Mark Goodacre, “Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels?

John’s Gospel as a Re-

imagining of Mark” in Eve- Marie Becker, Helen Bond and Catrin Williams (eds.),
John’s Transformation of Mark (London & New York: T & T Clark, 2021), 77-90,
reproduced on [Link].

Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels?

John’s Gospel as a Re-Imagining of Mark
Mark Goodacre
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

Introduction: ‘I believe in Dodd’

The idea that John knew the Synoptic Gospels is that rare thing in scholarship on
Christian origins – a view that has extraordinary historical pedigree. Unlike consensus
jewels in the scholar’s crown such as Markan Priority, it is a view that has been held
by the vast majority of scholars for the vast majority of the common era. The view was
still so widespread in the middle of the twentieth century that C.H. Dodd could
characterize it ‘almost as a dogma’.1 The remarkable rise of the view that John was
independent of the Synoptics, which almost became a consensus in the second half of
the twentieth century,2 and which has many adherents today, has a range of interlocking
causes and contexts. The popularity of the two-source theory provided an essential
backdrop. If two literary works as similar in structure, content and vocabulary as
Matthew and Luke were independent of one another, how could John, with all its
differences, have known either of them, or Mark? Moreover, an independent John
offered an additional route back to the historical Jesus at a moment when the quest was
getting some new life, and the theological impetus for the view is clear in Dodd’s work,
and in the reaction to it. Realized eschatology, which was at the heart of so much of

1
C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953),
449: ‘A majority of critics, for many years past, held the opinion, almost as a dogma, that he did so use
them – or Mark at least – altering them in accordance with special motives of his own.’ The tide was
turning within a decade. In 1963, Dodd wrote, ‘Recently there has been a certain trend away from
this position’; see C. H. Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1963), 8.
2
It is commonly claimed that a new consensus emerged in the second half of the twentieth century;
e.g., among many, Gail R. O’Day, ‘The Johannine Literature’, in Mark Allan Powell (ed.), The New
Testament Today (Louisville: Westminister John Knox, 1999), 70–85 (72–73). But the view can only
be sustained by ignoring major players like C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St John: An
Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text (2nd edn; Philadelphia, PA : Westminster
Press, 1978), Werner G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (rev. edn, Nashville, TN :
Abingdon, 1975), 200–4, and Frans Neirynck’s multiple articles on the topic. A useful beginning
point for the latter and for others in the Leuven school is found in Adelbert Denaux (ed.), John and
Copyright 2021. T&T Clark.

the Synoptics (BETL , 101; Leuven: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 1992).

77

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY
AN: 2689853 ; Eve-Marie Becker, Helen K. Bond, Catrin H. Williams.; John's Transformation of Mark
Account: [Link]
 78 John’s Transformation of Mark

Dodd’s thinking about Christian origins, can become mainstream when its most
famous witness, the Gospel of John, finds it not in his own creative reflections on the
Synoptics, but rooted instead in the earliest Jesus tradition. This takes place in a context
where form criticism is still dominant, and all similarities between the Synoptics and
John can straightforwardly be projected onto the ever general, ever vague ‘tradition’. ‘It
is now widely recognized’, Dodd wrote in 1953, ‘that the main factor in perpetuating
and propagating the Christian faith and the Gospel story was oral tradition in its
various forms’.3
Although form criticism is now no longer dominant, its love of ‘tradition’ is still
alive and well, and it is thriving in Johannine scholarship. The strength of the appeal to
tradition is clear. It has the potential to explain every parallel between John and the
Synoptics at the same time as guaranteeing some kind of historical pedigree. The
similarities are attributed to common traditions, while the differences are allowed to be
diagnostic of ignorance. Since oral traditions are by their nature lost, except in so far as
they are later crystallized in texts, there is an innate plausibility in appealing to them. It
is not like theorizing hypothetical literary sources, though those too have had their
attractions. Who would want to deny the existence of shared oral traditions about
Jesus? Moreover, the appeal to unseen ‘traditions’ rather than attested literary works
like the Synoptics gives interpreters a certain freedom in their analysis and exegesis, as
well as the opportunity to rescind from the kind of work that many scholars find
tedious, and best relegated to the introductory lectures.
In spite of the utility of the ‘parallel traditions’ model, the imagery that scholars use
when they invoke it should give us pause. Oral tradition is a ‘reservoir’. It is a ‘pool’. It
has ‘channels’. It is a ‘living spring’. The use of water imagery is endemic and continues
even in recent scholarship that has a greater degree of sophistication in its discussions
of orality. The use of this water imagery suggests a studied vagueness in what is being
imagined. It is infinitely flexible. It is literally ‘fluid’. As a sole explanatory factor, it is
allowed great malleability. There is nothing tangible, and ‘fluidity’ gives freedom to the
interpreter. Unseen sources provide untold explanatory power.
It is not, of course, a problem to recognize the role played by oral tradition in gospel
origins and interrelations. It is beyond reasonable doubt that oral traditions were
influential, and it is difficult to imagine life in antiquity without storytelling and the
sharing of traditions. The Synoptics and John themselves take the phenomenon for
granted (Lk. 1.2; Mt. 28.15; Jn 21.25). Any discussion of the origins of John must surely
take this seriously. The problem with the appeal to oral tradition is not what it affirms
but what it denies. The unnecessary elevation of oral tradition to become the sole
means of explanation for John’s links with the Synoptics, and so to question the
influence of one gospel upon another, is unfortunate and unnecessary. In this chapter
I would like to propose that John’s literary familiarity with the Synoptics explains the
data far more successfully than the view that the connections between them are due to
swirling pools of parallel traditions that somehow flowed into two independent gospel
streams, and I would like to explore this thesis by progressing from the minutiae to the
grand plan, beginning with small agreements that show direct connections, expanding

