Adam

Solo,
I have found in your link to Goodacre P. 52 only verses that I have assigned to Q portions of gMark (indeed, Mark 4:30-32 is Gospel of Thomas Sayings 20!), clearly among portions of Mark that are not verbally exact enough with gLuke to be among what Luke copied over into gLuke. In these (Twelve-Source) passages in Mark each gospel translated independently from Q. See my hotly contended work-up on this at Post #230 in my Gospel Eyewitnesses:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....306983&page=10

And for preliminaries on the presence of Q in Mark see

http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
Start at "Q"

andrewcriddle

I'm sorry I thought I had (sort of) answered it More generally, solid evidence that Luke had access to something like our Matthew (or vice versa) would convince me that Q is redundant.

Andrew Criddle

Gorit Maqueda

`Matthew used Luke' is falsifiable with the improbable discovering of a convincing Q manuscript.

Q is falsifiable with the improbable discovering of time travel.

Falsifiability is a sound criterion for scientific theories. Alas, here we have too little objective data, too little opportunities to make experiments, and too many brilliant minds to explain the deficiencies of both theories.

I personally think that the existence of Q is more probable that its non-existence, but mainly because of personal fatigue :-)

jdl

The last part is hilariously true. But if we're going to abandon the pretence that we might in theory be proved wrong, then why not just say the evidence is too ambiguous and be done with the argument?

Solo

[Clearly], the lady doth protest too much.

Jiri

Solo

Thanks, Andrew, I missed the post to jdl. You did answer the question.

Ok, I am good with that..... though I kind of wonder what 'solid evidence' would be in a case of a purely theoretical object where consensus is built around rhetorical assurances that the obverse is not possible.

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

It is wholly illogical that common material in gMatthew and gLuke could NOT have been copied by gLuke from gMatthew.

All the miracles of Jesus and his conception were made up and were eventually copied so it is NOT at all logical that gMatthew was incapable of making stuff up and that the author of gLuke could NOT have copied gMatthew.

But, what I find so strange and is that people here do NOT understand that even if there was a document called "Q" then the author of gMatthew may have used it and then the author of gLuke copied it from gMatthew.

Without an actual existing document called "Q", these are some possible transmission:

1. Both gMatthew and gLuke are copies of "Q".

2. gMatthew copies "Q" then gLuke copies gMatthew.

3. gMatthew merely uses scattered sources and gLuke copies gMattew.

In any event, imaginary sources have zero significance in re-constructing actual past events.

Apologetics sources do NOT show that there was an actual document called "Q"

Logical

I just wanted to thank everyone for the posts. Everything said here has been truly enlightening to me.

Regardless of how exactly it happened or which hypothesis is true, it seems everyone agrees it's likely none of the gospels contains any original material, and they all derive from a web of sources, not always copied accurately, and they all have been modified later as well. The latter part makes it possible for analysts to poke holes in any hypothesis. Doesn't phrase or sentence X disprove hypothesis Y? Possibly, or some copyist who had access to all the gospels made a mistake, or an intentional change, causing this "problem" with the hypothesis.

But knowing all this, I find it hard to understand how anyone could be a literalist and fundamentalist when the holy book is such a freaking mess.

But I'm no expert, just a hobbyist. Currently reading Doherty and Ehrman.