Ben C Smith

Okay, Earl, your book is on its way (back) to me via interlibrary loan.

In the meantime, I have once again perused your online summary of the Q situation, and here is the section that deals with your contention that only in Q3 are we introduced to a human founder called Jesus.

1.

Q was not a narrative Gospel, but an organized collection of sayings which included moral teachings, prophetic admonitions and controversy stories, plus a few miracles and other anecdotes. It was the product of a Jewish (or Jewish imitating) sectarian movement located in Galilee which preached a coming Kingdom of God. Scholars have concluded that Q was put together over time and in distinct stages. They have identified the earliest stratum (calling it Q1) as a set of sayings on ethics and discipleship; these contained notably unconventional ideas. Many are found in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount: the Beatitudes, turn the other cheek, love your enemies. A close similarity has been noted (see F. Gerald Downing, "Cynics and Christians," NTS 1984, p.584-93; Burton Mack, A Myth of Innocence, p.67-9, 73-4) between these maxims and those of the Greek philosophical school known as Cynicism, a counterculture movement of the time spread by wandering Cynic preachers. (Mack has declared that Jesus was a Cynic-style sage, whose connection with things Jewish was rather tenuous.) Perhaps the Q sect at its beginnings adopted a Greek source, with some recasting, one they saw as a suitable ethic for the kingdom they were preaching. In any case, there is no need to impute such sayings to a Jesus; they seem more the product of a school or lifestyle, formulated over time and hardly the sudden invention of a single mind.

No need is not an argument for your thesis; it is the negating of a potential argument against your thesis. And to admit that the Q sayings are not in fact the product of a single mind says nothing about whether or not Q, in whatever layer of development, imputed them to a single mind.

Nothing so far, then, about where Jesus is introduced as an historical figure.

2.

This formative stage of Q scholars call "sapiential," for it is essentially an instructional collection of the same genre as traditional "wisdom" books like Proverbs, though in this case with a radical, counterculture content. Later indications (as in Luke 11:49) suggest that the words may have been regarded as spoken by the personified Wisdom of God (see Part Two), and that the Q preachers saw themselves as her spokespersons.

May have been is not actually an argument; it is the suggestion of a mere possibility. And, even if we were to seize upon this possibility for all its worth, you are here discussing only Q1, the formative stage; Q2 is still left as a place to put the dialogue about John the baptist.

3.

The next stratum of Q (labeled Q2) has been styled "prophetic," apocalyptic. In these sayings the community is lashing out against the hostility and rejection it has received from the wider establishment. In contrast to the mild, tolerant tone of Q1, Q2 contains vitriolic railings against the Pharisees, a calling of heaven's judgment down on whole towns. The figure of the Son of Man enters, one who will arrive at the End-time to judge the world in fire; he is probably the result of reflection on the figure in Daniel 7. Here we first find John the Baptist, a kind of mentor or forerunner to the Q preachers. Dating the strata of Q is difficult, but I would suggest that this second stage falls a little before the Jewish War.

If Q2 is where we first find John the baptist, it naturally is a good place, so far, to place the dialogue about John the baptist. But you continue:

There is good reason to conclude that even at this stage there was no Jesus in the Q community's thinking.

Presumably, then, the good reason is to follow:

That is, the wisdom and prophetic sayings in their original form would have contained no mention of a Jesus as speaker or source. They were pronouncements of the community itself and its traditional teachings, seen as inspired by the Wisdom of God.

So far we have a mere restatement (that is) of the conclusion to be argued.

For while Matthew and Luke often show a common wording or idea in a given saying core, when they surround this with set-up lines and contexts involving Jesus, each evangelist offers something very different. (Compare Luke 17:5-6 with Matthew 17:19-20). This indicates that Q had preserved nothing which associated the sayings with a ministry of Jesus, a lack of interest in the source of the teaching which would be unusual and perplexing.

This is an argument, to be sure, but it is an argument against reading specific historical contexts into the Q sayings. You are correct to note that the settings are usually different between Luke and Matthew. However, Matthew and Luke usually agree in attributing the saying to Jesus. (In the very case which you mentioned, Luke 17.5-6 = Matthew 17:19-20, they also agree that the audience for this saying was the disciples; yet I do not think this agreement makes it into the critical edition of Q for some reason.) The critical edition of Q has Jesus appearing by name in front of several sayings or deeds.

