Yuri Kuchinsky

Q is a House of Cards...

When you have a House of Cards, it's enough to pull only one card out of it, and the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Goulder/Goodacre decided to pull out one of the cards -- they tried to undermine the idea that Mt and Lk were completely independent of each other. But pulling out any of the other cards would do just as well.

For example, the idea of the canonical Markan priority -- yet another foundation of Q -- is just as vulnerable to attack. And then, we get to deciding what was in Q, and what wasn't; the early layers of Q vs. the later layers; the mythical "Q community", and what it was all about -- all of this built on speculation after speculation... The whole thing is really quite embarrassing -- or should be.

And yet, to be totally objective, one would have to admit that there's at least _some_ rational basis in the Q idea.

For example, I will generally agree that the earliest Christian gospel had relatively little in the way of the sayings materials (so, in this respect, it was somewhat similar to Mk). On such a broad level, Goulder, myself, and the Q theorists would actually _all agree_! What a surprise!

But beyond this, of course, the disagreements will begin... Myself, I will say (together with Loisy) that the sayings materials are _generally_ kind of late -- they are for the most part the later elaborations of the Christian kerigma by various later preachers and/or gospel editors. So here I would radically disagree with the Q theorists, who want to see these sayings materials go directly to Jesus.

As to Goulder/Goodacre position on this same matter, it's actually sort of hazy... Basically, they don't seem to know where the sayings materials originated...

And there's also another broad area where I will generally agree with the Q theorists, and disagree with Goulder. I basically agree with the Q theorists that the Lukan rendering of the sayings materials is more original than the Matthean version. I think Goulder is the most vulnerable exactly on this point, i.e. when he tries to show that the authors of Luke took their sayings of Jesus from Mt. It seems reasonably certain that they didn't, for the most part...

And yet, I do agree with Goulder that Mt and Lk were definitely not independent of each other. In this, Goulder is really the voice of reason... For those who live in the real world, these two gospels, as well as Mk, were all transmitted and edited together for a very considerable period of time before the 4th century -- the date of our main gospel manuscripts. For about 200 years, actually... So how can they ever be seen as totally independent of each other? The idea is absurd.

So, it seems to me that, at various points along the line, a variety of the freshly baked "sayings of Jesus" were being added both to Mt and to Lk (as well as to Mk, to some extent)... It was actually a very complex, multi-stage process, similar to what Boismard has been arguing for a long time.

But in order to understand all this, one needs to advance beyond this childhood level of exegesis, where our modern NT criticism still finds itself today, in this post-Loisy era.

All the best,

Yuri.

the_cave

Maybe it would be fair to say they were drafted independently, but later edited together?

Dean Anderson

What do you think to the third possibility - that the sayings are relatively early, but were not originally attributed to Jesus.

They would then have been added at a later date by gospel editors (as you say) and retrofitted to become the words of Jesus.

spin

What I consider as absurd is for anyone to consider that these gospels were from original transmission "all transmitted and edited together".

1) The survival of the consistently manifest linguistic incompetence of Mark shows the absurdity.

2) The fact that three exist and not one, ie necessitating the separate original production and therefore existence of the texts, shows the absurdity.

I have no problem with the possibility of the texts being edited together at some stage and for some time, I know of a few manuscript examples to point to, but the conclusion that these texts were in circulation in constant development goes against the fact they were in circulation, for if they were circulating together they had each reached a level of a certain cultic authority, suggesting that they would not undergo any noticeable change at all.


spin

Yuri Kuchinsky

Sure, this sounds reasonable.

But what was the original source of these sayings, then?

Your theory seems unduly complicated...

Best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

But did I say so, spin? This is only a strawman that you've set up...

Quote:

1) The survival of the consistently manifest linguistic incompetence of Mark shows the absurdity.

The "linguistic incompetence of Mark" can be interpreted in more than one way.

Quote:

2) The fact that three exist and not one, ie necessitating the separate original production

Oh, great, you've just invented the wheel!

Quote:

and therefore existence of the texts, shows the absurdity. I have no problem with the possibility of the texts being edited together at some stage and for some time,

So this is actually my real position!

Quote:

I know of a few manuscript examples to point to, but the conclusion that these texts were in circulation in constant development goes against the fact they were in circulation, for if they were circulating together they had each reached a level of a certain cultic authority, suggesting that they would not undergo any noticeable change at all. spin

The real Synoptic problem is very different from how the modern-day Synoptic specialists see it. This whole field is absurd, because 99% of its practitioners refuse to live in the real world. They make toy castles instead, that are periodically demolished by the other kids.

In the real world OTOH, none of the 3 Synoptic gospels, in their present-day canonical form, are anywhere close to the earliest gospel.

Yours,

Yuri.

spin

Some of what you were trying to say is now oozing out.

It might be better if you were clear from the beginning and saved us a bit of time, trying to fathom what the content is through the smoke.

Now, I gather you are not in favour of Marcan priority. If this is correct, how do you explain the quality of Greek of Mark as compared to that of Matthew, say, when it can be fairly easily shown that the Greek content is closely related at a lexical level?


spin