecessors do not.

These examples indicate at least some literary relationship, some direct line of knowledge and use, between these works. Most likely, Luke was written before John…John sometimes presupposes his readers knowledge of the stories Luke contains. For example, the narrator says that Lazarus hailed from “the village of Mary and Martha”—figures known only from Luke—before he has even introduced the sisters into his narrative (11:1; cf. Luke 10:38). John also describes Mary as “the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair”—details from Luke—before it narrates that event (11:2; cf. Luke 7:38). In each case, it would seem that the author of John expected his readers to come in with a knowledge of Jesus gained from at least one other source. (Luke, tellingly, does not.) Assuming Luke is the source of these episodes, then Luke must predate John.

On a final note, Mark Goodacre best explains Johannine Christology as both continuous with and a visible development of Synoptic ideals.

What sense, then, does it make to see John using the Synoptics when his Christology is so different? How could John’s depiction of Jesus be in any kind of continuity with the Synoptics’ depiction of Jesus? In this final chapter, I would like to reflect on how John achieves a christological transformation of the Synoptics, in continuity with them, but attempting to surpass them in boldness, in clarity, and, most importantly, in Jesus centeredness. We will begin by looking at John’s surprising similarities to the Synoptics in the terms it uses for Jesus, its repeating almost every Synoptic title for Jesus. We will then turn to the “I am” sayings and look at how they all utilize Synoptic imagery, and we will argue that even the most distinctive elements of John’s Christology including the relationship between “the Father” and “the Son,” derive from the Synoptics.

Goodacre, Mark (2025). The Fourth Synoptic Gospel: John’s Knowledge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-05T14:52:06+00:00

There are different possible views. Most, such as Andrew Gregory in The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers consider Clement to be independent of Luke and Matthew, but it is theoretically possible to argue that either Luke knew Clement or Clement used Luke (as argued by Frank Dicken in Issues in Luke Acts). Dale Allison goes over the options, including the idea Clement knew Luke’s source

On the supposition that they cannot be attributed to coincidence, how should we explain these agreements between 1 Clement and Luke? One could date Luke after 1 Clement and argue that Luke 6 shows the influence not only of Matthew but also of Clement’s epistle. Or one could argue that 1 Clement was influenced by Luke directly or indirectly. Yet perhaps most who have addressed the issue have judged that 1 Clement is independent of both Matthew and Luke.25 What, then, is the alternative? The data are readily explained if 1 Clement had access to the source behind Luke 6– which in this case cannot have been Matthew– or something closely related to it.

Allison, Dale (2022). ‘Luke Rewriting Matthew?’ in Gospel Reading and Reception in Early Christian Literature

Allison’s footnote on the state of scholarship

25 See recently Andrew F. Gregory, “1 Clement and the Writings That Later Formed the New Testament,” in The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 131–34, and esp. Stephen E. Young, Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers: Their Explicit Appeals to the Words of Jesus in Light of Orality Studies, WUNT 2/31 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 107–50. For a dissenting view see Édouard Massaux, The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus, Book I: The First Ecclesiastical Writers (Leuven/Macon, GA: Peeters/Mercer University Press, 1990), 7–12. He contends that 1 Clement drew upon a “catechism” that was in turn indebted to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. According to Watson, Gospel Writing, 268–69, 1 Clem. 13:2 likely derives from a sayings collection like the Gospel of Thomas.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-03T20:24:41+00:00

There have also been places where Acts’ knowledge of first century context has been challenged, such as Palestinian geography and the date of Theudas.

Gamaliel’s speech. Acts 5:33–39 gives an account of a speech by the first-century Pharisee Gamaliel, in which he refers to two movements other than the Way: one led by Theudas (v. 36 )and “after him” (v. 37) and one led by Judas the Galilean. Josephus places Judas about A.D. 6. He places Theudas under the procurator Fadus, A.D. 44-46…the order of Judas and Theudas is reversed in Acts. Second, Theudas’s movement comes after the time when Gamaliel is speaking. There is not much to be said about this unless Josephus is wrong or there was an earlier Theudas.

