Yuri Kuchinsky

YURI:
In so far as the double tradition (Mt + Lk) is concerned, there are many studies that show that the Lukan version of the double tradition is more original.

In _most_ cases it is -- without a doubt.

Yes, in some cases it is not, as only to be expected.

Well, primitivity of the contents sort of implies the primitivity of the order, as well... And vice versa.

That's correct.

Yes, they are.

Well, one thing seems to entail the other.

Good to hear that!

YURI:
Because I have 1000 cases of Anti-Markan agreements, and they demonstrate conclusively that Mk wasn't the earliest gospel.

Why not?

In the triple tradition?

Really?

Are you just making these things up as you go along?

Keep in mind that the Anti-Markan agreements have been studied like for 100 years by many scholars. But what about all these other ones you're now bringing up?

I don't quite follow you.

Actually, I don't have any idea what you're on about, sorry...

The likeliest case is, as you write, "...the agreements are simply those parts where Mark eschewed both Matthew and Luke and went his own way".

If you want to argue any other scenario, please do so specifically.

Yes, without a doubt.

I've looked at this page of yours, and it looks like you're doing some fairly substantial work in this area. Good for you.

But what are you trying to prove with it, I wonder? Anything in particular?

All the best,

Yuri.

PS.
In regard to your discussion with Carlson, I really think this whole "fatigue" business is severely overvalued.

The key to this whole business is this (quoting myself):

"In so far as the double tradition (Mt + Lk) is concerned, there are many studies that show that the Lukan version of the double tradition is more original."

This is where the whole Goulder/Goodacre theory is at its most vulnerable IMHO. There's really massive evidence of Lukan originality in the double tradition. So it seems like the "fatigue" stuff is really just a drop in the bucket, as compared to that.

That's why Goulder/Goodacre theory will always remain a loser.

Peter Kirby

With a nod to the OP, could this be seen as a good thing for Powell's theory?

regards,
Peter Kirby

S.C.Carlson

It is a parable for the kingdom of God, for which you'd better be ready when it comes suddenly.

I don't find it confusing. The king gives the order and the events of 22:7b and 8ff. happen concurrently. Τότε in 22:8 refers back to 22:7a, and v7b is a parenthesis.

This might favor dependence on the parable of the tenants in Matthew, not on Luke, since Luke does not have οι λοιποι.

2 Cor 12:11 is metaphorical and indicative of the intense emotion Paul is feeling, and not relevant here. As for 1 Esdras 4:6, it occurs right in the middle of a passage about a king's absolute power; obviously, paying taxes is the king's command.


No, that's not what it suffers from. It suffers from the lack of the pattern and sequencing of agreement and disagreement that Goodacre defined for finding fatigue. Arguing that it is an atypical example does not get this example over the line.

Stephen

Ben C Smith

Yes, in the triple tradition.

But the very fact that you have to ask the question makes me wonder whether we are talking about the same phenomena. By a phrase like the agreement of two gospels against the third I mean only that two gospels share a word or phrase that the other lacks in his corresponding pericope or paragraph.

In Matthew 3.1-6 = Mark 1.2-6 = Luke 3.1-6, for instance, Matthew and Mark agree against Luke in calling John the baptist or baptizer, in describing his attire and diet, and in describing the Judeans and Jerusalemites coming to be baptized in the Jordan, confessing their sins.

No. Just reading the texts.

In Matthew 3.1-6 = Mark 1.2-6 = Luke 3.1-6, for instance, Luke and Mark agree against Matthew in mentioning a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and in their wording of the introduction of the Isaiah quote, as it is written against that spoken through.

Just to round things out, in that same pericope Matthew and Luke agree against Mark in the phrase every region of the Jordan.

You can see all these agreements in my synopsis.

Thanks, Yuri. You know how I live for your approval.

