keyser_soze

Never fall for an argument from authority. Many, many groups are guilty of that particular fallacy. Let the argument stand or fall of it's own accord. Research it for yourself, and if his theory holds, then it holds....no matter his or anyone else's credentials.

Ted Hoffman

That is not the objective. Am just curious.

Vinnie

I accept Markan Priority, just not canonical Markan priority. Yuri maintains that Mt. and Lk made use of a proto-gospel, as he stated. I believe Mt and Lk used an earlier version of Mark. There were like 5 different Marks by the end of the 2d century:

Two Versions of secret Mark.
"Original Mark"
The differing Marks used by Matthew and Luke.
The redacted canonical Mark which appeared after Mt and Lk used their versions of Mark.

Actually, that seems to make six versions of Mark! But original Mark may have been the one used by Matthew whereas Luke got a hold of a more redacted version. And thats just five or six that we know about

Vinine

Ted Hoffman

Yeah, I notice you state that 2ST raises questions about the authenticity of the canonical Mark.
You know a site where I can get arguments that refute Markan priority?

What is the core/DNA of Mark - how do you identify a version of Mark - when I get a ms - how do I know its a version of Mark and not a version of Matthew or Luke - I asked Yuri a similar question above about L but he did not respond.

PS. Six versions - wow . Could you outline the features of each of them? And perharps how you distinguish them?

Vinnie

I know of no online sites but as Yuri mentioned, if you are interested in this, read something by a Griesbach hypothesis proponent.

I believe that the text Matthew and Luke used (stuff defined as "triple tradition material") is similar enough to the text of canonical Mark for us to call this proto-Gospel they used, an earlier version of Mark which later evolved into canonical Mark after both Matthew and Luke used it.


Yuri might disagree here. He might not call this an earlier version of Mark, just an early proto-Gospel with some similarities to canonical Mark maybe? Both views are relatively close to one another but there would be a slight difference.

I also accept the existence of Q. Yuri believes AMtt and Luke certainly made use of sayings sources but he denies Q. He is correct that many well informed scholars deny Q. Goodcare has a case against Q and E.P. Sanders and AMrgaret Davies advocated this same "Mark without Q" position in "Studying the Synoptic Gospels." He attempts to demonstrate that Matthew knew Mark, and Luke knew Matthew and Mark. Ergo, no Q source. Though it must still be maintained that Matthew used sayings sources as well as Luke. I disagree with these scholars and find myself in a modified 2ST camp. With that being said, their arguments should not be brushed under some consensus rug. I doubt that many here would have the knowledge to even touch Sander's and Davies case against Q in SSG or Goodcares or even defend Markan priority against a well informed GH proponent. Its not called the "synoptic problem" for nothing!

Two versions were outlined in my article:

Matthew and Luke had access to a different text than canonical Mark, as my paper demonstrated.

It further maintained that Luke's copy lacked the Bethsaida section and this was most likely due to redaction. Thus Matthew and Luke had different versions of original Mark.

This is then two versions:

Canonical Mark came later, after Matt and Luke used these Marcan texts. Canonical Mark (which should need no elaboration) is a third version.

There are also two versions of secret Mark identifiable in second century literature. I don't have time to jump into secret Mark right now but I think Peter has an article on this somewhere on his site talking about the five versions of Mark. Maybe he can provide a link to it? I can come back later in the week and talk more though.

We have at least five different versions of Mark (if we call Matthew's version original Mark).

Vinine

the_cave

Not sure I'm entirely qualified to comment, and this thread is a bit dead, but I thought I would say a few things.

First, I hate multiplying gospels. What we got is what they are--anything prior is something else. That is, we should call it something else, rather than proto-So-and-So. That's the perspective I take on it, anyway.

So I wouldn't say that we really have even more than one verson of Mark. Secret Mark, sure, but that's different, which is why it's called Secret Mark. More than one Secret Mark? Maybe, who knows. But only one Mark. Anything else should be called something else.

I like Yuri's overall perspective, because it's similar to my own (!)--that is, in the end, we ultimately have multiple sources. Call it the Many Source Hypothesis (MSH)--you heard it here first.

Like many others, including Yuri, I would agree that we have sources such as M and L. I'm beginning to suspect these can be further broken up into infancy and ministry stories. I myself wouldn't call either a gospel narrative, but I could be wrong. I think they were just collections of material.

It's also clear we have a Signs Something-or-Other, which I (and others) prefer to call J. J might have included other material, about Lazarus for example. It also may have included a lot of Logos material. Or the Logos material could have been a separate source.

I think we can further discern kernels such as those that led to the resurrection stories in places like the Gospel of Peter and maybe the insertion into the Ascension of Isaiah chs. 3-4.