3
Dodd, Interpretation, 449.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels? 79

to whole pericopae where John becomes a fourth Synoptic gospel, and concluding with
the fundamental literary, theological, and conceptual similarity that suggests that it is
time to change our focus ‘from tradition to gospel’.

Minor verbal agreements

Given the number of scholars who affirm John’s independence of the Synoptics, it
is worth remembering that there are, in fact, a lot of close verbal agreements
between the Synoptics and John. The difficulty is that in simplifying the data in our
introductory courses, and attempting to underline the manifold differences between
the Synoptics and John, we have begun to believe our own propaganda. It is of
course the case that John’s agreements with the Synoptics are vastly different in volume
from the agreements among Matthew, Mark and Luke, but the excessively high levels
of verbatim agreement among the Synoptics are outliers in antiquity, when paraphrase
was the norm.4
Three examples here illustrate the kind of agreement that one often finds between
John and the Synoptics.

(a) Prediction of Judas’s betrayal (Mt. 26.21 // Mk 14.18 // Jn 13.21)

Mt. 26.21 Mk 14.18 Jn 13.21

καὶ ἀνακειμένων αὐτῶν Ταῦτα εἰπὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς
καὶ ἐσθιόντων αὐτῶν καὶ ἐσθιόντων ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι
καὶ ἐμαρτύρησεν καὶ
εἶπεν· Ἀμὴν λέγω εἶπεν· Ἀμὴν λέγω εἶπεν· Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω
ὑμῖν ὅτι εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν ὑμῖν ὅτι εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν ὑμῖν ὅτι εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν
παραδώσει με. παραδώσει με παραδώσει με.
ὁ ἐσθίων μετ’ ἐμοῦ.
And when they had taken After saying this Jesus was
And while they were their places and were troubled in spirit, and
eating, he said, ‘Amen eating, Jesus said, ‘Amen testified and said, ‘Amen
I say to you, one of I say to you, one of Amen I say to you, one of
you will betray me’. you will betray me, one you will betray me’.
who is eating with me’.

The underlined words here (Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν παραδώσει με) provide a
nine-word verbatim string with Mark and Matthew, the kind of agreement that is
diagnostic of literary familiarity. When one has several words in a verbatim string in a
specific narrative context, in cases where one cannot appeal to ‘free floating’ traditional
aphorisms of Jesus, one has good evidence of a literary connection.

4
On the distorting effect that intra-Synoptic agreement has on our appreciation of other literary
relationships, see Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Making of an Apocryphal Text
(London: SPCK , 2012), 44–48. For a helpful contrast between high verbatim agreement in the
Synoptics and the norm of paraphrasing sources, see John S. Kloppenborg, ‘Variation in the
Reproduction of the Double Tradition and an Oral Q?’, ETL 83 (2007): 49–79.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 80 John’s Transformation of Mark

(b) The walking on the water (Mt. 14.22–33 // Mk 6.45–52 // Jn 6.16–21)

Mk 6.50 Jn 6.20
ὁ δὲ εὐθὺς ἐλάλησεν μετ’ αὐτῶν, ὁ δὲ
καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· Θαρσεῖτε, ἐγώ εἰμι, μὴ λέγει αὐτοῖς· ἐγώ εἰμι· μὴ
φοβεῖσθε. φοβεῖσθε.
But immediately he spoke with them, and But
he says to them: ‘Take heart, I am; do not he says to them: ‘I am; do not
fear!’ fear!’

