Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Adam · 09-17-2013, 01:58 PM

MacDonald, Dennis R.—Not a Joke
Dr. MacDonald’s middle name would unfortunately make his most-radical theories to be suspected as some massive joke on scholarship, so I won’t give it here. Homer and Vergil as the proto-type for the gospels, particularly Mark? Not outlandish enough, so his latest is Two Shipwrecked Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk), that all our canonical gospels are based on apocryphal gospels, and the proof of this is based on a commentary by Papias on one that is somewhat like what is commonly called Q. I applaud MacDonald’s Q+ that recognizes that this Q+, including much narrative, was available for use in Mark. That part of his Q+/Papias Hypothesis is the easiest to accept, but is the point most unsatisfactory to one of the two reviewers in the February 2013 Review of Biblical Literature, John Kloppenborg (probably most objectionable being that Q+ winds up more like a narrative gospel than a sayings gospel). This link (including a listing of the verses MacDonald includes in Q+) should get you beyond the paywall that even blocked me by the twelve-month rule at my academic library:
http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8565_9389.pdf

The Christian scholar John McGrath gives MacDonald’s book even more respect as a possible great breakthrough to a new paradigm. With MacDonald getting two favorable reviews out of two, we must take him seriously, and I urge you to read McGrath’s review as well:
http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8565_9390.pdf

The preview at Amazon (for the prohibitively expensive book) is also helpful, particularly the diagram of sources in the preface page xv, showing the diagram linking the sources to the eventual canonical gospels.

Two Shipwrecked Gospels: The Logoi of Jesus and Papias's Exposition of Logia about the Lord (Early Christianity and Its Literature)

In MacDonald’s acclaimed masterpiece of new methodology, he works primarily from a work preserved in few fragment about a source that is not extant at all. Papias’s commentary is called his Exposition of Logia about the Lord. It was in five books, of which nothing is known for sure about the fifth. MacDonald tracks down every fragment and allusion for centuries thereafter to determine the nature and contents of the underlying “The Logoi of Jesus”, his Q+. Supposedly this is better than studying the gospels themselves. By definition a commentary comes later, and we have so little of it that we don’t what it comments upon, whether something like our Matthew or a translation of its underlying Aramaic source.

In spite of the critical acclaim, MacDonald lists himself as editor, not author, and there is enough in the preview to show that he based himself on the Italian editorial works of Enrico Norelli, Papia di Hierapolis, Esposizione delgi oracoli dei Signore, 2005.

MacDonald regarded Q+ as a strategic rewriting of Deuteronomy. Papias thought gMatthew and Q+ were both translations of the original Matthew in Hebrew. Q+ was used by all three Synoptics, thus it is included in Triple-Tradition material. MacDonald tries to reduce the gospels down to only one independent source, thus it is a great challenge to Historical Jesus research and to Christianity. If it is not all a joke, or just MacDonald over-playing his hand.

Granted that the Synoptic Problem continues to be knotty, wouldn’t it yet be more likely that such a flimsy structure as MacDonald’s would be less probable than my own that argues from Higher Criticism of extant texts that seven written eyewitness records underlie the gospels?

For those of you getting tired to my saying that there is nothing going in gospel source-criticism, I have turned up something that may be worth its own thread, at least here in FRDB.

Toto · 09-17-2013, 03:48 PM

Dennis McDonald is a knowledgeable, respected scholar who enjoys the respect of his peers. He uses fairly standard methods of literary analysis, recognizing their limitations. Your imaginary eyewitnesses have no support anywhere.

The second review is by James McGrath, not John McGrath.

Adam · 09-17-2013, 05:06 PM

It wasn't his brother? Whoops, that was 2000 years ago.
Yes, I started this thread because MacDonald is a real challenge, even though working at best with a (non-extant) text 80 years after the fact. I work with three sources within the four gospels for which I present evidence they were written (at least in note form) during Jesus's ministry.

Too bad MacDonald's narrative-inclusive Q+ does not closely correspond to my own similar concept, even though he agrees with me that Matthew wrote it. As Kloppenborg notes, MacDonald's force of his ideas often overwhelms the evidence.

MrMacSon · 09-18-2013, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

.. I applaud MacDonald’s Q+ that recognizes that this Q+, including much narrative, was available for use in Mark.

