Adam

I’ve made a detailed comparison of Mark with Luke and basically verified my theory. The same passages that are inexact between these two gospels are also the only pericopes subject to sequential anomalies. It had long been said, as by Streeter, that the Marcan chronology was chosen for use in Luke as well, but this is true in the details only assuming Streeter was keeping in mind his earlier findings (before his Proto-Luke breakthrough) that much of Q is in Mark. Without the Gospel of Thomas to prove this back then (before 1946), Streeter followed others in careful reasoning as to what in Mark must have come from Q. These alone are subject to being out-of-place between these two gospels. Luke chapters 4 through 6 have too many to list, plus the complication of whether these are Special Luke or not. Luke 11:15-23 (Beelzebub), 8:19-21 (Jesus’s family), 22:24-27 (reproving James and John), 10:25-28 (greatest commandment), and 19:12-13 (being ready) all are Q and come out of order in corresponding Mark 3:22-30, 3:31-35, 10:41-45, 12:28-34, and 13:33-37.
B. H. STREETER, M.A.
In: Studies in the synoptic problem (1911)
IV. On the Original Order of Q . . 141
V. St. Mark's Knowledge and Use of Q. . 165
VI. The Original Extent of Q . . . -185
VII. The Literary Evolution of the Gospels . 209
VIII. On the Trial of Our Lord before Herod: A Suggestion 229
Streeter text
(full text, out of copyright)
I have also uncovered my error in not applying last year’s discovery that Mar 10:46-52 is not from Q as I have been stating in several threads relying upon last decade’s publications in Noesis. This further improves the character of Q as devoid of place names. We would not have expected “Jericho” to appear in both Mark and Luke (as it does at 18:35-43).
I had been hunting to test a new possibility that Luke had used Ur-Marcus before any Q was added to it. Disproving this, I found that James and John’s request (Mark 10:35 -40, probably deleted by Luke as presenting apostles in a bad light) had already drawn (per above) Mark 10:41-45 from its originally later place in Q (Luke 22:24-27).
Abandoning that idea, I proceeded to develop Q as having been packaged with preliminary material and staging while in Aramaic, and then while in Aramaic or while being translated into Greek having two variants heading towards Mark and Luke. The preliminaries were evidently provided by Peter, as the incidents with his name attest. In the one variant, the first, heading towards Luke, the names James and John are attached and never Andrew. In the more developed variant, not sponsored by Peter, heading towards Mark, they realized that Peter had a younger brother who was invisible to him, and his name thus appears in the Mark 1:16-20 variant of the Luke 5:1-11 Catch of Fishes and in the Mark 1: 29-31 variant of the Luke 4:38-39 healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. Q comes from the Apostle Matthew, but his name does not appear before Mark 2:14. He would have known enough at second hand to write all the preceding verses in Mark, but his Q writings were introduced instead apparently by Peter. So Peter was involved in both the two major portions of Mark, his Ur-Marcus collaboration with Mark and also the framework around Q. He had a hand in both Ur-Marcus and Proto-Mark. Much of what I have heretofore labeled as M2 as a later edition of Mark was actually concurrent with the version Luke saw, it was just a different variant. There is no reason to think that the Luke 5:1-11 Catch of Fishes was seen by the writer of Mark and transposed into the perfunctory Mark 1:16-20. The versions had already diverged. At some point in the process the chronological sequence of it took first place in the sequence as logic seems to demand. Place names had been inserted in the variant head toward Mark. Most likely this divergence came so late that it has the full Aramaic characteristics of Special Luke. The Aramaisms in Luke 5:1 are almost identical to those in Luke 24:15 (the Walk to Emmaus).