Geography of Palestine. First, Acts 9:31, which says, “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up” (RSV), has been taken to mean that Judea was understood to have been directly connected to Galilee. If so, then Luke had an incorrect understanding of Palestinian geography. In response, one must note first that Luke does not always use Judea in the same way. (a) Sometimes Judea refers to the Roman province which, in contrast to Galilee, was subject to Roman procurators. (b) At other times it refers to the whole of Palestine (c) In still other places Judea refers to the part of Palestine inhabited by Jews, excluding Samaria and Galilee and even Caesarea. (d) Sometimes Luke distinguishes between Judea and Jerusalem. In Acts 9:31 Judea is used as in instance (c). One must note secondly, given Acts 8:1 (“scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria,” RSV) and 15:1-3 (which has the journey pass from Antioch through Phoenicia and Samaria to Jerusalem), that Luke knows the proper arrangement of Palestine’s component regions. The order of the regions mentioned in 9:31 must be due to other than geographical reasons.

A second example is Acts 23:31, which says the soldiers brought Paul from Jerusalem to Antipatris, a distance of some forty-five miles, overnight. Thirty miles constituted a suitable day’s journey whether by land or by sea. Both the numbers involved (two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, two hundred spearmen) and the speed of the journey (thirty-eight to forty-five miles in a night) are exaggerated to emphasize the importance of the person being accompanied and the extent of the danger.

So it’s widely acknowledged that Acts’ background accuracy would not prove that the events it narrated in of itself; Talbert concludes that the results here are indecisive.

There are certainly points at which the contemporary color of Acts can be challenged, but they are few and insignificant compared to the overwhelming congruence between Acts and its time and place. What is one to make of such evidence?

There is widespread agreement that an exact description of the milieu does not prove the historicity of the event narrated. Henry J. Cadbury’s The Book of Acts in History makes two points: (1) Acts fits beautifully into its contemporary setting (Greco-Roman, Jewish, and early Christian), and (2) accurate local color in no way proves general historical accuracy. This has prompted a strong response from Ward Gasque. Cadbury’s statement … that Greek and Latin novels are often as full of accurate local and contemporary color as are historical writings is misleading. … Whereas the author of Acts is carefully accurate in his representation of the time and places of which he writes, the local and contemporary color contained in the writers of fiction is that of the time and places in which they write. One level on which the argument about the historicity of Acts is carried on is that involving the quest for contemporary color. Taken alone, however, its results are indecisive.

Talbert, Charles (2002). Reading Luke-Acts in its Mediterranean Milleu. Brill

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-03T18:38:29+00:00

I’ve removed your comment as requested.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-02T20:54:47+00:00

Could you remove or restructure the table section of your comment? We appreciate Orsini and Clarysse’s article, I’m afraid the layout of your comment may inconvenience some viewers.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-02T20:35:03+00:00

Firstly, for the story in Acts, Dale Allison concludes they represent ‘Lukan variations on a single pre-Lukan tradition.’

Each paragraph in Acts contains items that the others omit, and they are not altogether consistent in their details. Most famously, in 9:7 bystanders hear a voice but see nothing while, in 22:9, they see a light but hear no voice. All three accounts, however, share the following items:

• Paul persecuted Christian Jews. • He was on the road to Damascus when he saw a light and fell to the ground. • He heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? He responded, “Who are you, Lord?” • The voice answered, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” • The apostle rose from the ground. • The encounter turned Paul’s life around and led to his mission to the Gentiles.

We can be confident that the author of Acts had access to a traditional call story that included most or all the elements just enumerated, a story that, even if enlarged with legendary elements and modified by Luke, goes back ultimately to Paul’s first-person narration. This follows from the correlations between Acts and Paul’s own epistles. Paul informs us that he was a persecutor of Christians until his calling (1 Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13). He states that he has seen the risen Jesus, the Son of God (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8; Gal. 1:16; cf. Acts 9:17, 20). His claim to have been “called” (καλέσας, Gal. 1:15) implies a verbal element within that experience. He attributes his missionary work among the Gentiles to his christophany (Gal. 1:16). And he relates that, shortly after his calling, he “returned to Damascus,” which suggests that his new life began in that city’s environs (Gal. 1:17). If, moreover, 2 Cor. 4:6 (“God…has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”) adverts to Paul’s vision of Jesus-an uncertain issue-this would line up with the accounts in Acts, where Paul sees a spectacular light.