So, even pressing your point here for its full force, we are not yet entitled to remove Jesus as a person from Q2; your argument is aimed explicitly at those parts in which each evangelist offers something very different, a distinction for which the mutual attribution of several sayings to Jesus cannot qualify.

Nor is the denial of specific settings in most sayings in any way an argument for the dialogue unit being a part of Q3.

4.

Nor are the apocalyptic Son of Man sayings (about his future coming) identified with Jesus, which is why, when they were later placed in his mouth, Jesus sounds as though he is talking about someone else. When one examine's John the Baptist's prophecy at the opening of Q (Luke 3:16-17), about one who will come "who is mightier than I," who will baptize with fire and separate the wheat from the chaff, we find no reference to a Jesus or an enlightened teacher or prophet who is contemporary to John. Rather, this sounds like a prophecy of the coming Son of Man, the apocalyptic judge, a prophecy put into John's mouth by the Q community.

Again, even at its full force, this argument says nothing about whether Jesus appeared in any layer of Q as an historical personage. To affirm that he was not originally the son of man is not to deny that he originally spoke about the son of man.

Furthermore, the observation that the sayings sound as though the speaker is speaking about somebody else applies to Q in general, not merely to Q1 or Q2 over against Q3.

Again there is nothing here to place the dialogue unit in Q3.

5.

Especially revealing is the saying now found in Luke 16:16: "Until John (the Baptist) there was the law and the prophets (i.e., scripture); since then, there is the good news of the Kingdom of God." This, like so much of Q, is acknowledged to be a product of the community's own experience and time (i.e., not going back to Jesus), and yet no reference to Jesus himself has been worked into this picture of the change from the old to the new. Luke 11:49 also leaves out the Son of God when speaking of those whom Wisdom promised to send.

Once more, these observations apply to Q as a whole (that is, no matter which of the layers first offered Luke 16.16, it was evidently still found in the version known to Luke). Thus, they offer us no assistance in identifying the dialogue unit with Q3 over and against Q1 or Q2.

Even if we grant this part of your discussion full credit, there is nothing in it demanding that Q2 lack an historical Jesus or the dialogue unit in question.

6.

Leading specialists on Q, such as John Kloppenborg (The Formation of Q), recognize that Q in its various stages has undergone considerable redaction (editing, adding and rearranging material to create a unified whole with identifiable themes and theology). But their analysis of Q3, the stratum they call the "final recension," does not go far enough. For only at this stage, I would argue, was an historical founder introduced, a figure who was now perceived to have established the community.

Again we meet up with the assertion that only in the Q3 stage is an historical Jesus introduced. You claim that this is what you would argue, so we patiently await the argument to that effect. You continue:

Certain past material would have been reworked and everything attributed to this founder, including healing "miracles" which had been part of the activity of the Q preachers themselves. For the teachings, possibly no more than a simple "Jesus said" was provided, which is why Matthew and Luke had to invent their own settings.

More summarizing of the basic assertion, listing the things that had to have happened if the assertion is true (past material reworked, adding a simple Jesus said; we have already noted that you have yet to actually mount an argument against the originality of the Jesus said statements to Q1 or Q2; implicating the settings where Luke and Matthew differ does not implicate the attributions on which Luke and Matthew agree). Granted that something like this must have happened if your assertion is true, the question remains: What makes your assertion true? Nothing so far....

7.

(This kind of skeletal addition is what we find in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas which is thought to have begun, in its own early stratum of sayings, as an offshoot of an early stage of Q. For more on the Gospel of Thomas, see my book review of J. D. Crossan's The Birth of Christianity.)

The gospel of Thomas attributes most of its sayings to Jesus by name. And there is still no word on why the addition, if that is what it is, of Jesus had to have occurred in Q3 as opposed to an earlier layer.

8.