John’s familiarity with Mark’s Gospel makes sense of this kind of agreement. John
never elsewhere has this construction, ὁ δὲ + λέγει + αὐτοῖς (‘but he is saying to them’),
but it is at home in Mark (6.38, here, 9.19, 10.24; it also occurs twice in Matthew – 17.20
and 21.16, i.e. it has figures of 2/4/0/15).

(c) The crown of thorns (Mt. 27.27–29 // Mk 15.16–18 // Jn 19.1–3)

Mt. 27 Mk 15 Jn 19
27 Τότε Τότε οὖν ἔλαβεν ὁ
Πιλᾶτος τὸν Ἰησοῦν καὶ
ἐμαστίγωσεν. 2 καὶ
οἱ στρατιῶται τοῦ ἡγεμόνος 16 Οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται ἀπήγαγον οἱ στρατιῶται
παραλαβόντες τὸν Ἰησοῦν αὐτὸν ἔσω τῆς
εἰς τὸ πραιτώριον αὐλῆς, ὅ ἐστιν πραιτώριον,
συνήγαγον ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὅλην καὶ συγκαλοῦσιν ὅλην
τὴν σπεῖραν. 28 καὶ τὴν σπεῖραν. 17 καὶ
ἐκδύσαντες αὐτὸν χλαμύδα ἐνδιδύσκουσιν αὐτὸν πορφύραν
κοκκίνην περιέθηκαν καὶ περιτιθέασιν
αὐτῷ, 29 καὶ πλέξαντες αὐτῷ πλέξαντες πλέξαντες
στέφανον ἐξ ἀκανθῶν ἀκάνθινον στέφανον· στέφανον ἐξ ἀκανθῶν
ἐπέθηκαν ἐπὶ ἐπέθηκαν
τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ αὐτοῦ τῇ κεφαλῇ, καὶ
κάλαμον ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ αὐτοῦ, 18 καὶ ἤρξαντο ἀσπάζεσθαι ἱμάτιον πορφυροῦν
καὶ γονυπετήσαντες αὐτόν· περιέβαλον αὐτόν, 3 καὶ
ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ ἤρχοντο πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ
ἐνέπαιξαν αὐτῷ
λέγοντες· Χαῖρε, Χαῖρε, ἔλεγον· Χαῖρε,
βασιλεῦ τῶν Ἰουδαίων. βασιλεῦ τῶν Ἰουδαίων· ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων·
27
Then Then Pilate took Jesus
and scourged him.
16 2
the soldiers of the And the soldiers led him into And the soldiers,
governor took Jesus into the the courtyard of the palace (that
governor’s is, the governor’s
headquarters, and they headquarters); and they called
gathered the whole cohort together the whole cohort.
around him. 28They stripped 17
And they

5
Figures in this format stand for number of instances in Matthew/Mark/Luke/John.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels? 81

him and put a scarlet robe on clothed him in a purple cloak;

him, 29and after twisting a and after twisting some after twisting a
crown from thorns, they put thorns into a crown, they put crown from thorns, put
it on his head. They put a it on him. it on his head, and they
reed in his right hand and dressed him in a purple
18
knelt before him and mocked And they began saluting robe. 3They kept coming up
him, saying, ‘Hail, King of him, ‘Hail, King of to him, saying, ‘Hail, King of
the Jews!’ the Jews!’ the Jews!’ and striking him
on the face.

Here, John’s agreements with Matthew against Mark are telling, and there is little
difficulty in representing the similarities and differences straightforwardly in a Synopsis.
There are twenty-seven words in John 19.2–3a, and fifteen of them are parallel with
Matthew. Where agreement like this occurs in the Synoptics, scholars do not hesitate to
conclude in favour of a literary connection between them. πλέκω (‘twist’) is found only
here in the Gospels and Acts (1/1/0/1+0), and ἄκανθα (‘thorns’) is found only in this
context in John (19.2, 5), while it is common in the Synoptics. Matthew and John agree,
against Mark, in their sentence structure, πλέξαντες στέφανον ἐξ ἀκανθῶν ἐπέθηκαν
(‘after twisting a crown from thorns, they put . . .’). Both Matthew and John have the
same redundancy, whereby the crown of thorns is placed upon his head (αὐτοῦ τῇ
κεφαλῇ),6 and this stress on parts of the body is somewhat typical of Matthew. He has a
similar redundant clarificatory addition to Mark 7.14–15 involving a part of the body
when he talks about words that proceed from ‘the mouth’ (Mt. 15.10–11).7
The parallel here between Matthew and John is telling because it occurs at a point where
Matthew is rewriting Mark in minor, subtle ways. Matthean commentators do not need to
appeal to fresh traditional material here. It is just a standard case of Matthew re-casting his
Markan source in his own words. What is striking is that it is Matthew’s re-wording of
Mark that finds its way also into John. Moreover, in cases like this, John effectively becomes
a fourth Synoptic gospel. The very thing that causes us to name three of the gospels
‘Synoptic’ is that it is straightforward to place them in synopsis. And here, placing John in
synopsis is easy, and the verbatim agreement clear. Nor is this an isolated example. John’s
version of the Anointing provides a particularly striking case of the phenomenon.

