Peter Kirby

Queer to the common man,
Quotidian to the scholar,
Quaint to the doubter,
Quarry to the believer;
Query: What am I?

The Myth of the Lost Gospel (or via: amazon.co.uk) is the title of the new book by Evan Powell, author of The Unfinished Gospel (or via: amazon.co.uk). In it, he maintains that the debate over synoptic relations has tended to overlook the possibility that Matthew used Luke, focusing instead on Luke using Matthew possibilities (Farrer and Griesbach and Augustine) and the Two Document Hypothesis. The first camp alleges that Luke and Matthew cannot have been independent, and the second camp claims that Luke cannot be understood best as derived from Matthew. And round and round the argument goes. Powell proposes to cut the Gordian knot by positing the dependence of Matthew on Luke:

Mark
| \
| Luke
| /
Matt

A hypothesis without a good name. The following is found on Carlson's website:

To this can be added the support of Martin Hengel.

I have read Powell's book, and what caught my interest most were the statistical arguments. I am posting this now in case anyone else had comments, or perhaps even some familiarity with Powell's recent work.

A surface problem with Powell's book is that there is limited interaction with scholarly publications by others, and what there is consists mostly of popular book treatments. No journal articles are found in the footnotes.

regards,
Peter Kirby

Toto

There is a previous version (?) The myth of the lost gospel: A layman's letter to the Jesus Seminar. It was published in 1995 but hasn't excited any comment on the internet.

Peter Kirby

It was republished in 2006 without the subtitle, or open letter format.

regards,
Peter Kirby

Diogenes the Cynic

Very intriguing, Peter. I have a few questions.

1. What are the statistical arguments you refer to in your OP?
2. How does Powell deal with the contradictory Nativities?
3. When does he date Matthew? A Matthean dependence on Luke would push into the 2nd Century, would it not?

Thanks for the tip on this book.

Peter Kirby

There are two arguments, found in chapter 1 and the appendix. I will summarize them later.

Here I will reproduce Powell's comments. I would preface them with my own note that this is no issue if the first two chapters of Luke (though not 1:1-4) were a later addition to that gospel.


It is certainly true taht Matthew and Luke contain genealogies and infancy narratives that cannot be reconciled with one another. For example, Matthew indicates that Jesus was descended from David through his son Solomon, while Luke claims Jesus was descended from David through Solomon's brother Nathan. And in the infancy stories, Matthew depicts Joseph and Mary as residing in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth--there was no inn and no manger, and the family eventually relocated to Nazareth when Jesus was a toddler. Luke reports Joseph and Mary as living in Nazareth all along. Clearly, from a historical perspective, the genealogies and infancy stories in Matthew and Luke cannot both be factually accurate. Now, these materials each have distinct theological ramifications, and their creators never intended for them to be interpreted literallly. The Church in the fourth century had no difficulty in accepting both Matthew and Luke as inspired scriptures despite their historical incompatibilities, which were as obvious to them as they are to us. Nevertheless, in contemporary thought it is sometimes alleged that Matthew would not have published stories in conflict with those in Luke had he been aware of them.

This argument is without merit. Matthew's genealogy and infancy materials ahve an ideological affinity with his Gospel at large, while Luke's traditions are not at all in harmony with Matthew's theological orientation. Moreover, we have already examined numerious instances in which Matthew alters Mark and Luke for ideological reasons, so it would not be surprising to discover that Matthew had done so once again with the opening materials.

The epistle of 1 Timothy indicates that some believers were occupying themselves with 'myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations' (! Tim 1:4). It is reasonable to suppose that the two conflicting sets of genealogies and miraculous birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are the results of teh creative debates to which the author of 1 Timothy was objecting. If this is the case, then the fact that there was disharmony between the communities of Matthew and Luke in these traditions is not surprising. In this event, each Gospel writer would have been expected to document the traditions favored within his own community. The fact that they are in conflict as they stand between the two Gospels is no indication that the later author did not know the earlier work.


He dates Mark 65-70, Luke 75-80, and Matthew 90-100.

regards,
Peter Kirby

jjramsey

What does this book have to say about Goodacre's arguments that editorial fatigue in Luke points to him copying him from Matthew here?:

http://ntgateway.com/Q/fatigue.htm

Peter Kirby

Goodacre quotes two instances that he sees as editorial fatigue in Luke's use of Matthew. Powell doesn't comment on them in his book. Goodacre also makes an error when he says,

"The alternatives are Luke's use of Matthew or Luke's (and Matthew's) use of Q - there is no issue here of direction of dependence."

Has Goodacre seriously considered Matthew's use of Luke?

regards,
Peter Kirby

Ben C Smith

Not to judge from the following statement from page 54 of the article:

There are two ways of explaining the double tradition: either Luke and Matthew are both dependent on a common source, Q - the majority view - or Luke has read Matthew, the view originating with Austin Farrer and developed with vigour by Michael Goulder.

However, it does not seem to follow that Goodacre has really made a mistake on this point in the long run, since he also claims to have found fatigue between Matthew and Luke running only in the one direction:

The best way, therefore, to seek an answer to the question will be to bear in mind that if the Two Source Theory is correct, one will expect to see not only Luke but also Matthew showing signs of fatigue in double tradition material. Those who believe in the existence of Q will have to look for their own examples of editorial fatigue in Matthew's versions of double tradition material. I have looked for examples and cannot find any.

