Vinnie

Premise: Mark and Q overlaps with verbatim agreement or simply those overlaps that are too extensive to be attributed to oral memory or a common oral matrix require some form of literary dependence between Mark and Q.

Must the two document hypothesis must maintain that Mark did not know Q?The same common sense question could be asked of Mark and Q's relationship as of Mark and Matthew's. Matthean priority is dismissed simply because it cannot be conceived how we would go from Matthew to Mark where the author of Mark left out so much rich material. Why would Mark, likewise, omit so many rich sayings from Q? Furthermore, why would Mark simply choose these few Q passages selectively out of all the others which we can safely claim he agreed with and should have used?

Are all Mark // Q overlaps really such? Or are they simple scapegoats for agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark?

Do Q // Mark overlaps inevitably lead to the position that Matthew and Luke used a different version(s) of Mark than the one now extant?

Vinnie

Zeichman

Matthew and Luke almost assuredly had different versions of Mark than the canonical one. Significant minor agreements such as Matt 26:67-68//Mark 14:65//Luke 22:63-64 seem to suggest a slightly different version of Mark was in use (not to mention the Bethsa'ida section).

However, it seems unlikely that Mark knew Q, yet put it to such little use. Mark certainly liked referring to Jesus as "teacher", yet little of Q-teaching is in his gospel. The Mark/Q overlaps, iirc, are different enough to suggest they are independent attestations. Not to mention that virtually none of Q1 makes it into Mark.

I know Burton Mack believed Mark knew Q (as he believes THomas, Luke and Matthew did), but I have never seen him argue it. Scholarly consensus is that they are independent of each other.

Julian

Mark was a far more creative writer than Luke and Matthew. He started with nothing but some Q-like document, if that. His was not a religious work to the extent that GLk and GMt was and I see no problem with Mark simply picking out the quotes he liked and leaving the rest. I suspect that Luke and Matthew would have a very hard time leaving out anything as they clearly show much more respect and religious awe for christianity. Mark reflects an earlier and less strict phase of christianity. It is also clear that Mark has far more of a political, sectarian agenda than the later Luke and Matthew.

Mark wrote a fictitious story based on sayings that he knew and, through that story, delivered some blows against some of the sects, e.g. Petrine christianity and general apostolic authority, such as it was in those days.

Luke and Matthew were full-blown religious nuts who probably didn't know of the heady, early days reflected in Q. For them it would have been inexcusable to leave out any saying of the lawd!

Just a theory...

Julian

Vinnie

Assuming Marcan priority, yes. How similar to our Mark does this text look seeings how the synoptic problm exists solely based upon our extant canonical gospels?

Mark 14:65 : They all condemned him as worthy of death. 65Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, "Prophesy!" And the guards took him and beat him.

Luke 22:63-64 63The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. 64They blindfolded him and demanded, "Prophesy! Who hit you?"

Matthew 26:67-68 67Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him 68and said, "Prophesy to us, Christ. Who hit you?"

I suppose its the question "who hit you" that you are referring to. This is inadequate at this point as an evidence for an earlier version of Mark since most scholars believe there was a pre-Markan passion narraive. This saying xould have come from there. Not only that, it is not textually warranted. Brown suggest this was a game of sorts in antiquity (see Death of the Messiah v.1 pp 573-584). The 2nd centiru bc Onomasticon of Pollux (dictionary of synonyms arranged according to subject) mentions three games play involving covered eyes. The first was blind tag which involved prophecy, the second was determining which hand was used to slap you as you covered your own eyes and the third involved being blindfolded and trying to find others while being hit with pieces of papyrus. The severity of the blows could become rather nasty.

Reading the passages reveals Matthew's removal of the blindfolding and Luke's retention of the blindfolding but omission of the spitting.

Though I think an idiom of sorts can be appealed to here: "Prophesy. Who struck you." It was a game in antiquity and all three evangelists have it.

