Ben C Smith

Okay, I understand that and certainly sympathize. But those agreements do not nullify that theory because of Marcan priority; rather, they argue against it because of another hypothesis that the two-source theory puts forth, namely the independence of Matthew and Luke.

Consider this scenario (author A wrote first, author B second, author C third):

1. Author A writes: I love a rollicking tale.
2. Author B reads and copies author A, but changes this line to: I love a good story.
3. Author C has both A and B in front of him and gets to decide which version to copy. He settles on: I love a good story.

Now authors B and C agree against author A, yet author A wrote first.

So how would agreements against an author have anything in the abstract to do with whether or not that author wrote first? The third author can always pick and choose which version he or she likes.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Okay, Stephen, here is my more or less finished reply. I wrote in my last substantive post to you:

You cited two portions of the article as incorporating the characteristics of the primary author:

1.

I agree that Goodacre here touches on the characteristic writing of the primary author; however, his very language proves that such concerns are gravy so far as fatigue itself is concerned: ...is all the more plausible.... His case was plausible before; now it is even more plausible. Or so it seems to me when I read those words.

I would be quite happy with my case being plausible, even if I might have to forego it being all the more plausible.

Elsewhere Goodacre makes a very similar assessment of plausibility on other grounds (page 47):

This is particularly plausible when one notes that Matthew's account is considerably shorter than Mark's: Matthew has overlooked important details in the act of abbreviating.

Would you then elevate brevity or abbreviation to the status of criterion? I myself would not. Abbreviation is, as I am reading Goodacre here, merely a plausible reason for the observed fatigue, not its very hallmark. Likewise, IMHO, the redactional observation that you have drawn out is merely a good reason for fatigue, not its hallmark.

2.

It appears to me that you have reversed the poles here. We were discussing the primary author writing more characteristically, but you have picked out a quote about the secondary author(s) writing less characteristically. Just because Matthew and Luke (the secondary authors) are writing less characteristically does not mean that Mark (the primary author) is writing more characteristically. There may be times when the two happen at the same time, but that is not necessary.

It seems to me that in many of the examples of fatigue in the article the docile reproduction itself is not a reproduction of anything particularly characteristic of the purportedly original author. For example, when Luke in the feeding of the five thousand copies the line from Mark about the place being deserted, I do not tend to regard the desertion of the place as a characteristic Marcan element. It is just what Mark happened to have at that point in his narrative, and Luke, in following the Marcan plotline, copied it. Does this sound right to you?

I do not think it means that at all. Goodacre could have chosen to discuss a delay factor, but he did not do so.

(As an aside, I myself would not necessarily even press the later part of it. What if the author copied from his source, then changed something around later and thus ended up conflicting with what he had already copied? The sentence from page 51 of the article: On several occasions, then, an evangelist's faithfulness to his source at one point has apparently led his account into difficulties at other points, might even allow for just such a scenario, since here nothing about earlier or later is implied. Goodacre may merely be varying his wording here, and has not mentioned earlier and later because he has done so before, but I still think the opposite case would be quite possible, even if one wished to assign it a name other than fatigue. All that to say that my idea of fatigue does appear be a bit looser than yours.)

I agree in principle with this statement, and would even tend to regard more distal cases of fatigue as of better quality, as it were, than those that are more proximal. However, I do not think either remoteness or proximity necessarily affects the basic case for fatigue itself. I think you have again elevated a possible reason for fatigue to the status of criterion for fatigue.

In the final analysis, it looks to me like this proximity factor is the only standout feature of my case that might cast doubt on its merits; however, I hope to demonstrate that my case has so many other strongly positive reasons going for it as to overwhelm this potential negative.

A question of degree, but of what? Of there being fatigue at all? Or of there being a discoverable reason for the fatigue? I hold with the latter, especially since in a few cases the actual reason for the fatigue is elusive. Does anybody really know why Luke set the miraculous feeding in a city rather than in the wild? I myself do not, but it is not always necessary to point to a reason. The phenomenon of fatigue is, IMHO, discoverable on its own merits.