Where John is a fourth Synoptic Gospel

The clearest example of John becoming a fourth Synoptic is in the Anointing pericope
(Mt. 26.6–13 // Mk 14.3–9 // Jn 12.1–8). Here, John is remarkably close to both Mark
and Matthew. Indeed, he is far closer to Mark and Matthew in this pericope than is

6
Robert H. Stein, ‘The Matthew–Luke Agreements against Mark: Insight from John’, CBQ 54 (1992):
482–502 (490 n. 27) asks, ‘Is this due to an independent logical assumption? (Where else would they
put a crown?) More likely is the view that another tradition, with which John was familiar, specified
this’. This kind of recursion – not Matthew but Matthew’s source – is endemic among those who
maintain John’s independence. It is not clear why it is preferable to project agreements onto
hypothetical prior sources except that it helps one to avoid the obvious.
7
On this example, see further Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels, 70–71.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 82 John’s Transformation of Mark

Luke in his rather different version of the Anointing (Lk. 7.36–50), a version on which
John also seems to draw.8 John shares with Mark and Matthew a cluster of motifs in a
similarly structured pericope that features close verbatim similarities:

1. The incident takes place in Bethany,

2. just before Passover,
3. at a dinner where a woman has a jar of very expensive perfume of pure nard (Mk
14.3, ἀλάβαστρον μύρου νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτελοῦς; John 12.3, λίτραν μύρου
νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτίμου),
4. which she uses to anoint Jesus;
5. there are complaints about the costliness of the perfume (τριακοσίων δηναρίων),
which could have been given to the poor (καὶ ἐδόθη πτωχοῖς, Jn 12.5; καὶ δοθῆναι
τοῖς πτωχοῖς, Mk 14.5);
6. Jesus says ‘Leave her . . . The poor you will always have with you . . . But you will not
always have me’ (ἄφες αὐτήν . . . τοὺς πτωχοὺς γὰρ πάντοτε ἔχετε μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν ἐμὲ
δὲ οὐ πάντοτε ἔχετε, Jn 12.7–8; ἄφετε αὐτήν . . . πάντοτε γὰρ τοὺς πτωχοὺς ἔχετε
μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν καὶ ὅταν θέλητε δύνασθε αὐτοῖς εὖ ποιῆσαι ἐμὲ δὲ οὐ πάντοτε ἔχετε,
Mk 14.6–7);
7. Jesus interprets the anointing in connection with his burial (Jn 12.7, Mk 14.8).

Looking at a Gospel synopsis for this passage is instructive, but even a segment of it
will help to draw attention to several of these connections with clarity:

Mk 14 Jn 12
4 4
ἦσαν δέ τινες ἀγανακτοῦντες πρὸς λέγει δὲ Ἰούδας ὁ Ἰσκαριώτης εἷς τῶν
ἑαυτούς· μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ, ὁ μέλλων αὐτὸν
Εἰς τί ἡ ἀπώλεια αὕτη τοῦ μύρου παραδιδόναι· 5Διὰ τί τοῦτο τὸ μύρον
γέγονεν; 5ἠδύνατο γὰρ τοῦτο τὸ οὐκ
μύρον πραθῆναι ἐπάνω ἐπράθη
δηναρίων τριακοσίων καὶ δοθῆναι τριακοσίων δηναρίων καὶ ἐδόθη
τοῖς πτωχοῖς· πτωχοῖς; 6εἶπεν δὲ τοῦτο οὐχ ὅτι περὶ
τῶν πτωχῶν ἔμελεν αὐτῷ, ἀλλ’ ὅτι
κλέπτης ἦν καὶ τὸ γλωσσόκομον
ἔχων τὰ βαλλόμενα βάσταζεν.