Well, it seems

Quote:

MacDonald offers an alternative reconstruction of Q and an alternative solution to the Synoptic Problem: the Q+/Papias Hypothesis. To do so, he reconstructs and interprets two lost books about Jesus ...

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Shipwrecke.../dp/1589836901

As James McGrath says

Quote:

"While some have occasionally suggested that Papias’s Hebrew Matthew might have been Q, that proposal has always seemed problematic for numerous reasons. MacDonald does something different. He expands Q and posits that [expanded] Q+ (The Logoi of Jesus) was not a Hebrew Matthew but a text similar to but different from the Gospel of Matthew, leading Papias to erroneously posit that the similarities between these Greek works was due to differing translations of an imagined Hebrew original."

"MacDonald thus brings together the Farrar and Two Source Hypotheses into a synthesis with the testimony of other early Christian writers about the writings they knew. This in itself is quite an accomplishment. It is impossible to say whether, ... this will become the consensus solution to the Synoptic Problem. But at the very least, MacDonald offers a possible way of preserving what is strongest in the current competing paradigms, while also identifying their weaknesses, and finding a third option that may prove satisfactory to proponents of both."

John Kloppenborg explains

Quote:

MacDonald begins with Papias’s now-fragmentary Exposition of the Logia of the Lord, attested in a few citations of Eusebius, Apollinaris of Laodicea, and Philip of Side, Andrew of Caesarea, and John of Scythopolis. Critical to Macdonald’s case is the famous citation of Papias in Hist. eccl. 3.39.16, Ματθαῖος µὲν οὖν Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρµήνευσεν δ’αὐτὰ ὡς ἦν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος, which MacDonald interprets to mean that Papias had two slightly differing Greek copies of the “logia” that he wrongly assumed to be independent renderings of a Semitic original. One of these two was Greek Matthew; the other, as his book argues, is Q+/(The Logoi of Jesus), or a much expanded collection of sayings and stories, overlapping Greek Matthew, but arranged somewhat differently. As Hist. eccl. 3.39.15 indicates, Papias also had a copy of Mark, which he assumed to be a partial collection of Jesus material and, in comparison to Matthew and Q+/(The Logoi of Jesus), out of order.

MacDonald then argues that Luke, written in the early second century (following Richard I. Pervo, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelist and the Apologists [Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge, 2006]), had access not only to Mark and both the “Matthaean” Gospels but also Papias’s Exposition of the Logia of the Lord.

ie. there are several levels of "if" that requires scholarly discussion.

Adam · 09-18-2013, 08:45 PM

In his endeavor to strip down to just one source for the gospels, even Mythicists should
find comfort in MacDonald. On the other hand, the author of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is also an expert on Papias and his exposition. He cites Norelli and is even aware of MacDonald's 2012 book. Add Richard Bauckham to our reading list:
Papias and the gospels
It's a rather long and dry paper mostly about what the work Exegesis means, but this reflects back on what Q+ is, whether Logia is sayings, narrative, or both.

Bauckham hints at but avoids developing the relevance of his position that John the Elder wrote the Gospel of John, as he believes it was known to Papias.

Adam · 09-23-2013, 04:10 PM

This thread is not a trap. Dennis MacDonald is on your side, and I have provided helpful links to him. I'm just trying to be a helpful scholar.

Anyone else have useful links to the Q+/Papias Hypothesis?

