Philosophically trained British
theologian & biblical exegete, whose studies in the composition of the
synoptic gospels laid the foundations for one of the primary alternate
theories to the Two
Source hypothesis. The
son of a Baptist minister, Farrer was ordained an Anglican priest at Oxford
where he served as chaplain & fellow of several colleges. He was warden of
Keble College from 1960 until his death.
Farrer was a creative
conservative. He championed classic metaphysics against the dominant schools
of 20th c. British philosophy: positivism & process philosophy. In an era
when systematic theology had largely become divorced from biblical analysis,
Farrer challenged form
& source criticism's
fragmentation of the gospels by proposing that the evangelists be treated as
authors rather than editors. He argued that each gospel writer functioned more
as a constructive theologian than as a reporter of previous sources.
Unlike other critics of the Two
Source hypothesis,
Farrer took for granted the priority of
Mark and argued that Mark created the
gospel genre by constructing a complex symbolic network of echoed images. His
1954 study of Matthew's revision of Mark went further than redaction
critics in stressing
the creative strategies of the gospel writer. Farrer held that Mark was
Matthew's sole literary source. He interpreted any material in
Matthew that could not be traced to Mark (such as the Sermon on the Mount) as
Matthew's own theological composition inspired by the Hebrew
Pentateuch.
But Farrer's most influential
work in biblical criticism was his 1955 article "On Dispensing with Q"
[in Studies in the Gospels, ed. D. E. Nineham (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) pp. 55-88] which
argued that the Q hypothesis was unnecessary if the plan of
Luke's
gospel could be explained as a creative revision of Mark & Matthew:
The Q hypothesis
is not, of itself, a probable hypothesis. It is simply the sole alternative to
the supposition that St. Luke had read St. Matthew (or vice versa).
It needs no refutation except the demonstration that its alternative is
possible. It hangs on a single thread; cut that, and it falls by its own
weight. [p. 62]
The primary obstacle to
interpreting Matthew as a source of Luke has always been the differences in
their presentation of Jesus' sayings. Farrer granted that Luke could be
accused of
pulling well-arranged Matthean discourses to
pieces and re-arranging them in an order less coherent or at least less
perspicuous. [p. 63]
But, he countered: Luke's
rearrangement need not be better than Matthew's; it need only be shown to fit
Luke's overall plan. Luke's plan, as Farrer saw it, had two main goals:
- a narrative
"foundation" based on Mark rather than Matthew
- a teaching section (Luke
10-18) "quarried" from Matthew's speeches and material he had
omitted from Mark.
Farrer identified Deuteronomy
as the inspiration of Luke's design for his teaching section & argued that
the composition of the latter was less problematic than others had claimed.
All Luke needed to do was recall what material he had already used from Mark
(in Luke 3-9) & not repeat passages parallel to these in his section drawn
from Matthew (Luke 10-18). Farrer explained parallels to material from Matthew
in Luke's first section (Jesus' sermon at the mount & his
commendation of John the Baptizer) as a deliberate analogy to the Pentateuch:
But logic forbade him to gather the whole of
it [Matthew's sayings] there [in Luke 10-18]. The Deuteronomy will not stand
out as Deuteronomy without some semblance of a Protonomy; without a first
law the second will be second to nothing. [p.
78]
Farrer contented himself with
suggesting rationales that made appeal to a hypothetical sayings source
unnecessary. He did not work out his interpretation of Luke in detail. In
the decades since Farrer's death, however, disciples like Michael
Goulder have made his
hypothesis the primary competitor to the Two Source hypothesis among British NT
scholars.
Other On-line Resources
[For further introduction, see
E. V. McKnight, What is Form Criticism?, Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1969.]