καὶ ἐνεβριμῶντο αὐτῇ.

6 7
ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· Ἄφετε αὐτήν· τί εἶπεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ἄφες αὐτήν, ἵνα
αὐτῇ κόπους παρέχετε; καλὸν ἔργον εἰς τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ ἐνταφιασμοῦ μου
ἠργάσατο ἐν ἐμοί· τηρήσῃ αὐτό·
7 8
πάντοτε γὰρ τοὺς πτωχοὺς ἔχετε τοὺς πτωχοὺς γὰρ πάντοτε ἔχετε
μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν, καὶ ὅταν θέλητε μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν,
δύνασθε αὐτοῖς εὖ ποιῆσαι, ἐμὲ δὲ οὐ ἐμὲ δὲ οὐ
πάντοτε ἔχετε· πάντοτε ἔχετε.

8
Streeter’s discussion of John’s familiarity with Luke is still a classic: Burnett H. Streeter, The Four
Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: MacMillan, 1924), 401–8; see 402–3 on the Anointing.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels? 83

But some were there who said to one But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples
another in anger, (the one who was about to betray him),
‘Why was the ointment wasted said, 5 ‘Why was
in this way? 5 For this ointment could this perfume not
have been sold for more than three sold for three
hundred denarii, and the money given hundred denarii and the money given
to the poor.’ to the poor?’ 6 (He
said this not because he cared about the
poor, but because he was a thief; he
kept the common purse and used to steal
what was put into it.)
And they scolded her. 6 But
Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone; why do 7 Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She
you trouble her? She has performed a bought it so that she might keep it for
good service for me. the day of my burial.
7 For you always have the poor with 8 You always have the poor with
you, and you can show kindness to
them whenever you wish; but you will you, but you do
not always have me.’ not always have me.’

Such close agreement in structure and wording naturally raises the question of the
direction of dependence. There are those who have suggested Johannine priority in
different forms,9 but there are indications here that John is secondary. John appears to
have crafted this account on the basis of the Markan/Matthean narrative. The story, the
structure, and the wording are substantially similar. The only major fresh elements in
John are the naming of the woman as Mary, contextually determined by his resetting
of the account as a postlude to the Lazarus story, and the naming of the one who
complains as Judas. This element itself may be derived from Mark 14.10–11, which
comes straight after the anointing, and links Judas with an unhealthy interest in
money.10 But there is one element in John that is not to be found in Mark or Matthew,
Mary’s wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair (καὶ ἐξέμαξεν ταῖς θριξὶν αὐτῆς τοὺς πόδας
αὐτοῦ, Jn 12.3; cf. 11.2). This detail appears to come from Luke 7.38 (καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν τῆς
κεφαλῆς αὐτῆς ἐξέμασσεν . . .), where it forms part of Luke’s story of the anointing (Lk.
7.36–50). As in Mark and Matthew, it is an anointing by an anonymous woman in the
house of a man called Simon, though Luke relocates it at an earlier point in the
narrative, as often (cf. the Rejection at Nazareth, brought forward to Lk. 4.16–30; Paul’s
first visit to Jerusalem, brought forward to Acts 9.25–26 and the Jerusalem Council,
brought forward to Acts 15 from its ‘true’ location in Acts 18.22), a move that necessitates
some reworking of the details, especially the stress on the forthcoming death and
burial. It is now a story about a ‘sinner’, whose hair hangs loose.
The anointing in each of the Synoptic accounts makes sense. In Mark and Matthew,
Jesus’ head is anointed with perfume. No hair is mentioned; no feet are mentioned. In

9
For the argument for Johannine Priority from this pericope, see especially J. F. Coakley, ‘The
Anointing at Bethany and the Priority of John’, JBL 107 (1988): 241–56.
10
For other examples of John naming unnamed Synoptic characters, see Mk 14.47 // Jn 18.10–11
(Jesus’ arrest) where the ‘one who stood near’ becomes Peter, and the ‘slave of the high priest’ becomes
Malchus; and Mt. 28.17 // Lk. 24.37 // Jn 20.24–28 where Matthew’s and Luke’s doubting disciples
become Thomas.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 84 John’s Transformation of Mark

Luke, the woman wets Jesus’ feet with her tears, an act of repentance, and she wipes
them with her loose ‘sinner’s’ hair before she anoints them with perfume. But John’s
reminiscence of the Lucan detail about the wiping of Jesus’ feet with her hair creates an
anomaly. First, there is no reason for Mary, in John, to be wearing her hair like Luke’s
‘sinner’, which is the point of the Lucan story. Second, because there are no tears in
John, Mary’s wiping of Jesus’ feet with her hair means that the perfume ends up on her
hair and not on Jesus. Jesus is the one who is supposed to be being anointed.11 The most
plausible explanation here is that John has drawn a favourite Lukan detail into a
narrative in which it no longer makes sense.

