Logical

So gLuke and gMatthew have two sets of shared passages, let's call them X and Y. We know that X also exists in Mark so we conclude that they both copied X from Mark. That leaves us with Y, and scholars hypothesize that they got it from another source, called Q.

Question: How do we know that Luke did not get Y from Matthew, or vice versa? Why assume there must be another source?

In fact, how do we know that Luke didn't get both X and Y from Matthew, or even Matthew from Luke?

Vorkosigan

We don't. In fact the Minor Agreements suggest Luke knew Matthew. But the order of Q stuff in Luke is different from Matthew. If there is no Q, it requires that Luke go through Matthew, then "pick out" all the not-Mark stuff and treat that as a separate source which he can re-arrange.

Vorkosigan

tanya

There is no Q. There is only an idea of Q.

Is there some evidence from the patristic literature that this approach was never followed? Origen? Tertullian? Clement? Eusebius?

I am unable to understand why this process of selective exclusion/inclusion of material is deemed exotic. At what point in human history did this process become as conventional as it is today?

Which is more difficult:

To accept the existence of an ancient document for which one has no evidence, or

to accept the idea that various authors lifted sections of text from one another, sometimes without attribution?

yalla

"Questioning Q" by Goodacre and Perrin has a chapter by Ken Olson titled "Unpicking on the Farrer Theory".
Basically it looks a how ancient authors utilised more than one source and then placed multi-source material into their own work.
This is pre 'cut and paste' days.
I believe it is accurate to say that Olson finds that the way the author of "Luke' incorporated material directly from his minor source g"Matthew' is consistent with standard practice of the time.
You can find the work titled as "How Luke Was Written" here:
http://kaimoi.blogspot.com.au/2005/0...s-written.html

tanya

Thanks for that link, yalla

yalla

No probs tanya except that ....I don't think it works!
Doesn't for me anyway when I visited a few minutes ago.
:huh:
It used to work some time ago but I haven't been there for some time.
You may have to get the book but...my memory is that the PhD thesis was better [more detail] than the chapter in the book.

However my reason for linking was to show that a common reason that is given by Q supporters for author "Luke" not having copied author"Matthew' was the illogical arrangement of such material is in fact, according to Olson, incorrect and thus rendering Q less likely.
Olson is/was a student of Goodacre.

Logical

It just occurred to me that Luke and Matthew couldn't have copied from each other. If Luke copied from Matthew (or vice versa), they would have agreed on stories like the birth and death of Jesus, and we wouldn't have seen differences there. Why would one copy the Q material from the other, but then change the nativity and death plots? Don't such differences suggest that each was unaware of the other, and both independently got their Q material (which didn't include the birth and death stories) from a third source?

Now of course, that third source could just be Mark, but if they had access to Mark, then why didn't they copy the death of Jesus story from Mark accurately? Perhaps the version of Mark that they had didn't include the death story? Or, I guess, there was after all a totally separate source that all three Gospels independently copied from.

Meatros

I don't know much about the hypothetical "Q", but must "Q" be a document? The reason I ask is because I read Alan Dundes 'The Bible as Folklore' recently and his suggestion that the NT could have arisen from folklore type origins is interesting.

yalla

We know [if we accept "Markan" priority] that both "Matthew' and "Luke" copied from "Mark".
But both made substantial changes to that original material, including additions and variations.
And both added considerable new material of their own - from whatever source[s] [obviously one was Jewish scriptures].
Neither felt constrained to exactly and slavishly merely copy the original material from "Mark", nor stick to the Jewish material without adapting and amending such to suit their own varying individual agendas.
They were more than mere copyists or editors, they were original creative storytellers with their own stories to tell, whatever the real, purported or imagined sources of such.

Bingo the Clown-O

This:

A Monopoly on Marcan Priority? Fallacies at the Heart of Q