spin

Doh! Ya don't say?

But not to follow you off on a tangent, I specified the context for using Occam's Razor and for a particular purpose. If you have specific complaints about its use in the case in which I proposed it, feel free to explain those complaints.


spin

Cretinist

That kinda is disregarding it...

Yes, it suggests to me that there was criticism of early Christians from Jews about Jesus not being of Davidic ancestry. Mark seems to also be aware of this criticism, and deals with it in his own way (Mark 12:35-37). So Matthew and Luke made up lists. What it doesn’t suggest to me is that Luke, for some unknown reason, would disregard Matthew’s and substitute his own if he knew about Matthew’s list.

True, you have a point there.

My argument wasn’t meant to be a formal deductive proof, so I don’t think I’ve committed any fallacy in the technical sense.

My incredulity is based on not being able to come up with anything besides bad ad-hoc rationalizations of the problem. Perhaps you can think of something that would cause Luke to disregard the beginning of Matthew besides his unknown “purpose”?

This would only follow if we knew Luke used Matthew.

Luke not using Matthew’s beginning is evidence against it, unless you can come up with a good explanation for why he wouldn’t. “It didn’t suit his purposes,” isn’t a good explanation; it’s a comeback comparable to Fundy apologetics. Maybe Luke also had a copy of John, yet he didn’t use it because it didn’t suit his purposes. How would you be able to tell?

This seems like straining out a gnat to swallow a camel to me.

Cretinist

Maybe, but the beginning of Luke seems to indicate that he believes he is writing history, so I don’t think he would just makeup his own version. Perhaps he had another version he thought was historical and substituted that one for Matthew’s.

Perhaps some of the names had a purpose, but if they did, no one today knows what it could be. Luke could have made them up to make Jesus’ ancestry unverifiable. He could have looked at Matthew’s list and saw the problems it had with the OT, and decided to trash it and start over. That’s about the only semi-plausible motive I can come up with, assuming Luke used Matthew. But Luke’s list still contradicts the OT in places...

I agree.

Vinnie

I disagree. Ancient authors regularly supplemented their narratives by adding speeches with no means of transmission. Josephus did it and so did Luke who thought he was writing history.

Second I am sure Luke thought his accoutn was "true" and even accurate in a lot of placs but I think it is unreasonable to place a modern mindset on Luke. History to Luke certainly involved creativity.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Great point. Mark without Q proponents rarely come up with any valid reason why Luke used Matthew and not Matthew used Luke. They say the "redaction goes that way" but that isn't a valid response. Why did Luke use Matthew and not vice versa? Since Luke is allowed in this framework such a free use of Matthew I take it the same courtesy must be extended to Matt using Luke scenario as well?

Vinnie