Lack of places and times is a characteristic of Q by its nature as sayings, but the Q writer readily lists where the hearers came from. See Mark 3:7-8 verified by Luke 6:17-18. Thus Mark 1:5-6 seems to be qT preceding 1:9-20 likewise qT. Mark 1:1-3 remain uncertain (UM, qT, or new editing), but exactitudes define Mark 1:4, 7-8 as from Ur-Marcus. The only other Ur-Marcan before 2:17 is Mark 1:21-28. It is set in Capernaum (Luke 5:31), an exorcism. Both support this being Ur-Marcan, though it is the verbal exactitudes that prove the point.
Thus Q extends from Mark 1:29-45 and right on through Mark 2:16. 2:1 gives Capernaum as the location, but sure enough in Luke 4:17 it’s just “Now it happened one day.” Nor do we learn where Levi’s tax office was. Verbal exactitudes tell us that Mark 2:17 through 3:5 are UM.
Mark 3:7 though 4:41 are all Q. Mark 4 is all sayings. No places are identified in both Mark and Luke. We see “the Twelve” mentioned at Mark 3:14, 16 (Luke 6:13), 4:10, then not again until Mark 6:7 (Luke 9:1, 13), the next qT section Mark 6:2-16. Still no place names. Then comes the great Marcan Interpolation (6:47-8:26). Lots of sayings, but not particularly Q-sounding. It’s replete with place names (and poor geography), so it’s not from Q. There are numerous passages in Mark that are out of sequence with their places in Luke. This only happens with Q passages.
Mark 5:1-43(Luke 8:26-56) is UM, as is Mark 6:30-52 (Luke 9:10-17). The Walking on Water (Mark 6:45-52) is in John 6:16-21, so I disregard its omission in Luke.
qT includes Mark 9:14-29(Luke 9:37-43), the epileptic demoniac. Exorcisms are unusual in Q, but this was an unusual exorcism. It’s unusual also in having time and place right after the Transfiguration. Perhaps Luke condensed this story because it reflects unfavorably on the disciple that verbal exactitudes were lost. This might not be from Q. Mark 9:33-37 reads “Twelve” at verse 35, helping attest it as from qT.
James and John’s request (Mark 10:35 -40, probably deleted by Luke as presenting apostles in a bad light) had already drawn (per above) Mark 10:41-45 from its originally later place in Q (Luke 22:24-27). Also the use of “the other ten” at 10:41 is an implicit use of the term “twelve”. All “James and John” isolations are from qT.
A remarkable change occurs when they reach Jerusalem. Not only is Jerusalem named, but Bethphage and Bethany as well. From Mark 11:1 onwards we cannot be sure verbal inexactitude indicates a Q origin. It has long been held by many that there is no Passion Narrative in Q. My own recent argument that the original Passion Narrative begins six days prior (John 12:1) means that Mark 11 through 16 have to be regarded as unlikely Q territory.
Nevertheless, Mark 12:1-17 (Luke 20:9-26) certainly read like Q sayings. Mark 12:18-23 (Luke 20:27-33) has to be UM, however, based on strong exactitudes, in spite of its strong tie to the following verses. A little farther on, Mark 12:28-34 (Luke 10:25-28) has to be qT because it is far displaced from its position in Luke.
A strong case can be made for Mark 14:1-25 as qT, because the term “Twelve” appears at Mark 14:10, 17, and 20, (Luke 22:3 parallels the first). The lack of verbal exactitudes shows that the comparable verses in Luke 22:1-20 did not come from our Mark but from the qT underlying it.
