aa5874

Why don't you just simply produce the document called "Q"?

You seem only interested in people who agree with your position.
You must understand that not everyone will ever agree that there was a document called "Q" or that it was necessary for a document called "Q" to have existed.

Now, there is no raw data to support "Q".

First of all, the raw data indicates that there was not even any documents called Matthew, Mark or Luke. A document or documents called the "Memoirs of the Apostles" appear to predate the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke and further, the canonical Synoptics are late and show signs of interpolations.

aa5874

But, your statement is blatantly false. It is just not true that every one has me on ignore and you must know that you are propagating mis-leading information.

When will you stop making these ridiculous bogus claims?

sharrock

In defence, IMHO, aa5874's posts are always concise. And logical.

Vic333

Thanks Abe, it takes a few posts to learn who's who. aa5874 will be on my ignore list from now on.

ApostateAbe

Yeah. I figure he thinks that is all it takes. If you treat uncertainty like a death blow for any proposition, then you can be completely logical and an idiot at the same time. They are a nuisance in any debate about anything. In general, they are derided as "postmodernists." They are a special problem in Biblical scholarship, because almost nothing is certain, and it is all about intermediate probabilities, but they can not think in those terms--either it is fact or it is wrong. In Biblical scholarship, they are called "minimalists," because they want to minimize the historical value of anything contained within the historical religious texts. Not all minimalists are like aa5874--he is just an extreme case.

aa5874

Well, if you claim that almost nothing is certain in Biblical scholarship then you are engaged in futility or you are just being a nuisance by proposing an HJ or "Q" . It is simply illogical to base probabilities on uncertainty.

The first hurdles that must be overcome when dealing with the Synoptics is their actual date of writing and actual content. Based on your own admission then the actual date of writing and actual content are uncertain.

And when it is taken into account the many textual variants of the Synoptics, please tell me how are you going to even begin to "theorise" that there was "Q" when "almost nothing in Biblical Scholarship is certain"?

You now must admit that "Q" is virtually dead .

ApostateAbe

QED.

Steven Carr

It is strange.

Mainstream Biblical scholarship is supposed to be so good at telling us who or what did or not exist 2000 years ago.

Yet it cannot tell us whether or not Q really did exist as a document.

ApostateAbe

My impression is that the existence of Q has nearly unanimous acceptance among secular scholars.

show_no_mercy

How exactly do you determine that religious texts are historical? By assuming they are. Biblical minimalists don't make that assumption, they follow archaeology and other hard evidence to reconstruct historical narratives rather than relying on what are possibly sectarian writings as a primary source.

Though I'm not sure why you're brining "minmalists" into the discussion about New Testament texts, since I'm not sure what archaeology you would use to reconstruct a narrative in the NT.