Ebony Cohen
New Testament
Dr
. Coleman
000098309

The Four Source Hypothesis The New Testament begins with three important books which is Matthew
,
Mark
,
and Luke
.
People believe that these three books was put in this order because of way they are seen in the bible but it is actually quite different
.
People also think that the books was created with only three sources when it was really four sources
.
What was the four source hypothesis
,
how did it come about and why it was done this way are questions we all ask ourselves
.

A four document hypothesis or four source hypothesis is an explanation for the relationship between the three gospels of Matthew
,
Mark
,
and Luke
.
It posits that there were at least four sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke
;
which was the Gospel of Mark
,
and three lost sources which is Q source
,
M source
,
and L source
.
The Q stands for quelle which means unknown
.
The first source is of course Mark
.
In
Mark it validate Jesus as the Messiah
,
Messiah meaning anointed one sent by God
.

Source number two is the Q source which no one knows where the information came from . M is our source number three
.
The M source came from Matthew
.
In Matthew they talk about the teaching of the christian faith
;
validate Christianity as a legitimate religion .
[1]
Mark you will find that he uses most miracles
.
In Matthew they take us back to Abraham to relate to what is going on in Matthew
.
The last source number four is L
.
In Luke it stayed the universality of Christianity
.
In this book the take us all the way back to Adam so we can understand the situation that's going on with Jesus in Luke
.

The most important questions one will ask is how did these four sources come about . Well in the year of 1925 an English biblical scholar by the name of Burnett
Hillman Streeter studied the New Testaments and discovered the
“
four source hypothesis ”. Streeter was born November 17
,
1874
,
Croydon
,
Surrey
,
England
.
He went to Queen
’
s College and University of Oxford
;
Streeter spent most of his life there
,
becoming chaplain in 1928 and provost in 1933
.
He was ordained in 1899 and for 15 years , from 1922 to 1937
,
was a member of the Archbishop
’
s Commission on Doctrine in the
Church of England
.[2]
He wrote or contributed to a dozen volumes in the fields of philosophy of religion
,
comparative religion
,
and
New Testament studies
.
Streeter soon became well known for his studies of the New Testament
.
He developed the theory of

“ local texts
”
in the manuscript transmission of the New Testament
.
Afterwards The
Primitive Church followed his work
.
Streeter stated that there were three systems
,
not one , of church government in the earliest Christian churches
.
Streeter discovered The
Four Gospels
:
A Study of Origins in the year of 1924
.
His other work included

Foundations
:

A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought
,
which came about in 1912 by Seven Oxford Men
,
The Chained Library in 1931
,
Reality
:
A New
Correlation of Science and Religion in 1926
,
and The Buddha and the Christ
(
Bampton
Lectures
, in 1932
).
[2]
Most people get confused when it comes to the four source hypothesis
.
We have Mark
,
Q
,
M
,
and L sources
.
The Gospels according to Matthew
,
Mark
,
and Luke are similar to each other because they view Jesus the same way
.
Even though they are similar in ways they are also different as well which gives us our other three sources
.
Source number one comes from Mark because it was the first to be written
.
How do we know?
Because Matthew and Luke have information in Mark that they do not have in each other . Source number two is our Quelle source
,
or just Q source
.