No, nothing in particular... at least not yet. I wish the synopses themselves to be as neutral as possible.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

It appears to me that Matthew has tried to turn it into such a parable, but in the process it has lost some of its cogency. Within the parable the logic of expecting guests rounded up at the last minute off the street to be wearing formal attire escapes me.

I do not find such an explanation convincing. I wish I did, but I do not. The τοτε appears to point to a time contemporaneous with the last event mentioned, the burning of the city.

That Luke lacks the οι λοιποι part is my point. It is the οι λοιποι part that conflicts with what Matthew has in common with Luke, namely the rejection of the invitation in favor of everyday affairs. After the Lucan version has run its course in Matthew 22.5, and the very wording implies a closed set of reactions to the invitation, Matthew offers up yet another group reacting very differently.

Of course paying taxes will be a royal decree. Nevertheless, in the text it is the citizens who compel one another to pay the taxes (1 Esdras 4.6-7):

Likewise those who do not serve in the army or make war but [rather] till the soil, whenever they sow, reap the harvest and bring some to the king; and they compel one another to pay taxes to the king. And yet he is only one man! If he tells them to kill, they kill; if he tells them to release, they release.

The subject of the verb compel is not the king here.

Matthew introduces details not present in the Lucan version, details that imply a rather long interval, then lapses right back into the Lucan version, in which no such interval is countenanced. This appears to me to be just the sort of thing Goodacre was pointing out.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I refer you to the 1959 Greek synopsis by de Solages, in which the synoptic texts are divided up by agreement status into separate boxes. (I do not have the book in front of me, and am relying on memory, so corrections are of course welcome.) Three of those boxes are as follows:

1. Agreements of Matthew and Mark against Luke.
2. Agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark.
3. Agreements of Mark and Luke against Matthew.

In the comments toward the end of the book, IIRC, de Solages specifically comments on how few the agreements of type 2 above are compared to the other two types of agreements.

So the answer to your question...:

...would be no. I may be misremembering, and I may be botching all my own synopses that show all three kinds of agreements in our texts (in which case I am certain you will show me where I went wrong), but I am not making it up.

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

The τότε is a favorite word of Matthew and is lacking in the Lukan parallel. This word betrays Matthew's active redactional hand in composing the sentence, so whatever tension that may existsin the sentence (assuming v. 7b is not interpolation), it is because he decided to add that word to the source. The tension is with the immediately preceeding clause, so it is less likely that it was completely unintended. If one views v. 7b as a parenthesis the apparent tension goes away entirely. (However, if Matthew was first, and Luke viewed v. 7b in the way that you do, it is easy to omit.)

This is quite the opposite of editorial fatigue where the tension comes from the secondary author's failure to keep editing the source--"docile" reproduction--in such a way as to keep it consistent with a more remote context in which the later author did modify the source. In your example, there is no docile reproduction, and the τότε shows Matthew in action, and the tension is too close to the redaction to be a case of fatigue.

It does not need to be, since the king has his subjecs do the compulsion for him. They do it as agents of the king to force people to do what the king wants (pay taxes).

The immediate preceeding context, 1 Esdras 4.3-5, states:

But the king is stronger; he is their lord and aster, and whatever he says to them they obey. If he tells them to make war on one another, they do it; and if he sends them out against the enemy, they go, and conquer mountains, walls, and towers. They kill and are killed, and do not disobey the king's command; if they win the victory, they bring everything to the king--whatever spoil they take and everything else.

The portion goes on to detail the king's absolute power.

I disagree; it lacks the features that suggest editorial fatigue or docile reproduction. Matthew is hardly fatigued or docile; indeed, he is actively redacting v.8 with his favorite word τότε.

Even if you're right about the tension occasioned by the insertion of v. 7b into an earlier source, there is no Lukanism that Matthew carried over and betrays that earlier source to be Luke. Indeed, one could even more easily argue that v. 7b is an interpolation or marginal gloss that got worked into Matthew's version of the parable. but I think the text makes sufficient sense as it stands not to do that.

