yalla

One day I'll get organizized.
Until then the shemozzle of scribbles that constitute my "Q" notes will stay in their present chaotic form.

A week ago I came across this, via reading this comment:
"Matthew 9.14-17 has abbreviations of Mark 2.18-23 and some of his abbreviations are shared by Luke 5.23-39 which perhaps shows Luke's knowledge of Matthew here".
From this Book - "Saint Matthew" J.G. Fenton, Pelican, UK, 1963.

So I looked at the 3 sections in the RSV.
Here is a very short version.

Mark has the basic version.
-Matthew's version of Mark 2.19-20 is identical except he excludes
"as long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast"
-Luke's version also omits the same line as Matthew. The rest is the same [or virtually the same as both- you can check].

-Matthew adds 2 new words to that of Mark in his [Matthew's] 9.17.
He says the wine is 'spilled' and the skins are 'destroyed'. Mark does not say that.
-Luke 5.37 uses the same 2 words as Matthew.
The Greek is the same.
Note again, these words are not in the original ie Mark.

What we have here is a case of Matthew altering Mark and Luke having the same alterations as Matthew.

This is simply explained, not by both getting it from elsewhere [this section is not, so I understand, considered by proponents of Q to be a Q section] but by Luke reading Matthew [or maybe vice versa].


These 2 examples can be multiplied.

There is no need of a Q hypothesis.

tanya

agree, 100%

Bingo the Clown-O thank you for that link....
right....

andrewcriddle

Some of the agreements between Matthew and Luke in passages not in Mark are too verbally close to be plausible examples of oral tradition.


Andrew

DNAReplicator

I have never really bought into the Q hypothesis either. I know it is a very unfashionable view, but It seems more logical to me that 'Matthew' as described by Papias could actually be what we call Q today.

Consider this; Papias can be interpreted as implying that Matthew wrote first, but the testimony is often discounted because gMatthew as we know it is not as Papias describes

However, if what Matthew wrote was what we call Q, and this early text was heavily redacted over the following decades to something approaching gMatthew as we have it today, then we can make better sense of Papais's comments. When 'Luke' later writes his gospel, he could have been in possession of early version of gMatthew, which would be a short sayings gospel, with no virgin birth, no Pauline resurrection etc. Matthew is then consistent with the mundane pre-resurrection human Jesus obliquely described by the Pauline material. If gThomas is early (and I see no reason to rule this out), then the Jesus figure in Matthew consistent with the one portrayed in Thomas too.

If so, then when Luke tells us

his comments make better sense. He is then treating this early Matthian text with the same sort of respect he shows Mark, but feels free to amend and alter the later redacted Matthian material to suit his own theological purposes. Of course he would also be aware of the Matthean redactions, so the minor agreements with Luke against Mark are explicable.

I have always suspected that this idea has never gained any traction because it suits nobody's agenda too well. It describes a first version of Matthew which portrays a fairly mundane preacher/faith-healer. This does not suit Christians and simultaneously makes a HJ nobody has heard of in his lifetime seem more parsimonious - which is not likely to be a popular idea on these pages.

Of course with an absence of too much supporting data, the idea is simply a one more un-provable conjecture amongst many. However, it does seem to make sense of much of the data we do have regarding the early development of the Jesus figure (Papias, Luke 1, gThomas) in a way that other conjectures seem to struggle with.

JonA

Here: http://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/1378

yalla

Thanks JonA!

For those who may be interested, here is the abstract for this thesis.

This thesis examines the viability of the Farrer theory of how The Gospel According to Luke was written in light of the influential criticisms of that theory by F.G. Downing. Downing argues that on Farrer's theory, Luke has departed from known compositional procedures of Graeco-Roman authors in deserting the common witness of his sources, in picking out Matthew's additions to Mark from Matthew's gospel to use in his own work, and in removing the Markan parallels from the Matthean additions that he has picked out. This thesis will argue to the contrary that in following one of his sources at a time rather than trying to follow both simultaneously, and in using material from his second (Matthean) source to supplement his main (Markan) source, Farrer's Luke appears to be following accepted ancient compositional methods, and that he has no demonstrable tendency to remove Markan parallels from his use of Matthew.

Solo

True and a good argument against the oral source hypothesis in the double tradition, but the bad news for the Q theory is that Matthew and Luke also often closely agree against Mark in the triple tradition.

Best,
Jiri

outhouse

while some think they copied from one another, that is a minority position



the majority of scholars do follow the Q tradition


Q was probably a jewish sourced oral tradition, or a true jewish version of scripture that had to be redacted to meet the roman version of jesus were stuck with today, that was either purposely destroyed or destroyed in fire or war.


because we dont have Q doesnt mean it didnt exist.


So far all these mythers have down in this thread is steered you away from real work done on the subject, for their own personal uneducated version which is less then a minority position. They havnt reached that minority status yet

Tigers!

Here's a radical thought - the life of Jesus the Christ

Adam

Please realize that Q is basically by definition whatever is in Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark. The presence of much of Mark in the Gospel of Thomas indicates that there was a document that was utilized in the production of all four of the above gospels. Thus much that is Triple Tradition by definition is from the same document used for the defined Q. Thus agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark prove nothing against the Q theory.

Nor is what is contained within the defined Q necessarily part of the original document. Wherever "Q" has the verbal exactness Andrew Criddle mentions, it is really "Q2", written originally in Greek as opposed to Q1 that was written in Aramaic and translated loosely and always differently into Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas.