Adam

My thesis of seven written eyewitnesses records to Jesus means that some of them are in gJohn. This is not a standard scholarly position currently, but nevertheless I am wondering whether anyone knows of a theory interweaving Q and John. I hold that Nicodemus wrote the Johannine Discourses, with the earlier ones rather misrepresenting what Jesus basically taught. I have found numerous sections of q1 from the Sermon on the Mount that make sense spliced with comparable sections of John chapters 7 through 10. My understanding would be that Jesus said some things like Q in Jerusalem, but Nicodemus did not write the Q parallels, just the blow-back from the hostile audience reaction.

My wider thesis holds that in addition to some Q passages obviously in gMark, much of the narrative in Mark is also Aramaic Q material copied into gMark. There is also the intermediate case in which Jesus is accused of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, which many scholars believe comes in from both Q and the other tradition from Ur-Marcus. Accordingly, my first example is Mark 3:13-30 as a lead-in to John 7:11-39, 50-52, where he is accused in verse 20 of being demon-possessed.

Second, there is Matthew 5:1-16 in which the light and darkness motif is found also in John 8:12-27.
Third, Matthew 5:16-37, 7:15-23 is rather condemnatory, leading to the more extreme John 8:28-59.
Fourth, Matthew 5:28-7:14 leads up to the sheep-gate image in John 10:1-18.
Fifth, not particularly well illustrated in Q, but certainly a knotty issue for Synoptic scholars, did Jesus portray himself as someone very special as a messiah, the Christ, the Son of Man, or God? The question is asked at John 10:24 and answered in 10:25-41.

The above provides underpinning for my new project to write down the earliest gospel sources in the order in which they were written. The other necessary part of it is the Passion Narrative mostly from gJohn.

Adam

I appreciate the forbearance of all of you from embarrassing me about my proposed poor methodology in the OP. Everybody knows that the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 -7) contains "M", Matthean material in addition to Q. Proving similar motifs from this later material to gJohn would not help prove any of gJohn came from eyewitnesses. Furthermore, even recognized Q material contains both q1 and q2 strands (or more) and any later q2 materials would not help either.

gLuke has a similar problem with L and q2 material that is intermixed with q1, but is the better methodological choice because it allows simple scholarly comparison with the standard Q texts as established by Kloppenborg and Mack and others.

Here are my substitutions so far for the comparable places in the OP:
Second, there is Luke 11:33-35 in which the light and darkness motif is found also in John 8:12-27.
Third, Luke 6:43-44, 46-49;10:16, 12:56-59, 13: 26-27 is rather condemnatory, leading to the more extreme John 8:28-59.
Fourth, Luke 13:24-27 leads up to the sheep-gate image in John 10:1-18.

Adam

It’s time now to launch here on FRDB my Earliest Aramaic Gospels, and on its own thread, Early Aramaic Gospels
Explanatory notations will have to appear on that thread, but bigger source-critical issues would be best addressed here in this thread. John up through John 17 I present as what Nicodemus wrote, using Teeple’s translation and the codes he used for his various sources. See my rationale at Gospel Eyewitnesses post #38
I find in all cases where Teeple used code “G” (for Gnostic) the saying is very early and the most likely to be like q1. I don’t find the “E” (for Editor) code to be as different in style as Teeple believes, but Teeple objects to the ideology. Thus I take pains to show every switch from the one to the other, so the reader can make up his own mind whether the E material is later commentary and redacting. (I also include some “S” Source passages that I attribute to this writer and not to the Signs Gospel.) I find it impossible to tell whether this stage-setting was done by the original note-taker (presumably Nicodemus) or someone later. Note that the characterization of “the Jews” is particularly negative in E, but the word literally means “Judeans”, and in the original text may have read “we” as Nicodemus was himself a Judean (and even in the power structure that was particularly Jesus’s target) and taking offense at what Jesus said. Presumably at the feasts were lots of Galileans, and those among them who believed in Jesus stood out against the great mass of Judeans who did not. To help keep some perspective here, consider whether what now reads “Jews” may have been “we” or “us” as originally transcribed. The main consideration is that the Johannine Discourses preceding John 12 were accumulated as evidence against Jesus and as extracts may misrepresent what Jesus said by distortion and losing context.
The earliest written gospel eyewitness records include q1 (always from Luke in my method here) starting with John the Baptist and then to the ministry of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark. My theory includes (what is obviously true) that some Q is in Mark, but also that much narrative material from Q is in Mark. These passages in Mark are not paralleled with exactness in Luke, showing both gospels got this independently from the original Aramaic, thus they may be as early as (or not much later than) the q1 passages. These Triple-Tradition passages I call qT (for Twelve-Source) are not so clearly early as the q1, so citing them in Mark helps preserve the distinctness. See my rationale at Post #5 (and the latter portion of Post #4) in
Gospel Eyewitnesses CF Post #5
(Much expanded over my post #74 in Gospel Eyewitnesses on FRDB)

