Chris Weimer

The problem, Stephen, is that life is ultimately far more complicated than we realize, and all good historians, though we know most of their sources, had sources we don't know now, can't know now, and won't ever know. Judy Redman and I had a lengthy email conversation after she took to liking the "Weimer Hypothesis".

I give my basic position here and here.

I must say, Stephen, the debate between you and Walt turned me away from dependence and closer onto Q more than anything I've seen from Goulder, Farrer, or Goodacre.

PS - The cry of dereliction point was not for or against Q or dependence, but an exasperation saying how difficult the synoptic problem really is since we seem to be lacking something.

S.C.Carlson

Oh well, can't win 'em all, I guess.

Doug Shaver

I don't remember in detail the argument that persuaded me, but the outline was something like this. If there was no Q, then Luke must have used both Mark and Matthew as his sources, and so Luke's gospel was essentially a rewriting of Matthew. That rewriting entailed some extensive cutting and pasting by Luke of Matthew's non-Markan material, but there is no credible explanation for the way he did that cutting and pasting. Therefore, Luke's gospel was not a rewrite of Matthew, and therefore the non-Markan material in both Matthew and Luke must have come from a common source.

S.C.Carlson

The Farrer model does not claim that Luke is a "rewrite" of Matthew, only that Matthew was one of Luke's sources.

andrewcriddle

By "from oral tradition" I meant that in this alternative Matthew has little or no constraints on the precise wording or order of the material he is adding to Mark but he is not inventing entirely freely.

One the one hand, it is not credible IMO that Matthew had no traditions whatever about what Jesus said other than Mark. Eg I don't think it credible that Matthew simply invented the Lord's prayer.

On the other hand a fixed memorized oral source, (like the early stages of the Mishnah may have been), although technically oral, is likely to have similar effects on the transmission of the tradition as a written source would.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

I think the issue is that Goulder's model has the advantage of simplicity. The non-Markan parallels between Luke and Matthew come entirely from Luke's use of Matthew.

Once one agrees that some of the parallels between Luke and Matthew come from independent use by Luke of a tradition also known to Matthew, then the question immediately arises of how much. Eventually IMO one ends up doubting whether any of the parallels really require knowledge of Matthew by Luke.

The differences between Luke and Matthew are large enough IMO that if knowledge of Matthew by Luke is not required then it is simpler to explain the material on the basis of Lukan independence of Matthew.

Andrew Criddle

Cheerful Charlie

Mark was the earliest, Matthew and Luke had Q for the sermon on the mount and a few other bits.

CC

spamandham

This is certainly possible, but since a couple of scholars have shown that Mark->Matthew->Luke is viable, throwing an extra hidden variable into the mix, such as Q, doesn't seem to add any explanatory power, as long as you make the very reasonable assumption the reason the authors of Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels, was to push their own agendas, rather than to act as unbiased historians.

Doug Shaver

I don't care whether Farrer said it in so many words. If Luke was familiar with Matthew, and there was no Q, then Luke rewrote Matthew.
Aside from Mark, there are no other sources that we know about. Speculation about sources that he might hypothetically have had access to cannot be used as evidence for their existence.

andrewcriddle

One argument for Q that I haven't come across in the literature, follows from the data in Manson's The Teaching of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Manson takes Q for granted and does not use his data to argue for Q but IMO they can be used this way.

Manson divides the sayings in the Synoptics into G sayings addressed to the General Public D sayings addressed to the Disciples and P sayings Polemical utterances against Jesus' opponents.

Manson lists the frequencies of G D and P for Mark, Q (defined strictly as the material in Luke and Matthew but not Mark), M (Matthew only) and L (Luke only)

The frequencies of P (Polemical) material are particularly interesting.

Markan material is 23.5 % P
Q material is 10.7% P
M material is 25.3% P
L material is 38.5% P

On the assumption that Luke used Matthew rather than the hypothetical Q; this means that Luke avoided using P material from Matthew which is absent from Mark. The Material in Matthew but not Mark which Luke used has less than half the percentage of P material than the material in Matthew but not Mark which Luke did not use.

However the material found in Luke only has a startlingly high amount of P material. Therefore Luke; (if he used Matthew), on the one hand strongly approved of P type material in his unique passages, while avoiding using it in the material he borrowed from Matthew.

It may be simpler to say that Luke used little of the P material found in Matthew but not Mark because the material shared between Luke and Matthew but not Mark came to Luke not from Matthew but from a source which omitted much of Matthew's polemical sayings.

Andrew Criddle