Goodacre has several examples of fatigue that begin after the seam, and he does not (nor should he, IMHO) classify them differently than those that began at the seam.

His mention of the beginnings of pericopes seems to me to be precisely a way of explaining why the evangelist would be writing more characteristically: ...Matthew and Luke differ from Mark at the beginning of the pericope, at the point where they are writing most characteristically.... This statement presumes that the authors write more characteristically at the seams, a not uncommon synoptic observation, IIRC, but it also seems to presume (to me, at any rate) that writing characteristically is, in fact, the real question in point. The seams are really only a reason for the author to have written more characteristically. That is why several good examples from the article do not involve the seams; the seams, while a highly likely place, are not the only place where an author might write characteristically.

Quite agreed.

I nowhere find Goodacre listing criteria per se at all. He even seems to mildly eschew such an approach when he states on page 46 that the clearest way to explain the phenomenon is to illustrate it. He sometimes describes some of his examples in terms that you are choosing to apply as criteria, but he himself did not describe them as such AFAICT, nor did he methodically apply them all, or even any subgroup of them, to all his cases to see how they would stack up against a list (whether a checklist or any other kind of list) of criteria.

In each case where he uses a point that you speak of as a criterion, it looks to me like he is using it as a bonus argument, not in any way as the basis for his original assessment of fatigue.

I think you could level the same criticism at the fatigue found in the parable of the pounds. In what follows ordinary Lucan redaction of Matthew is italicized; Lucan additions to the Matthean storyline are boldfaced; and the specific instances of fatigue are underlined. Luke 19.19-27:

And he said to [the second] also: And you are to be over five cities. And the other came, saying: Master, behold your pound, which I kept put away in a kerchief; for I was afraid of you because you are a demanding man. You take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow. He says to him: By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? Then why did you not put the money in the bank, and I would have come and collected it with interest? And [the master] said to the bystanders: Take the pound away from him and give it to the one who has the ten pounds. And they said to him: Master, he has ten pounds already. I tell you that to everyone who has shall it be given, but from the one who does not have it shall be taken away, even what he does have. But these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.

The Lucan redaction here is quite heavy. The most basic instances of editorial fatigue are the mention of the other and the mention of the ten pounds. But both instances feature in situ Lucan redaction:

1. The first instance (the other) is thoroughly Lucan; Matthew at this point retains the one who had received the one talent to match his other two instances. Luke, in other words, did not get it from Matthew; he volunteered it as a redaction of Matthew.

2. The second instance modifies pounds, another Lucan redaction; furthermore, a lot more than what you seem to regard as docile reproduction is going on here, since Luke goes on to repeat his error emphatically in the very next line (he has ten pounds already), a repetition which he again did not take over from Matthew.

Luke, IOW, after departing from Matthew and handing out cities instead of cash, is intensely interested in returning to the Matthean plot. IMHO he wishes to justify the saying of verse 26, and that justification requires the Matthean plot device in which something is taken away from the foolish slave. What he is doing here does not look to me like what you are calling docile reproduction, which from your description appears to have to either (A) be nearly verbatim or (B) embrace a characteristic feature of the primary author. Rather, Luke is actively seeking to (paraphrastically) replicate Matthew at the point which will make verse 26 meaningful.

Is docile reproduction, then, a misnomer in this case? It may be, but what I want to point out is that I have always been using that term, right or wrong, to describe all copying of the source, even highly paraphrastic replication of the basic storyline, regardless of whether the motive was laziness (true docility) or active interest.

Let me pause here for a moment. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that you are correct that my case is not one of fatigue. Even so, I would still regard it as quite a strong indication that Matthew was altering an account that looked much like the Lucan version, whatever label you wish to attach to it.

