S.C.Carlson

There's no logical reason why Mark could not have known Q (if it existed), and there are a couple of scholars today making that case (e.g. Fledderman, Lambrecht). I think, however, you've essentially identified through your questions why more scholars have not been making that case.

Basically, the Mark-Q overlaps are one technique for accounting for those anti-Markan agreements that cannot be ignored as coincidental. In the 19th century, the preferred strategy was to assign those sections to "Ur-Markus," a hypothetical, early form of Mark. Without Ur-Markus, the choice is either to assign them to Q or to suppose that Luke had made secondary use of Matthew in addition to Mark and a smaller Q. The latter option is the three-source hypothesis (Holtzmann, Morganthaler, Gundry, and Ron [not Robert] Price).

That would be the Ur-Markus hypothesis. I can't say it's inevitable because it has been abandoned, but it has had some respectable defenders.

Stephen Carlson

Ben C Smith

I recall that blog entry. It seemed to me at the time, and it still seems to me, that Goulder has confused historical plausibility with literary design. The question as I currently see it (pending your response, at least) is not whether or not we can plausibly add details that make sense of what initially confuses the reader; rather, it is whether the author himself has inadvertantly left out a detail that he should (for the sake of clarity) have included.

In this case, if Matthew had either a blindfold or two different groups in mind, he forgot to tell the reader. I pondered the passage for months before you mentioned how Goulder handled it, and I probably never would have lighted on his solution without him (or your reference to him). That looks to me like a deficiency in the Matthean prose, a gap that happens to be filled in nicely in Mark and Luke.

It appears to me that any of the usual examples of fatigue could be neutralized if we are allowed to fill in the gaps as Goulder has done. It is easy enough, for instance, and quite plausible, to imagine Jesus entering a house some time before Matthew 12.46. Yet Matthew does not mention it; ergo, fatigue. The missing blindfold looks like the missing house to me. Matthew took spitting on him and covering his face and elided it quite naturally to spit on his face, skipping the blindfold.

Or so it seems to me so far, at any rate.

Ben.

Vorkosigan

My own view is that there is no Q and not one saying goes back to Jesus. The writer of Mark dipped into the common pool of Hellenistic and Jewish wisdom, extracting out sayings known to many. Matthew, who obviously spent many an hour puzzling Mark out, and who was a lot dumber, went to that same pool and grabbed more.

For me the significant overlap is the Baalzebub one, on my site here. Essentially I argue that the writer of Mark often signals his borrowings by citing passages elsewhere in the Gospel. Baalzebub is the object of only one reference in the OT, in a passage that the writer uses twice. Hence my suspicion that it is original to Mark. Hence my conclusion that "Q" is actually Mark, expanded by Matthew and Luke. Andrew Criddle, who always comes to the conversation equipped with a large bucket of cold water, pointed out that the Septuagint spells Baalzebub differently than the Gospels do, and thus the writer might not be pointing back there.

But the one Vinnie raises is another good one. Dale Allison (1998) has argued that the Temptation story is a reading of the Myth of the Fall.

"In paradise Adam lived in peace with the animals and was guarded and/or honored by angels. There too he was fed by angels or (according to another tradition) ate the food of angels, manna. But after succumbing to the temptation of the serpent he was cast out (the verb is ekebalon in Gen 3:24 LXX).

This sequence of events is turned upside down in Mark. Jesus is first cast out. Then he is tempted. Then he gains companionship with the animals and the service of angels."(p187-8)

The writer of Mark is the only one who preserves all the elements in inverted order. The others all omit and change the order. The Markan version is the original and correct one -- the preservation of the inverted parallel shows the origin of the passage, in the creativity of the writer of Mark, not the manuscripts of Q.

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

If Mark knew Q does this undermine the two document hypothesis in any way? If we are allowed to say Mark knew Q and took the overlaps from there how do we explain the inclusion of the material and the omission of the rest of the material---including stuff Mark surely could have made good use of? If Mark can omit material in such drastic ways we might as well say Mark knew Matthew and drop Marcan priority. Isn't the difficulty in seeing how Mark would omit so much from Matthew--and why this gospel would even be preserved by the church--one of the major evidences for Marcan priority?

So my question is, do verbatim agreements in Mark//Q overlaps undermine the rationale for Marcan priority to begin with? If they do then it would seem that a simpler way of explaining triple agreements under Marcan priority where Matthew and Luke also agree against Mark (the overlap passages) is by positing a direct relationship between Matthew and Luke. Of course Matthew still could have had access to a sayings document or sayings documents and other special traditions (Luke as well).

If Luke knew Matthew what justifies the creation of an altogether new source such as Q? Is it neccessary to explain anything? Is Matthew insufficient? Take for example the parable of the mustard seed. Why is this a Mark // Q overlap? There are several minor agreements of Mt and Lk against Mark but both Mt and Lk agree in putting the Leaven after the mustard seed--an exception to the rule that they do not agree against Mark's order. Why not say Luke knew Matthew. All difficulties resolved. What room then, for inventing new texts?

