I Keep Getting Emails Asking Me "What The ---- is Your Underlying Point? I Haven't Read Your Book but I Have Been Following Many of the 1,375 Blogposts You've Written Since June of 2009. It's All Very Interesting. But I Can't See The Forest From the Trees. Can You Please Sum Up Your Theory For Me in a Way I Can Understand???"

Well, if I can't get you to buy my book at Amazon for $5.00 I hope this BEGINS to put my greater theory about the origins of Christianity in some kind of framework. The summary from a man many consider to be the most authoritative expert on the Samaritan tradition and a reader in the Anglican Church:

To whom it may concern

My colleague and friend Stephan Huller has been engaged on a major multi-faceted research project for many years. There is no need to set out his overall thesis in detail here, since that has already been done in the communication from Prof. Robert Price, which I attach below. Instead, I would like to make some remarks on both the scholarly integrity of his work, and some of its implications.

The results of Huller’s research have been presented in a long series of unpublished but widely circulated monographs, as well as articles published in the Journal of Higher Criticism. The earliest works are academically sound, but show their birthmarks, the traits of first efforts at formulating a new approach to an extensive field of research. It is a sign of Huller’s integrity that he has ruthlessly discontinued lines of argument that could not be demonstrated from the primary sources. All linguistically unsound arguments have been discarded or else re-formulated. Over the course of time, every detail of his thesis has been re-examined and re-argued. Nothing now remains that is not strongly supported by the primary sources. None of the pillars of his argument stand on sand. While it is true that some arguments from the sources are open to counter-interpretation, and some such arguments have more of the improbable than the probable, the attentive reader will see that every weak argument is accompanied by more than one compelling line of argument from the primary sources leading to the same conclusion. This means that every questionable line of proof could be deleted, and every detail would still be supported by alternative arguments that are not easily dismissed. For example, the evidence from the Arabic Diatessaron is taken from the annoyingly inadequate edition by Ciasca, and the whole section needs to be rewritten on the basis of the careful edition by Marmardji. This might mean deleting some subsidiary arguments, leaving the main arguments as they are. But all these are minor matters.

Huller’s command of the primary sources is phenomenal. When the monographs are eventually published in their final form, the formal bibliography accompanying each one will show that much of the documentation is simply beyond the ken of most New Testament scholars, at least to the extent that this is reflected in the actual use of it, as opposed to knowing it exists. One striking example will do. Everyone knows there is an Alexandrian tradition surviving to our own day that is independent of what can for convenience be called the Catholic tradition, but also independent of the Nestorian tradition, and so on. Everyone knows that Alexandria has the authority of Mark, and that it asserts the primacy of Mark over Peter. But where are the assertions critically examined? More importantly, where are the results of such examination of the Alexandrian tradition applied to the question of the history of the Gospel or the Gospels?

This leads us to Huller’s integration of disparate sets of evidence. It is said that Darwin used to keep a separate section of his notebook in which he recorded any datum or any line of argument he came across that seemed incompatible with his own arguments, the purpose being to make sure he never lost sight of any of this. We all have our mental lists of what is inexplicable or what does not fit, and we have all had the experience of suddenly seeing the answer after twenty years. Then again, I think we could all name some authors who have written passionately on the basis of real data selectively gathered, and have on this precarious foundation elaborated some evanescent theory or other explaining everything. Again we come to Huller’s critical ruthlessness. One example. For literally years he was unable to reconcile the well documented figure of Marqe ben Tita, that is, Markus the son of Titus, the composer of both the core of the Samaritan liturgy and a long book forming the foundation work of Samaritan theological writing, on one hand; and then on the other hand the evidence for a figure of the same name responsible for a form of Samaritan theology and practice with Imperial support blurring the lines between Samaritans and Christians and Jews and Nasoraeans. The progressive publication by several scholars of evidence for an earlier and earlier dating of the traditional Marqe made the anomaly more acutely felt. Yet the answer, or at least the start of an answer, suddenly came, in the form of my re-reading of the notes in an earlier article by Hans Kippenberg followed by Huller’s re-examination of the collection. It was shown beyond any doubt by Kippenberg that single verses or half-verses in several of the hymns attributed to Marqe express contrition for very recent undefined collective theological error, and the rejection of this error, still undefined. The hymns attributed to Marqe make up a foundation work, that is to say, they express the creed of a self-consciously new religious movement in liturgical form. Even though the hymns are not didactic in form, this creed can be abstracted from them in sharp detail and in depth. (To use an imperfect analogy, they resemble in these respects the Protestant hymns that have remained in use since their composition in 17th c. Germany and the Netherlands, when interpreted as a corpus. Or otherwise the analogy of the Church of Scotland and Presbyterian hymnbook will do, mutatis mutandis). See further on this character of the little collection my chapter Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra in the Samaritan Tradition in the vol. of the CRINT entitled Mikra. The collection of hymns as we have it goes back to a new religious movement which has rejected what has gone before and sees itself as returning from a brief period of heresy to orthodoxy. The content of what was once one of the foundation documents of the previous movement, now seen as a heresy, has been kept, but this content has been re-edited and new sentiments of contrition have been inserted here and there. The venerable name associated with the original form of the document has been kept, and rightly so, since it remains mostly his work. These conclusions are the result of so much correspondence between me and Huller that attribution to one or the other of us is irrelevant. The point is that Huller never let go of either of the two of these seemingly incompatible phenomena, waiting instead for the means of reconciliation to turn up. There are some that have written article after article on the Samaritans by consistently making the documents say whatever they wanted.

