Toto

Most people use gLuke as shorthand for "Gospel of Luke," similarly aLuke is shorthand for author of Luke.

Nazaroo

Just an observation:

Its astounding that the most popular opinion, that Matt and Luke were written independantly, is also the most absurd.

While Luke (and Matt) reproduce virtually every verse of Mark in some form (95%+ of the text of Mark) The same can be said for the relation between Luke and Matt.

Ignoring the Infancy sections (Matt. suppliments Luke, not the other way round), virtually every item or pericope in Luke can be matched to an 'equivalent' one in Matthew.

Nowhere else in the history of literature has such an extensive and well-documented act of plagarism ever taken place. Yet certain vested interests would have you believe that these two (the largest Christian documents extant) gospels were created 'independantly', without one having any knowledge of the other.

What nonsense.




Even the Special Luke (only) material, and the Special Matt. can be matched piece by piece. This implies that one author/editor substituted some items as well as rearranged them.

When we look carefully at what one author/editor must have done to convert one gospel into the other, it becomes obvious that Matthew converted Luke, by removing and toning down the embarrassing 'Social Gospel', allowing rich Jews to keep their gospel and their incredible wealth too.

Jesus is turned into a new stern Moses, and the Jews get to hang onto their money. In cooperation with the Roman authorities, the Jews have reissued a 'tamed down' version of Luke on a few other points too...like taxes.

The new Matthew has Jesus actually paying taxes by sending a Jew to 'catch a fish' (a goyim) and take the money from him to pay the tax.

Likewise, the obvious parable about the Roman occupation (the 'pigs' and the demon called 'Legion' gets cleaned up.

Voila! A gospel that both Roman Imperial power and Jewish Temple authority can embrace as 'Moses again, and then some'.

No wonder Marcion and others smelt a rat and reverted to Luke.

JoeWallack

JW:
We have the following reasons to doubt that "Luke" used "Matthew" as a priMary source or was even familiar with it:

1) The Infancy Narratives are completely different. A possible explanation is that the original "Matthew" did not have any or much of an Infancy Narrative.

2) The Post Resurrection Narratives are completely different.

3) Regarding Positive Editing of the Markan Narrative generally "Matthew" and "Luke" do not agree with each other against "Mark". Since "Luke" is obviously prefectly willing to Edit "Mark" why not copy "Matthew's" related Edit most or at least some of the time? Since the extant manuscripts clearly demonstrate a subsequent Trend of Harmonization in the TransMission process we can Project that the originals had even less positive agreement than what we see now.

The better question than what is the Source of the agreement between "Matthew" and "Luke" regarding The Sayings is Why does the original Gospel "Mark" disagree and not have these Sayings?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Nazaroo

These are excellent points.

And further evidence supporting the likelihood that Matthew copied (and rearranged) Luke and not vice versa.

Diogenes the Cynic

Luke's intro tells us that he copied previously written material. We know for a fact that he used Mark. He also used at least one other written source (not counting his probable knowledge of Josephus). The only real question was whether his source for the Q material was indepenent of Matthew.

Those crackpot pages you linked to were a hoot, though.

spin

The only absurdity here is the contentlessness of the statement. You should know better than making such vacuous pleas.

Seeing as Luke leaves out from Mk 6:45-8:26 we have evidence for more than 5% just there, so at best you are exaggerating.

Perhaps you should check again.

Now we get gormless:

"[P]lag[i]arism"! What a meaningless term to use here. Consider for a moment that it was par for the course to rework earlier texts, what does a modern notion such as plagiarism have to do with the discourse other than to muddy the waters.

In fact much of Samuel and Kings has been worked into Chronicles and 1 Maccabees is the main source for AJ 12, so "[n]owhere else in the history of literature has such an extensive and well-documented act of plagarism ever taken place" is obviously wrong.

What would you say exactly are the "vested interests" of those who propose the two document hypothesis?

I must agree.

Perhaps you might demonstrate this.

How would you go about demonstrating this thesis?



(Umm, "goyim" is plural.)

So it wasn't Marcion's gospel that got altered into Luke, it was the other way around, huh? What makes you think that?


spin

Nazaroo

you've missed the point again.

The fact that Luke 'leaves out' Mk 6:45-8:26 is strong evidence both that,

(1) This section was added to Greek Mark much later.

(2) and Luke copied Mark before it was inserted,

(3) while Matthew copies the section straight through (with expansions and adlibs),

(4) Making Luke earlier than Matthew, and

(5) making Luke a better witness to the original text of Mark (Ur-Mark).


This has been commonly noted since Streeter (The Four Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk), 1930)

Removing the obvious interpolation (recording two different versions of the feeding of the 5000/4000), an attempt to preserve an alternate version of Mark's story, Luke reproduces virtually the whole of Mark.


It may be a modern notion, but one familiar to modern readers, and adequate to the task of describing the essential process. Luke copies Ur-Mark, and Matthew copies and rearranges Luke, as well as incorporating material from the newer (extant) Mark and James.

Most people call that plagiarism. It is not anachronistic in the sense of describing the essential act.

Who cares what the original 'authors' thought of doing it? If you prefer just 'copying' then I don't mind using the word 'copying' to describe this obvious act of pilfering.