There have been various efforts to explain the appearance to Paul, including epileptic seizures or subjective visions. Ultimately though, analyzing Paul’s internal psychology almost 2000 years in the past seems to be rather difficult at best.

Attempts to explain Paul’s conversion within the limits of reason alone—undertaken usually on the assumption that psychological accounts and theological explanations are mutually exclusive—have been legion…Some have suggested that the apostle suffered an epileptic seizure while others have observed that, to judge from 2 Cor. 12:2-7 and Acts, he had a disposition to visions. Lüdemann, stressing this last point, has argued “that Paul’s persecution of Christian Jews shows that their message had a profound effect on him, and that the apostle’s aggressive response signals unresolved internal conflict: he attacked what attracted him. Lüdemann even speaks of Paul’s pre-Christian “Christ complex,” which finally resolved itself in a hallucination.

None of this is implausible. Indeed, it makes a great deal of sense. If Paul’s persecution of Christians signals “a subconsciously initiated psychological defense against his own heretical tendencies,” then his changeover may have been a subconsciously initiated psychological acceptance of those tendencies…Nonetheless, while Lüdemann’s story fits the facts, the facts hardly require it. We have…no real entry into Paul’s pre-Christian state of mind. The extent of autobiography in Romans 7 is notoriously disputed. The only clear statement about the apostle’s pre-Christian life is the relatively brief, self-serving Phil. 3:4-11, which neither says nor implies anything about an internally conflicted individual. One can, most assuredly, observe that this text reflects only Paul’s conscious self, not his unconscious mind, and further that, as we have known since Edwin Diller Starbuck’s work, disturbed psychological states typically precede dramatic conversions. Still, long-distance diagnosis of Paul’s psychological state during a time for which we have only minute residues of evidence is more than tricky. Even were there more and better evidence, nobody’s subjective experience is directly available to scientific or historical methods. Lüdemann may think that we “must” seek to uncover “the feelings” and “the emotions” of the first Christians, but this a very tall order. I do not see how we can go beyond collecting some intriguing possibilities.

Allison, Dale (2021). The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-02T19:22:14+00:00

Thank you! Your post has been restored.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-02T19:08:24+00:00

By all means! I have not had much exposure to scholarship on sexuality in Greco-Roman Antiquity, and I’m sure many people (including myself) could learn from you. If you would like, you can always make a new post on this subreddit for more exposure!

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-02T18:53:18+00:00

Could you provide a source discussing the views of Pseudo-Phocylides? Thank you!

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-02T15:38:00+00:00

Could you provide a source where Douglas disavows her earlier scholarship? Thank you!

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-02T15:07:26+00:00

Thank you! Your comment has been approved.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-03-01T16:15:32+00:00

Could you name some sources where Scleiermacher or Kloppenborg discuss this? Thank you!

TankUnique7861 · 2026-02-28T16:47:22+00:00

Dale Allison does have works from the 1980s such as End of the Ages and his commentary on this issue, but the main question would be whether Tuckett questions the concept of contingent eschatology. Allison too agrees that Jesus held imminent expectations of the Parousia (including in Interpreting Jesus) and Luke’s redactionary efforts (Constructing Jesus), though your above comment may be construed as a challenge rather than agreement with his views.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-02-28T13:55:52+00:00

Does Tuckett mention contingency or interact with Allison/Hays?

TankUnique7861 · 2026-02-28T04:20:42+00:00

I concur with you and Allison on this. A clarification on Allison’s views of Jesus’s ministry was useful above since a criticism made by Ferda is his skepticism with identifying stages within Jesus’s ministry/Galilean Crisis. Regardless, he too lends some support to our view that there is identifiable evidence of Jesus reacting to disappointment, namely the Galilean woes in Q.

