yalla

Ben.
I read your first post yesterday and thought it was interesting.
I noted the response of S.C.Carlson which seemed to provide an answer as to order.

Late last night I got my RSV, complete with it's cross references at the bottom, and used them to go back and forth to trace pedigree of the Mt. block you cited.
That took me hours, I'm slow, and I gave up and went to bed.
But I would like to share what I found.
But the thread has grown in the interim and there is a lot of new stuff to absorb. So I will give what I finished with last night and read the new stuff later and risk that my points may have been rendered wrong whatever.

Mt 10.24 is copied, close to verbatim, at Luke 6.40, as you said.
BUT Luke goes on, in 6.41, to more material from Mt.. Namely the "specks and logs" stuff from Mt. 7.3-5.
So here L is combining Mt. material from 2 places.
He splits and he combines.

Mt.10.25b is the Beelzebul reference that Vork appears to comment on [at a quick glance] so I'll skip that.

v26 is the "light hidden/revealed" stuff which is copied, near verbatim, as you note, by L at 12.2.

Or is it?
There is a difference, Mt. has 'covered' and L has ''hidden" in the first part of the line.
And if you look at Mark 4.22 you can see the common source [presuming Markan priority].
And L's '' hidden'' is, closer to Mark's "hid' than Mt.'s "covered"...in the first part of the line.
Which suggests that L's line is an amalgamation of that of Mark and Mt..
That's pretty nit-picky until you add the following:
Luke has a doublet of this verse at 8.17 [I saw something re this above].
There L has copied Mark almost verbatim.
And the words used are quite different to the words in Mt......"manifest, secret".
So L has a verse based on Mark and a parallel verse that is based on Mt. but ''tinged'' with Mark.

I suggest the following process occurred:
1.Mark wrote his line 4.22.
2.Mt. copied the line, with variation.
3.L copied Mark at 8.17 and Mt. at 12.2 [with a tinge of Mark]

Q is not involved.

Unless:
All 3 copied Q.

But if so why does Mark have words that are not in Mt.? Words that must have been in an alleged Q if L also has them? [Or why has Mt. and L have words 'revealed/known' not in Mark?
Words that are synonyms for the words used in Mt. and L.

Continuing.
Mt. 26-33 is closely copied by L at 12.2-9.

But focus on Mt. 10.32-33....which is about "acknowledge/deny JC and god" etc. and copied closely by L at 12.8.
If we check out Mark 8.38 we see that this is the same verse but presented as a negative statement in contrast to Mt.'s positive ['acknowledge''] and negative ["deny"].
But L has this Mark 8.38 at Luke 9.26, another doublet.
And both of them have a different word to the Mt./L version...."ashamed".

So same process as before?
1.Mark writes a verse about being ashamed and the consequences with SOM etc.
2.Mt. copies the idea and expands it to have the positive and negative consequences.
3.Luke copies both.

No need to hypothesize Q.
Unless....as before:
In which case ...where did L and Mark get ''ashamed'' from but Mt not...etc?

I suggest that the way Luke has treated this block of Mt. material does not support the hypothesis of Q.

I'll have a rest and read the other posts to see how far I have got it wrong whatever.
cheers
yalla.

Edit
Quick thought.
The order in the temptations scene differs in Mt. cf L.

Ben C Smith

Thanks, Yalla.

Thank you for your input. I am mulling it over. However, I do not see where you address the argument from order. If Stephen is correct on the matter of order (that it is either a very small coincidence or a natural way for Luke to rearrange Matthew), then my argument crumbles anyway. The argument from order is really my only argument here... so far, at any rate.

As for tracing the texts in your RSV, I do not know how much it will help, but I have several of the relevant synopses uploaded on my site:

Matthew 7.1-6 = Luke 6.37-42 (for Luke 6.40).
Matthew 10.26-31 = Luke 12.2-7 (for Luke 12.2).
Mark 4.21-25 = Luke 8.16-18 (for Luke 8.16).
Matthew 6.22-23 = Luke 11.33-36 (for Luke 11.33).

I cannot think of any others that I have, but each synopsis provides both the Greek and a somewhat literalistic English translation.

Nice to meet you.