‘A Passion narrative with an extended introduction’

If, though, there are places where John appears to carry over Synoptic minutiae, as well
as occasions when the gospel effectively becomes a fourth Synoptic, the question might
still be asked about whether agreements of this kind are sufficient to draw a direct line
from the Synoptics to John. After all, parallel structuring in one passage like the
Anointing will be attributed by some to good-old form-critical chriae, according to
which the structural parallels are there in the text because they were already there in
the tradition. In order to move more decisively beyond parallel traditions, we need
something more. We need some attention to the macro-similarities between the
Synoptics and John, similarities like the structuring of their entire gospels as literary
works.
The substantial differences in content between the Synoptics and John have
provided the kind of misdirection that has made it easy to ignore the fundamental
structural similarities between Mark and John. Who told Mark and John, independently
of one another, to begin their works with John the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus, to go on
with the calling of the disciples, and to devote half of their gospels to the Passion
Narrative? This is not a question of individual ‘traditions’ but of narrative direction and
overall literary structure. The generic constraints of writing a bios do not account for
this specific way of configuring the Jesus story. Our failure to find the similarities
striking may say more about our innate canonical bias than anything else; our
presumption of the normativity of telling the story in this way not only ignores
countless other ‘non-canonical’ ways of telling Jesus’ story, but it assumes that there is
something inevitable about the Synoptic and Johannine constructions.
It is amazing how often Martin Kähler’s description of ‘a Passion Narrative with an
extended introduction’ is applied to Mark when it is equally applicable to John. Indeed
Kähler himself was talking about all four canonical gospels.12 If anything, John out-
Marks Mark by devoting the whole of the last half of the gospel to the last week of Jesus’

11
See Michael D. Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNTS up, 20; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1989), 403.
12
Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (trans. by Carl E.
Braaten; Philadelphia, PA : Fortress, 1964), 80 n. 11.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels? 85

life, much of it to one evening (Jn 13–17), so that Jesus’ teaching is thoroughly immersed
in a crucifixion context. Moreover, just as Mark early on signals the coming conflict
(Mk 2.1–3.6), so too John foreshadows the Passion by sending Jesus to Jerusalem at
Passover, immediately after the narration of the first sign (Jn 2.1–12), audaciously
drawing forward the telling of the temple incident (Jn 2.13–22) to this remarkably
early moment. There are, of course, those who would argue for the historicity of
the Johannine placement of the incident, but to press an uncertain point about
historicity would be to miss the certain point that John’s Gospel uses the incident to
begin the foreshadowing of the Passion story, explicitly evoking Jesus’ death and
resurrection (Jn 2.19–22).
The structural similarities between Mark and John are in fact much closer than is
commonly perceived, even by those arguing for literary contact between them. It is
possible roughly to quantify the extent of the ‘extended introduction’ in each work, and
on the assumption that the Triumphal Entry begins the Passion Narrative proper, it is
striking to see how similar its position is in each gospel:

Mk 1.1–10.52 Jn 1.1–12.11
425 verses13 535 verses
63.8% 61.7%
Mk 11.1–11: Triumphal Entry Jn 12.12–19: Triumphal Entry
Mk 11.1–16.8 Jn 12.12–21.25
241 verses 332 verses
36.2% 38.3%

In other words, the ‘Extended Introduction’ in both of the gospels occupies just over
60% of the whole, and the Passion Narrative begins at a very similar moment. If one
thinks of the Passion Narrative proper as beginning later, with Jesus’ arrest, the same
point can still be made:

Mk 1.1–14.43 Jn 1.1–17.26
581 verses 729 verses
87.2% 84.1%
Mk 14.43–52: Arrest Jn 18.1–14: Arrest
Mk 14.43–16.8 Jn 18.1–21.25
85 verses 138 verses
12.8% 15.9%

We should not imagine, of course, that the evangelist has precisely measured his
Markan scroll, with a view to introducing his own Passion Narrative at a similar point.
But the parallels in the structuring of the two books are noteworthy, and literary
influence of the one work on another, especially given the strikingly similar openings
to the two works, is preferable to the idea that this is coincidence.

