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Four-document hypothesis

Explanation for the relationship between three Gospels of the Bible

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The four-document hypothesis or four-source hypothesis is an explanation for the relationship between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that there were at least four sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark and three lost sources. It was proposed by B. H. Streeter in 1925, who refined the two-source hypothesis into a four-source hypothesis.

Editorial summary

“Four-document hypothesis” enters the record as explanation for the relationship between three Gospels of the Bible. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Four-document, hypothesis and Explanation can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1925—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Four-document, hypothesis and Explanation.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Four-document hypothesis” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Four-document, hypothesis and Explanation provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1925.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Four-document hypothesis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.