Stephen

Yuri Kuchinsky

YURI:
In so far as the double tradition (Mt + Lk) is concerned, there are many studies that show that the Lukan version of the double tradition is more original.

That's right, Peter.

IMHO Powell's theory is definitely a step in the right direction.

But why does he still insist that Mk was the earliest gospel?

All the best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

OK, Ben, I stand corrected. I guess the de Solages synopsis settles it, at least from the technical standpoint.

But there's still the big picture to consider...

My main point is that Mk could not be the earliest gospel.

1. Agreements of Matthew and Mark against Luke.

... are fully consistent with Mk being secondary.

3. Agreements of Mark and Luke against Matthew.

... are also fully consistent with Mk being secondary.

But,

2. Agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark.

... are IMHO entirely inconsistent with Mk being the earliest gospel.

True, Goulder/Goodacre seem to provide a way out of this dilemma, but this is entirely illusory AFAIAC.

In an earlier message, you stated that you're not really trying as yet to prove anything in particular with your synopses, and just wish them to be "as neutral as possible".

Well, this is a praiseworthy goal but, still, you shouldn't lose sight of the Big Picture completely.

All the best,

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

Agreed. One might even say that τοτε is characteristically Matthean (90-6-15+21).

I am not sure that active is the right word here. The word τοτε appears so very often in Matthew that it might be more habit than intent. Usually making every other event in his gospel happen at that time does not lead to any lack of cogency; here I think it does. Matthew has written characteristically, and soon after has got himself into trouble with his source.

Not exactly. Placing most kinds of event at that time would not have caused any problems. The real problem is that the exact event he chooses to now narrate fits only uncomfortably after a long delay.

How remote is more remote? On page 56 Goodacre lists an example of Lucan fatigue on Matthew that occurs between two adjacent verses, Luke 10.23 and 10.24.

There is docile reproduction in my example. You have been looking only at Matthew 22.7-8a so far, but that is not where I am seeing the docile reproduction in the first place. I find it, rather, in 22.8b-9:

The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and, as many as you can find, invite them to the wedding feast.

Matthew is here getting back on track with Luke, whose company he left at 22.5 (a departure marked with that awkward οι λοιποι in 22.6, I might add). He could have continued the story in 22.8 from the sacking of the city with that τοτε, a mark of contemporaneity with the preceding event, but he did not. Instead, his account backtracks without warning to a time when the wedding feast is still awaiting substitute guests. Why? My best answer is because he was returning to the Lucan version.

I do not find this example of fatigue exceptional. It is fairly immediate, true, but not as immediate as Luke 10.23-24. It involves a redactional addition (the military campaign, the τοτε) followed by a return to the purported source (the feast hall still waiting to be filled), just like the example of fatigue in Matthew 8.1 (page 47 of Goodacre) involves a redactional addition (the crowds in 8.1) followed by a return to the purported source (the injunction to silence in Matthew 8.4 = Mark 1.44 = Luke 5.14). Instead of the more usual changes to the source at the beginning of the pericope it involves changes in the middle, but so does the fatigue that Goodacre finds on page 49 in the parable of the sower and its interpretation.

In fact, this example of fatigue, like some but unlike most that Goodacre adduces, has extra support. It has that awkward οι λοιποι that signally marks the Matthean departure from his source. It also has the tension between a bunch of guests being herded in off the street and one of them chancing not to be wearing formal attire. These tensions, like my example of fatigue, come from what Matthew has over and above Luke.

You may have a point here. So let me turn instead to Josephus, Antiquities 2.1.1 §3, in which Jacob compels his older brother Esau to give up his birthright, though Jacob at the time certainly had no authority over Esau. Or to 4 Maccabees 8.9, in which prisoners by their disobedience compel a king to kill them, the exact opposite of an exercise in kingly authority. Or to Bel 1.30 (according to Theodotion), in which the Babylonians compel their king to hand Daniel over to them, another reversal of kingly authority.

Ben.