Craigart14

No, it's not just you. What's the point of doing research if you have already made up your mind what you think? They should be looking to discover whether Q existed, not prove that it didn't.

Craig

Rick Sumner

This sounds nice in theory. In practice, once one moves out of the harder sciences, very little research is ever done when the author has not, to some degree or other, already made up their mind what they think. We are creatures of bias.

spin

Rick, I don't think you are being constructive here with your rhetorical style. Why not cut the crap approach and try to look at specific issues where Q might be breakable or where Luke using Matthew may be breakable? Stop the fluent opinions of experts and get dirty with text. I would also advocate that anyone else in this thread do the same, ie get into the text. Otherwise it is all rather disembodied, isn't it?


spin

spin

This seems like self-justification.


spin

Chaucer

Something else that a few scholars now point to may, in a way, reconcile both viewpoints: both the view that Q is something entirely synoptic -- i.e., from Matthew, along with the (contrary?) view that Q is something that is separate and apart from the synoptics altogether, the notion that a majority of scholars still credit today. How so?

Well, there are certain remarks from Papias that I once took with hefty grains of salt. But IF the word "Logia" means "sayings" -- an obviously central IF that I leave to those here with a better knowledge of Greek than mine to address properly -- it's just possible that Papias's remarks may contain a germ of a possible solution here.

You see, Papias is apparently quoted as having once said that Matthew first collected the "logia" of Jesus in -- it seems implied, but not certain -- a text that was exclusively sayings at an early stage. Naturally, if that means that there was once a Matthew that did not have the narrative material as in the version we now know, that early Matthew text may in fact be the Q that so many scholars now think they can deduce. Consequently, Q, as a concept, may not be exclusively hypothetical. Papias may give us some external evidence after all, however scanty, for such a document.

The fact that Gentile's statistics appear to be generated in a vacuum away from any proselytizing for the Papias angle, and the fact that other scholars, at the same time, have pondered the Papias allusion for a fair while but in a different corner from any analysis of material reproduced in Luke, may -- may -- reinforce the possible notion that here we have two different pieces of data from two different directions that together cross-testify to a possible origin for (written) Q in the writer of Matthew but not in the actual text of the known Matthew familiar to most readers today.

Thoughts?

Chaucer

Rick Sumner

I believe I did look at a specific issue, or, more appropriately, address a specific contention of Earl's. I also raised three other concerns (general Lukan awareness of Matthean redactive tendencies (a la Goulder), Lukan awareness of the distinctively Matthean virgin birth, and the absence of any evidence the document ever existed).

I was met with an analogy to creationism. Did you perhaps see something more substantial in Earl's analogy that I missed? I'd delight in some elaboration if that's the case. If not, then I rightly called him on it.

One must wonder if you're reading the thread.

I was unaware I'd cited any "experts" or there opinions, except to comment on Kloppenborg's. Comment in the negative. Since the argument Earl gives, which I addressed is, as far as I know, unique to Earl, it's difficult to see how citing experts could do much good. I suppose there was the comment on stratiagraphy and what is "generally held," but that's a matter of experts Earl relies on, not me. I think stratifying a hypothetical text is ridiculous.

There's always this oh-so-subtle hint that you could contribute something substantiative if only you could get up the energy. Perhaps one day you'll eat some Wheaties before posting?

Rick Sumner

Alas, not today.

spin

I didn't see one biblical reference.

For a starter, in the non-Marcan parts of Matthew supposedly used by Luke, why is there not one sign of fatigue with Matthew's "kingdom of heaven"?

Yes, I did note the rhetoric, though you apparently mistook its actual usage. What has happened though is that the rhetoric has taken over and content has dried up.

Well, that's good. Neither Goulder nor Goodacre are experts then.

I was talking generally of your (and Earl's) comments as they fit in the thread.

If you can individuate the hypothetical text then you can apply the same sorts of philological criteria as one does on other texts.

I have no problem posting on the value of Q if it is made a reasonable discussion. Although I'm not wedded to Q, the alternative (Luke using Matt) seems crassly unable to deal with the reality of the texts.


spin

EarlDoherty

I disagree. We are talking about textual commonality, not thematic. Of course Mark contains material which is related to the Matthew-Luke material assigned to Q. He would have shared those traditions on an oral level. We are talking about common wording (or close to it) which bespeaks the use of literary derivation of some form. In the case of the triple tradition pericopes, one cannot tell whether Q contained sayings of that nature because Matthew and Luke are both evidently taking their versions from Mark.