I also favor a separate Passion Narrative, but I'm not committed to this. I just think that John couldn't really have known about Mark (or else disregarded it, for whatever reason) without using either his material or his narrative more extensively, so there must have been a separate common source for their passion accounts. (This would also suggest a common source for Mark and John, for the material and structure that they occasionally share, an idea which I support.)

And maybe there was a Q, maybe there wasn't--maybe it was part of M, or L, who knows. The point is, there were many sources, and they all contributed to the documents we have today. Note that these documents include people like Ignatius and Barnabas and the Second Century Apologists.

And ultimately, many of these sources were oral.

I don't think we need to hypothesize earlier "versions" of gospels. I personally favor Mark as the earliest gospel, with Matthew and Luke basing their accounts on Mark, probably in that order. (And Matthew would have been influenced by L, and Luke would have been influenced by M, if you see what I mean.) And maybe there was an earlier, or separate, "gospel", or even more than one such document, but I prefer those who simply term it a proto-gospel, without labeling it with the name of one of the gospels we have. Maybe "gospel" is even misleading, since it doesn't exactly look like any of the gospels we now have. "Non-Q Sayings Sources?" "Ministry narratives?" That's what we might want to call them, anyway...

And yet, trying to reconstruct these hypothetical "gospels" seems to me to be an indeterminable endeavor. Take the ending of Mark for example--maybe Mark ended with the Centurion, sure. Except that invalidates the suggestion that Mark is a readings cycle, with the beginning of Jesus' ministry in Galilee thus corresponding with the angel's statement to the women at the tomb that Jesus will go before them to Galilee. So that's actually less evidience that Mark is a midrashic yearly cycle of readings--and, that's less of a reason for writing the Midrash in the first place. I'm not saying that the author of the "Centurion-ending gospel" couldn't have been inspired by Misrash practices, I'm just saying that I can't see evidence deciding it one way or the other, since the main criterion for such theories is mostly "See, now doesn't that sound plausible?"

Or, maybe Mark took an earlier "gospel" that ended with the Centurion, and spiffed it up into a midrashic cycle of readings. But then Mark didn't invent the gospel narrative, like some claim--someone else did. Or, maybe the original writer was Mark, and canonical Mark is the spiffed-up yearly-readings-cycle of Mark. Who knows?

Not me, that's for sure, and I see little evidence that anyone else will anytime soon. I could be wrong.

the_cave

For that matter, there's a problem talking about things like "Mark". Take Doherty's thesis, for example--that is, the author of Mark more or less invented the first full picture of an historical Jesus (though perhaps it was inspired by prior ideas.) But which author is Doherty talking about? The author of the Centurion-ending gospel? Or does he think that Mark ended at the tomb? Does it matter? Is he simply talking about the first Midrashic author of a Jesus narrative? Was that really the author of Mark (with either ending)? Does this mean he thinks that Mark is the first gospel narrative, and that either the two-source theory or the three-source theory is correct? (It seems he must...I should ask him, come to think of it!)

This is why I think that Mark should be reserved for the name of the author of the complete gospel as we have it. Ideally it would be reserved for the name of the earliest document that bears the name--except we have no such document. All we have is the current gospel of Mark.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Thanks, the_cave!

Quote:

Call it the Many Source Hypothesis (MSH)--you heard it here first.

Actually, it's already known as the MSH (the Multi-Stage Hypothesis, as argued by Boismard)!

Quote:

Like many others, including Yuri, I would agree that we have sources such as M and L. I'm beginning to suspect these can be further broken up into infancy and ministry stories. I myself wouldn't call either a gospel narrative, but I could be wrong. I think they were just collections of material. [snip] I also favor a separate Passion Narrative, but I'm not committed to this.

Well, lots of scholars believe that the Passion Narrative was the earliest form of the original gospel. And later, more stuff was built up around that...

Quote:

And maybe there was a Q, maybe there wasn't--maybe it was part of M, or L, who knows. The point is, there were many sources, and they all contributed to the documents we have today.

Seems reasonable...

Quote:

And yet, trying to reconstruct these hypothetical "gospels" seems to me to be an indeterminable endeavor. Take the ending of Mark for example--maybe Mark ended with the Centurion, sure.

I also see this as an indeterminable endeavor!

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Well, this is definitely a weakness in Doherty's analysis IMHO. He seems to be way too closely bound with the mainstream 2 Source Hypothesis. If it fails, so I guess also his analysis.

I don't know, maybe he can say that he only made the 2SH his foundation because everyone (or almost everyone) accepts it, so he doesn't really need to get into the Synoptic morass to argue that Jesus didn't exist.

So perhaps he can still make some sort of a case for non-historicity even without the 2SH? Remains to be seen, though...

Best,

Yuri.

Ted Hoffman

The linchpin of Dohertys thesis is not based on Mark writing the first Gospel.

His thesis is iron clad. Argument for the best explanation - considering everything we have. As an ABE, it accounts for just about everything.

His analysis remains sound, whichever way the synoptic problem points.