... the literary interrelationship among the first three "synoptic" gospels.'1 The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the 'synoptic' gospels, in contrast with the Gospel of John, because they can be readily arranged in a three-column harmony structure called a "synopsis." Unlike the Gospel of John, the Synoptic Gospels share a great number of parallel accounts and parables, arranged mostly in the same order and told with many of the same words. Any proposed logical solution to the synoptic problem therefore must account for these literary similarities among the Synoptic Gospels, not so much in terms of their factual content, but in the selection of that content, the arrangement of the material, and wording of the parallels. However, the 'Synoptic Problem' for many scholars is not really a "problem" in the normal sense of the term. It can simply be seen as a way to refer to questions and ...

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