Ben.

yalla

Ta Ben,
I'll check your site out.
I didn't address the order issue because I thought Stephen had but I later saw that the issue is not settled for you.
And it is an interesting idea.
In the other thread Toto gave a link to Ken Olson and how Luke was probably written. Are you familiar with that because it deals with the mechanics of multiple sources being used in antiquity?

What I will try to do is to imagine how an author, say L, may have handled getting a block of material from his "extra" source, be it Mt. or Q, into his [draft?] main work ie his gospel.
A detailed knowledge of how ancient authors worked would be necessary to be confident of getting it right. I'm only guessing.
[pause to welcome people home]
[later]
So I just had a look at your post and I reckon I can add little at this stage about the writing process. I'll have a think.

In the meantime a few ideas.

Mt's block 10.24-33 ..I didn't get past 33...and Luke's bits.

1.Includes material from Mark

10.26 is derived from Mark 4.22
10.32-33 is derived from Mark 8.38

Which suggests the original source is not Q.
But that is not relevant to Luke either way.
His doublets show that ,for him, Mt. 10 etc is NOT a Mt. block OR a Q block.
It is a block of material that includes either Mt. or Q AND material from Mark.
Either way it rings 2 bells in his head and may remind him of what he has written on his scraps of papyrus on the small table under the window.
I think we are being misled by the apparent monolithic appearance of this Mt.[Q] block.
Luke would see it differently. He is familiar with 2 sources whoever they are.

2.When Luke copies 10.24, either from Mt. or Q, at Luke 6.40, he immediately goes on at 6.41 to put in a bit from either Mt. 7.3-5 or Q if that is the source of Mt. 7.3-5.
So he is going 10, 7, 10 again...if from Mt., or god knows, if from Q cos we don't know the order of Q.

So his order is not strictly in sequence if we look at the verse following.

3.My quick thought re the temptation scene.
One of the 2, Mt. or L, has altered the sequence of the trials either from the other [presume L altered Mt.] or the original Q, which, if it existed could have had either sequence or another.
There seems to be no major theological reason for preferring either sequence.
But it shows that change can occur.
And so can the converse.

4.Looking at this mixed bag [I wrote that to try and get us out of the mind set of seeing it as a solid block] of material I was amused by the varying prices of sparrows.
Now, very important question, what is the price of sparrows? I'm serious.
Someone has it, not wrong but different.
Who?
Why?
What is the relevance?
I don't have any answers.
May be we over analyse sometimes?
Maybe random dispersal is randomly interspersed with non-random dispersal? [Did that make sense?]
A footnote, sort of.
Luke, when writing of the epiphany on the mount with god and Elijah et al, specifically alters the time gap from Mark's "6 days" to a vague "about 8 days" [something like that]. It seems a trivial change to make.
Perhaps such changes, like the price of sparrows, is just him?
Last point to make before I allow my wife to get onto her computer.
I am intriuged by this question of order but cannot get precisely clear in my mind what essential difference is made whether the Mt. 10 material is in fact either Q or Mt. as to whether that implies which of the 2 it is.
Could you please try a different explanation for me?
Catch you later,
yalla

Ben C Smith

I have often wondered about that change. The change in the price of sparrows may reflect local Lucan and Matthean economics.

Yes, I have read that before, but do not yet feel qualified to either approve or disapprove. Additionally, IIRC, he was responding to an article by F. G. Downing (right?) which I have not yet read.

My hangup is still that Luke would (A) not give a rip about preserving the original order of Matthew and yet (B) somehow end up with the five pieces of Matthew 10.24-39 all in the same relative order even after he has dispersed them. If Luke was looking for suitable contexts into which to place the five blocks, then it seems coincidental to me that those five suitable contexts happened to fall in that order. If he was not looking for suitable contexts, if he was just dispersing material, then one wonders what he was up to from the very start, and why it mattered to keep the relative order of this section against the overall reordering of Matthew as a whole.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

If Luke was copying from Q, then the Matthean order of 10.24-39 derives from Matthew having scanned Q once through, compiling material for his mission discourse. The Lucan order of parallels to that material derives from his having stuck more faithfully to the original order of Q (that is, both he and Matthew got Luke 6.40 from early in Q and Luke 17.33 from late in Q, and the other units from toward the middle of Q).