Vinnie

Ben C Smith

For clarification, one of the phrases in my post, if Matthew had either a blindfold or two different groups in mind, should read if Matthew had either a blindfold or two different positions in mind.

S.C.Carlson

Yes, I would say that Mark's knowing Q would undermine the argument from omission (e.g. "Mark would not have omitted the sermon on the mount if it was before him"). There are other and better arguments for Markan priority, the main plank of the 2ST and the Farrer theory, so the undermining won't necessarily be fatal.

The overlaps don't really undermine Markan priority, but they do complicate the 2ST. Rather, the Mark-Q overlaps indicate the existence of a literary relationship in certain "triple tradition" passages between Matthew and Luke that cannot be accounted for by their independent use of Mark. In the Mark-Q theory, that is handled by assigning them to Q and supposing that Matthew and Luke made independent use of Q. The Farrer theory, on the other hand, denies the independence of Matthew and Luke and holds that the literary relationship is due to Luke's direct use of Matthew in those places. You're right that even with Luke's use of Matthew there could be other traditions that were available.

I think you've pointed out the main logical flaw in the Three-Source theory (Mark, Q, and Matthew as sources for Luke): if Luke used Matthew, then is Q necessary? Ron Price claims that with the 3ST, Q would be meaner and leaner and would make better sense as a document in its own right, without all the overlap bits. In terms of method, the basic approach is fine and has indeed been effective in the Old Testament's Documentary Hypothesis, in which a mechanical separation of the Torah into sources based on different patterns in the names of God just so happen to produce surprisingly coherent entities. The remaining issue is whether Price's smaller Q works as fine as its own coherent, document as he says it does. These judgments can be rather subjective.

Stephen

S.C.Carlson

Goulder's argument is not really a fatigue argument here. Rather, he's arguing that Matthean text would have made enough sense to its author that there's no need to conjecture that it must have originally lacked Matt 26:68 ("Who hit you?"). This conjecture (which is not even listed in the NA27 apparatus) is necessary for the standard Streeter-Neirynck solution to the Minor Agreement at Mark 14:65.

(I suppose Goulder's approach to this parallel, however, eliminates Matt 26:68 as a possible example of editorial fatigue in redacting Mark, but the main interest over this parallel has been accounting for the Minor Agreement, not evidence for fatigue.)

Stephen

Ben C Smith

Which conjecture, while not necessarily untenable, I for one find rather unlikely. Rather, the who hit you agreement stands out as one of what I would call the major agreements against Mark.

Yes. I currently regard Matthew 26.68 as an example of fatigue. Do you think that Goulder is on to something? Or do you think his analysis lacks a little? Personally, I find it unnecessary to resort to that kind of counter-conjecture just to establish a text (who hit you) for which there is no alternate tradition. Streeter, whose acumen I respect immensely, sometimes seems to me to have spooked other critics into flimsier-than-usual arguments where none were needed in the first place. (I am somewhat less familiar with the influence of Neirynck in that regard.) It seems to me that anyone wishing to remove who hit you from the text of Matthew will always be on the defensive. Those wishing to go with the unanimous text at that point do not need, IMHO, any special conjectural weapon.

Farmer, IIRC, has a rather different take on why Matthew 26.68 stands on its own, does he not?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

If one demonstrates that Luke knew Matthew, then in a strict, clinical, logical sense Q is not necessary. I am not certain, however, that the strict, clinical, logical approach always works for history. If Mark, for instance, had been lost to history, it would not have been strictly necessary to posit it hypothetically as an explanation for Matthew and Luke. We would have been free to say that Matthew composed freely, and Luke copied from him (or even vice versa).

Yet Mark, while not logically necessary, is there; we have it in writing. Is some sayings text or tradition (calling it Q might mislead the reader), while not logically necessary, perhaps there too, but without the good fortune of having been preserved for posterity?

For me it is the internal evidence that sometimes points to a sayings source of some kind. I would be very interested to read the Farrer response to what Kloppenborg, for example, argues at Matthew 10.24-39. I have a chart drawn up on my site, and it certainly looks to me like Matthew copying from either Luke or some sayings text makes sense while Luke copying from Matthew seems arbitrary (dispersing the units into five blocks, but keeping them all in the same order throughout his gospel).

Also, it looks to me like Matthew had some text or tradition very much like Luke 14.15-24 in front of him when he decided to distort the story into the muddle that we now have at Matthew 22.1-13.

In the broadest sense, no, a sayings source is not externally necessary if Luke knew Matthew (or if Matthew knew Luke, for that matter), but certain internal details IMHO may demand some kind of third-party vector.

Ben.

Boro Nut

Not directly, no. But he could easily have learned of his existence first hand from James Bond.

Boro Nut