Diogenes the Cynic

I think the FH needs to explain the radically different Nativities and Appearance narratives,

Diogenes the Cynic

I believe the Farrer still assumes Luke had Mark (Luke accurately preserves some things from Mark that Matthew does not). It's just intended to explain the Q material, but I find it unconvincing.

I'm actually more curious as to how some of the Markan material came to be paraphrased in John.

aa5874

I think Farrer may be dead.

It can easily be seen that the author of gLuke attempted to improve on gMatthew's birth narrative by NOT including the non-historical massacre of the children by Herod and eliminating the secrecy, fear and death that was supposedly caused by gMatthew's Jesus.

In gMatthew, even God through his angel told Joseph and Mary to FLEE from Herod to avoid death.

gLuke's Nativity is a most glorious event with Angels bringing Good News to the Shepherds and the Jews and had a public Celestial Celebration.

The Nativity with the apparent improvements can be logically deduced to be last.

There is also one other EXTREMELY significant factor. One of the earliest non-canonical author, Justin Martyr, did NOT mention the Four Gospels but knew of a Nativity story which is fundamentally similar to gMatthew's.

It will be noticed that gMatthew's nativity story, or a similar nativity story, was known by the writer Justin Martyr who mentioned the Magi which is NOT found at all in gLuke.

Dialogue with Trypho

Doug Shaver

The similarities in wording are undisputed. There is no controversy about that.

I don't understand your puzzlement about how they both could have had access to a third source. Are you under the impression that there must have been only one copy of that source?

The evidence for its existence is the similarities we're talking about. Let me explain the reasoning one more time.

1. Given the similarities, it must be the case that either (a) one copied from the other or (b) both copied from a third source.
2. (a) is improbable.
3. Therefore, (b) was probably the case.

Now, there are some reputable scholars who dispute premise 2, but they have failed to persuade most of their colleagues. I suggest you do some research to learn their arguments and then the counterarguments. Until you do that, you're not going to get much respect in this forum.

Gundulf

Interesting, but I believe faulty. A person may not be biologically descended from someone, but still have numerous inheritance rights. Adopted children receive full rights as inheritors of their parents' estate. I understand that this included back in the feudal middle ages (and perhaps still today where such concepts are still practiced) their claims to nobility / succession of titles of lordship, etc. for children who were adopted.

So, if Jesus were not the biological descendent of David (but "adopted" for all practical senses by him), it would not necessarily follow that who "adopted" him, and thus the implications of that ancestry, was irrelevent.

Duvduv

Well, Doug. Even people who are not expert in one or another field are entitled as participants to raise questions with one another on this forum and share ideas.
As far as I know the forum is not restricted and I don't know who is authorized to speak on behalf of the hundreds of people who follow these threads and the few who participate.

Gundulf

Wonder if I might jump into this discussion, I've studied this in detail some time ago and coincidentally, have just been wondering myself about this very question.

The standard hypothesis of the Biblical study (pretty well accepted by critical/secular scholars, and not significantly rejected by Christian scholars who remain open to the theory) is the Q hypothesis. That Mark had been written earliest, and that a collection of sayings, no longer extant, referred to as "Q" had been in circulation (perhaps even orally), and that both Matthew and Luke drew from both Mark, Q, and their own particular sources.

This is pretty standard.

But just in the past few weeks (entirely unrelated to this discussion), I had begun wondering why couldn't it be equally conceivable that Luke, instead of copying from Mark and Q, copied from Mark and Matthew, and added his own material as well, just as Matthew had done when copying Mark. To my first thoughts, this seems to cover all the facts just as well as the Q hypothesis.

It would go like this:

Mark writes Mark using whatever source and info he had.

Matthew writes his gospel using Mark as a source, and adding other material he had access to.

Luke takes both Matthew and Mark, copies from them what he wants, and adds his own unique material as well.

This seems to cover the facts just as well and, technically, it benefits from Occam's razor by being simpler as not introducing an unnecessary hypothesis. Any "agreement" between Luke and Matthew over against Mark would be just as easily explained by Luke using Matthew as his primary source, and Mark being a secondary (as VERY little is common between Mark and Luke but absent from Matthew).

Also fits the fact that Luke admits quite up front that he gathered numerous sources to compile his gospel.

In other words, I don't think many (if anyone) doubts that all three used various sources of some sort or another. The suggestion of the "Q" (common source for Matt & Luke) is that Luke did NOT copy from Matthew. I'm curious now (and need to research further elsewhere as well) - but what is the evidence that would suggest that Luke could NOT have done such?

Any thoughts?

Duvduv

Thank you. I never understood why there had to be such a commitment to the idea of Q. There are clar similarities between Matthew and Luke, and a relationship of both to GMark.
But other sources, including orally transmitted stories could also be a source to both and even separately to GJohn.
After all, if Jews had orally transmitted traditions and even American Indians did, so what's so unusual about Christian ones?

Diogenes the Cynic

This is basically the Farrer Hypothesis. It has a number of problems with it, notably the radically different nativity and appearance narratives, as well as several other things.

Diogenes the Cynic

The Jewish Messiah has to be a direct, patrilinear descendent of David. Adoption doesn't count for royal succession. Neither does the mother. It has to be the actual "seed of David."

The whole idea that anybody could trace their genealogies back to David in the 1st Century is nonsense anyway. There were no such records.