BACK Professor William R. Farmer When discussing those who vindicated The Clementine Gospel Tradition (that the Gospels were written in the Matthew, Luke, Mark order), the names of Owen, Griesbach, Riley, Chapman, Butler and Orchard spring to mind. But, often the great contribution of William Farmer is unmentioned. Farmer was a Methodist Minister who became Professor of New Testament Studies at the Southern Methodist University of Dallas, Texas. He combined this with being research scholar at Dallas University. For years he dutifully taught his students the Markan priority theory which states that Mark was the first to write a Gospel. But in 1961, during a lecture, he publically made known that he had come to reject the theory. In1964, as part of his the Introduction to: The Synoptic Problem, he explained why he had done so. He had studied a book, published by Christopher Butler in 1951, which had convinced him that the Markan priority theory was a fallacy. He accepted that the Synoptic Problem still needed to be solved, but not with the unproved Markan priority theory or the imaginary ‘Q’ document. Farmer had also become fascinated by the question of how and why such a theory had come to be widely accepted, including by himself. In his book he traced the history of the theory in England. And later, in his ‘Bismarck and the Four Gospels’ (1996) he detailed the political domination which had enforced the teaching of the theory in Germany. In 1987 the Anglican priest Harold Riley and the Catholic Bernard Orchard o.s.b. co-authored: ‘The Order of the Synoptics’.  In the first part of the book, Riley praised Farmer’s researches and ideas. Then, and on pages 114 and 115 of the same book, Orchard explained that the first modern attempt to reject Markan Priority had come from John Chapman and Christopher Butler. But, “their efforts to gain a fresh hearing for [the tradition of Matthew being written first] failed to make any lasting impression, although Chapman had made a powerful plea for the critical and historical evidence to be examined simultaneously, and Butler had succeeded in showing that ‘Q’ was unnecessary”. Yet,  “… their efforts to gain a fresh hearing for the tradition [of Matthew being written first] failed to make any lasting impression, although Chapman had made a powerful plea for the critical and historical evidence to be examined simultaneously, and Butler had succeeded in showing that ‘Q’ was unnecessary”. Orchard continued: “But the seed they had sown finally took root when a young Methodist professor gave it a new energy and impetus by linking it up with the earlier researches of J. J. Griesbach and Henry Owen. For in 1964, as a result of reading the works of Chapman and Butler, Professor William R. Farmer, up till then a firm believer in the priority of Mark, risked his academic reputation by publishing The Synoptic Problem, which for the first time within the Protestant establishment in North America, offered sound critical reasons for believing that the Two Document Hypothesis [Markan Priority] was really and truly without any solid foundation, and that the correct order of composition was Matthew first, then Luke, and then Mark”. “At the time of its publication, and indeed for some years after, Farmer’s work was generally ignored where it was not ridiculed; but now, looking back, it can be seen to be the beginning of a new era in Gospel studies. Since its appearance there have been no less than five important international conferences on the relationships between the Gospels, and it has now become clear to a distinguish body of reputable scholars that the existing solution [of Markan Priority] must in all probability be relinquished and other possible solutions envisaged, especially those that take greater account of the [historical] tradition. The peculiar strength of the claim of the Two Gospel Hypothesis for a sympathetic hearing lies in the harmony it asserts to exist between the historical and the critical data;  …” So both Riley and Orchard recognised and proclaimed the important part played by Farmer in modern research. The 2GH organisation in America which plans, in the near future, to update its website, owes much to William R. Farmer who was born in America in 1921 and died there in 2000. -----0----- Copies (html and pdf) of:  Bismarck and the Four Gospels by William R. Farmer are available elsewhere on this www.churchinhistory.org website: See: Item [G 290].  -----0----- BACK Version: 15th October 2013