For example:

Sermon on the Plain (with Social Gospel) --> Sermon on the Mount (woes against rich deleted).

(The many parallels from all parts of Luke to the new super-Sermon are too many to list, but it is inexplicable that Luke would break to pieces the Sermon on the Mount and scatter the bits, only to completely undermine and drain the force of the original speech, if he had known of it. cf., Luke 8:16,(unhidden lamp & again 11:33, 12:1-3), Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13f), food and drink (Luke 12:22, cf. Matt. 6:25f), Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:1f etc.)


Beware Leaven (scribes Lk 12:1f)--------> Woe to scribes (original more plausible speech of Jesus cranked up)
Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13f) ---> SoM (Matt. 6:24)
Parable of the Fig Tree (Luke 13:6-9) ----> Fig Tree (garbled, Matt. 9:33f, 21:18 threat literalized)
Parable of Salt (Luke 14:34-35) ---------> SoM (Matt. 5:13 directly applied)
Parable of Lost Coin (Luke 15:8f)--------> Hidden Treasure (Matt. 13:44)
Parable of Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11f)----> Two Sons (Matt. 21:28f)
Parable of Unjust Steward (16:1f ) ------> (embarrassing immoral lesson deleted )
Matthew substitutes: Parable of the Bad and Faithful Servants (Matt.24:45f)

Parable of the Tax Collector ------------> deleted.
Story of Zacchaeus Generosity ---------> embarrassing example deleted.
(last trace of social gospel vanishes)

Law and Prophets, John (16:14f) -------> (ambiguity removed, Law expanded and reinforced cf. SoM. etc.)

Parable of Rich man/Laz. (soc. gosp. 16:19f) ---> Social Gospel turns into Narrow Way, literal hellfire (Matt. 7:13 etc.)

Days of Noah and Lot (17:20f) -------> Woe to Galilean cities! (not Jerusalem, Matt. 11:20f)

Taxes and Caesar (Luke 20:20f) -------> dangerous ambiguity cleared up with made-up story of Jesus paying taxes (Matt. 17:24f)

Parable of Widow's Mite (Luke.21:1f)----> Parable of Foolish Virgins (25:1f -- "get your own supplies!")

Coming persecutions (Luke 21:12f)------> deleted.

Fig Tree analogy (Luke 21:29)----------> Lesson of the Fig Tree (Matt.24:32, cf. Matt.9:33, 21:18)

"Who is the greatest?" (Luke 21:24f) -----> Embarrassing story deleted, toned down (Matt.20:20f)

"Buy a sword!" (Luke 21:35)------------> Dangerous and incriminating advice deleted.




So much for 'Matthew's Deletions and alterations.

All of his 'additions' are later Church and Congregational crap:

Tree and fruit ---Matt. 7:15f
Cost of Discipleship Matt. 8:18 etc. (multiple repetitions)
Son of Man is Lord of Sabbath Matt.12:1f)
Miracles multiplied and exaggerated (14:34 etc.)
Disputes over ceremonial washing expanded (15:1f)
"Jesus" on fasting wholly out of realistic context (17:19)
Dealing with offences (18:6f)

"Who is Greatest?" (stolen from episode in Luke 21:24)
teachings on Divorce and Celebacy (obvious later church accretions 19:3f)
Woe to Scribes and Pharisees leaves out Lawyers (Matt. 23:1 compare Luke 11:37)
Inane parables (Wise and Foolish virgins, sheep and goats, blah blah)
Story of bribed guards (anti-Jewish apologetics/polemics)

Nazaroo

Think about it. You've just thrown your whole case.

If Luke is really a (much later) edition of Marcion's Gospel (150 A.D.), then Luke couldn't have copied Matthew, but somehow Marcion magically duplicated 90% of the material in Matthew, or the final editor of Luke did.

But that is the most ludicrous scenario of all.

Are you even serious?

Luke may suffer from a few variants, but nothing like your proposal shows up in any manuscript evidence of any period or place.

hatsoff

I agree with the majority opinion that Matthew and Luke drew independently from Mark and Q. However, it is possible, though somewhat unlikely in my opinion, that Luke drew from Mark and Matthew drew from both. The way I see it, Matthew has a tendency to make more significant alterations--corrections, as he apparently saw them--to his source material. An example of this is the beatitudes, where Matthew has added material Luke does not. And of course, we all know that the shorter reading tends to be the first.

It is also narrowly possible (again, in my opinion) that Luke wrote first, followed by Mark (drawing from Luke) and then Matthew (drawing from both). This scenario has many problems, however, and I find it very close to implausible. I don't see any sufficient explanation for the textual relationships which even allows for either Mark or Luke to have drawn from Matthew. So I'm left a little surprised that so many (34% of the respondents thus far) believe it to be true.

As for an ur-Mark or ur-Matthew, or even an ur-Luke, any of these are of course possible, but Occam's razor plays a great role, there.

hatsoff

Assuming Marcion's Gospel was a precursor to Luke (which is extremely unlikely for other reasons), I don't see this as a problem--it just reinforces the idea of a two-source hypothesis, substituting Marcion for Luke.