GentDave

Yuri: Sure, it was similar to Mk in so far as it was probably very short, and lacked much in the way of sayings materials.

Dave: By traditional means, I would also say it was is substantially the same order as Mark, and that most parts of it were substantailly Mark's wording.

By the study, the document Matthew and Luke used had a vocabulary profile similar to Mark.

So, someting at least pretty Mark-ish, was the source for Matthew and Luke.

Yuri: Both FH and 3SH fail to account for an awful lot of material in Lk that is completely original, i.e. not found in either Mt or Mk.

Dave: How So? Luke worte it himself, or used sources, not used by Matthew and Mark.

Yuri: -- Both tend to ignore plenty of material in Lk that appears to be much earlier vis-a-vis both Mt and Mk.
This early Lukan material is the key to understanding the early history of the gospels IMO. In fact, out of the 3 Synoptics, Luke seems to have more early material than any of the others!

Dave: Are you saying Luke had early material, not used by Matthew and Mark? If so, that does not contrdict my results at all. I'd only say that he re-wrote it into his own style, if he did that.

Or are you saying that Mark and Luke have a common early source that they both used? If so, I'd say that common early document had a vocabulary much more like Mark than Luke.

In fact, the only significant differances, may have been that our Mark is expanded here and there with commentary and details, over the original Mark.

Overall the study drew me more away from a completely independent early gospel, and more toward something very Mark-like as the first.

I'd be interested in whatever details you have about early Luke.

Peter Kirby

I didn't read your whole site, GentDave, but perhaps you can answer here: what evidence indicates that Luke used Matthew rather than Matthew used Luke? Evidence from your study, I mean, unless you want to bring in other considerations.

best,
Peter Kirby

GentDave

Here are the pages that talk about Luke using Mattew.

http://www.davegentile.com/synoptics...pretation.html
http://www.davegentile.com/synoptics/sayings.html
http://www.davegentile.com/synoptics...greements.html

In a nut shell, there is a category 212, made up of the minor agreements. It turns up as related to categories like 211, and 210, that are undisputedly Matthew. But 212 is not related to categories that Luke must have written.

Also, category 202 is the agreements in "Q" between Matthew and Luke. These turn up related to 201 (the part of Q in Matthew only) and 200 (Sondergut Matthew), but 202 is not significantly related to the Luke parts of Q (102), or related at all to sondergut Luke. (002)

So, both categories, that a priori might have been Luke or Matthew have a vocabulary style related to Matthew, and not to Luke.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Dave,

All this material that you're presenting is the product of multiple interpretative decisions that had previously been taken by various parties. Most of this can be described as secondary interpretation, and lots of things could have gone wrong while all those prior interpretative decisions were being made.

For example, the concepts such as "the style of Lk" or "the style of Mt" may already be problematic. In general, I see some parts of Mt as late, while some are early. So since you've mixed all these in your analysis of Matthean style, then your overall findings may not really reflect the true picture of various Matthean styles as used in different parts of Mt.

Likewise, there are probably some early Lukan stylistic elements, and some late ones, as well.

Also, Koester has carefully distinguished between some late Markan stylistic elements that would be different from his early ones. (Vinnie has a summary of this on his webpage.)

So, basically, in order to have a meaningful analysis of all these issues, we really need to come down to the level of primary data. So how about you present here some specific passages in the triple tradition where _you say_ that Lk copied some stuff from Mk and/or Mt (rather than the other way around)?

After we examine some such test cases, perhaps your general methodology can be considerably clarified.

Meanwhile, soon I will present some specific material in Lk that I see as obviously earlier than what we find in Mk and Mt.

Regards,

Yuri.

GentDave

The study itself does not go down to the level of specific passages. You know that. There are certainly things to be learned by doing that, but that's not what the study is about. It's about the overall vocabulary profile.