You have it backwards. It is not independence that has to be proven (how would one go about that?). You have to prove that Luke is dependent on Matthew in order to reasonably reject Q as a working hypothesis. And that is precisely what I have maintained and demonstrated is very difficult to do.

This (and more that followed in the same vein) is juvenile nonsense, and does not become you, let alone advance the discussion.

Nothing is being assumed. We are talking about the common material possessed by Matthew and Luke. That is a block of recognizable and demonstrable material, whether assigned to Q or not. It excludes “everything else invented by Matthew” (the so-called “M” material) because Luke doesn’t have it. And I never said, nor would I, that Matthew didn’t invent anything related to the soteriological concerns surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection. Of course he did. But the material he shares with Luke pointedly does not include those concerns. If that block of material was his invention, to be taken over by Luke, it becomes something remarkable that it does not contain anything about those concerns.

I hope you realize you are begging the question here. You are basing things on the principle that Luke did copy Matthew, and judging what he did and did not copy. That is the very principle that is under debate. You can’t assume it in your argument. This is also like Goodacre defining what Luke left out from Matthew’s redactions of Mark by saying it wasn’t “Luke pleasing,” an entirely arbitrary device: Matthew’s “Q” doesn’t contain any death and resurrection material because Luke wasn’t interested in it. How convenient. This is not only arbitrary, it’s downright lame.

I’m afraid this doesn’t follow at all. Naturally the Q material Matthew used served his purposes and preferences, otherwise he wouldn’t have used it. No one is denying that of Matthew’s Q passages. But that doesn’t change the fact that this block of material is lacking those key elements of Matthean concern. It doesn’t mean that Matthew had no other concerns which Q served.

As I said earlier, is that the best you can do to illustrate the “problems” with Q? Q is by definition a hypothetical document and entails the fact that we don’t possess it. To state that we don’t have a copy is a tautology, and to claim this as a problem is flirting with fallacy. The case for Q is a case for demonstrating that such a hypothetical document is a valid postulation given the textual condition of Matthew and Luke, and the weakness of the only feasible theoretical alternative that Luke copied from Matthew. Whether we possess a copy or not is irrelevant to the case. And as I (and someone above) have pointed out, Papias’ “Matthew” as a collection of sayings is a very feasible candidate for a witness to Q or something like it.

If you would like to present a valid “serious problem” instead, please do so. Be forewarned, however, that arguments based on specific wording agreements (or lack of) between various evangelists can usually be easily dealt with by considerations of that long gap between autograph and extant copies of the Gospels, during which any number of changes, assimilations, etc. could have taken place.

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty
The main focus seems to be on how attractive or advantageous it would be to eliminate Q (and how fashionably radical and progressive it would be).

You took exception to this, and called it rhetoric. Even here I disagree. This has definitely been my impression of many who advocate dismissing Q on this and other boards over the years. Some of those who do turn out to have a very inadequate understanding of the nature of Q and the arguments in its favour, yet they champion no-Q as though it is self-evident and the inevitable wave of the future. Their remarks often lead me to conclude that it is indeed for motives of it appearing “fashionable” that they adopt this position even in the context of their lack of knowledge. (Naturally, this would not be a motive I would attribute to you, Rick, nor to everyone.) But perhaps it is an opinion that I should not be voicing and I’ll withdraw it.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Yes, we do. In fact, your idea of “fossils” is analogous not to citations but to the Q material itself in Matthew and Luke. These are older life-forms that evolved prior to the writing of the Gospels, found buried in Matthew and Luke. By excavating them, we, like the anthropologists, are able to discover what life was like on the Galilean scene before a Q founder was added to become part of the Gospel character Jesus of Nazareth.

My comparison with creationism, while hardly profound, has some validity. You present (solely) the lack of a physical copy of Q as a major problem for the theory. That’s not a straw man. You are saying that since we cannot lay eyes on Q it is unlikely to have existed. The Alabama school board declared since no one was there to lay eyes on the process of the evolution of life, it is unlikely to have taken place. I merely said that one reminded me of the other. And it does.

Earl Doherty