11
His Gospel often sounds like it is directly dependent on oral traditions, with its
lively pace (and immediately...), its present tenses (and Jesus says...), its love of
visual detail ('the green grass', Mk 6.39; 'he was in the stern, asleep on the
cushion', 4.38) and its abrupt ending (16.8).35
This orality that permeates throughout Mark’s gospel is to be expected considering that his was
the first gospel that was written down.36 Not having any other gospel works to draw from, Mark
may have utilized other sources both oral and written in the composition of his gospel.
It should also be mentioned in this brief treatment of the literary connection of the
Synoptic gospels that there have been several models that have been proposed to deal with the
Synoptic Problem. These literary models vary from those that propose two sources to four
sources, and some of which espouse the hypothesis of a source document (Q) that could have
influenced the Synoptic gospels. The details of the strengths and weaknesses of these models
are beyond the scope of this paper but sufficed to state that no one model effectively answers
all of the questions raised by the Synoptic Problem. Perhaps the state of Synoptic Problem
research and the study of the process by which the Synoptic gospels were written could best be
summed up in the words of Fr. Raymond Brown, “Τhe process was probably more complex than
the most complex modern reconstruction.”37
Limits of Redaction Criticism
James Dunn has noted in his work, “Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early
Transmission of the Jesus Tradition,” that while literary solutions are important to the Synoptic
35
Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze, location 792-794, Kindle edition.
Ibid, locations 795-798, Kindle edition.
37
Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 115.
36