If Luke was copying from Matthew, then the Matthean order of 10.24-39 derives from Matthean editorial priviledge: Matthew simply picked up those sayings from oral tradition, from Mark, from his own fertile imagination, or wherever, and then set them in his mission discourse. The Lucan order of parallels to that material derives from either coincidence (if he did not intend to use the original order) or design (if he for some reason decided to keep the original order amidst his wholesale rearrangement of Matthew elsewhere).

My trouble may simply be my own lack of imagination on that point of Lucan order of parallels if he was following Matthew. I have difficulty embracing the coincidence, and even more difficulty imagining a Lucan motivation for doing it on purpose.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Yes, watching the likes of S. C. Carlson and Michael Turton tear me a new one ought to be quite entertaining. Enjoy the show.

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

Some of the material is only a verse in length. Furthermore, the definition of a block, passage, and pericope has problems with artirariness, so let's count for the sake of example the Ammonian sections in the Eusebian canons. The double tradition is found in canons III (Matt-Luke-John) and V (Matt-Luke) for a total of 104 sections. That's like taking two decks of cards, shuffling them, and dealing them out, and looking to see if the order of any run of five cards from the same deck are found in the same relative but not necessarily immediate sequence in the suffled result.

I haven't computed the result, but I wrote a quickie program to simulate it. With 104 parallels, the percentage of shuffles in which there is at least one sequence of 5 numbers in the same relative order is 52%.

With 70 parallels, the pct is 38%
With 50, 29%
With 20, 12%
With 11, 6%
With 10, 5%.

Even if there were only 11 blocks, I would not be comfortable ruling out coincidence if 5 of them in a row preserve the same relative sequence. At 104 parallels, the odds are just better than even.

I'm beginning to understand your argument a little better--you're worried about the odds that suitable contexts for the Matt 10:24-39 parallels would be found in Luke in the same relative order. I think, for the reasons given above, that coincidence is not a problem.

What's interesting about your argument is that it is very different from Kloppenborg's, where his perception of the lack of suitability of the Lukan contexts is the key to his argument for Q:

Although Luke may have moved 17:33 to follow his illustration of the fate of Sodom (17:31 [from Mark], 32), it would be exceedingly difficult in the other instances to assert that Luke saw in Q a topically ordered set of sayings and scattered them throughout Q. This problem is particularly acute in the case of Luke 6:40, which, as many critics have observed, seems to interrupt the connection between 6:39 and 6:41-42. It should be obvious that it is simpler to suppose that Matthew collected and organized sayings than to think that Luke broke up originally unified clusters and used the debris in such an unproductive manner. (Excavating Q, 89)

It should be noted at the outset that this portion from Kloppenborg (which your web page cites) is taken from his argument about the original order of Q, and is not being used as an argument for Q as opposed to Luke's use of Matthew. Even so, it has some relevance because an argument against Q having Matthew's order can also be used as an argument against Matthew being Luke's source instead of Q.

Kloppenborg's discussion about Luke 17:33 assumes that the suitability of contexts (here, after a Markan parallel), is not a problem for the scattering argument and effectively concedes that his last parallel is irrelevant to the phenomenon. This would cut his list down to 9 or, under your better way of counting blocks, down to 4.

Kloppenborg's point about inserting Luke 6:40 between 6:39 and vv.41-42 does not work, however, because the Matthean parallel to Luke 6:39 is not found before its parallel to Luke 6:41. Rather the Matthean parallel to Luke 6:39 is not in Matt 7:2, but at Matt 15:14. (Your synopsis is helpful.) So, Kloppenborg's argument actually refutes an original source ordered as 6:39, 41-42, skipping 6:40. Unfortunately, that's not Matthew's order.

If Q/Luke 6:40 is so intrusive that Luke would not have done it, why then did the compiler of Q do it? This problem has exercised the talents of Q critics. In Kloppenborg's Formation of Q, p. 182 he explains the resolution as follows:

It is clear that this section of Q is composed of several originally independent sayings: 6:39, 40, 41-42, 43-44, and 45. Evident the basis for the association between v. 39 and vv. 41-42 is the common motif of impaired vision and the importance of sighted instruction or correction. Since 6:40 does not share this motif, it most likely that 6:40 was already attached to 6:39 prior to its association with vv. 41-42. Schürmann rightly observes, "Presumably no one would have encumbered the coherence of vv. 39, 41-42 so severely by a subsequent addition of v. 40."