I'm not sure what you mean by previous interpretations. Do you mean the placement of the words into different categories? If so, then there is a small dergee of subjectiveness. I discuss that the authors of the HBB assume the 2SH, so some things in the "Mark/Q overlap" are arguably misclassified. But, for the most part the classification is non-subjective. Up to the point of producing the probabilities there is very little that is subjective or based on assuptions. How to interpret the results is a little more subjective, however.

In any case, I certainly do not want to claim that there are not more details "below the surface". There could be 20 documents, all full of slight modifications of the last, for all I know. What I do know, is that the big picture, at the level of resolution the study is capible of, looks like the 3SH.

As an example, I suppose category (211) which only appears in Matthew could be 2/3 Matthew, 1/3 "someone else", and the minor ageements (212) could be Mathew, and they would still show up as related, and we would totally miss the "someone else" involved.

All it really says is that for the majority of text Mark came before Matthew, and Luke. Also, that Matthew came before Luke. And finally that there is a noticably distinct sayings category.

If you have specific questions about the study, I'd be glad to try to answer them, and I'd be interested in anything you post about Luke.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Yes, Dave, but without some specific examples, the idea that the 3SH is valid will not find any ready acceptance, I'm afraid...

Quote:

I'm not sure what you mean by previous interpretations. Do you mean the placement of the words into different categories? If so, then there is a small dergee of subjectiveness. I discuss that the authors of the HBB assume the 2SH, so some things in the "Mark/Q overlap" are arguably misclassified. But, for the most part the classification is non-subjective. Up to the point of producing the probabilities there is very little that is subjective or based on assuptions. How to interpret the results is a little more subjective, however.

Well, there you go. Even the interpretation of your overall results still remains somewhat subjective...

Quote:

In any case, I certainly do not want to claim that there are not more details "below the surface". There could be 20 documents, all full of slight modifications of the last, for all I know. What I do know, is that the big picture, at the level of resolution the study is capible of, looks like the 3SH.

But I wish we knew with more certainty what is this Big Picture of yours really the Big Picture of?

Yes, it's a Big Picture of something, but what is it that we are really measuring? That's the central problem here as I see it.

Quote:

As an example, I suppose category (211) which only appears in Matthew could be 2/3 Matthew, 1/3 "someone else", and the minor ageements (212) could be Mathew, and they would still show up as related, and we would totally miss the "someone else" involved. All it really says is that for the majority of text Mark came before Matthew, and Luke. Also, that Matthew came before Luke. And finally that there is a noticably distinct sayings category. If you have specific questions about the study, I'd be glad to try to answer them, and I'd be interested in anything you post about Luke.

I'll be posting the stuff about Lukan priority pretty soon. I can give many specific examples where Lk is clearly the earliest. For example, the Synoptic Anointing scenes. IMHO it's completely impossible that the Lukan Anointing scene was based on the Markan (and/or Matthean) Anointing scene. The reverse was far more likely, and lots of big name scholars happen to agree with me here...

As to your study, basically, I don't think that the application of your type of statistical analysis was really appropriate in this case.

Keep in mind that you started out to compare the 2SH with the other 2 theories. But we already knew from the outset that, based on the Anti-Markan Agreements alone, the chances of 2SH being valid were about 1 in 1,000,000.

OK, suppose you've _totally_ proved that the FH and the 3SH are both somewhat more likely than the currently mainstream 2SH. So how would we put this in the numerical terms? Let's see...

The 2SH chances of being right = 1 in 1,000,000.
The FH chances of being right = 1 in 900,000 (?)
The 3SH chances of being right = 1 in 800,000 (?)

Is this correct?

So are these the sorts of the results that people should see as encouraging for the FH and the 3SH?

Regards,

Yuri.

Bernard Muller

Dave wrote:
"I tend to see Luke as liking some of the corrections to Mark's Greek that Matthew made, but not liking a lot of the content changes. Luke did not see Matthew as authoritative, in my view.

I'm familiar with the nature of the MAs, and many could be explained the way the 2SH suggests. However, the study suggests the MAs (cat. 212) are Matthian in style much more than Lukian, suggesting Luke borrowing from Matthew.

