anthony93

Yeah, it's hard to figure what the "party line" is there. Maybe it's "there isn't one". I Googled "Q" and a good percentage, maybe even half, seemed anti-Q, mostly, but not all, for doctrinal reasons.

Doherty's thesis rests, in large part, on his analysis of Q. While I find the Mythicist conclusion (i.e., its ALL myth) to be overstating the case, there are a lot of good points in the book. I have Challenging the Verdict as well, but honestly, I find the format annoying (if he had done the "your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury" bit at the beginning of each chapter it would have been fine, but the whole book?), so I have been picking at it. Not so much about Q there, at least so far. Anyway, I am still wondering about Q. Especially the strata. I know that various theories about Historical Jesus use similar concepts, i.e. Jesus wouldn't have said that because it's apocalyptic, it must have been added later, Jesus wouldn't have done that, he was just a "peasant". etc. Is it a valid concept (maybe used to draw overly broad conclusions)? Or just bad reasoning?

Evan

Hi Ted,

I think your assessment is indeed plausible. Personally, I am reluctant to read too much into the famous quotation of Papias, "Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew (Aramaic?) language, and everyone translated them as well as he could." The problem is that the quotation, assuming it is accurate, is removed from its literary and historical context. The general discussion relates to what Papias recorded concerning Mark and Matthew.

Note that at face value, the single most dramatic difference between Mark and Matthew is that the latter contains an enormous collection of sayings that do not exist in Mark. Thus, the question Papias may have been addressing is the authenticity of the sayings in canonical Matthew. Where had they come from? Why were they not in Mark? How could all of these sayings in Greek (as they existed in Matthew) have come from Jesus? I can see the possibility (as you suggest) that Papias was defending the authenticity of the sayings in Matthew by claiming he had collected them in the original language and subsequently translated them as well as he could. If this is the context of the reference, then there is no inference to be drawn that Papias was referring to anything that might have looked either like Q, or to a "sayings gospel" of any type.

Evan

TedM

Evan, I agree that we don't know if Papias had ever seen anything other than a canonical Matthew.

If he was providing a tradition that explains how the sayings ended up in a Greek canonical Matthew, I am curious as to whether that tradition is reasonable. Is there a good reason to doubt this claim/tradition? Do we have any traditions of Matthew by the time of Papias other than him being one of the disciples, known as the tax collector? Is there any evidence for the origin of the sayings in Matthew that aren't in Mark? Mark has sayings too--where those sayings exist in Matthew, does Matthew's version differ from Mark's--indicating perhaps that Mark was aware of some of the same sayings but that Matthew's version wasn't influenced by Mark's?

ted

Evan

Ted,

You raise a number of questions that it would take a book to address, so I don't think anyone could do them justice in the short space of a forum post. Few scholars today would accept the notion that Matthew was actually composed by one of the disciples. Matthew is commonly understood to be a work of the late first century that was attributed pseudonymously to the apostle Matthew in order to imbue it with apostolic authority. I think this assessment is accurate.

The vast majority of the material in Mark, certainly over 90%, is replicated in some form in Matthew, although Matthew often edits or epitomizes the Markan texts for more efficient presentation. Matthew typically eliminates what he considers to be superfluous verbiage in Mark. So some of the Markan stories appear in compressed form in Matthew. An example is the healing of Jairus' daughter, which takes up 21 verses in Mark 5:22-5:43. Matthew tells the same story in a condensed form (merely nine verses) in Matt 9:18-26.

The actual sayings of Jesus in Mark tend to be replicated more faithfully by Matthew than the non-sayings narrative text. However, Matthew edits or corrects the Markan sayings material whenever he feels it is required. One example of this is Mark 10:19 = Matt 19:18. In this verse Mark has Jesus say, incorrectly, that "do not defraud" is one of the Ten Commandments. Matthew understandably edits this reference out.

Some of the non-Markan sayings material that is present in Matthew is also found in identical or similar form in Luke. This, by and large, is the material Q theorists believe originated in a sayings gospel Q. However, beyond the material that appears in both Matt and Luke, there is quite an array of sayings in Matthew that are unique to Matthew, and also an array of sayings in Luke that are unique to Luke. The material that is unique to either Matthew or Luke is, with some exceptions, not imagined by Q theorists to have been derived from Q.

Since all of the sayings material that is either common to Luke and Matthew, or unique to either Luke or Matthew, did not appear in the Gospel records until the post-70 CE era, it is easiest for me to imagine that it was, by and large, a product of the post-70 CE era.

Evan

robto

I agree with you about Doherty. Personally, I find the arguments for Q convincing, but the arguments for its stratification less so (see post #8 in the thread I linked earlier).

As for the specific point in your OP, I think Doherty would say that this passage was a perfect opportunity to insert a prophecy of Jesus's death, as for example in Mark 10:33-34.

TedM

Thanks Evan. With the 4 gospels we have evidence of at least 4 independant sources of various sayings and doings which appear in one gospel and not another. We also have evidence of the pulling together of various sayings source information in Matthew and Luke (Matthew uses Mark, Matthew uses Luke, Luke says he used material from eyewitnesses). Luke also references "many narratives" which came before his work. It seems likely to me that taking all of these data into account that there was a pre-70 tradition of sayings and doings. As such, I don't see a good reason to reject Papias' tradition regarding Matthew and Mark, if they are applied to pre-canonical works. IOW even though we may be able to say that one work preceded another, we cannot say that the unique material in a work was 'invented' and as such, the possibility of real sources behind such material is reasonable. That's my perspective, but I readily admit to not having done any kind of extensive analysis. Thanks for your insights.

ted

Evan

Ted,

I don't disagree at all. I think we can safely assume there were many collections of sayings and/or doings in circulation prior to the formation of the canonical gospels. Martin Hengel points out that missionaries and evangelists would most likely have carried notes on the traditions of Jesus to assist them in their preaching. We may imagine these would have included simple lists of sayings.

In preparation for the writing of his gospel, it is reasonable to suppose that Matthew would have compiled an inventory of all known sayings which he then edited, translated, organized, and selected from for inclusion in his gospel. I would not reject Papias' statement, but merely suggest that this preparatory research by Matthew is what he may have been referring to--not a separately published "sayings gospel Q" per se.

Evan

anthony93

Yes.
And he'd be wrong Two reasons:
1. In the above passage, Jesus waits till he is alone with the apostles. No big deal there but it fits better into the narrative plus it a nudge-wink to the reader, we get the inside story, those silly "Jews" don't get it,after all.

2. More importantly, if Mark (or Luke or Matthew) had, it would have been (rightly) snagged as an interpolation. Doherty ends up defending (same page as the quote about Luke-Q) the Q saying (its in all the synoptics but I'll stick with Mark)
as not really forshadowing the death of Jesus. So, I agree Luke Chapter 11
would have been a good place for it, yet he doesn't go for it. There is definitely mythologizing (that a word?) in the Gospels but it isn't as deliberate as some make out. So, at some point I think it fair to say that the most likely explaination is that it does, in some sense, reflect an actual recollection of an event. Not conclusively, sure. But more likely.