This new Jesus is positioned as superior to John, who now serves as his herald. At a slightly later stage he is identified with the expected Son of Man. In the very latest layer of Q we find the stirrings of biography and a tendency to divinize this Jesus. The Temptation story (Luke 4:1-13) belongs here.

More restatement and refinement of the assertion. Still no actual argument for it.

From here you turn to explaining where the Q tradents would have gotten the idea of a founder. This discussion clearly presumes your assertion that the founder was introduced only late into Q.

When your book arrives, I will run through the Q chapters with a fine-toothed comb to see if you ever actually mount an argument for placing the dialogue unit in Q3.

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

In this case, however, it is you who have missed a key nuance in Kloppenborg's argumentation, namely: "Although Q lacks Mark's overarching narrative framework...Q lacks a unifying narrative format..." (emphasis in bold added). Kloppenborg is a very careful writer; he put the words "overarching" and "unifying" in there for a reason, so don't ignore them when you respond to Zeichman.

Stephen

jgibson000

Earl writes:

This new Jesus is positioned as superior to John, who now serves as his herald. At a slightly later stage he is identified with the expected Son of Man. In the very latest layer of Q we find the stirrings of biography and a tendency to divinize this Jesus. The Temptation story (Luke 4:1-13) belongs here.

How does the Q "temptation" story, intent as it is to present Jesus as recapitulating the testing in the wilderness to which Israel was subjected, "divinize" Jesus?

Jeffrey Gibson

Zeichman

Indeed, he may also want to read Wendy Cotter's "Yes, I Tell You, and More Than a Prophet," which argues the exact same thing that I do.

So far, it seems to be very often that the scholars Doherty quotes says the exact opposite or at least something completely different from what Doherty claims they are. N.T. Wright's (unargued, iirc) comparison of important ideas in Judaism is turned into an absolute claim by Doherty; Mack (though internally inconsistently), Kloppenborg, and Crossan all place at least part of Q 6:22-23 in Q1 and the basis for the latter two is nothing like what he claimed it is (i.e. son of man sayings, apocalyptic); Kloppenborg on the use of Mark when discussing the Beelzelbub controversy says the exact opposite of what Doherty claims he is: he is using redaction criticism, not equating the beliefs of different evangelists. His quotation of Harper's Bible Commentary is completely tangential to what I said: I was talking about Ancient Near Eastern instruction, not "wisdom writings" in general and especially not the sister-genre of "proverb collections." His citation of the composite nature of Q 7:18-35 and quotation of Kloppenborg has missed my point: I would not at all contest the composite nature of this section, only its relevance to stratigraphical location (and the reason that I follow Kloppenborg so closely is not because I worship him, but because he argues for things instead of conjecturing favorable ideas without argument, if someone else offers a persuasive argument another direction I would certainly follow, despite what Doherty seems to think).

This tendency to quote scholars as saying the opposite of what they do seems to indicate that conclusions are far more important to Doherty than arguments, since it doesn't seem like he has read these individuals very carefully.

jgibson000

FWIW, if you'll search the archives, you'll see that others have previously made, and have provided evidence for the truth of, the same observation.

Jeffrey Gibson

EarlDoherty

I am going to withdraw at this point, because I don't even seem to get the most basic idea across to any of you. You refer to "Q3" as though it is an established category, with a fixed definition accepted by everyone. Then you demand that I supply arguments for why I include a given pericope (in this case, the Dialogue) in that Q3. While I generally accept scholarship's 'established' content of Q1, my distinction between what constitutes Q2 and what constitutes Q3 is, of course, somewhat original. (It is laid out in my book, if not to the degree of detail which you might like.) If I define Q3 in such a way that it includes some of the 'established' Q2 material, and explain how I arrive at my own distinctions between Q2 and Q3, then that is my argument. You are so stuck in your paradigms that you cannot recognize or acknowledge such argument.

As an analogy (imperfect, of course, as all analogies are), if car enthusiasts generally divide American automobiles into A1, A2 and A3, respectively defined as General Motors, Fords and Chryslers. I come along and suggest a different cateogization, and according to the latter, I place the Mustang in my A3. But my categorizations are based on a different set of distinctions than according to auto-maker. You come along and demand that I justify placing a Ford product in the Chrysler category. But my A3 is not defined as "all cars made by Chrysler," but some other distinction, which can involve an overlap between Fords and Chryslers. I try to explain and justify my set of distinctions, but all I meet is demands that are stuck in the auto-maker paradigm.