If Luke sometimes becomes fatigued with the double tradition material (Goodacre actually adduces 5 cases, only 2 in detail, some stronger than others), then it follows that Luke probably copied either (A) from Matthew or (B) from one of the sources of Matthew, and that Matthew probably did not copy from Luke. And, if Matthew never becomes fatigued with the double tradition material (though he frequently becomes fatigued with Mark), then it follows that Matthew was probably not copying from a source (like he was copying from Mark). This eliminates option B above, and we are left with A, that Luke was copying from Matthew.

That, at any rate, is how I read his argument.

For my money, however, the parable of the wedding feast (Matthew 22.1-13) offers an example of Matthean fatigue with a story that must have originally looked like the parable of the great supper in Luke 14.15-24; IOW, Matthew has becomed fatigued either with Luke or with one of the sources of Luke.

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

You've caught my interest. Have you written this up somewhere, or can you explain here?

Stephen

Ben C Smith

Why, so you can poke holes in it?

I have a brief discussion of it on my page on redactional tendency and editorial fatigue; it is the last example of fatigue, toward the bottom of the page (under Luke copied Matthew). For convenience, here is most of it:

The Lucan version is simple and straightforward. A man decides to host a dinner (14.16), and he sends out his servant to invite the guests (14.17). The servant is met only with excuses (14.18-20 names three, but does not imply that those three exhaust the list). So the man sends his servant out to invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame to the great dinner (14.21-23), vowing that none of the original invitees will ever taste of the meal (14.24).

Things get rather more complicated in the Matthean version. It appears that Matthew has attempted to rewrite the parable. The man hosting a dinner has become in 22.2 a king hosting a wedding feast for his son. The king sends out, not just one servant, but many, and the invitees not only reject the offer but actually kill and otherwise mistreat the messengers (22.6), provoking the king to kill them and, incongruously, to burn their entire city (22.7). Then the king sends his servants out to the streets to invite others, both evil and good (22.10), to the feast. One (only one?) such impromptu guest happens to arrive without wedding clothes, and is promptly cast into the outer darkness (22.11-13).

What has happened to the simple, straightforward tale of frustrated dinner plans? Now a violent subplot of killed servants, a city torched in vengeance, and the outer darkness intrudes. Both the parable of the tenants in Matthew 21.33-46 and the historical fall of Jerusalem in year 70 appear to have infiltrated what was once a parable like that in Luke 14.15-24.

The incongruity both of relating a wedding invitation to the burning of a city and of banishing an admittedly impromptu guest out into a place of torment for failing to appear in the proper wedding attire, even though that guest was literally dragged in off the street, is the result of Matthean overreaching.

Matthew has apparently tried to combine three different parables or ideas for parables, the first a parable like we find in Luke 14.15-24, the second a parable about a king wreaking vengeance on those who slew his servants (as in the parable of the tenants), and the third a parable about invited guests arriving at a wedding dressed inappropriately. But he leaves us with a muddle, evidence that he has become fatigued with the Lucan version of the parable.

For comparison, here is my discussion, based on Goodacre, of the talents and pounds:

What is in Matthew 25.14-30 the parable of the talents is in Luke 19.11-27 the parable of the pounds. Mark Goodacre notes on page 55 of Fatigue in the Synoptics:

The Matthean version of the parable is deservedly the more popular of the two, for it is simpler, more coherent and easier to follow. There are three servants; one receives five talents, one two and the other one. The first makes five more talents and is rewarded, the second two more and is rewarded; the other hides his talent and is punished.

The Lucan version is not so simple. It appears that Luke has tried to rewrite the parable. For one thing, the master in Matthew becomes a nobleman in Luke who has his own separate storyline: He goes off amid protests to receive a kingdom (19.12, 14, and upon his return commands that the protesters be killed (19.27). None of this is in Matthew, and all of it is extraneous to what the servants are doing with their pounds.

Furthermore, the nobleman in Luke 19.13 leaves pounds, not with three servants, but with ten (Luke is fond of the number ten; notice the ten coins of 15.8, the ten lepers of 17.11-19, and the ten cities of 19.17). Then, when he wishes to see what the servants have done with the money that he left them, in 19.16 he summons the first (ο πρωτος), in 19.18 the second (ο δευτερος), and in 19.20 the other (ο ετερος). What happened to the ten servants? Goodacre, page 55:

It turns out, then, that Luke has three servants in mind, like Matthew, and not ten after all.

Indeed. It is also interesting that giving the nobleman an entire kingdom has provoked Luke to set the first servant over ten cities and the second over five cities (19.17, 19). So, when the pound from the third servant is taken from him and given to the first (19.24), the reader is left to wonder, so what? What is an extra pound to somebody who has just received ten cities?

Luke has apparently tried to combine two different parables or ideas for parables, the first a parable like we find in Matthew 25.14-30, the second a parable about a man leaving to receive a kingdom and returning to wreak vengeance on his enemies. He has also tried to slip in one of his favorite numbers, the number ten. But he leaves us with a muddle, evidence that he has become fatigued with the Matthean version of the parable.

Interestingly, one of the elements (as noted above) that Matthew appears to add to his parable of the wedding feast is the historical fall of Jerusalem in 70, while one of the elements that Luke appears to add to his parable of the pounds is the historical journey of Archelaus to Rome some 73 years earlier. Not sure what to make of that parallel yet.

Ben.