Synoptics (Biblical Commission)

Synoptics. —In answer to questions about the mutual relations between the first three Gospels, the Biblical Commission (q.v.), decided (June 26, 1913), that it is not inconsistent with their decisions already issued to explain the similarities or dissimilarities between these Gospels, to dispute freely the various conflicting opinions of authors, and to appeal to hypotheses of oral or written tradition, or to the dependence of one Gospel on another or on both that preceded it. The hypotheses known as the “two sources” is no longer tenable: to wit, the attempt to explain the composition of the Greek Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke mainly by their dependence on the Gospel of Mark and on the so-called Sayings of the Lord.