Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

JBL 123/2 (2004) 315–322
CRITICAL NOTES
MEMORY, WRITTEN SOURCES, AND THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM:
A RESPONSE TO ROBERT K. MCIVER AND MARIE CARROLL
Robert K. McIver and Marie Carroll recently published in this journal the results
of an experiment involving forty-three students, in which three groups were asked to
write on six of eight topics. 1 The first group was instructed to write a brief summary (less
than a page) about the first two topics without consulting any written sources. For the
second two topics, they were permitted unlimited reading of a prepared written source
but had to return the source before writing their summary. (They were permitted to use
the wording of the source, however, if they remembered it.) For the third pair of topics,
they were permitted to use and retain the written source and to borrow from it for their
summaries. The second and third groups of students were instructed to do the same
with these same topics, but with the procedures regarding the use or nonuse of a written
source applied at different times so as to produce writings on the same topic according
to all three procedures. In this way, McIver and Carroll sought to determine what the
phenomenon of sequential agreement might tell about an author’s reliance upon oral
and written sources. Ultimately, they hoped that this information might shed light on
the composition of the Gospels.
McIver and Carroll found that the summaries written without the use of a source
(a source that existed but was not distributed to all the students) agreed with the source
for 5.0% of the wording and averaged a maximum of 2.45 words in sequential order;
summaries written after reading and returning a source agreed with the source for
15.3% of the wording and averaged a maximum of 5.43 words in exact sequence; and
summaries for which a written source was retained while writing agreed with that source
for 28.4% of its words, with their longest word sequences averaging 12.6 words. 2 The
real focus, as stated above, was the length of sequential agreements. McIver and Carroll
write:
1 Robert K. McIver and Marie Carroll, “Experiments to Develop Criteria for Determining
the Existence of Written Sources, and Their Potential Implications for the Synoptic Problem,” JBL
121 (2002): 667–87. The experiment to which I refer is their “experiment 5.” Subsequent references
to this article will be by page number(s) in parentheses.
2 “Sequential order” here refers to a conjoined sequence. I point this out because Robert
Morgenthaler’s category of “Form- und Folge identisch” (Statistische Synopse [Zurich: Gotthelf,
1971]) considers the phenomenon of sequential agreement without concern for whether nonagreeing
words interrupt the sequence.
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