Adam

You should know by now that this thread “Splicing Q and gJohn” has taken “final” form as “Early Aramaic Gospels” in which qT is shown from Mark, q1 from Luke, the Passion Narrative from John 18 and 19, and the Discourses of course from the rest of John. ( have only presented four instalments thus far. see Early Aramaic Gospels. ) I propose to present the next tier of eyewitness sources similarly as each source drawn from one canonical gospel. The part of Mark that has no connection to Q (nor already published as the Passion Narrative) I give the old-fashioned name “Ur-Marcus” and can conveniently draw from Mark. Special Luke or “L” has to be listed from Luke. The only additional source I want to show from John is the Signs Source, of course to be shown from John.
The complication is that I had thought about presenting q2 from Luke, giving an overlap problem with L. q2 is certainly early because it underlies both Matthew and Luke. However, that does not in itself make it any earlier than any of the three others I want to show from this tier. The real problem for me is that I don’t regard it as an eyewitness source, or at most of less value as such. The q2 author had very little contact with Jesus, perhaps none at all directly.

I’m now asking whether anyone objects to leaving q2 out of the picture. If it needs to go in, what gospel text should I select for it? I could use Matthew, as its verses have close (sometimes identical) parallels with Luke. That doesn’t seem proper, however, as the scholarly world has a preference for the text as in Luke, and Burton Mack doesn’t even list the parallel verses in his appendix in The Lost Gospel of Q.

Do I need to splice in Q if it’s only the lesser text, q2?
Any other methodological advice (or whatever)?

Adam

I’m sticking with leaving out q2 from either of the first two tiers of eyewitness gospel sources, but adding in the complication again of splitting John into two sources in each tier. Yes, I have this second tier as "Gospel Sources" about finished, but I'll hold off presenting it until I finish my instalments in "Early Aramaic Gospels". The set together could revert to my methodological title "Gospel Eyewitnesses".

Here's how I'll explain myself when presenting John 13:
[I’ll be switching gears in the second tier regarding passages from John. Whereas in Early Aramaic Gospels the earlier (basically 17) chapters of John were from the Discourse Source (G and much of E) by Nicodemus and the remainder could be reserved to present the Passion Narrative (S and G) by John Mark, now in this second tier of eyewitnesses the first 12 chapters of John contain primarily Andrew’s Signs Source (S) which does not appears in John 13 or 21 at all. Therefore the narrative source in these later chapters has to be by default the E writer (ordinarily the Editor) who I identify as John the Apostle. Yes, that makes eight sections instead of seven, because I split up the q portions from the Apostle Matthew into q1 in Luke and qT in Mark.]

I had been thinking about making a third pass through the gospels to pick up all significant passages not covered already, namely Matthean, Marcan interpolation, q2, Infancy Narratives, and the Editor and Redactor in John. Then the three could be spread over two pages two columns with a fourth column for footnotes and commentary. I think that would be an editing and publishing nightmare anyway, and would prefer to focus on my essential discovery of seven written eyewitness records.

Huon

If the eyewitnesses of the gospels prove (as you write) the veraciousness of the gospels, then the veracious gospels prove reciprocally the veraciousness of the eyewitnesses.

Vicious circle.

