Editor's Note
Epiphany 2016
Years ago when I began studying the New Testament closely, I always wondered what made us so sure that
there really was a “synoptic problem.” How did we really know that the gospels were actually dependent
upon one another and that Matthew borrowed heavily from Mark or vice versa as some think? Couldn't the
similarity in language from one gospel to the next be explained by the fact that the different authors
witnessed more or less the same events?
As it turns out, the answer is “no.” To demonstrate this I've linked to three separate accounts of Super Bowl
XLIX, played on February 1, 2015, in which the New England Patriots narrowly survived a late comeback by
the Seattle Seahawks with a dramatic interception in the end zone. One account is here, another is here, and
a third is here. I've run some analysis. Not only is the structure of the accounts radically different in each
case; the authors only share 15-20 % of words in common. When we remove common English words, the
names of the players, as well as words like “touchdown” necessary to narrate any football game, the rate of
actual verbal agreement among the sports columnists drops nearly to zero. This is to be expected! We are
reading the testimony of three different eyewitnesses! Even though each draws on a common experience of
the game itself and a common pool of official game statistics, the rate of verbal agreement is astonishingly
low.
Not only does the English language feature a variety of ways to describe the same event, authors working sui
generis try to be somewhat creative. Each narrates what he saw, as sportswriters tend to do, and each looks
for a specific frame to narrate the game. As it happens, the frame each has employed is not entirely original
to him. Each writer extensively discusses Malcolm Butler's last second goal line interception and the
controversial call that led up to it. Nevertheless, each author manages to give us the overwhelming sense that
he has written independently of the other two. Let's adopt the Super Bowl accounts as our pet example of
what independent eyewitness accounts of the same event put in a styled literary format look like. We will
call this Model A; it describes what basically independent accounts look like whether the authors themselves
were witnesses or whether they depended upon those who were.
To use an unfortunate recent event, here and here are two write-ups on the backgrounds of the San
Bernardino shooters. You will notice that they share a fairly high degree of textual similarity. This should not
surprise us. In a fast-breaking story such as this we would not expect two separate journalists to procure
information first hand; they would inevitably depend upon the first reports. There is a certain public nature
to the description at this point. With the verbal agreement in some portions of upwards of 50% to 60%, it
becomes difficult to credit chance. There is some literary dependence between these write ups. Either one is
dependent on the other, or both are dependent on some as yet unknown third source or perhaps a plurality
of sources. We will call this Model B; it describes what basically interdependent accounts look like.
As it turns out, the gospels are in many ways more like Model B than Model A. They betray a sense of literary
interdependence at the level of individual story. When we compare, for instance, a short unit like the healing
of Peter's Mother in Law or a longer unit like the healing of the Gerasene demoniac, we see agreement
upwards of 75%.