13
The figures here are based on Mark having 666 verses, omitting Mk 16.9–20, and John having 867
verses, omitting Jn 7.53–8.11.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 86 John’s Transformation of Mark

The revelation of the hidden Messiah

In this chapter, I have attempted to argue that John’s familiarity with the Synoptics
makes better sense than the idea of mutually shared traditions by giving examples of
literary influence beginning with words and sentences, moving then to entire pericopae,
and ultimately to whole gospels.14 There is, however, something still more fundamental.
John shares Mark’s basic literary conceit that the story is one in which Jesus’ identity is
hidden only to be retrospectively understood after the resurrection. Just as Kähler’s
‘passion narrative with an extended introduction’ gets forgotten when it comes to John,
so too William Wrede’s Messianic Secret is all too often focused solely on Mark.15 In
some ways, this is unsurprising given the boldness of Jesus’ public pronouncements in
John, which we rightly stress in our introductory lectures in a bid to make sure that our
students have grasped the differences between the Synoptics and John. But once again
we are in danger of taking our own propaganda too seriously. Despite the apparently
public revelations in John, the evangelist repeatedly depicts Jesus as a hidden Messiah.
There are three elements to the way that John configures this: (a) There are insiders
who understand and outsiders who do not; (b) Jesus hides himself from the crowds;
and these are resolved by (c) the hermeneutical key of the resurrection.

(a) Insiders and outsiders

John divides Jesus’ audience into two. There are those who believe – who perceive Jesus’
identity and for whom Jesus’ speeches make sense – and there are others who are
hostile to Jesus – who fail to understand his speeches, thinking him either blasphemous
or incomprehensible. Examples are manifold, but John 10.24–27 illustrates the two
groups effectively:

So the Judeans gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us
in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ 25 Jesus answered, ‘I have told
you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me;
26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27 My sheep
hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.’

14
One of the strengths of Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to St John (BNTC , 4; London:
Continuum, 2005), is that as well as word, verse and pericope level comparisons, he looks at larger
motifs; see, for example, his summary comment, ‘While there are some instances of similarities with
Synoptic material, where an equally strong case for John’s use of Synoptic-like independent tradition
might be made, this commentary argues that the much stronger case is that John knows the Synoptic
Gospels themselves. The case becomes even stronger when not simply isolated pericopes are
compared, as is frequently done, but when whole units of material or whole motifs are also taken
into account, as will be indicated below’ (p. 32).
15
William Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des
Markusevangeliums (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901); English edn: William Wrede, The
Messianic Secret (Cambridge: James Clarke and Co, 1971). But for exceptions, see John Ashton,
Understanding the Fourth Gospel (2nd edn; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 207–11, Troels
Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017), 315–20, and works cited in notes 16 and 18 below. Wrede himself did not, of
course, see the Messianic Secret motif as Mark’s literary creation (Messiasgeheimnis, 145).

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels? 87

In other words, in spite of Jesus’ bold declarations, many of his hearers simply cannot
hear what he is saying. This functions in a way similar to the ‘parable secret’ in Mark
4.10–12: ‘To you has been given the secret . . . but to those outside, everything comes in
parables’. Indeed, John shares with Mark (and the other Synoptists) the quotation of Isa.
6.10, about those whose hearts have been hardened (Jn 12.39–40; cf. Mk 4.11–13), in a
very similar context. It could be argued that John’s Gospel not only uses but also
improves on the way that Mark configures the secrecy theme. Whereas Mark’s disciples
all appear to remain ignorant, and are still absent at the end of the gospel, John’s
disciples ultimately do understand who Jesus is. John’s insiders/outsiders motif
improves on Mark’s by properly contrasting the understanding disciples with the
confused outsiders.

(b) The hidden Messiah

Just as Jesus often withdraws himself in Mark, so too Jesus frequently hides himself in
John:16

But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as
it were in secret. The Judeans were looking for him at the festival and saying,
‘Where is he?’
John 7.10–11

After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them. Although he had
performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him.
John 12.36b–3717

In the latter case, the passage combines the hidden Messiah motif with the insiders/
outsiders motif – Jesus hides himself (12.36), and while hidden, the narrator steps
forward to expound Isaiah 53.1 and Isaiah 6.10 (12.37–43). In other words, these are
aspects of the same phenomenon, according to which Jesus’ identity is revealed only to
those he chooses, and only when the time is right.18

