neilgodfrey

Yes but more than that, those first two chapters (and the Emmaus Road piece, too) imitate that mythic type atmosphere I have spoken of, too. They build on more than just the content of the Samson and Samuel births and resonnate throughout with many facets of narratives from those of Abraham on. But that's another topic.

Yes, it is strange indeed. Am rethinking some key aspects of this whole question.


Neil

spin

My problem is that I'm stuck seeing Lk 1 as a prefabricated block of text which the Lucan writer has modified, then imitates it for his Jesus infancy story. Gone is Elisabeth's annunciation, replaced by Mary's, making the original writer's text more opaque. So, if you see a connection in the type of material with the Emmaus road story, I can't contradict you, but I don't see the relationship between a piece of baptist narrative and a part of the post-resurrection extensions of Luke.


spin

neilgodfrey

I don't know for sure exactly what you mean by "the Lucan writer". Presumably the author of the main body of the gospel? I am currently working with the model where the first two chapters are an addition by the same author who wrote Acts (and yes, the Emmaus Road narrative). But this is hardly the topic under discussion here. And has been discussed in some depth on iidb and elsewhere. Hence the parenthetical mention of the Emmaus Road bit.


Neil

spin

I understand the writing of the gospels not to have been the work of single writers, but probably of several writers. With Matt in my analysis of the Nazara/Nazoraios/etc material I think I can point to at least three, if not four, writing events (separate occasions when the text was developed upon). With Luke, covering the same topic, I pointed to at least two writing events (the writer who named the hometown scene as Nazareth was different from the person who relocated it from 9:1 to 4:16ff).

The gospels to me represent community traditions that receive and incorporate additions and modifications through time until the written tradition is more or less closed when it is absorbed into a wider world. Talking about Matthews and Marks and Lukes trivializes the writing process involved and allows for the reification of the unique writer of each.

I'll talk about the "Lucan writer", ie the person responsible for the piece of text from the gospel of Luke under consideration at a particular moment. I'll use "Luke" to talk about the document, hopefully making it easier as well to understand that I'm not talking about the writer, but the text.


spin

Chili

It shows that for one to go fishing on the other side of the boat one must be reborn of water first. The other side of the boat here is the right side of our mind where the seclusion of Elizabeth speaks of the calm at sea that represents the inner determination towards liberation by the house of Israel that now is coming to a full stop.

The significance here is that their liberation also brings freedom from the law that is written upon our heart [as if in stone] by their captivity.

Rick Sumner

The question of JBap to Jesus from prison (Matt.11.2-6) also lends some credibility to your theory. It flatly contradicts John's testimony in Matt.3. Since we can state with some degree of confidence that the testimony in chapter 3 is Matthean invention, it seems less likely that the question in Matt 11 is likewise a wholesale invention--he was too conscious of it earlier in his gospel.

A Baptist tradition, outside of the Jesus tradition, can make some sense of this, with the answer John receives being a Matthean ploy. It's really not necessary to solve the problem though, so while it fits the model, I don't know how strongly it counts for it.

In this hypothesis, why is the only information about John found here? That starts to look like a bizarrely written source.

In the infancy, Luke either considered his source to be more reliable than Matthew, or simply didn't have Matthew. But once you move past that, all of Luke's information about JBap comes from either Matthew/Q or Mark. So his source either didn't have any more information, or Luke didn't consider it reliable anymore.

It the two-source hypothesis this isn't as damaging. It's not helpful, but doesn't really hurt. Luke could have considered his source to be reliable enough for the infancy, because it's all he had, other than, perhaps, oral traditions shaped by Matthew. Once he moved on to material he had other sources for, he favoured them.

But in a Mark-without-Q world you start to have a problem, because Luke either had a very strange looking source in front of him, or a source that he, curiously, only considered reliable for the infancy.

Unless we're going to hypothesize that Matthew for sure, and possibly Mark, had access to the same tradition. But then why does Luke seem to favour their redaction over his source? Surely he'd be aware that his predecessors had used the same material. Why consider them the better source?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

JoeWallack

JW:
In The Birth of the Messiah page 156 Brown gives the standard Biblical Formula for Annunciation of Birth:

1) The appearance of an angel.

2) Fear or prostration.

3) The divine message.

4) An objection or request for sign

5) The giving of a sign

In Baps Annunciation:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/...1&byte=4782437

JW:
"Luke" follows the standard outline. Specifically for the 3. The divine message, Brown breaks it down as follows:

a. Visionary addressed by name.

b. Qualifying phrase for visionary.

c. Visionary told not to be afraid.

d. A woman is or will be pregnant.

e. She will give birth to a male.

f. The name of the child.

g. The etymology of the name.

h. Future accomplishments of the child.

