The Minor Agreements
Jesus Is Mocked
57 Then they spat on
his face and slapped him and hit him,
68 saying:
“Prophesy to us, O Christ,
Who is it who is striking you?”—Matt. 26:67-68
63 And the man who
held him, mocked him, beating him,
64 And blindfolding him, they questioned him,
saying:
“Prophesy,
Who is it who is striking you?”
65 And they spoke
many other words against him, reviling him.—Luke 22:63-65
65 And some began to
spit on him and to cover up his face and to slap him and to say to him:
“Prophesy”;
And the attendants received him with blows.—Mark 14:65
All verbatim
agreements in Greek between Matthew, Luke, and Mark are underlined in the above
texts. The term “minor agreement” is used to refer to agreements between
Matthew and Luke against Mark in passages where Mark contains a parallel
passage. The agreements as a whole between Matthew and Luke against Mark are
rather striking. Matthew and Luke agree with one another against Mark in using
the participle form of “to say”: saying, and then they agree with one
another against Mark in including the question: “Who is it who is striking you?”
The problem for those who advocate the Two-Source Hypothesis is that, according
to that hypothesis, neither Matthew nor Luke had access to the other. Both have
independently copied Mark. How then, based on this hypothesis, can one explain
the above agreements between Matthew and Luke? The word “prophesy” could have
been copied from Mark because it is present in the parallel text Mark. And the
agreement in using the participial form of the very “to say” instead of the
infinitive as in Mark, could be explained as due to a stylistic preference on
the part of Matthew and Luke. But the presence in the texts of both Matthew and
Luke of the question: “Who is it who is striking you”? cannot be explained as
having been copied from Mark, because those words are not in Mark’s text.
Defenders of Markan
priority have been unable to explain this evidence to the satisfaction of most
scholars. In most cases, the minor agreements are explained by defenders of
Markan priority as due to stylistic preference. But many cannot be so easily
explained. Sometimes extensive agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark
is explained by conjecturing what is called an overlap between Mark and Q.
In these instances,
it is suggested, Matthew and Luke have copied Q and not Mark. But no one has
ever suggested the overlap theory to explain the presence of the question “Who
is it who is striking you?” in Matt. 26:68 and Luke 22:64. This would require Q
to have a passion narrative, and few defenders of the Two-Source Hypothesis
would want to assume that.
Based on the
Two-Gospel Hypothesis, Matthew has presented Jesus being distracted by his tormentors
and taunted with the words: “Prophesy to us, O Christ, who is it who is
striking you?” For the distracting effect of being spat upon, Luke substitutes
the act of blindfolding, to bring out the cruelty of Jesus’ mistreatment. How
could Jesus possibly see who was striking him after his tormentors had
blindfolded him?
Mark’s account
includes the spitting in Matthew and well as the covering of his eyes in Luke,
and includes the other harassing treatment—slapping and hitting. By omitting
the question, “Who is it who is striking you?” and closing his account with the
words: “and the attendants received him with blows,” the reader is allowed to
imagine Jesus’ tormentors relentlessly escalating violence against him, from
the physically harmless though insulting: “being spat upon,” through mildly
violent “slapping,” to Jesus being violently beaten following the terse and
mocking command to “prophesy.”
The agreements among
all three accounts can be explained on the sequence of composition. The
agreements between Matthew and Luke are explained by Luke’s use of Matthew, and
the agreements between Mark’s account and those of Matthew are explained by
Mark’s use of these two earlier Gospels. Objections to this sequence can be
raised, but so far the objections are based on subjective considerations, such
as: Why would Mark have done this or that? Or why would Luke have modified
Matthew in this way or that way? There is no hard literary evidence against the
Two-Gospel Hypothesis that equals the importance of the agreement between Luke
and Matthew against Mark found in the minor agreement, “Who is it who is
striking you?”
There are both
positive minor agreements and negative minor agreements. The minor agreements
in the mocking incident just discussed is an example of what scholars term a “positive
minor agreement,” a case where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark by the positive
act of including a question that is not found in Mark. The other kind of
agreement is created when Matthew and Luke agree in not having something that is
found in Mark. This is called an “agreement in omission.” Some scholars
term this a “negative agreement” of Matthew and Luke against Mark. Although
these negative agreements in omission have in the past been given less
attention than the positive agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark, in
recent years they have been playing a more important role in the international discussion
of the minor agreements. For example at the 1991 Symposium on the Minor
Agreements in Göttingen, Germany, under the sponsorship of the theological
faculty of the University of Göttingen, the agreements in omission between
Matthew and Luke against Mark played an important role. (William R. Farmer, The
Gospel of Jesus: The Pastoral Relevance of the Synoptic Problem [Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994], 134-36. For a discussion of “negative
agreements,” see pp. 136-38 on the calling of Matthew)