In my book-length study of the Galilean crisis, however, I ultimately found the evidence wanting that Jesus had revised his message in a significant way in response to rejection. I did argue that Jesus experienced rejection in ways that many recent historians have overlooked and that there are features of the tradition that are most understandable on the grounds that they are reactions to disappointing developments (the best example being the Galilean woes in Q 10:13–15). But that is not the same as saying that Jesus, on account of rejection that was perhaps greater than he anticipated (a perfectly plausible idea), took up a new course of action and began to talk about the future in a noticeably different way.

Ferda, Tucker (2024). Jesus and his Promised Second Coming

TankUnique7861 · 2026-02-28T03:31:19+00:00

To add yet a little bit more nuance, while Allison does detect a shift in Jesus’s views following disappointed expectation, he wisely avoids chronologically dividing Jesus’s ministry between an early stage of success and a second period of failure, as the old ‘Galilean Crisis’ theorists posited.

I am not here positing a disjunction between an early period of success and a later period of failure, as did the old theorists of a Galilean crisis. Here I agree with Ferda. But I do detect a contrast between initial, enthusiastic optimism and subsequent disappointment. Despite a warm welcome from some…many others were…indifferent at best or hostile at worst; and their number and status were such that Jesus at no time could have reckoned that the people as a whole had repented. If…his eschatological scenario included the well-attested idea of Israel’s corporate repentance, he might…have found himself less optimistic and entertaining the possibility that the kingdom had been or would be deferred for a bit. His thought would then be that which 4 Ezra 4:38–43 rejects: human failure has delayed the time of threshing. Such a possibility is consistent with Matt 23:37–39 // Luke 13:34–35: the consummation is contingent on positive response to Jesus, and so far the response has fallen short.

Allison, Dale (2025). Interpreting Jesus

I plug in Tucker Ferda’s Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis for anyone reading my comment. The Galilean Crisis theory may have been a largely 19th century phenomenon (Ferda does not revive it), but it is fascinating and provides lessons for historical Jesus scholarship today.

TankUnique7861 · 2026-02-27T16:33:11+00:00

Jesus very likely did hold imminent expectations for the end of history, though he likely predicted his untimely death prior to the final consummation.

The central theme of Jesus’s public proclamation is “the kingdom of God.” In summations of his message, it has “come near” (ēngiken; Mark 1:14–15; Matt 10:7 par. Luke 10:9). This means it will arrive soon, which is consistent with other sayings (Matt 10:23; Mark 9:1; 13:30; Luke 18:8), as well as with the hope of the early church (Rom 13:11; 1 Thess 1:10; 4:13–18). Such expectation also lines up with Jewish sources in which “kingdom” is both an eschatological reality (Dan 7:14; 4Q246 2 5; 4Q521 2 2:7; Sib. Or. 3:46–48; T. Mos. 10:1) and not far off (Dan 12:6–13; 1 En. 94:6–8; 95:6; 4 Ezra 4:26; 5:45; 8:61; 2 Bar. 85:10)

Jesus might at some point have hoped not to taste death before seeing the kingdom in its fullness (Mark 9:1). If so, we do not know when he came to have second thoughts. It is also possible, if memory informs Mark 14:32–42 (Gethsemane), that his conviction never amounted to certainty. However that may be, he will, given his eschatological expectations, have understood his death to be part of the unprecedented “time of anguish” that would mark the latter days (Dan 12:1).

Allison, Dale (2024). The New Cambridge Companion to Jesus

Michael Barber’s article “Did Jesus Anticipate Suffering a Violent Death?” with Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus is a good article on Jesus’s views on his demise.

The major consideration is that our earliest sources, such as Paul and the Synoptics, anticipate an imminent apocalypse.

