Authorship of the Synoptics

Decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission

June 26, 1912 (AAS 4 [1912] 463ff; EB 4O8ff; Dz 2155ff)

I: Does the clear verdict of tradition showing extraordinary unanimity from the beginnings of the Church and confirmed by manifold evidence, namely the explicit attestations of the holy Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, the quotations and allusions occurring in their writings, the use made by ancient heretics, the versions of the books of the New Testament, almost all the manuscripts including the most ancient, and also internal reasons drawn from the text of the sacred books impose the definite affirmation that Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, and Luke, the doctor, the assistant and companion of Paul, were really the authors of the Gospels that are attributed to them respectively?

Answer: In the affirmative.

II: Are the reasons by which certain critics strive to prove that the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark (16:9-20) were not written by Mark himself but were added by another hand, of such a character as to justify the statement that they are not to be accepted as inspired and canonical? Or do they prove at least that Mark was not the author of the said verses?

Answer: In the negative to both parts.

III: Similarly is it lawful to doubt the inspiration and canonicity of Luke's accounts of the infancy of Christ (chapters 1 and 2); or of the apparition of the Angel strengthening Jesus and the sweat of blood (22:43f)? Or can it at any rate be shown by solid reasons-a view preferred by ancient heretics and favoured also by certain modern critics-that the said accounts do not belong to the genuine Gospel of Luke?

Answer: In the negative to both parts.

IV: Can and should those very few and altogether exceptional documents in which the Canticle Magnificat is attributed not to our Blessed Lady but to Elizabeth, in any way prevail against the unanimous testimony of almost all manuscripts both of the original Greek text and of the versions, and against the interpretation which is clearly demanded no less by the context than by the mind of our Lady herself and the constant tradition of the Church?

Answer: In the negative.

V: As regards the chronological order of the Gospels is it right to depart from the opinion supported by the very ancient and constant testimony of tradition, which avers that after Matthew, who before all the others wrote his Gospel in his native tongue, Mark was the second in order, and Luke the third to write? Or on the other hand is opposition to be found between this opinion and that which asserts the second and third Gospels to have been written before the Greek version of the first Gospel?

Answer: In the negative to both parts.

VI: Is it lawful to postpone the date of composition of the Gospels of Mark and Luke till after the destruction of the city of Jerusalem? Or, on the ground that our Lord's prophecy concerning the destruction of that city appears more detailed in Luke, can it be maintained that his Gospel at least was written after the siege had begun?

Answer: In the negative to both parts.

VII: Should it be affirmed that the Gospel of Luke preceded the Acts of the Apostles; and as this book, written by the same Luke (Acts 1:1f), was finished at the close of the Apostle's imprisonment at Rome (Acts 28:30f), that his Gospel was not composed after this time?

Answer: In the affirmative.

VIII: In view both of the witness of tradition and the internal evidence concerning the sources used by each Evangelist in writing his Gospel, is it prudent to doubt the opinion that Mark wrote in accordance with the preaching of Peter and Luke in accordance with that of Paul, and also that these Evangelists had, besides, other trustworthy sources, whether oral or written?

Answer: In the negative.

IX: Do the words and deeds which are reported by Mark accurately and almost in verbal agreement with Peter's preaching, and are faithfully set forth by Luke who had "diligently attained to all things from the beginning" through the help of entirely trustworthy witnesses "who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:2f) rightly claim for themselves as historical that entire belief that the Church has always placed in them? Or on the contrary ought the same facts and deeds to be regarded as in part at least destitute of historical truth, either on the ground that the writers were not eye-witnesses or that in the ease of both Evangelists defects of order and disagreement in the succession of events are not seldom detected, or that, as they came on the scene and wrote rather late, they could not help recording ideas foreign to the mind of Christ and the Apostles or events already more or less distorted by popular imagination, or finally, that they indulged in preconceived dogmatic ideas, each one in accordance with his own aim?

Answer: In the affirmative to the first part, in the negative to the second.