Mark 14:43-45 includes “twelve” at verse 43 (Luke 22:47). The story if from Q probably included Mark 14:26-27, 33-43 (Luke 22:39-47, with no parallels to verses38-42). Similarly, Mark 14:48-52 can be added on as probably from qT. Most of Mark 14:62-75 (Luke 22:55-62, 69-71) is added on to the original Johannine Passion Narrative. That it is qT is also shown by the inverted sequential order in the comparable Lucan passages. After this point the disciples scatter, so the word “twelve” cannot occur thereafter (except for “eleven” at Luke 23:33), making it even more difficult to be sure about what is qT or not.
The story continues neatly if we see Mark 15:3-13 (Luke 23: 1-5, 13-23) as qT. Mark 15:29-32 (Luke 23:3537 follows without much of a break as the next qT. Follow that with Mark 15:42, 44-47 (Luke 23:50-55).
As for the continuation of qT, my analysis has been published in 2006, in which I called it the Twelve-Source:
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Resurrection
The prime source underlying the Synoptic gospels is the Twelve-Source. It is identified by what is common to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but is not in John. Applying this to the resurrection accounts, the following is extracted as the Twelve-Source:
Twelve-Source
Mk 16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, and Salome
Mt 28:1 went to visit the sepulchre
Lk 24:1 with the spices they had prepared, at the first sight of dawn.
Mk 16:3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 16:4 But when they looked they saw that the stone—which was very big—had already been rolled back.
Lk 24:3 But on entering they could not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
Lk 24:4 As they stood there puzzled about this
Mk 16:5 They saw a young man in a white robe seated on the right hand side and they were struck with amazement.
Mk 16:6ab But he said to them, "There is no need to be so amazed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.
Lk 24:6 He is not here, he has risen.
Mt 28:6 Come and see the place where he lay.”
[To this point this Twelve-Source text has no conflicts with the extant texts of Matthew and Mark, but I will attempt to reconstruct the underlying Twelve-Source that explains how Luke diverged from the other two at this point. I will bracket my interpolations.]
Lk 24:7 . . . He told you . . . in Galilee that the Son of Man was destined to be handed over into the hands of sinful men and be crucified. [In Galilee he told you he will] rise again on the third day.
[Observe! If Galilee existed a second time in the original text, a simple scribal elide from the first occurrence to the second would read:]
In Galilee he told you he will rise again on the third day.
[Then assume translation from Aramaic to Greek:]
Galilee [is where] he told you he will rise again...
[Leading right to present extant texts:]
Mt 28:7c=Mk16:7b He is going ahead of you to Galilee: that is where you will see him.
[Resuming the Twelve-Source, following Lk 24:7:]
Mk 16:8 And the women came out and ran away from the tomb because they were frightened out of their wits.
[Perhaps also this verse:]
Mt 28:9-10 Suddenly, coming to meet them, was Jesus. “Greetings”, he said. And the women came up to him and, clasping his feet, they did him homage.
Lk 24:10 The women were Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James.
The upshot of the above analysis of qT in Mark and Luke is just a very few changes needing to be appended to my Early Aramaic Gospels thread:
Delete Mark 10:46-52 (Luke 18:35-43) from qT and move it to Ur-Marcus (to appear in the upcoming next pass through the eyewitnesses of Jesus).
Add in as qT:
Mar 14:26-27, 33-42 (Luke 22:39-47, with no parallels to verses38-42)
Mark 15:3-13 (Luke 23: 1-5, 13-23)