Adam

Now that the first pass through the gospels picking out the earliest eyewitness sources as been completed on Early Aramaic Gospels, I’ll say that my earlier experience with Gospel Eyewitnesses has not been repeated. It’s good that there are fewer unsubstantiated dismissals, but I would have liked more methodological criticism. As the title of this thread indicates, I expected some comment on whether q1 could really be argued as similar to the Johannine Discourses. Had I picked out a proper set of q1 to include and q2 to exclude? (As it happens, I have just read that the key figure, Kloppenborg, proceeded with his division into q1, q2, and q3 even though he believed Q was originally written in Greek. This ties in with my case that Kloppenborg, Mack et all simply used subjective ideological grounds for their separations. I argue that q2 can be shown to stem from Greek, leaving q1 as derived from Aramaic.) Most of all I expected protests for my qT concept that even “Marcan” narratives may be from Q, if like q1 the verbal similarities can be close but without long exact sequences. It surprises me that posters here are willing to grant me that Matthew/Levi may be the eyewitness author of much of gMatthew through his extensive involvement in the underlying text of gMark.

Nor have I heard any protest at dividing up gJohn between two first underlying sources which have in the past been regarded as late incursions of Christological Theology (John 1 to 17) and the Passion Narrative derived from the Synoptics. I even hoped for some technical improvements about whether specific verses in gJohn belonged in the source and whether I had picked the most likely original verses between the three (or even four) gospel possibilities.

I have seen that there are lots of keen thinkers here on this forum. It is a shame that no one seems willing to apply such talents and knowledge towards an unfamiliar set of premises (i. e. that nothing at all can be taken for granted). Even though I have (for now at least) foresworn a third or fourth pass through the gospels to all detailed notes or commentary, maybe someone would like to play Devil’s Advocate for me?

Meanwhile, my second pass is ready to present, featuring an Ur-Marcus strata in Mark, Special Lucan (L) in Luke, and splitting John between Signs Source in John 1 to 12 and the Beloved Disciple’s story in Luke 13 and 21. What goes in it could be affected by changes to Early Aramaic Gospels, so the sooner I get useful critiques the better for me.

outhouse

proselytizing much ?


how many other forums have you copy/pasted this to?

Adam

You only proselytize to this forum? (One would hope.)

Adam

Jay Harrington’s entire 2000 The Lucan Passion Narrative: The Marcan Material…
Is for most pages of each chapter accessible at Harrington
Reading 1000 pages of detailed critique may seem tiresome, but it’s certainly better than reading 100,000 pages of the works this is drawn from (much in German and French, not too painful in Harrington’s excerpts left untranslated).
How the scholars disagree! Some theories prevail for a while, fade, yet remain tenable, such as Proto-Luke.
It’s hard to believe that some elementals seem unnoticed. By the Proto-Luke theory, Mark was copied in later to the document that was already Q + L. Much of this is so close that copying can hardly be denied, and that it was in the reverse direction from Luke into Mark seems hardly worth considering. But has no one noticed that the passages that are not so exact are also the passages that break the usually-touted Lucan dependency on the Marcan order? It hardly seems possible that by coincidence these two sets of passages just happen to be the same? It’s also strange that the Proto-Luke theory waned in the very period when the Twelve-Source theory arose about Mark. Sherman Johnson wrote about (against) the Proto-Luke theory, but later advocated for the Twelve-Source theory. Did he never notice that the Twelve-Source had different characteristics in its (supposed) copying into Luke, that there was less verbal exactness and that there was less chronological agreement? But then the early Twelve-Source derivations were tendentious, so these parallels would not have been there. But now that I have based Twelve-Source on the (lack of) verbal exactness, I have a better list which can therefore also reveal the chronological problems. Presumably the latter accrue from what I view as an original Q that was translated independently towards Mark and Luke and then subject to change also in the incorporation into the gospels themselves. But alas! The heyday of these theories came when the Gospel of Thomas discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945 had not yet made it apparent that that there was Q material in Mark. Everybody since has just assumed that what came into Mark from Q got copied into Luke in the same manner as the non-Q material in Mark? Such an oversight! The presumption of Marcan priority has been too sweeping to be questioned, even at the (Q) edges?
In 1930 H. Balmforth in The Gospel of Luke…. (pg. 12, in Harrington pg. 294) wrote that no style identified the Marcan material supposedly copied into Luke by the Proto-Luke theory. However, this presumes that the Q portions had not already been included in Proto-Luke (in Q or Proto-Luke style) and that anything truly copied in would be consistently Marcan or Lucan style. Where Balmforth (and presumably everyone else) was looking for one style, there could be four! His book went through many printings. The difference is not in style, but in the contrasts between Mark and Luke in verbal exactitude.
I have not been getting helpful critiques here, so I’m spending time as above researching the literature for facts and opinions supporting or refuting me.