The twenty-third episode of the seventh season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (November 8, 2023). It tells the story of how Jesus’ Parable of the Great Feast came to have two wildly different versions in the Gospel of Matthew and of Luke.
You can listen to the episode right now and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:
Show Notes about the Episode
The Parable of the Great Feast is told in Luke 14:15-24 and in Matthew 22:1-10. Direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.
The Two-Source Hypothesis
There is an undeniable literary relationship between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. If you start reading them side-by-side, you quickly see that they not only tell the story of Jesus in remarkably similar ways. They sometimes tell it in exactly the same words.
And we are not just talking about the sayings of Jesus or of other people being transmitted in identical words. Things like descriptions or the reactions of whole crowds of people are also described exactly the same.
None of this can be explained by different eyewitnesses observing the same events. It quickly becomes obvious that what has happened is that these writers have been literally copying one another.
Almost all scholars today agree that, of the three, the Gospel of Mark was written first — probably sometime around 70 CE — and that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, often copying directly.
Many scholars also propose that, though Matthew and Luke were unaware of each other, they also shared another common source that no longer exists. This theoretical source is usually referred to as “Q” (from Quelle, the German word for source).
Thus all material that is shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark is considered to have been copied from Q.
Since the Parable of the Great Feast is not found in Mark, that would mean that, according to this hypothesis, it was originally part of Q.
This theory seems to be of little use in explaining how this particular parable is so different in the two gospels, however. Presumably one or the other of these two gospel writers intentionally adapted the story from Q to make some important theological points.
Because, as I have explained in the episode, there seems to be some evidence that Matthew has adapted the parable to a certain extent by turning it into an allegory, some might conclude that Luke’s version is closer to the original Q parable.
Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre Hypothesis
Recent years have seen the growth of an alternate hypothesis to explain the connections between these books. The Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre Hypothesis agrees that Matthew and Luke used Mark, but argues that a theoretical Q is unnecessary. It suggests that the passages shared by Matthew and Luke can be explained by Luke using Matthew and changing his source material according to theological and literary preferences.
The great evangelist for this hypothesis these days is Dr. Mark Goodacre and you can access his books and podcast at https://markgoodacre.org/. His book, The Synoptic Problem, A Way Through the Maze, which is available as a free download, is particularly helpful for a good grounding on the connections between the three gospels.
If this hypothesis is closer to the truth, that would mean that Matthew’s version of this parable is somehow closer to the original form of the parable, even if he has somehow edited it to introduce allegorical elements.
I am hardly an expert on the Synoptic Gospel problem, but I must say that I am finding the F-G-G Hypothesis a bit more persuasive these days. In many ways, I would say that this episode began with me trying to understand how Matthew’s version could have been closer to the original, and why Luke might have wanted to tone down anti-elite rhetoric.
Media in this Episode
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: AhDah by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3345-ahdah
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com
Music: Diving In The Oceans Of Kepler by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7062-diving-in-the-oceans-of-kepler
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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