Adam

New project initiated this week. The idea started to link production of all four gospels around Andrew the Apostle. More broadly, is anyone aware of any theory that ties together the production of the Signs Gospel in John with the later layers of Q? My understanding of Q is that it underlies gMark as well, so that this would tie in to all four of the gospels from the less obvious Q side, theoretically separate from the Passion Narrative that everyone can recognize as shared among the four gospels. Within a day I had to change the theory to be that Andrew was together with John Mark in this whole project.

Again broadly, the tie may be from the Dead Sea Scrolls Qumran community from which John the Baptist presumably came. Robert Eisenman even revolves several Dead Sea Scroll figures around New Testament figures. John the Baptist gives the most appearance of being a Qumran offshoot. In John 1:40, 43 we find Andrew and Philip as the two disciples of John who witnessed the baptism of Jesus. This leads right into the Signs Source with the wedding at Cana in Galilee, John 2:1-11. I tie the Signs Source to this Andrew, which includes most the narrative up through John 12. Andrew (and Philip) turn up again at John 6:5-8 and 12:21-22.

A prominent theme turning up close to this Signs Source is the word “Pharisee”. Close, but not necessarily within it. It seems to come from someone obsessed with it who consulted with the author of this section and added in his editorial notes. I sorted this out as the P-Strand. The most likely author is John Mark, putting together the Signs Source with his own Passion Narrative source within gJohn that detailed his experiences as the “disciple known to the high priest”.

The only mention of “the twelve” in John (6:67, 70, 71) apart from the one “one of the twelve” in John 20:24 is in this Signs Source section. That ties to the theme of “the Twelve” in the packaging around the Q narrative I find in Mark and Luke, what I call qT. Similarly there is the interest in this section of Mark with the Pharisees: Mark 2:16, 18(2) Probably from the same source comes the q2 material in Q we find in just Matthew and Luke, because so much is about John the Baptist—and Andrew was one of his disciples.

What I am saying here is effectively recognizing Andrew and John Mark as the composite eighth “eyewitness” I have heretofore called the Qumraner.

The next stage in the tie-ins is to recognize that the qT framework around q1 goes in two directions between Luke and Mark. The name “Peter” and names “Peter, James, and John” come up many times in Luke, but the corresponding Marcan passages add in “Andrew” at most relevant places (relevant places not including where Peter solely speaks). The pair of names “James and John” comes up many times in Mark (but Luke may have simply suppressed these unfavorable reflections on the apostles). This indicates to me that John Mark got his information for qT from Peter and for qTM from Andrew.

Only in qTM comes the divergent view that Jesus would go and did go (first?) to Galilee upon his resurrection (Mark 14:28, 16:7), and this is confirmed in what seems to be the original ending of Mark we still see in Mt. 28:16-20.
The divergence between qTM and qTL goes deeper than names, groups, and places, however. The foursome “Peter, Andrew, James and John” that occurs only in Mark (1:16-20, 29-31) occurs most importantly at Mark 13:4, where Jesus seems to present to them alone the Little Apocalypse of Mark 13. Was Jesus not an apocalyptic prophet at all, or at most a closet prophet? Did Andrew misunderstand or misrepresent Jesus? And this apocalypticism gets further heightened in Matthew 24, though ties to Andrew diminish. Presumably the tie to John Mark continues, with John Mark continuing to draw together new sources together with what he had already drawn together for Mark 13. John Mark’s interest in Peter continues with new episodes (Mt. 16:16-18, 23; 17:24-25; 18:21).

What I need to know is what I said initially, has anyone previously tied together the production of all four gospels? (Not presuming I am right about this, but has anyone tried to do this?) Of course there are the usual Synoptic solutions (any with John also?), but does anyone say anyone had his own hand in all of them?

And for my own thesis, does the identification of two key figures help or hurt my case for eyewitnesses? If the seven eyewitnesses did not develop so separately, have I helped firm up my own case by filling in the details or have I opened the whole case to charges of collusion?
(I’m just presenting my thought processes here; I’ll be working this out for a while to see if it works as well as I’m hoping now.)

Adam

I really need your help, guys.
My new thesis as stated in my Post #12 is too broad to research on Google (or probably anywhere else). Bible study sites have taken up anything I might find by searching on gospel, name of gospel, author, or my particular candidates now, Andrew and John Mark. Has anyone ever read about anyone who expressed the idea that all four gospels were written in a process where a clique of one, two, or three guys did the basics? There are of course the conspirarcy theories of Atwill, Carotta, or about Piso, but do any of these jibe with the scholarly source theories? Is there any scholar who ties the four gospels together to two or three people? Am I developing something entirely new?

Toto

No.

The idea of one forger or a small clique producing four disparate contradictory gospels, and also the noncanonical gospels, is the big stumbling block IMHO to the conspiracy theories. Atwill imagines a group of forgers sitting around producing humorous variations on a theme, but I don't think that is your theory.

