Two Shipwrecked Gospels: The Logoi of Jesus and Papias's Exposition of Logia about the Lord

Dennis R. MacDonald

Jun 2012 · Early Christianity and its literature ; Book 8 · Society of Biblical Lit

About this ebook

With characteristic boldness and careful reassessment of the evidence, MacDonald offers an alternative reconstruction of Q and an alternative solution to the Synoptic Problem: the Q+/Papias Hypothesis. To do so, he reconstructs and interprets two lost books about Jesus: the earliest Gospel, which was used as a source by the authors of Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and the earliest commentary on the Gospels, by Papias of Hierapolis, who apparently knew Mark, Matthew, and the lost Gospel, which he considered to be an alternative Greek translation of a Semitic Matthew. MacDonald also explores how these two texts, well known into the fourth century, shipwrecked with the canonization of the New Testament and the embarrassment at outmoded eschatologies in both the lost Gospel and Papias’s Exposition.

About the author

Dennis R. MacDonald is John Wesley Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Claremont School of Theology. He is the author or editor of a number of works, including Christianizing Homer (Oxford University Press), The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, and Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles (both from Yale University Press).