Let's try these on for size:

JW:
Deviations from the formula:

No b. Qualifying phrase for visionary.

No d. A woman is or will be pregnant.

No g. The etymology of the name.

Compare to the Annunciation to Mary:

JW:
The only deviation from the formula here is strangely g. The etymology of the name, which was also omitted for JtB. It would certainly appear that our female evangelist here is otherwise aware of the complete formula and has deliberately omitted a qualifying, positive phrase for Zechariah and cut short the Annunciation by omitting the pregnancy. The result is obviously to compare Mary favorably to Zechariah. Considering that our femme faTale never criticizes any fellow female and actually flips the women at the end from the ones who didn't believe to the ones who did believe and makes the men the ones who didn't believe, I believe you have something else significant going on with the JtB Annunciation Spin. There is major incentive by "Luke" to edit for the purpose of male bashing.

In perhaps the low moment of Brown's career he recognizes all of the standard pieces of the Annunciation formula somewhere in the INs and demonstrates that whatever was original was likely edited to break up the standard formula presentation. Sadly he concludes that it was the original authors who edited their own work.



Joseph

spin

Yup. There are a lot of problems caused by incorporating JtB into the gospels. What's happened here seems to be an issue of a redaction element that doesn't pay enough attention to what was said in an earlier layer of the text. Mt 3:17 has specifically been altered to have the voice make a public announcement, not just one to Jesus: "this is my son...". Not only has John recognized the special status of Jesus, it's reinforced by the voice, yet 11:3 has John showing no real awareness of that status. (My partner suggested that John was being ironic, urging Jesus on to do something tangible...)

The thing is, though, that the scene of John in prison asking for clarification from Jesus is shared material with Luke: compare Mt 11:2-6 with Lk 7:18-23. In the effort to incorporate such a ready-made source, the Matthean writer wasn't contemplating that it would cause problems with material already in his written tradition.

The infancy fragment may have been the only surviving written source (if there were more than that). I must admit that infancy gospels based on Jesus are a fair bit longer, but they are developments after the Mt & Lk received their infancy narratives.

I see no sign of the Lucan writer having Matt available.

I haven't thought of a source wider than the infancy fragment, but the Lucan baptism scene doesn't actually follow Mark at all. The writer uses material available to Matt, but also some unique stuff as well, eg 3:10-14 with 3:15 as editorial glue.

I see that much of the baptist material came from interaction with the baptist sect. It also points to baptist information arriving at different times. Mark contains a small amount of it, then Luke and Matthew contain extra material. A lot of John's material is independent.

(I'm sure you realize that I don't see any room for a person called "Luke" (or Mark, etc.), ie a single author of the Lucan gospel tradition. It shapes your approach to the text more than you might be aware, apparently stimulating assumptions based on the single authorship.)

Sorry, I don't hold your understanding of the relationships between these texts. I think of a text written, Mark (without going into its development), arriving at different christian communities, one taking it and adapting it to the community's traditions and forming the basis for Matthew and another ending in a community that develops Luke. Between christian communities there were itinerant preachers (see the Didache and also Lucian's "Passing of Peregrinus") who passed preaching for food and lodging. These preachers carried traditions sometimes written, though mostly oral that they used to earn their living. As traditions reached particular communities those traditions were evaluated and shaped for the current state of the literary tradition.


spin

spin

Sorry, I don't accept your Ur-feminist approach to Luke and I have difficulty with the sort of text evolution you seem to presuppose. I supply a working model in the last paragraph of my previous response (to Rick Sumner).


spin

Rick Sumner

No one in the movement was interested enough to make copies?

Apologies, I should have made myself clearer. At least for purposes of this discussion, working within your hypothesis, I am using "Luke" to refer to the redactor of the sources, not necessarily the author. The redactor either didn't have Matthew, or didn't consider Matthew as reliable as the Lucan author.

So do we have an independent baptist tradition known to Matthew/Q and Luke? Editorial gloss by Luke? Or an independent tradition known only to Luke used to supplement his use of Matthew/Q?

Just trying to get a picture of what you think we're looking at. There is of course a possibility of some sort of combination at different points as well. I'd be inclined to agree, for example, that Matthew and his question from the imprisoned JBap represents an independent tradition from a JBap movement. Not that it's necessarily historical. . .I'd think it represents some sort of contention between the two groups.

I've seen it suggested that the author of John was a convert from a JBap movement.

[QUOTE](I'm sure you realize that I don't see any room for a person called "Luke" (or Mark, etc.), ie a single author of the Lucan gospel tradition. It shapes your approach to the text more than you might be aware, apparently stimulating assumptions based on the single authorship.)

But we still have a redactor who pieced those traditions together into what is now the gospel of Luke, and the question pertains as well to him as it does to an individual author.

Regards,
Rick Sumner