Adam

Super reply, Toto, thank you.
I guess between two or three insiders I thought I could incorporate the Resurrection primarily in Galilee of Matthew and Mark with the earlier accounts in Jerusalem, but I can't see Andrew as that much involved with the final production of gMatthew and I'm sure John Mark wouldn't have gone along with the Galilean primacy.
Meantime I've been exploring another idea that didn't work out. Taking a good look at the detailed comparison between gMatthew and the other Synoptics, I thought I could spot a tell-tale difference of assimilation into gMatthew of the contrasting sources I see within gMark. However, gMatthew gives little concern to sequential order. As is well known, it splits things up by theme.

jdboy

Atwill mentions the Flamen Priests. I think these priests were in charge of the emperial cult.
When Vespasian took over he resurrected the emperial cult as it was in the time of Julius. Supposedly a more just and noble time. Tiberius, Nero and Caligula had abandoned the emperial in favor of the so called personality cult.

Adam

Draft superceded 10/10/12
Surprising, isn’t it, that FRDB is accomplishing so much that nothing of mine is on the “front page” any more. Yes, I have been delaying my already prepared second tier of eyewitnesses to Jesus following upon my Early Aramaic Gospels here. I realized that there may be something more I can do with Q2. Among that is my announced project to show the authorship by Andrew, Peter, and John Mark of the underlying structure of the four gospels. That itself has been delayed now that I have found a new project to consider totally recasting Q2 as a much bigger entity thoroughly embedded in gMark as well as the usual other two Synoptics.

Here’s where that project stands. I have used Appendix II of James R. Edward’s The Hebrew Gospel & the Development of the Synoptic Tradition to explore whether the numerous low-Semitism verses in Luke from the Triple Tradition (and some few L items) should be considered as an expansion to Q2 rather than as non-Q Marcan material. Doing this gives us a gospel that stands somewhat on its own, though in narrative as much about John the Baptist as about Jesus. The theory is that Q2 was written in Greek and thus has fewer Aramaisms than Q1 does.

The verses to consider to add are shown in regular type, except the one that appears only in Luke shown in italics. The verses from my conventional list of Q2 materials from gMatthew and gLuke. are bracketed:
Luke 3:3-6, [3:7-9], 3:10-15, [16-17], 19-20; 4:14,18-19, 40-41; 5:12-16, 31-39; [6:36-42] 6:43-45; 7:1-10; [7:18-35]; 8:9-39; 9:1-27, 44b-48a; [9:57-10:24; 11:1-4, 9-26, 29-34; 12:2-7; 12:22-31, (Peter)39-46; 13: (20-21),34-35]; 14:16-23; [17:1-2]. 17:3-10; 17:23-37; 18:14b-30; 19:28-40, 45-48; 20:1-8,20-33; 22: 19-22, (Peter)33-34; 23:16-26,33-38, 44-45.
The later sections are the more dubious because they read like editorial insertions.

Adam

Draft superseded later same day:
Q Texts and Expansions 10/10/12:
The Oxford or Two (Four) Source Hypothesis is most eminently (and stodgily) defended by Christopher Tuckett in his Q and the History of Early Christianity, 1996. Ever since Holtzmann in 1863, Marcan priority has been the pre-eminent scholarly position, reinforced since 1900 by Adolf Harnack with the Q Hypothesis. Harnack limited his Q to exactly where verses were in both gMatthew and gLuke and not Mark. After decades of dissension on expanding Q into verses present in only one or in all three of the Synoptics, Streeter had to call a truce in 1924 to just return to defining Q as the overlap of the first and third gospels. But if this had been questioned before Nag Hammadi scrolls were discovered in 1945, how much more so after the Gospel of Thomas was shown to contain much Q material. Sticking with the narrower view had to require (as with the Jesus Seminar) denying that gThomas harked back to Q (that it instead was an independent witness to the words of Jesus) or (as with Tuckett in 1988 and 1991) refuting connections between Q and gThomas (pg. 2).

