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Old 09-24-2011, 12:33 PM   #21
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Originally Posted by EarlDoherty View Post
Much is made of Goodacre’s concept of “editorial fatigue.” In principle it sounds legitimate, but when examined in practice it proves to be extremely weak. I’ll illustrate by quoting a page from Jesus: Neither God Nor Man (p. 321-322). I notice that Jiri made no effort to comment on this passage.

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(6) Goodacre proposes a feature which he calls “editorial fatigue.”117 In such a phenomenon, a writer begins a passage by imposing an intended change on his source, but before he finishes he lapses into original elements of that source, thereby creating an inconsistency or contradiction between earlier and later parts. In other words, the copying writer fails to sustain his own changes. For example, Matthew in 8:1-4 has Jesus, while being “followed by a great crowd,” cure a leper, to whom he then says: “Tell no one.” This is a pointless admonition given the presence of the crowd. But in his source, which is Mark 1:40-45, no crowd has been introduced and the admonition makes better sense. In determining to keep Mark’s latter words even in the context of a crowd, Matthew seems to have overlooked or ignored the contradiction he has created.

Does Luke do the same in any of his passages and thereby betray a lapse into a source in Matthew? Such things are not so clear as in the example given above. In that example we know that the source is in fact Mark, whereas a Lukan source in Matthew is the very thing that must be determined. Thus the examples offered for the latter need to be particularly evident.

We can look at Goodacre’s two principal examples of alleged Lukan editorial fatigue when using Matthew.

Matthew 10:11-14 presents Jesus instructing his apostles when they “enter a town” to stay in the house of some worthy citizen. He then tells them when they “leave that house or town…shake the dust from your feet.” Luke, in 9:4-5, has no initial words about entering a town, but begins by talking about entering a house; later he tells them “as you leave the town, shake the dust from your feet.” Goodacre points out that Luke’s reference to leaving the town is lacking any antecedent, since he has not mentioned a town at the opening, and this is taken to indicate that the concluding “town” is derived from Matthew’s version. But this is surely reading too much into the situation. Whether Luke has mentioned a town initially or not, it can certainly be the case that such a thing has been assumed. Luke need not be drawing from Matthew to introduce the leaving of a town, since he could simply have the assumption in mind that the house was located in a town, something that would be quite natural.

In Luke’s Parable of the Pounds (19:11-27), a departing nobleman gives ten servants each a pound, urging them to trade it wisely. When he returns, he finds that one servant has made a profit of tenfold, a second a profit of fivefold, while a third stored his pound and made no profit at all, incurring the master’s wrath. Itemizing the actions of only three servants would seem to be inconsistent with the initial statement of giving money to ten. In Matthew’s version of the parable, however, only three servants are mentioned at the beginning as recipients, so that the attention given to only three at the master’s return is consistent. Goodacre takes this as indicating that Luke, after starting out with ten servants, has lapsed into Matthew’s version (his supposed source) with only three.

Yet this seems problematic in itself. First of all, one might wonder why Luke would change Matthew’s three servants into ten to begin with. He would surely not be intending to go through ten servants’ results upon the master’s return, creating an utterly unwieldy parable. (If he did, perhaps it was “fatigue” that caused him to stop at three!) Second, the Greek in referring to the third servant is “ho heteros,” which is not “the third” but “the other,” and some translations (RSV, NASB, NIV, KJV) render it “another,” with no necessary implication that it is the third and final. Thus we need not assume that Luke has lapsed into envisioning only three servants and is thereby betraying a source in Matthew.

In fact, the likely explanation is that Luke introduced ten servants to better symbolize the meaning of his version of the parable: that Christians left behind at Jesus’ departure (at his death) are charged with spreading the faith and enlarging its membership, but he only intended to deal with three such disciples on Jesus’ return (at the Parousia) as representative examples. Understanding it this way is no doubt why some translators and commentators render “ho heteros” as “an-other,” despite the definite article—which in any case some manuscripts lack. (The Englishman’s Greek New Testament, for example, omits the article “ho” from its Greek text and translates “heteros” as “another,” pointing out that the article is added only in some manuscripts.) Besides, to think that over the course of only a few verses Luke could have forgotten that he was intending to deal with the results of ten servants’ investments would require him to have been brain-dead rather than merely fatigued.
Jiri made no effort to comment on this passage ? Really ?
I said the passages in the OP (#1) were excerpts and gave a link to the whole essay. Here's my response in the essay to your handling of Goodacre's "editorial fatigue".