I also think the agreements of omission against Mark are too large to explain by completely independant action. I think there must have been a proto-Mark that they both used, or Luke knew Matthew's omissions and tended to agree."

Dave, let me engage in pure unsubstantiated theories right now:
Let's say GMark was introduced early on in Matthew's community.
Then, one of the principals, looking at GMark, noticed the obvious: poor Greek, very undignified for a document which otherwise had values.
Solution: rewriting in part in better Greek (with no major changes or additions)
"Matthew" used that version for his gospel, and somehow, a copy of it (that is 'rewritten GMark' or post-GMark) made it to GLuke community.
One more step: a younger "Matthew" might have been the rewriter, or at least, somebody from the same milieu, sharing the same vocabulary & jargon, that is from a same group of educated Jewish Christians of the same city.
As I contended, a lot of Q was written between GMark & GMatthew, and likely in the same community. If it the case, the Q authors would have access to the post-GMark, explaining the similarities.

Food for thoughts. I do not have a clue how these theories can be proven or disproven, but it seems to me your study would allow them.
How to explain the disappearance of the post-GMark?
Well, it became known this post-GMark was not the authentic original one and therefore did not get recopied, ensuring its end.

I contacted Dave by E-Mail about the resurrection of this thread. So I hope he will share his thoughts on that.

Best regards, Bernard

GentDave

Yuri writes: Keep in mind that you started out to compare the 2SH with the other 2 theories.

Dave: This kind of statement leads me to believe you don't understand what I did. I didn't set out to compare any set of hypotheses. After the results were in, I evaluated what popular theories were consistant with the results and which ones were not consistant with the results.

Reduced to its basics the study says 4 things:
1) For the majority of text that Mark and Matthew have in common Mark is more original.
2) For the majority of the text Mark and Luke have in common Mark is more original
3) For the majority of the text that Matthew and Luke have in common outside of Mark, Matthew is more original.
4) There are "sayings" that are somewhat distinct in their vocabulary.

Note that I said the *majority* of the text, not *all* the text.

There are an infinite number of hypotheses consistant with that, if we allow unlimited complexity. The simplest theory that is consistant with the study is the 3SH, but others that are more complex are also consistant.

The study does eliminate some ideas, like the idea that Mark was a composit based on a finished Matthew and Luke, but it does not eliminate many other ideas.

I'm basicly sympathetic to the idea that Luke has some early source, but the study adds no support for that. However, one could hypothesis that there was an early source that Mark tended to copy word for word, and Luke tended to re-write in his own vocabualry. This would be fully consistant with the study. Another possibility would be that in most cases Mark was more original, but in a few cases Luke was. There are many possibilities. Again, any theory that fits the 4 poins above, would fit wih the results.


Yuri also writes: As to your study, basically, I don't think that the application of your type of statistical analysis was really appropriate in this case.

Dave: These are very general complaints you are making. "There are assumptions". "the statistical analysis was not appropriate here". But, unless you have something specific, like an assumption that was incorrect, or something that invalidates the limited conclutions that I claim, then I don't find this very productive.

GentDave

Bernard,

That idea is generaly known as deutro-Mark.
see:
http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
under dMk

My study would tend to argue against that. If that were true we'd expect the minor agreements to be unrelated to Matthew's style or Luke's style, but they do show up as related to Matthew.

Bernard Muller

So where the 700 bits where GLuke & GMatthew agree against GMark would fit in? In 3), that is what is considered Q? Where else?

Does Q, if postulated a document, and if compiled/written between GMark & GMatthew, and if put together in the same milieu, in the same city, from people sharing the same vocabulary/syntax as GMatthew, would show similarities with GMatthew, of the same nature you identified in your study?

OK, I see the deutero-Mark is shot down. I did not like the idea but I was trying to figure out from where the 700 items might come.

Best regards, Bernard