Tuckett waffles on whether Q was originally in Aramaic or Greek. We know conclusively that some Q was in Greek because of some very close verbal parallels. He acknowledges that this might apply just to some portions of Q, and he faults Kloppenborg for accepting Turner’s faulty proof for Q coming from Greek. Yet he still holds that Q was in Greek. (p. 90-92).
The term “Ur-Marcus” is subject to similar confusion. Whenever I speak of it I mean some text that underlies some part of Mark and Luke (or Acts). There is a more narrow use of the term as meaning everything in Mark that also got into Luke. That such a text ever existed seems doubtful, as the style of the “Marcan Interpolation” has been established as the same as the coarse Greek as the rest of Mark. Further, the Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke show that the text each used had already been corrected. (Carl Safford Patton, Sources of the Synoptic Gospels, 1915, p. 90-92. available on line free)

The Four-Source Hypothesis holds that in addition to Mark and Q, the other two Synoptics had a unique source respectively M and L. Thus the simplest explanation for gLuke would be that it combines Q, Ur-Marcus, and L. However, each of these sub-texts is itself composite. L is at least an Infancy Narrative plus the even larger material integrated into the remaining 22 chapter. Q must be at least a Greek text and an Aramaic (or at least a process that explains why there is so much coherence yet without close verbal exactitude). Let’s call them Q1 and Q2. However, most scholars agree that some Q material is found in L (and even more in M). Put aside that complication as minor consequence, but can there be (in spite of Tuckett) lots of Q material in gMark? My theory of seven written gospel eyewitnesses accepts that there is. I have already sorted out a qT that presumes to be framework around the Q material that is in gMark (and the other Synoptics). I attribute it to the Apostle Matthew, and it includes Mark 1:9-20; 1:29-2:16; 3:6-4:41; 6:2-16 9:14-29, 33-37; 10:35-45; 11:3-11, 15-19; 12:1-17;13:18-23, 13:33-37; 14:22-27, 33-42, 43-45, 62-63, 66-72; 15:3-13, 29-32, 44-47. The rest of gMark tends to default to Ur-Marcus (except most likely whatever is not also in Luke). However, this is really whatever is Mark is lacking close verbal parallels to Luke. This would seem to apply only to Q1. Might there also be closely parallel verses in Mark that are really Q2 material that was not omitted by Mark? This arises by the similarity to q2 verses in Luke being so very close to q2 verses in Matthew. Unfortunately, there are already verses that are very closely parallel in Mark and Luke. I have listed these heretofore as Ur-Marcan. If true Ur-Marcus arose in Aramaic, then the verses we are looking for that originated in Greek would probably have less Semitic traces to them—just as the q2 verses in Luke have very low counts for Semitisms in James R. Edward’s Appendix ii.

Doing this gives us a gospel that stands somewhat on its own, though in narrative as much about John the Baptist as about Jesus. The theory is that Q2 was written in Greek and thus has fewer Aramaisms than Q1 does.
The verses to consider to add are shown in regular type, except the one that appears only in Luke shown in italics. The verses in bold are from my conventional list of Q2 materials from gMatthew and gLuke. These regular q2 are also bracketed:
Luke 3:3-6, [3:7-9], 3:10-15, [16-17], 19-20; 4:14,18-19, 40-41; 5:12-16, 31-39; [6:36-42] 6:43-45; 7:1-10; [7:18-35]; 8:9-39; 9:1-27, 44b-48a; [9:57-10:24; 11:1-4, 9-26, 29-34; 12:2-7; 12:22-31, (Peter)39-46; 13: (20-21),34-35]; 14:16-23; [17:1-2]. 17:3-10; 17:23-37; 18:14b-30; 19:28-40, 45-48; 20:1-8,20-33; 22: 19-22, (Peter)33-34; 23:16-26,33-38, 44-45.
To give more of a rationale than just style, my bigger hypothesis is that Q2 arose as an abridgment of if the Signs Source (in John) narrative to just the Feeding of the 5000 and a recollection of the healing in Cana, with instead mostly teachings of Jesus and stories about John the Baptist. The two miracles (Luke 9:10-17, 7:1-10) are indeed extremely low in Semitisms.