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Originally Posted by Solo's Blog
Further on, there is the “editorial fatigue” question. Doherty defines the feature proposed by Goodacre correctly as a tendency of a creative editor in modifying a source text, to revert to the original, or carry over a reference to the original that contradicts the intent to modify the text. Unfortunately, he then goes on as if Goodacre proposed that the editorial fatigue itself is a phenomenon which, like the minor agreements, militates directly for Luke’s use of Matthew rather than Q. That most certainly is not the case in Goodacre’s book that Doherty quoted. What Goodacre proposed back in 1998 is something else: we can help establish Marcan priority if we find a fairly persisting pattern of fatigue in Matthew/Luke redacting Markan stories. He made some intriguing comments about applying this rule in the Fatigue in the Synoptics paper to the double tradition which he did not repeat in his book The Case Against Q published in 2002. In preparing this essay, I have exchanged e-mails with Mark Goodacre, and asked him about his decision not to push his case with the double tradition examples Doherty cites (Mt 25:14-29/Lk19:11-27, Mt 10:11-14/Lk 9:4-5). Doherty goes on for nearly a page trying to refute the alleged Matthean dependence by Luke in these stories by all sorts of irrelevant and fallacious tangents, failing to note that the fatigue is non-starter for the manner he grasps Goodacre’s argument, i.e. that the tool does not help establish which source caused the logical lapse. What Goodacre proposed was something else. Assuming that we accept the evidence of the phenom for both Matthew and Luke in the triple tradition and the two examples of Luke’s fatigue in reading Matthew, is it not curious that Matthew does not get fatigued also (!) while reading Q ? Goodacre wrote to me that no-one in the thirteen years since the paper was published has come up with an example of Matthew’s fatigue reading Q, as he does in the three recorded cases of him mishandling Mark. Conclusive ? Not by itself, no, but it is definitely curious.
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Old 09-27-2011, 01:55 PM   #22
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IMO the real problem with Earl Doherty's use of Q is not his belief in its existence, which I think is probably correct. The real problem is his use of speculative ideas about the supposed strata of this hypothetical document. This does seem to be piling hypothesis upon hypothesis.
Andrew Criddle
If we did not have Mark but only Matthew and Luke, then the hypothetical Q in this case would be much bigger, including all of Mark as well. Then when the Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1946, scholars would have realized that their Qm might not include any narrative at all, because the portions of Mark that are in Thomas are primarily parables, with also some sayings. But this reformulated Qm would not equal our standard Q of the Double Tradition. Also we would have no proof that narrative could be excluded from this Qm.
For our Q that we define as the overlap between Matthew and Luke, we know that there is a small portion of narrative, mostly about John the Baptist. Thus the discovery of gThomas in 1946 should have raised the question not only whether our Q was too narrowly defined to exclude what in gThomas is also in Mark, but whether the historical text of Q included large portions of Mark. gThomas has no narrative to speak of, so the omission of narrative that is in Mark does not mean that significant narrative was absent from the historical Q. Much of the Triple Tradition can reasonably be considered to be part of it, namely the portion called by some scholars the Twelve-Source. (The word “Twelve” is used in place of “apostles” or “disciples”. It is distinct from the portions about Peter that old scholars called Ur-Marcus.) This narrative portion, if in Q, would also reasonably be regarded as from a later stage of Q. After all, a scribe can write down what someone says while it is being said, but writing about events that have happened necessarily comes later.
I’m acknowledging that various strata of Q may exist. Personally I have little use, however, for assigning stages of Q by ideological preference. I do accept stylistic comparisons as useful for differentiating strata. The most important is that there was an early stage of Q in Aramaic that can be identified by contrasting translations into the Greek in gMatthew and gLuke. The later stage originally written in Greek is also notable for an increased interest in John the Baptist, Satan, and eschatology.
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Old 09-29-2011, 06:56 AM   #23
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This narrative portion, if in Q, would also reasonably be regarded as from a later stage of Q. After all, a scribe can write down what someone says while it is being said, but writing about events that have happened necessarily comes later.
This is a purely theoretical assumption in want of proof. There is no reason to suppose a pre-written document with blessings, maxims and exhortations from the sermon. For all we know, a collection of sayings in the sermon may have been first put down as the sermon.

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I’m acknowledging that various strata of Q may exist. Personally I have little use, however, for assigning stages of Q by ideological preference. I do accept stylistic comparisons as useful for differentiating strata.
But then again, 'style' is often in the eye of the beholder with a theological (or ideological) agenda.

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The most important is that there was an early stage of Q in Aramaic that can be identified by contrasting translations into the Greek in gMatthew and gLuke.
Is that a wish or a statement of fact ?

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Jiri
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Old 09-29-2011, 11:13 AM   #24
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This narrative portion, if in Q, would also reasonably be regarded as from a later stage of Q. After all, a scribe can write down what someone says while it is being said, but writing about events that have happened necessarily comes later.
This is a purely theoretical assumption in want of proof. There is no reason to suppose a pre-written document with blessings, maxims and exhortations from the sermon. For all we know, a collection of sayings in the sermon may have been first put down as the sermon.

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I’m acknowledging that various strata of Q may exist. Personally I have little use, however, for assigning stages of Q by ideological preference. I do accept stylistic comparisons as useful for differentiating strata.
But then again, 'style' is often in the eye of the beholder with a theological (or ideological) agenda.

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The most important is that there was an early stage of Q in Aramaic that can be identified by contrasting translations into the Greek in gMatthew and gLuke.
Is that a wish or a statement of fact ?