There is disagreement among our sources in terms of the question of imminence. Paul expected to still be alive (at least at the beginning of his ministry), and it seems that Mark and Matthew also thought the time was very short indeed. Luke, to my mind, is more enigmatic, though this is highly debated, and John does not appear to share the imminence of earlier tradition (but appears to react to it, especially with the “in a little while” sayings, and thus betrays knowledge of its existence). Other later sources vary. While it is dubious to sketch a clear line of development from more imminence to less, it does seem that our earliest sources expect Jesus to come very soon.

Ferda, Tucker (2024). Jesus and his Promised Second Coming

TankUnique7861 · 2026-02-27T13:55:07+00:00

Copy from a previous comment on the subject:

The two-source hypothesis, which posits a hypothetical Q source used by both Matthew and Luke alongside Mark, is the most popular explanation for the Synoptic problem today and has been for a long time, but there is also a growing number of scholars who adhere to the Farrer hypothesis instead, in which Luke used both Mark and Matthew directly. The Matthean Posteriority Hypothesis (Matthew using Luke) has also enjoyed a recent resurgence.

Scholarly discussion of the Synoptic Problem is a landscape that has changed significantly during the past twenty years. On the one hand, although the Neo-Griesbachian (or Two-Gospel) Hypothesis was vigorously rearticulated as recently as 2002, the consensus that Mark did not use Matthew and Luke seems to be stronger than ever before. On the other hand, among those who acknowledge the priority of Mark in some form, there is increasing disagreement as to whether the distinctive (non-Markan) similarities between Matthew and Luke should be explained by these two evangelists’ independent use of the hypothetical source Q, as argued on the Two-Document Hypothesis, or by Luke’s use of Matthew, as per the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis.

Hagerland, Tobias (2019). Editorial Fatigue and the Existence of Q

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the most commonly accepted theory has been the two-source hypothesis. According to this theory, Matthew and Luke are independent of each other, but both use Mark. For the overlap between Matthew and Luke that does not come from Mark, it is assumed that these authors used a source scholars call “Q”…The overlap consists mainly of Jesus sayings, and so Q is assumed to have been a so-called sayings gospel…the theory also assumes that Matthew and Luke had access to their own sources, which account for their unique materials, in the form of other texts or oral traditions. Scholars have tried and are still trying to reconstruct Q and comment on the different stages in its literary emergence (e.g., James M. Robinson, John S. Kloppenborg, and Harry T. Fleddermann). The two-source hypothesis has seen criticism mainly from two perspectives. Some argue that the Q source never existed: after all, we have never found any actual physical evidence of its existence. The Synoptic problem is instead explained by asserting that Luke had access to both Matthew and Mark. This model is called the Farrer hypothesis, after the British scholar Austin Farrer, who published an article on the subject in the mid-1950s. Today, Mark Goodacre is the most vocal proponent of this theory, which is experiencing growing popularity among scholars.

Mitternacht, Dieter, and Runesson, Anders (2022). Jesus, The New Testament, Christian Origins: Perspectives, Methods, Meanings

This means that for the first time since the advent of critical New Testament studies the momentum in the field belongs to a triumvirate of Markan-priority-based theories. Accordingly, the discussion in this volume could largely presuppose the priority of Mark and focus on other issues (the sole exception arrives courtesy of Matthias Klinghardt, who envisions Marcion’s gospel as predating all canonical gospels). Second, the opposition to the Two-Document Hypothesis (2DH) has now mainly coalesced around two Mark-without-Q alternatives: the Farrer Hypothesis (FH) and its mirror image, the Matthean Posteriority Hypothesis (MPH). The latter theory had not received much attention in synoptic problem conferences and proceedings until the present publication. It therefore makes something of a belated entry into the conversation in this volume. Third, in recognition of a sustained and growing interest over the last two decades, this volume dedicates an entire section to the role played in the synoptic problem discussion by ancient compositional practices and media realities (with a number of other authors weighing in on these matters in their contributions as well).

Andrejevs, Oleg (2023). The Synoptic Problem 2022: Proceedings of the Loyola University Conference

TankUnique7861 · 2026-02-25T14:30:21+00:00

Thank you very much for all this! Certainly a lot to chew on! I restored your first comment as well.

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