Thus, according to Kloppenborg, the compositional history of Luke 6:39-45 is that Luke 6:39 was first joined with v.40, and then later attached to v.41-42 on account of the linkage between v.39 and v.41.

A proponent of the Farrer view that Luke used Matthew instead would have no trouble agreeing with the sequence of compositional events. First Luke attached Matt 10:26 to Matt 15:14, and then inserted the cluster into Matt 7:1-6 thereby producing what is now Luke 6:37-42.

At this point the two views are on equal footing, but there is one little bit of data that the Farrer side can explain better: the redactional seam of Luke 6:39a, And he also told a parable to them. The Lukan nature of this seam is commonly recognized, e.g., Fitzmyer's commentary, p. 1:641: "This is a Lucan redactional introduction to these two verses." For this reason, the IQP had no trouble omitting this Lukan seam from their reconstruction of Q.

But now we're in a quandry, because under the Q hypothesis, the personal making the redactional insertion (the compiler of Q) and the person writing the "redactional introduction" (Luke) are two different people. To make matters worse, the later person appears to be informed about the compositional history of his supposed source. This redaction was millennia ahead of his time!

On the other hand, if Luke's source was Matthew, these problems go away, because the same individual is responsible both for the redactional insertion of (vv.39b-40) and its Lukan introduction (v.39a).

Agreed.

Stephen

Ben C Smith

As neutral as using the Eusebian sections sounds, I do not think they will work for our purposes:

• Your total of 104 total blocks (22 from canon III and 82 from canon V) ignores repetition. For example, the first Matthean section and fourteenth Lucan section are each listed thrice in canon III because they match three noncontiguous Johannine sections (1, 3, and 5). Yet they are really only one block, right? Remove the superfluous repetitions from canons III and V and we are down to 87 Matthean blocks or 89 Lucan blocks by my calculations.
• Even more problematic is the fact that the Eusebian sections have to account for Marcan parallels, Johannine parallels, and the sondergut material for each evangelist; neither Ammonius nor Eusebius was interested in the double tradition for its own sake. So, for example, Matthew 5.1-12 (Jesus on the mount uttering the beatitudes) is divided up into 7 sections, 4 of which belong to our canon V, simply because Matthew has a few beatitudes unique to his gospel sprinkled in. That is fair enough for Ammonius and Eusebius, but for our little game of chance there is surely no justification for regarding the beatitudes as 4 distinct blocks. Surely at least the beatitudes as a whole, if not the entire sermon, belong to a single block. Examples of this kind may be multiplied. I do not know for certain how far my intermediate figure of 87 or 89 would drop now, but it has to be quite a fall.
• This last bullet I am less sure of, but it seems to me that many of the cards in the deck have already been stacked, and not by chance. For example, whether on the Q hypothesis or on the hypothesis that Luke knew Matthew, it is surely no coincidence that the sermon on the mount comes early while the apocalyptic material in Luke 17 and Matthew 24 comes late, right? In either case the overall order of the source (whether Matthew or Q) is being followed, and following the order of the source is design, not chance. To use your analogy of the coin flips (let us say 100 for the sake of example), the odds of five heads in a row would change if we already knew that, say, 50 of the coins were placed as heads or tails on purpose, would they not? Would we not then be calculating the odds based only on the 50 that were not preplanned, as it were? I may be all mixed up here, but it seems to me that we are only really talking about those blocks of the double tradition that are truly scrambled between the two gospels. The blocks that follow a discernible plan would not be up to chance at all.

I want to wait for a response to these statistical points before I invest any more electrons in them, since I may well be mistaken.

Yes, exactly, and especially with what you will bring up next I want to emphasize that suitable contexts are those suitable to Luke, not necessarily to us. I have intentionally avoided (so far) the question of how suitable to us the Lucan contexts are for the dispersed pieces of the Matthean mission catena. I have phrased my argument in such a manner that our perceptions really will not matter; the intentions and perceptions of Luke are all that concern us.