Best,
Jiri
Q is mostly sayings, so when I say there may also be narrative, it's the narrative that's most likely a later addition.
Style is often employed with an agenda, but noting whether passages are basically exact or not is not particularly subjective. Where the parallels are inexact, we probably have contrasting translations from another language. Where they are exact and seem to be later additions, they were more likely added to the text in Greek. The best examples of this exactness between gMatthew and gLuke is whatever of Q occurs between Matthew 23:23 and 24:51 and the following passages (often about John the Baptist) in Luke: 3:7-9, 16-17; 6:36-38, 41-42; 7:22-28; 10:13-15; and 11:24-26. So that is a statement of fact. That the rest of Q is inexact tends to show it was originally in Aramaic--it's more than just a wish, but short of a statement of fact. That Q apparently had literary stages of course enhances the Q theory.
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Old 09-29-2011, 11:59 AM   #25
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Q is mostly sayings, so when I say there may also be narrative, it's the narrative that's most likely a later addition.
Any source to this that you care to reaveal ?

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Where the parallels are inexact, we probably have contrasting translations from another language.
Again, is this something you believe to be a fact ? If so, what other possibilities are there for double tradition sayings 'inexactness' ? Why do you think Luke could not have been redacting Matthew ?

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Old 09-29-2011, 01:43 PM   #26
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Q is mostly sayings, so when I say there may also be narrative, it's the narrative that's most likely a later addition.
Any source to this that you care to reaveal ?

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Where the parallels are inexact, we probably have contrasting translations from another language.
Again, is this something you believe to be a fact ? If so, what other possibilities are there for double tradition sayings 'inexactness' ? Why do you think Luke could not have been redacting Matthew ?

Best
Jiri
Anything's possible, but I'm saying what I believe to be the case. If you have
refutations, it's up to you to provide them rather than asking me for idle speculation about why the improbable may be true. To me it seems that those who deny the Q Hypothesis have a preset agenda for strict orthodoxy or radical anti-orthodoxy.
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Old 09-30-2011, 01:13 PM   #27
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To me it seems that those who deny the Q Hypothesis have a preset agenda for strict orthodoxy or radical anti-orthodoxy.
I suppose if one does not have anything in the way of arguments, there are always dramatic announcements to be made. :huh:

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Old 09-30-2011, 08:49 PM   #28
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To me it seems that those who deny the Q Hypothesis have a preset agenda for strict orthodoxy or radical anti-orthodoxy.
I suppose if one does not have anything in the way of arguments, there are always dramatic announcements to be made. :huh:

Jiri
Now that I can post links I can bolster my argument by copying from what I wrote elsewhere, not only can I argue for a written Q, but by enlarging it by identifying some narrative with it I can give evidence for its author:

"One commonly hears that there are no Q passages in the Gospel of Mark. This is incorrect. The discovery of the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas at Nag Hammadi in 1946 revealed sayings in it that are in Mark, and not just from Matthew and Luke. Although this could mean that the text of Thomas was based on the completed Synoptic Gospels, close study shows that it is more likely that the parts of Thomas that overlap the canonical Gospels are based on a source text they share in common, namely Q or some variant thereof. Unless the writer of Thomas also had access to Ur-Marcus, this shows that Thomas picked up some of the same parables from Q that Mark included. It thus seems that Ur-Marcus was almost completely narrative text with even fewer sayings than we commonly attribute to Mark.

The Q Source could have been written very early. It was written in Aramaic, judging by the sections that Mark and Luke have in common that lack verbal exactitude. The word “Twelve” (meaning the 12 Apostles) appears so often in this that it is commonly called the Twelve-Source. The name Matthew (or Levi) occurs where this text begins (as at Luke 5:27), and early external tradition names the writer as this Matthew, so this material could have been from an eye-witness or could even have been first put in writing during the lifetime of Jesus."

http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common
See also my section on Q in one of my other three article there:

http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
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Old 09-30-2011, 11:07 PM   #29
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The word “Twelve” (meaning the 12 Apostles) appears so often in this that it is commonly called the Twelve-Source. The name Matthew (or Levi) occurs where this text begins (as at Luke 5:27), and early external tradition names the writer as this Matthew, so this material could have been from an eye-witness or could even have been first put in writing during the lifetime of Jesus."
There is no mention of "the Twelve" or "the twelve apostles" in Q. In Q 22:28-30 there is a saying "you who have followed me will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel". That is all there is. Most experts on Q do not credit there were "twelve thrones" in the saying.

Look, Adam, you are a newbie here. When we start a thread on FRDB, it is to pursue specific interests we have as individual posters. The reason I started this thread was to explore specific issues with Earl Doherty's (who is a self-published author and a frequent visitor here) touching on the existence of Q. If you want to read Earl's book and want to comment on the aspects I raised here, fine: be my guest. But I am not really interested in faith-based testimonials hijacking my OP. Hope, you understand and will respect the debating rules here.

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Jiri
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