09-17-2013, 01:58 PM	#1
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	MacDonald, Dennis R.—Not a Joke MacDonald, Dennis R.—Not a Joke Dr. MacDonald’s middle name would unfortunately make his most-radical theories to be suspected as some massive joke on scholarship, so I won’t give it here. Homer and Vergil as the proto-type for the gospels, particularly Mark? Not outlandish enough, so his latest is Two Shipwrecked Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk), that all our canonical gospels are based on apocryphal gospels, and the proof of this is based on a commentary by Papias on one that is somewhat like what is commonly called Q. I applaud MacDonald’s Q+ that recognizes that this Q+, including much narrative, was available for use in Mark. That part of his Q+/Papias Hypothesis is the easiest to accept, but is the point most unsatisfactory to one of the two reviewers in the February 2013 Review of Biblical Literature, John Kloppenborg (probably most objectionable being that Q+ winds up more like a narrative gospel than a sayings gospel). This link (including a listing of the verses MacDonald includes in Q+) should get you beyond the paywall that even blocked me by the twelve-month rule at my academic library: http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8565_9389.pdf The Christian scholar John McGrath gives MacDonald’s book even more respect as a possible great breakthrough to a new paradigm. With MacDonald getting two favorable reviews out of two, we must take him seriously, and I urge you to read McGrath’s review as well: http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8565_9390.pdf The preview at Amazon (for the prohibitively expensive book) is also helpful, particularly the diagram of sources in the preface page xv, showing the diagram linking the sources to the eventual canonical gospels. Two Shipwrecked Gospels: The Logoi of Jesus and Papias's Exposition of Logia about the Lord (Early Christianity and Its Literature) In MacDonald’s acclaimed masterpiece of new methodology, he works primarily from a work preserved in few fragment about a source that is not extant at all. Papias’s commentary is called his Exposition of Logia about the Lord. It was in five books, of which nothing is known for sure about the fifth. MacDonald tracks down every fragment and allusion for centuries thereafter to determine the nature and contents of the underlying “The Logoi of Jesus”, his Q+. Supposedly this is better than studying the gospels themselves. By definition a commentary comes later, and we have so little of it that we don’t what it comments upon, whether something like our Matthew or a translation of its underlying Aramaic source. In spite of the critical acclaim, MacDonald lists himself as editor, not author, and there is enough in the preview to show that he based himself on the Italian editorial works of Enrico Norelli, Papia di Hierapolis, Esposizione delgi oracoli dei Signore, 2005. MacDonald regarded Q+ as a strategic rewriting of Deuteronomy. Papias thought gMatthew and Q+ were both translations of the original Matthew in Hebrew. Q+ was used by all three Synoptics, thus it is included in Triple-Tradition material. MacDonald tries to reduce the gospels down to only one independent source, thus it is a great challenge to Historical Jesus research and to Christianity. If it is not all a joke, or just MacDonald over-playing his hand. Granted that the Synoptic Problem continues to be knotty, wouldn’t it yet be more likely that such a flimsy structure as MacDonald’s would be less probable than my own that argues from Higher Criticism of extant texts that seven written eyewitness records underlie the gospels? For those of you getting tired to my saying that there is nothing going in gospel source-criticism, I have turned up something that may be worth its own thread, at least here in FRDB.

09-23-2013, 04:10 PM	#6
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	MacDonald--Not a trap This thread is not a trap. Dennis MacDonald is on your side, and I have provided helpful links to him. I'm just trying to be a helpful scholar. Anyone else have useful links to the Q+/Papias Hypothesis?

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09-17-2013, 03:48 PM	#2
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Dennis McDonald is a knowledgeable, respected scholar who enjoys the respect of his peers. He uses fairly standard methods of literary analysis, recognizing their limitations. Your imaginary eyewitnesses have no support anywhere. The second review is by James McGrath, not John McGrath.

09-17-2013, 05:06 PM	#3
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	It wasn't his brother? Whoops, that was 2000 years ago. Yes, I started this thread because MacDonald is a real challenge, even though working at best with a (non-extant) text 80 years after the fact. I work with three sources within the four gospels for which I present evidence they were written (at least in note form) during Jesus's ministry. Too bad MacDonald's narrative-inclusive Q+ does not closely correspond to my own similar concept, even though he agrees with me that Matthew wrote it. As Kloppenborg notes, MacDonald's force of his ideas often overwhelms the evidence.

09-18-2013, 08:45 PM	#5
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	In his endeavor to strip down to just one source for the gospels, even Mythicists should find comfort in MacDonald. On the other hand, the author of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is also an expert on Papias and his exposition. He cites Norelli and is even aware of MacDonald's 2012 book. Add Richard Bauckham to our reading list: Papias and the gospels It's a rather long and dry paper mostly about what the work Exegesis means, but this reflects back on what Q+ is, whether Logia is sayings, narrative, or both. Bauckham hints at but avoids developing the relevance of his position that John the Elder wrote the Gospel of John, as he believes it was known to Papias.

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