This is how I am approaching it: If Luke was looking for appropriate contexts for his five Matthean blocks, then I am interested in the odds that his appropriate contexts happened to fall in the same original order as those five Matthean blocks. If, however, Luke was not looking for appropriate contexts for the material, then I am interested in what exactly he was looking for. If the context did not matter to him, then what did? Apparently the mere dispersal of these particular blocks in in such a way as to dismantle the absolute order and yet retain the relative order (unless you can think of another factor). That would seem arbitrary to me, like just toying with a text instead of trying to produce a meaningful composition.

I looked up those pages again, and I admit that I have pressed Kloppenborg a bit differently than he was approaching the issue. But, as you note later, the relevance is palpable: If the Lucan order is original compared to Matthew, then Luke did not get it from Matthew.

This is where I differ from, not only Kloppenborg, but quite a few Q supporters. While I am as puzzled as anybody over the placement of Luke 6.40, I have so far tended to see that as a problem on any hypothesis, and therefore not an argument against any one in particular, since somebody, whether Luke himself or the compiler of Q, had to have placed it there.

On the other hand, I have seriously played with the idea that Q was just a set of sayings, almost random in sequencing, and therefore not altogether unlikely to place Luke 6.40 in between 6.39 and 6.41-42; if that were the case, then it would be easier to credit the compiler of Q with the anomaly (perhaps somewhat like how Thomas 6b-13 intervenes between Thomas 6a and 14) than the author of Luke. But I am not there yet.

I am missing a piece. If Luke is the one following the Q order more faithfully, as Kloppenborg appears to hold, why would it matter to him that Matthew might have moved part of a contiguous discourse unit to a different chapter? Is not the point that Luke found 6.40 already placed where it is (by the compiler of Q), and merely copied it, and that this is easier to believe than that he intentionally moved Matthew 10.24-25a so as to interrupt what would originally have been 6.39, 41-42?

Again, I am missing why, if Luke is the one preserving Q better, as Kloppenborg seems to think, the Matthean order would matter.

Let me point out as an aside that the usual use of puns to indicate original language might fall apart at Luke 6.40. Luke 6.39 appears to be joined to 6.41-42 by the idea of eyes and eyesight (or the lack thereof). Luke 6.40, about disciples and masters, sticks out sorely. But my NASB has pupil for disciple at Luke 6.40, and of course the pupil is part of the eye. So the original language of Luke 6.39-42 must be English! (You learn something new every day here on the IIDB.)

Matthew 10.26 is a typo for Matthew 10.24-25a, right?

My brain must be on sleep. I do not understand why Luke, whether composing freely, drawing on Q, or rearranging Matthew, cannot write his own introduction to 6.39-42.

Again, I do not understand. I apologize for my denseness here. If Q gave Luke his sequence of 6.39-42 already premade, how does his writing and he also spoke a parable to them betray his knowledge that verses 39-40 and verses 41-42 were originally separate?

Ben.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Ben, I think your argument here is generally valid, but it doesn't really provide a 'smoking gun' for Mt using Lk.

Sure, I agree with you that it is somewhat more likely in this case that Mt was using Lk rather than vice versa. But I doubt that the true believers will be persuaded by an argument such as this.

To me, the Bethsaida section provides the best argument for Lukan priority. Here we can see the strong theological reasons why the Bethsaida section is clearly a Gentile-oriented section, and thus far more likely to be rather late. And formally, the addition of the Second Feeding of the multitudes has a clear stamp of being an expansion.

So these are the smoking guns. For someone who is not persuaded by these, they'll not be persuaded by anything.

All the best,

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

I completely agree. But I also suspect that there are no smoking gun arguments at all in synoptic studies. The evidence is too dense for one clean ta-da proof. Our arguments end up having to be subtle, tight, and limited.

All I can really hope to do is add fuel to woodpiles, one stick at a time, then throw a match and see which one burns the brightest. I submit that Matthew 10.24-39 is a stick in the Matthew used Luke or Q pile, and you appear to agree with at least that much.

Funny, I am persuaded by Matthew 10.24-39, but not by the Bethsaida section. But that is a topic for another day.

I always enjoy your points, Yuri.

Ben.