William Farmer, on page 229 of The Synoptic Problem, cites page 198 of Some Principles of Literary Criticism and Their Application to the Synoptic Problem by Ernest De Witt Burton for six ways of determining which text is primary and which is secondary. The first three of these are:

1. Manifest misunderstanding of what stands in one document on the part of the writer of the other.

2. Insertion by one writer of material not in the other, and clearly interrupting the course of thought or symmetry of plan in the other.

3. Clear omission of matter from one document which was in the other, the omission of which destroys the connection.

I think that both the Lucan parable of the pounds and the Matthean parable of the wedding feast betray signs of number 2. (I would call that fatigue; would you? Or is that a different sort of thing in your mind?)

Call it what you will, you ended post #32 with your judgment that whatever is going on, it is not a case of fatigue. Which of course begs the question: What do you think is going on?

Even without the help of Luke 14.16-24 I think the redaction critic would soon notice that the plotline in Matthew 22.2-5, 8a, 9-10 is a central unit to which the subunits in 22.6-7, 8b, 11-14 are quite peripheral and indeed contradictory. I do not know about you, but to me it seems most plain and probable on its face that Matthew had a parable like Matthew 22.2-5, 8a, 9-10 = Luke 14.16-24 before him (at least in his mind or memory) and added parts to it. Furthermore, he stumbled when he left its storyline (the awkward οι λοιποι); he stumbled when he came back to its storyline (the fatal combination of τοτε with the burning city before it and the pending nuptials after it); and he stumbled when he appended an extra bit of storyline at the end (the inexplicability of a single guest dragged in off the street without wedding clothes). If he composed this muddle from scratch, fully intending all along to tell a story about a king both hosting a feast and razing a city, how very convenient that he nevertheless offered Luke a central coherent storyline on a silver platter.

Let me put it another way. Imagine that Matthew had more seamlessly written up this parable. Imagine that the stumbles listed above did not exist. It would still be a cinch for a redaction critic to see in this parable three separate storylines. Verses 6-7 would still present a very extreme action and reaction that would still drive the story too far forward in time, and verse 8 or 9 would have to pull it back (even though we are imagining that Matthew would have pulled it back more gracefully). And verses 11-13 would still seem tagged on and quite removable.

Verses 2-5 and then 8a, 9-10, however, require each other, and only each other, for completion.

So, when we go back to the parable with the Matthean stumbles back firmly in place, and then we notice that the stumbles in fact mark off precisely the plot digression in verses 6-7 and the appendix in verses 11-13, we now have two good reasons to suppose that Matthew was redacting a source (whether hardcopy or in his memory) that lacked both the plot digression and the appendix.

Add to that the fact that both Luke and Thomas (saying 64) have just the sort of version of the parable that we are looking for to explain the Matthean muddle, and now we have three good reasons to suppose that Matthew is secondary here.

Add another reason from context. We have both noticed how the parable of the tenants appears to be encroaching on the parable of the wedding feast, and we have both noticed that Matthew has set these two parables in close conjunction. But Luke does not. Modifying the one parable to resemble the other (or, conversely, removing the parts of the one that resemble the other) and moving it into conjunction with the other (or, conversely, moving it away from the other) are two separate and independent actions; neither requires the other. It is of course possible that Luke has performed these two independent operations for two independent (sets of) reasons, but is that more probable than Matthew having performed both actions? I think not, because for Matthew it could easily have been the same reason or set of reasons; making the parables resemble one another and then locating them in the same context makes perfect sense, especially given how Matthew likes to string together similar pericopes elsewhere (the parables of the kingdom, for example, in Matthew 13).