What does that leave for Ur-Marcus: Mark 2:23-28, 3:1-6; 5:21-43; 9:1-9: 9:49-50; 10:46-52; 12:1-12; 15:34-40.
Looks like I might as well reduce it all to Mark and Q again, just with different boundaries. Ur-Marcus should include also all q2 as simply remnants of Ur-Marcus that were omitted by Mark, no longer interested in John the Baptist.

Adam

The two prior posts #17 and #18 are included to provide evidence for this new concept on the Synoptic Problem, but need revision to transform probings into arguments.
Final Resolution after two drafts in previous posts:
I was working up a paper today for you to show how complicated is the Synoptic writing process. None of this simple Mark, Q, L and M! As you know, I’m into showing how incremental pieces got added. However, I found out that if you (I) carry it far enough, it flips over to where a bigger gospel gets abridged into a smaller. No, I’m not headed towards Farrer or Griesbach and hopefully not even Augustinian, but I still come out with the Four-Source Hypothesis, just with a different Mark and a different Q.

Already I have put Early Aramaic Gospels on this site. I think I can stay with my verses in Luke representing q1 and my Marcan verses from qT; the Q1 verses I say got into Mark as the Twelve-Source, part of the Triple Tradition. My next pass was to have Ur-Marcus, the rest of Mark, listed in Mark and L listed in Luke—but leaving out q2 in Luke because I considered it as later or as not eyewitness material. But my new insight is to regard it not as a late insertion, but as a remnant in Matthew and Luke that was omitted in Mark. What did remain in it from the original text, I have been calling Ur-Marcus. But I can’t properly show it by just copying relevant verses from Mark. It also includes the relevant q2 verses from Luke. That causes a problem for me, as I had till now included only L material for my upcoming second pass through Luke.

This makes the combined q2-Ur-Marcus a complete gospel of its own, loaded with all the John the Baptist stories that Mark preferred to delete. It’s a lot shorter than my original conception of Ur-Marcus (the canonical version less the “Marcan Interpolation”). So that’s the “Mark” in my revised Four-Source theory. That still leaves a lot of Mark as q1 sayings (confirmed by their presence in the Gospel of Thomas) plus the accompanying Twelve-Source framework, all of it in Greek. This is my substitute for Q. All this (plus the Marcan Interpolation) got included in Matthew along with almost all the Q1 sayings that were deleted towards the production of Mark. But Ur-Matthew would not have included this Marcan material. Most of it was originally in Aramaic, so we can regard this as Papias’s Matthew-in -Hebrew. However, James R. Edward’s tracing of ancient quotes from such a gospel would indicate that it also merged with L in Aramaic. Along with all the other original Aramaic texts, it has disappeared.

You can see my Q1 (substitute for Q) at:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=317757
by reading normal q1 in Luke and my recovered framing in the selected Marcan verses. Everything else that’s in Mark could be considered the complement; Q2. In addition read the classic q2 in Luke:
These include Lk. 3:7-9, 16-17; 6:36-42, 7:18-35; 9:57-10:24; 11:1-4, 9-[26, 29-]32[34]; 12:2-7; 12:22-31,39-46; 13:[18-21],34-35; 17:1-2.
That’s my substitute for Mark.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Adam,

Eyewitness testimony is almost always in the first person form. "I saw this" or "I heard this" or "He told me this" We get none of that here. Thus the form is not an eyewitness form. Worse, even eyewitnesses may make things up, or be mistaken about things, or steal and change other people's eyewitness testimony. Thus, even if the material did have the form of eyewitness testimony, which it doesn't, it could not be taken for eyewitness testimony.

Let us say we have a text that reads "Mila Kunis came from the desert. She was not the messiah, but she pointed out the messiah." At best, we can take a guess and say it is eyewitness testimony, but unless we find somebody who saw the eyewitness and is willing to testify for the eyewitness and we trust the testimony of the eyewitness to the eyewitness than it is a useless exercise of the imagination.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin