ABSTRACT
Once the hypothesis that explains the observed evidence in the biblical passage has been elevated to the level of an argument, that argument or thesis can be used in turn as a working assumption to deduce further insights about the biblical text. The two-source hypothesis was developed as a way of making sense of the evidence in the Gospels those points toward a complex literary relationship between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Although the hypothesis is not subscribed to by all modern New Testament scholars, it has withstood many challenges over the years and is the most widely held view. The case of the two-source hypothesis illustrates quite clearly the intellectual movement from inductive to deductive reasoning and from a hunch to a hypothesis and eventually to a thesis. The two-source hypothesis serves as a model for the investigation of biblical material and for the development of explanations for curious features of the biblical text.