One more note on what I believe Matthew is doing in 22.8-9. I noted in the parable of the pounds that Luke seems actively interested in returning to his Matthean plotline so that he can get in that good word in 19.26 about having and taking away. I see Matthew doing much the same thing here. Even though his story has now veered off into warfare and vengeance, he seems to me to be actively interested in returning to his Lucan plotline involving the wedding hall finally being filled. Why? Two reasons, I think. First, he knows that verses 2-5 have been left hanging. Will the wedding go on as planned? Will anyone show up? Second, he has to get to the point where he can tag on his appendix about proper wedding attire; to do that he has to redact himself back to the wedding hall. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us, he stumbled while doing so, and left us a clue as to what his source might have looked like.

Point A IMHO has nothing to do with fatigue; Goodacre has several examples in which the redaction of note occurs well past the seam. Indeed, while pointing out on pages 52 and 53 that in five of his first six cases it is a characteristic change at the beginning of the pericope that leads to later problems, one of those five (the parable and interpretation of the sower) turns out not to fit that profile. In that parable the Lucan changes occur in the heart of the parable, not at the beginning. Other examples later in the article also fail to fit the profile (the saying about ears and eyes, one of the examples from the parable of the pounds). The profile itself is useless as a criterion; all that really matters is the characteristic language of the secondary author, and looking to the seams is only a good way, but by no means the only way, of locating characteristic language.

Point C IMHO has little or nothing to do with fatigue either, as Luke demonstrates for us above in the parable of the pounds.

Point D is a matter of perception, apparently; I see the problems in the Matthean parable of the wedding feast as severe enough that I would suspect he was cribbing from a source even if Luke 14.16-24 were not extant.

We are left with point B. I admit that my case would be even stronger if the redaction and the ensuing difficulty were more widely separated. But I think my case is strong even so, given the other difficulties in the pericope.

I must confess I am not even tempted to begin to regard Semitisms, Latinisms, or points of style like the use of the historical present as an indication of primitivity.

Sorry to have snowed you under so much here. I tried to keep it short; really I did.

Ben.

Yuri Kuchinsky

YURI:
IMHO the standard 2 Source Theory (2ST), which asserts Markan priority, is refuted by the agreements of Mt and Lk against Mk (the Anti-Markan Agreements).

Hi, Ben,

But what I'm saying is that, even if we accept the mutual dependence of Matthew and Luke, still Markan priority is highly unlikely.

What you're looking at here is just one hypothetical case. But when you have 1000 such cases, this allows us to look for some significant patterns of dependence.

Best,

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

What if author C agrees with author A about 1,000 times and also agrees with author B about 1,000 times? Which would be more primitive, A or B? What if the counts were 1,000 and 2,000, respectively?

Ben.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Ben,

Once you accept that Mt and Lk were not independent of each other, the standard 2ST is already discarded. And so you find yourself in uncharted territory.

The likeliest explanation of all these massive Anti-Markan agreements of Mt and Lk is that they're pointing to the oldest Synoptic text.

The agreements of Lk and Mk (against Mt) also seem to point to a very old Synoptic text.

Once you abandon the 2ST but still want to retain the Markan priority, you'll need to argue for it specifically. You cannot just assume it by default.

But each single passage needs to be considered on its own merits, of course. All these generalities just don't help us that much.

Sometimes the oldest Synoptic text is just preserved by one gospel, or by none at all. Often enough it can be found only in the patristic citations or in the Diatessarons.

All the best,

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

I agree that the two-source hypothesis goes the way of mutual Matthean and Lucan independence. I disagree that the territory is uncharted. There are fewer landmarks on the map, to be sure, but Farrer, for example, is not completely uncharted.

That remains to be seen. Agreement alone does not prove antiquity. The latter two authors can always agree against the first on any of the six triangular theories (Augustine, Greisbach, Farrer, Wilke, Büsching, Lockton), since the latest author knows both predecessors and is able to pick which reading he or she likes best.

Are you arguing that the concrete kinds of agreements of Luke and Mark against Matthew point to an older text, or are you arguing that any such agreements in the abstract must always point to an older text?

Well, of course. That was never at issue AFAICT.

Ben.