The Evangelists' calendar a lectionary explanation of the development of scripture : the speaker's lectures in Biblical studies

from the PREFACE This book is a revised and expanded form of the first six Speaker's Lectures in Biblical Studies, delivered in Trinity College, Oxford, in the summer of 1972. I was elected Speaker's Lecturer originally for three years, 1968-71, to present the thesis that Matthew had no other considerable source but Mark, which he elaborated mid- rashically. During the first of these years, a second idea occurred to me, that it was possible to give a more convincing account of the arrangement of Matthew than was available, on the assumption that the Gospel was a lectionary book—that is, a series of liturgical Gospels for the Saturdays and feasts of a Jewish-Christian Year, taken in order. I was able to incorporate this suggestion into the 1970 and 1971 Lectures, and the whole Matthaean thesis was published in 1974 under the title Midrash and Lection in Matthew. At every step, the claims I had been making for Matthew involved the consideration of Luke. This had been so from the beginning, for if Matthew had only Mark and no Q, the Q material in Luke could be explained only on the hypothesis that Luke derived it from Matthew. The problem here was not to show the Lucan versions of Q-sayings to be secondary—for which I was able to produce arguments—but to account for the changes that Luke would then have made in the Matthaean order. Here again, it was a lectionary thesis which pro.vided a neat solution to the difficulty: only whereas Matthew had been concerned principally to provide Discourses to fit the themes of the Jewish-Christian Feasts, Luke was attempting something more elaborate in a weekly story 'ful- filling\* the Saturday Old Testament lesson. I provided a sketch of such a theory in the last chapter of my Matthaean book, and asked the Electors for an extension of two years (the maximum) to discuss the topic more fully. This they granted, and in 1972 I attempted to establish the background of O.T. readings in the first century. In 1973 I applied the resulting pattern to the exegesis of Luke as a whole. ... Preface vii List of Abbreviations xiii 1 A CYCLE OF LITURGICAL GOSPELS 1 2 THE TORAH AS AN ANNUAL CYCLE OF READINGS 19 (i) The Calendars 21 (ii) The Torah as an Annual Cycle of Recitals 26 (iii) The Holiness Code and the Autumn Festival Readings 31 (iv) The Sidrot as the Work of the Redactors 35 (v) The Chronicler's Work as an Annual Reading Cycle 38 (vi) The Samaritan Annual Cycle 40 (vii) The Special Sabbaths 42 (viii) Philo 47 (ix) Matthew 48 APPENDIX THE DECLINE AND DEMISE OF THE ANNuAL NisAN LEcnoNARY CYCLE 52 (i) The Armenian Lectionary 53 (ii) The Origins of the Triennial Cycle 56 (iii) The Mishnah Megillah 61 (iv) The Growth of the Triennial Cycle 64 TABLE I The Traditional Sidrot and Haphtarot 67 TABLE 11 The Chronicler's Lectionary System 70 3 LUKE AND THE ANNUAL TORAH CYCLE 73 TABLE III The Sidrot and St Luke's Gospel 103 4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORIES CYCLE 105 (i) Five Alternative Prophetic Cycles 106 (ii) The Formation of the D Histories Cycle 114 (iii) The Redaction of the Law and the Chroniclers 126 (iv) The Redaction of the Law and the Histories 129 (v) The Use of the Histories Cycle in 1 Maccabees 132 TABLE IV A Reconstruction of the D Lectionary Year 139 TABLE V 1 Maccabees as Readings between Pentecost and New Year 140 5 LUKE AND THE HISTORIES 141 TABLE VI Luke and the Histories Cycle 156 6 ISAIAH, LUKE AND THE TWELVE 157 (i) The Liturgical Origins of Isaiah 157 (ii) Luke and Isaiah 1-12 164 (iii) Isaiah and the Lucan Journey 170 (iv) The Liturgical Origins of 'The Twelve' 174 TABLE VII Isaiah, Luke and the Twelve 181 7 PENTECOST AND THE THIRD CANON 183 (i) Ruth 184 (ii) Job 186 (iii) Aramaic Daniel 191 (iv) Hebrew Daniel 199 (v) Proverbs 204 (vi) Ecclesiasticus 206 8 MATTHEW, THE O.T. CYCLES AND THE EPISTLE 212 (i) The Formula-Citations 215 (ii) The Origin of the Epistle 218 (iii) A Lectionary Hypothesis 223 (iv) Pauline Logia in Matthaean Discourses 227 9 MARK AND HIS SUCCESSORS 241 TABLE VIII following page 306 The Lectionary System in Operation in the Churches of the Synoptic Evangelists INDEXES Biblical Passages 307 Extra-Biblical Passages 327 General Index 329