For me to satisfy you would be a hopeless and thankless task. If your "fine-toothed comb" is preset to draw out only the hairs that you have aligned it for, you will not find what you are seeking. You are simply not disposed to even try to understand what I am proposing. You can make of this what you will, but there is a limit to the amount of time I will waste here.

As usual Kipling was right. Never the twain shall meet.

All the best,
Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Before bowing out, I’m going to comment on this, just to illustrate the deficiency in the application of reasoning which seems to infect those bent on my destruction, including in Zeichman’s critique. Carlson seizes on these words atomistically, as though he thinks they somehow counter my contentions. What kind of narrative are we talking about in Q, the narrative that Kloppenborg is talking about? It is a narrative from beginning to end, the only kind that matters. Kloppenborg is defining what he means by narrative in using the words “overarching” and “unifying”. He certainly is not implying that there is another kind of narrative present. Can Carlson point out what other kind of narrative there is in Q? An “under-arching” one? A smaller scale narrative between only some of the pericopes? Of course not. The only ‘narrative’ character that exists in Q is that found within a handful of pericopes. The Dialogue has a narrative character within itself; so does the healing of the centurion’s servant, a couple of others. But that is irrelevant. What is at issue is whether there is a large-scale narrative framework covering multiple pericopes. And there isn’t. And Kloppenborg is not claiming that there is. He may be a “careful writer” but he certainly isn’t implying what Carlson wants him to be. Carlson’s comment is a Hail Mary pass; he hasn’t thought it through, he’s just hoping Kloppenborg is implying something that will prove harmful to the issue I’m addressing—which is why he doesn’t try to explain what Kloppenborg’s “reason” is.

He also fails to realize that this “overarching” narrative idea is precisely the kind of narrative that Zeichman appealed to in trying to explain why John in the opening pericope doesn’t sound like he is talking about a person on the scene. My counter was to demonstrate, appealing to Kloppenborg’s remarks on the subject, that no such narrative framework, on the basis of which Zeichman was trying to argue, exists in Q.

Unfortunately, Zeichman has fallen into the trap of accepting Carlson’s above quote as actually representing an argument against me on Kloppenborg’s part, that I have quoted Kloppenborg as saying something, whereas he “says the exact opposite or at least something completely different.” Well, he doesn’t. In this case, Kloppenborg and I agree and Zeichman’s trust in Carlson is misplaced. There is no narrative structure in Q which would support the arguments he makes in his critique. The worst part of it is, he still doesn't realize it. Instead of actually reading, absorbing and responding to my arguments on this point, he simply grasps at Carlson's straws.

What can I do against argumentation like this? The only thing I can do is withdraw and spend my time more productively.

Earl Doherty

Ted Hoffman

Earl, its a four-way tagteam. It would be a full-time job to address their concerns, arguments, ideas, assumptions, errors, criticisms and opinions. You can only do so properly when your schedule is free. Maybe it will coincide with the results of Ben's fine-toothed comb.
But I think you are doing quite well so far. If you can keep it to two or three posts a week, you shall be able to address all their arguments without feeling frustrated.

Peter Kirby

This isn't even a very hostile tagteam. Try writing about Samuel Rutherford's strange case if you want to see the dogs of IIDB at work!

Ted Hoffman

The thread title itself states that it was a "strange case". But that was IIDB at its best: if you approach the table with bogus argumentation, it shall be passionately, intelligently, quickly and ferociously attacked. Were you being serious in that thread?

Hostile? What emotions do the following expressions evoke when leveled against one's arguments: "How is this not wishful thinking?", "you've misrepresented them", "you seem to have forgotten", "Is a vanity press really "publishing"?", "he seems to have missed a crucial element", "Doherty has missed a key nuance in Kloppenborg's argumentation", "Doherty has missed my point", "Doherty doesn't seem like he has read these individuals very carefully..."