16
On the hidden Messiah motif, see especially the helpful discussion in Susan Miller, ‘ “Among
You Stands One Whom You Do Not Know” (John 1:26): The Use of the Tradition of the Hidden
Messiah in John’s Gospel’, in The Ways That Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus, ed. Lori
Baron, Jill Hicks-Keeton and Matthew Thiessen (Atlanta, GA : Society of Biblical Literature, 2018),
243–63, and literature cited there. Although the feature is occasionally noted in Johannine
scholarship, it is rarely seen as deriving from Mark’s redactional presentation of the motif. See also
note 18 below.
17
See also 7.25–31, 8.59, 10.6, 11.54, and 12.36.
18
Cf. Mark W. G. Stibbe, ‘The Elusive Christ: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel’, JSNT 44 (1991):
19–37, especially 25: ‘The constant emphasis in Johannine scholarship on Jesus the revealer needs
challenging precisely for this reason. The Jesus of John’s story is just as much the concealer as the
revealer; just as much the one who conceals truth as the one who discloses it.’ Stibbe hints that John’s
‘elusive Christ’ may have been influenced by Mark’s characterization of Jesus (pp. 32–33).

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 88 John’s Transformation of Mark

(c) The hermeneutical key: The Resurrection

In John, just as in the Synoptics, the resurrection marks the turning point for the full
revelation of Jesus’ identity, the hermeneutical key to the gospel, which the readers
already possess, without which the characters in the drama are doomed to confusion.
The key passage in Mark famously occurs at the conclusion of the Transfiguration
story (Mk 9.9–10), where ‘resurrection’ is defined as the key turning point, but the same
idea is developed in Luke, who adds the element of ‘remembering’ that now becomes
important in John:

‘Why are you looking for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has been
raised! Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, 7 saying that
the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of men who are sinners, and be
crucified, and on the third day rise?’ 8 And they remembered his words . . .
Luke 24.5–8

After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this;
and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
John 2.22

His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified,
then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been
done to him.
John 12.16

Like Luke, John makes the Markan motif more coherent, with disciples who do succeed,
ultimately, in understanding Jesus’ identity and mission, as they interpret through
‘remembering’, in the new light of the resurrection.
Hans Conzelmann once said that the Messianic Secret was the hermeneutical
presupposition of the gospel genre.19 Whether or not one accepts Conzelmann’s
assumption that the canonical gospels are sui generis, his insight makes sense of the
very nature of the Synoptics and John, gospels that are obsessed with Jesus’ death while
explaining his life by focusing on the resurrection, and taking it as the reader’s key to
the whole.20

19
Hans Conzelmann, ‘Present and Future in the Synoptic Tradition’, Journal for Theology and the
Church 5 (1968): 26–44 (43).
20
Cf. Engberg-Pedersen, John as Philosophy, 319, ‘If one believes (as one should) that John must have
taken over (and developed) from Mark the whole genre of the gospel narrative as this had been
created by the latter, one must surely also agree that John has taken over and developed the much
more specific theme of the Messianic secret that constitutes the “inner form” in Mark of the genre of
the gospel narrative, the theme that drives the story to its conclusion.’

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 Parallel Traditions or Parallel Gospels? 89

Conclusion: From tradition to gospel

I have attempted to suggest that the significant literary parallels between the Synoptics
and John are sufficient to awaken us to the possibility that Dodd, and the greats who
followed in his wake, like Raymond Brown, J. Louis Martyn, Ernst Haenchen and John
Ashton, who would only ever go as far as to say that John must have used ‘Synoptic-like’
traditions, may have underestimated the extent of John’s familiarity with Matthew,
Mark and Luke. The key word here is ‘literary’. The most striking parallels between John
and the Synoptics occur at the literary level, from sentences in verbatim agreement, to
words in redactional reworkings of Mark, to parallel pericope forms where John
becomes a fourth Synoptic gospel, to the very structure of the Fourth Gospel, and all
this in addition to John sharing Mark’s fundamental literary conceit, of the hidden
Messiah whose identity is only understood retrospectively through the hermeneutic of
the resurrection.
To maintain John’s independence from the Synoptics, one has to maintain that there
were a surprising number of coincidences, floating on the swirling seas of oral tradition.
At the same time, it requires the emergence of John’s Gospel to be without clear literary
precedent, regarding Mark’s way of telling the Jesus story not as an innovation but as
normative and inevitable. This is not to play down John’s profound differences from the
Synoptics but to suggest, instead, that differences are not diagnostic of independence
but of the extent of John’s creative, dramatic, christological transformation of the
Synoptic source material that is at the root of his project.

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]
 90

EBSCOhost - printed on 10/16/2022 2:51 PM via DUKE UNIVERSITY. All use subject to [Link]