Writing and Rewriting the Gospels
By James W. Barker
Eerdmans, 208 pages
Published January 30, 2025
New Testament professor James W. Barker eschews complex argumentation, technical jargon and overwhelming footnotes for an accessible and meaningful solution to the synoptic problem (the attempt to understand literary relationships between Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospels). Barker asserts that many other solutions are needlessly complex, often based on erroneous assumptions about first-century writing practices. Writing and Rewriting the Gospels brings Occam’s razor to bear, leading to what Barker calls the snowball theory: Mark comes first. Matthew uses Mark. Luke uses Matthew and Mark, and John has access to all three (and Paul).
Barker briskly surveys the various proposed solutions to the synoptic problem (such as the existence of Q — a hypothetical source used by Matthew and Luke) while regularly offering clarifications and definitions. This habit marks the whole work and ensures accessibility for pastors and lay readers.
Barker’s first chapter is his strongest and most enjoyable, as he challenges the myth that so-called oratory cultures led to ancient storytellers who comfortably memorized epic tomes. Instead, Barker imagines the most ordinary of processes — a writer with one, two or more written sources scattered around them, available for reference. The highlight of the chapter is Barker’s homemade experiments with wax tablets and scrolls — deeply engaging, journalistic scholarship.
As Barker returns to the familiar issues of the synoptic problem, he produces a dizzying array of cross-references between the Gospels. Once laid out, his conclusions appear self-evident; for example, Mark opens his Gospel with an adult Jesus, Matthew adds Jesus’ birth, and Luke then adds the birth of John the Baptist. Through careful attention to those (rare) passages where John overlaps the Synoptics, the snowball grows.
Writing and Rewriting the Gospels is weaker when Barker attempts to read them in light of the Pauline epistles and their unique Christologies. Barker suggests a straightforward link between chronology and Christology — earlier writings emphasize Jesus’s humanity, while later writings focus on his divinity. Barker recognizes that not each subsequent writing necessarily steps up the Christological claims, citing second-century examples of communities that supposed a lower Christology than Barker sees present in the Gospels themselves. Barker seems unwilling to consider that his own claims might be contestable. Yet, the only uncontestable claim one can make about anything related to Pauline studies is that everything is, and likely has been already, contested!
Despite Barker’s successful use of casual terminology and vivid analogies throughout the book, the topic remains specialized, primarily of interest to those who follow scholarly developments in the field of the Gospels rather than as a resource for preachers or small groups. For those with a strong interest in the synoptic problem or who are curious about the relationships between the Gospels, Writing and Rewriting the Gospels offers a compelling and refreshingly simple story of the birth of the Gospels and their relationships while rescuing a commonsense description of the workflow of first-century authors.
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