Huller’s theory includes the picture of an Imperially sanctioned religious movement that united the Palestinian population. This fell into disfavour and split along its old fault lines and along some newly invented fault lines, producing three new orthodoxies, all Imperially sanctioned. The first is known by historians as Rabbinic Judaism. (Not the same thing as the earlier Pharisaism, though with the predominant element coming from the older Pharisaism. That it incorporated the Sadducees as well can be seen from the fact that the founder of the Rabbinic metaphysical tradition, Yishma’el the High Priest, was a Sadducee. This is well documented. In addition to the documentation, there is the fact that he is not given the title “Rabbi” in reliable mss. of Tannaitic texts. There is evidence in the Tannaitic texts that the process of reconciliation within Pharisaism, and then between Pharisaism and other sects, finishing with an amalgam now called Rabbinic Judaism, started in the time of Yohanan ben Zakkai. Much of the alternative Pharisaic tradition and some of the Sadducaean tradition that had been hidden in the solution precipitated out of the solution with ‘Anan Ben David and then the Karaite movement). The second was Catholic Christianity, so self-styled for the first time right at the end of the process of its formation, in about 170 A.D. The third was Samaritanism in two forms, one called Dosithean and the other probably called Gorothenian. In some ways the Dositheans were closer to the original movement that had been rejected. (The two eventually reconciled, but centuries later). Those groups that did not fit into the new threefold pattern eventually left Palestine. Most crossed the Jordan or went to Syria proper.

One implication of Huller’s picture, out of very many, is that there is now a historical context for the conclusion of several scholars that our set of four Gospels was edited and promulgated as a single publication in Greek in four parts in Greek in Rome round about 170 A.D. (The decisive evidence is given by Trobisch, though he was anticipated to some extent by von Campenhausen and others). What came before that was a single Gospel, much longer than any one of the later four. This is universally referred to as simply “the Gospel”. This single Gospel was obviously not exactly the same in content or wording from one sect to another. (This is not part of Trobisch’s argument. His concerns are elsewhere. I refer mainly to Huller’s proof, but also indications by Plooij and Boismard and von Campenhausen). One of these long Gospels, the Gospel of the Hebrews, was re-edited by Tatian. Presumably he turned the dialect from Western Aramaic to Syriac, though he might have used the Hebrew original, which is known to have been accessible later on to Jerome. Where needed there were some additions from the new Canonical Four, as well as some limited adjustment of the wording to them. What the book was called when it was not simply called “The Gospel” we don’t know. A confused statement by Epiphanius seems to show that it was still called the Gospel of the Hebrews, though this is no more certain than anything else from this befuddled cleric. This edition by Tatian was at some time given the slightly misleading name “the Diapente” which later turned into the erroneous name “the Diatessaron”. It is known that in Rome the Four were used for all serious theological writing and Tatian’s edition (translated from Syriac into Latin) was used for the composition of the liturgy and all teaching and preaching. In Syria old habits remained and Tatian’s edition was used for all purposes, including learned commentary, for a long while. A second long Gospel (given the Siglum P by Boismard) was used by Justin Martyr. As it shows up in the quotations in Efrem that are not from the Diatessaron, it was presumably recast from Western Aramaic into Syriac. It survives in full, though condensed in some places, in a Middle English translation from French from Latin from Syriac recast from Western Aramaic. We now have answers to the twin baffling questions, why are the present Canonical Four in Greek, without a Hebrew or Aramaic original; and what happened to the Hebrew and Aramaic. This is not the place to set out the evidence for these statements about the history of the editing of the Gospel. I just say, read Huller’s arguments, along with the arguments of the other scholars mentioned. Read Huller’s integration of all this with his picture of the rise of a self-conscious “Catholic Church”, part of a new officially promoted threefold pattern, itself following on from an earlier attempt at unifying the population of Palestine-Syria. You might still be unconvinced, but you will have to work hard before saying so. This example is only one part of Huller’s cohesive theory. Each other aspect will demand the same degree of hard work to refute.


Dr. Ruairidh (Rory) Bóid
Honorary Research Associate
Centre for Religion and Theology
School of Historical Studies
Monash University (Melbourne)