Cretinist

Freely rearranging and emphasizing certain aspects sounds reasonable. After all, John probably did it with Mark. But completely and utterly disregarding the genealogy and the birth narratives?

Surely Luke wouldn't have completely disregarded Matthew's genealogy; they're both just stupid lists that serve no purpose other than to legitimize Jesus' Davidic ancestry. What reason would Luke have to change it? What would make Luke look at Matthew's list and go "Well, this just won't do! I'm just gonna trash this and make up a bunch of names instead."

And surely, even if Luke had another birth narrative tradition, wouldn't he most likely have tried harder to harmonize it with Matthew's?

Jackson's changes of Tolkien are understandable and explainable; much more so than merely saying they didn't suit his purposes. I can't think of any plausible explanation for Luke's motivations behind disregarding the beginning of Matthew. An unknowable, unexplainable motive is a worthless hypothesis.

Vorkosigan

Luke didn't "disregard" them. He substituted his own instead. Luke and Matt are the only gospels with a geneology. Doesn't that strike you as suggestive?

And we know Luke dumped material wholesale (the great omission for example)....

"Surely Luke wouldn't have...." is an Argument from Incredulity and thus, a fallacy. The obvious conclusion is that Luke did disregard these items, so that your argument fails.

Why not? Luke invented lots of material, and reworked others. For example, some exegetes argued that Luke used an extant tradition to mold his Birth and Infancy narratives. If he had another tradition, it is easy to see him discarding one in favor of another he felt was more useful to his purpose.

"Wouldn't he have tried harder..." is an Argument from Incredulity and thus, a fallacy. Seriously, it isn't an argument at all. To my mind, Q is best explained by Luke using Matthew. Against that hypothesis you can advance evidence that Luke could not have used Matt. Instead, you advance speculation about Luke's motives.

That was my shorthand that included any particular motive of Jackson from "let's show Legolas' tight butt" to "I hate the scouring of the Shire" to "we need more romance."

Yes, but speculation about motives is worthless about evidence, and "I can't think of.." is not a useful argument against anything. The evidence in the form of minor agreements, the interpretative frameworks (like Occam's Razor), and the comparative analysis (like the use of Matt by others) is decisive in this regard. It carries much more weight that "Luke would never...."

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

This assumes Luke actually thought Matthew's infancy narrative was historical. Maybe like good critical scholars today he knew it wasn't and took up the initiative of "I'll show them how to write a real infancy narrative."

Luke had another list? Or maybe some of the names did mean something. What evidence is their that the genealogies were just random names? I highly doubt they are that.

Not if ancients tended not to harmonize, if they tended to choose one source over another and often enough used sources whole even when they contradicted other statements in their own writings. Ancients authors were like that.

Aside from the above reasons there is some question as to when the Lukan infancy narrative was added to Luke. First edition or a later one?

With that being said I am not convinced Luke knew Matthew. I leave it open as a possibility. It doesn't hurt sober Jesus research either way though. Instead of Mark and Q and M and L we have Triple Tradition, non triple tradition found in Matthew and special L as indepdnent streams of tradition

And a great hunk of Matthew's non infancy and non Markan (trip tradition material) is all sayings material. Matthew must have known a sayings document or documents with these. Everyone meet Q junior. Plus we still have Thomas which has a lot of these Jesus sayiings as well. Only the scholars who use precise Q strata and reconstructions are effected strongly by this question.

Mythicism fares no better with or without Q. Its entirely bogus either way.

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

Yes. You can view it either way. There is no escaping a Sayings Source even if you give up the fact that it was known to Luke.

No doubt. Just let us know when some scholar develops a viable historical methodology, so you can have some methodological support for your faith statements.

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

I make no faith statements. HJ agnosticism and mythicism is as loud as a faith statement as you can get here. Keep grasping.

Vinnie

spin

Getting rid of Q is on the surface quite a good thing to do. Occam's Razor cuts such a Q away if no-Q can be sustained to explain what Q is supposed to explain. However, I don't think it can.

Amongst the exceptional editing that people who reject Q want to impose upon the Lucan writer is the separation and expansion of the Mission of the 12 in Mt 10:5-15 parts of which material ends up in Luke's Mission of the 12, 9:1-6, and parts in the Mission of the 70, 10:1-12. Are we to believe that the Lucan writer sifted two stories from the same material in Matt or that he received two separate but related stories, one from Mk 6-15 and another, which was also used by the Matthean writer who conflated the two stories?

Are we supposed to believe that Luke's beatitudes were derived from Matt's? ie two were selected and another, unrelated one added? Or did the two documents work in different directions on the same material in isolation?

Is there some reason why the Matthean idiosyncratic "kingdom of heaven" (which is used where Mk has "kingdom of God" as well as non-Marcan material) never turns up in Luke (eg in the Mission of the 12), if Matt is one of Luke's sources?

Why is Luke's Lord's Prayer so different from Matt's? This is after all the only prayer that Jesus instructs people to use.

Are we supposed to believe that the Lucan writer has so much source material which he considers consistently better than Matt?

I think getting rid of Q makes things much more complicated than assuming the Lucan writer had a form of Mark and a form of "Q" and worked with other materials which came his way, for we have already established that he had other materials.

I must admit I've been out of this nt stuff for a long time, but have things changed so much as to make no-Q so interesting?


spin

Yuri Kuchinsky

Sure it makes things much more complicated. Life is in general complicated. And the history of NT gospels is certainly a lot more complicated than the infantile "mainstream opinion" would allow.

Yuri.

spin

Though there was no comment about complicatedness per se, Occam's Razor is rather useful.

If you don't want to comment on the content of the post, why not try to say something useful at least instead of this aimless jabbering?


spin

Yuri Kuchinsky

Or maybe Mt substituted his own instead, after rejecting the Lukan genealogy?

These are two competing genealogies, and each one has a clear theological meaning of its own. It's not certain who first came up with this idea to add a genealogy, but they both were probably later additions, anyhow.

Yes, Luke was using Matthew. But Matthew was also using Luke. They were all using each other.

The Synoptic gospels were transmitted and edited together as a canon for at least 200 years from the time they were first composed (ca. 130 CE --> ca 330 CE).

I think this provides more than enough time for them to influence each other in a variety of ways.

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Yes, you can use Occam's Razor from time to time to make life less complicated. But life is still pretty complicated!

Quote:

If you don't want to comment on the content of the post, why not try to say something useful at least instead of this aimless jabbering?

THE "SYNOPTIC PROBLEM"
http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/synprob.htm

The Originality of Luke ~ Yuri Kuchinsky
http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/earluke.htm

Regards,

Yuri.