I shall try to reprint in a follow up post an example of a Mark // Q overlap where there is some agreement. I think the overlap view requires some verbatim agreement by definition. A Mark // Q overlap is a sharing of the same material by Mark and Q. The more Mark // Q overlap we have the more material and words that the two will share thus requiring dependence between them.

The layering of Q is another matter. We cannot discuss the layering of Q without first determining if we have good grounds for positing Q to begin with. There might be a far more simpler solution.

Yet there are countless agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark and an ever growing Q document to account for these. Two achille's heels of the two document hypothesis.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Here, instead of putting it here I outlined verbatim agreements here on a page:

http://www.after-hourz.net/writings/markqover.html

its short and sweet.

also relevant is this paper on the text of gmark and whether under the 2dh our mark was original mark.

http://www.after-hourz.net/writings/gmarktext.html

ive posted it before but i updated it and just put it back online. nothing major changed....

but back to the mark // q stuff.

if you look at all the supposed mark q ovrlapps a lot of the wording will agree verbatim. the content is already the same (this is definitional as its a material overlap) but any triple agreements indicate agreements of Mark and Q. These seem as if they get rather extensive to the point of necessitating a relationship between Mark and Q under the 2DH.

Vinnie

Vinnie

determining literary dependence...

nothing fancy...just basic stuff....

cleaning up the comp, trying to finish and put up half written articles and projects...

http://www.after-hourz.net/writings/dependence.html

Zeichman

I'm certainly not denying a pre-Marcan passion narrative, but I don't think one minor agreement is sufficient evidence enough that Matthew and Luke preferred it over Mark's passion. The verbatim agreement, I believe, is significant, as it is omitted in canonical Mark. Granted, UBS4 gives Mark a "B" rating here, both Matthew and Luke have "A" ratings. Matthew's ommission of the blindfold seems rather inexplicable, as was pointed out on the Ancient Mediterranean boards a while back, as Jesus could readily see who hit him. While it's plausable that these verses are a conflation of Markan and Passion material (thus Matthew's ommission may be explained as him losing something in his harmonization), it fails to explain why Mark would leave it out, less the Passion narrative had also been changed since he used it, as far as I can tell.

I can accept this premise. However, I think we can also agree that there ought to be numerous, significant agreements between Q and Mark to conclude dependence.

I really wish some group would make a "hypothetical books of the Bible" book and do UBS-style voting on the inclusion of various verses and include Q and pre-canonical Mark, among other lost works. That would be a great resource.

Vinnie

Matthew's account makes no sense without a blindfold so he must have known his readers were aware of the game. That or he slipped up in his copying. I doubt the latter because it looks like he deliberately removed the incident for reasons to be later espoused. Also because both Luke and Mark have the blindfold we probably should not remove it from original Mark. Also removing it from original Mark makes two evangelists commit blunders rather than one as the sense is the same in both. Thus removing the blindfold from original Mark is uunwarranted and creates more difficulty than it solves. So the "not being able to see" is implicit in Matthew as well. "Prophecy, who hit you?" requires this to make any sense.

I'll reprint Brown's explanation of why he left the part about the blindfold out later. Its only a paragraph but I have to run to work now.

V

Vinnie

so its not lost:

http://www.after-hourz.net/writings/markqover.html

the passages:

Matthew Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights and afterward he was hungry.

Mark The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.

Luke And Jesus, full of the holy spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry.

Matthew and Luke Agreements against Mark

Jesus
was led (verb form differs, however)
devil
and
was hungry


Triple Agreements

the Spirit
the wilderness
tempted by the
forty days

S.C.Carlson

Michael Goulder argued that Matthew's account does make sense without the blindfold because there are two groups of people beating on Jesus at the same time: one group spitting on his face (which is why there's no blindfold) and another group clubbing Jesus from the back (whom he cannot see).

Goulder's article is Michael Goulder, "Two Significant Minor Agreements (Mat. 4:13 Par.; Mat. 26:67-68 Par.)," Novum Testamentum 45 (2003): 365-373.

I have blogged about it here: http://www.hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2...ant-minor.html

Stephen Carlson