Vinnie

Thus sayeth yalla. So let it be written, so let it be believed.

Did I ignore to mention Newton's third law of motion? My third cousins middle-name? If that is what you want to call it so be it. My initial topic discusses supposed Mark // Q overlaps and these can only be discussed within the two document hypothesis since a Q // Mark overlap assumes this framework. I did not comment on the Mark without Q view because I wanted to discuss the consequences of the overlaps. Q might show itself to be self-defeating in such a way and this could lead to the view that Luke knew Matthew but I'm not there. This thread looks at Mark and Q overlaps.

It would be wise to read and comprehend what is being writte before presuming someone is saying or doing something they are not. You may be upset that your particular viewpoint is a statistical minority in the 0.00001% range of scholarship. Regardless, please do not project the axe you are grinding with scholarship on me. I never gave consent to Q. It is self evident that any discussion of Q and Mark overlaps requires either an acceptant of the 2DH or an agreement to argue from within that framework. THat is how an reductio ad absurdsom argument works.

It is only unpleasant to conservative scholars. Critical scholars don't mind. Look at how many miracles John Meier dissects in volume two and he writes with the imprimatur and nihil obstat if my memory served me well.

Since you like to accuse scholars of positing Q to avoid unpleasant discussions please write a thesis demonstrating this fact. Start all the way back at the beginning when Markan priority first became accepted and when a sayings source for the double tradition (or Q) was posited. Please make a table with two charts. In the first section place all the various arguments and reasons scholars give. For example, it can be headed as follows: "The arguments scholars put forth for accepting Q." For the second part of the table of data you can put this heading: "Yalla's secret evidence for why these lying scholars really believe in Q" an go from there. You could add a third heading if you like: "Why the literary creativity model better accounts for the data".


The majority determine's "fact". The majority accept Q but I think the majority is sober enough to realize that Q is not set in a stone. If Q is not entirely set in stone its because the majority recognize this.

This is a meaningless statement. People are skeptical about all things, including well established and accepted facts. For example, that the holocaust happened, that the earth is old, that evolution occured. What ultimately matters is the evidence.

Yuri is also a published author, just not in this specific sub-field as far as I know. Not gleaning the point, however. Michael Turton does not accept Q, therefore the rest of the population should be skeptical of it? That is, of course, not an insult to Michael. We can put anyone's name in there, including my own. We should all be skeptical in this field by default. What matters is the evidence but "facts" are generally determined by the majority view. I've never even endorsed Q of the 2DH in this thread. It is transparent that you do not possess all the facts.

Vinnie

Yuri Kuchinsky

This seems reasonable, Ben.

Yes, indeed, although Lk is believed to preserve the sayings tradition more faithfully overall, sometimes Mt has the earlier version.

So then what is this "third party" behind both Lk and Mt? It's the earliest proto-gospel, that's what!

Cheers,

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

So when are you going to publish your own critical text of this earliest proto-gospel?

In other news, I have Howard in hand now and am beginning to (slowly) pore over the text (pardon my split infinitive). Say, what do you make of Mark 9.20-27 making its little cameo appearance right after Matthew 17.7? What is a snippet of Mark, by all accounts the least quoted gospel, doing in a text of Matthew?

Ben.

Chris Weimer

yalla,

For the record, not that it matters or not, but it's Chris Weimer, not Weimar. Weimar is a city in Germany and the name of the republic after the Third Reich. I'm neither of those. But now on to the important bits.

It's actually quite common, believe it or not, in all fields to use the current existing theoretical framework with which they believe in, especially if the evidence contrary is still built on shaky grounds, as the Farrer-Luke theory is. I wouldn't expect Goodacre to "prove that Luke used Matthew" if he would write a paper on the type of material that Luke borrowed from Matthew. He is merely assuming an existing framework with plenty of evidence prior to his writing. The common little phrase you might have heard is "Don't reinvent the wheel."

But that is hardly what is being done here! If you actually read the entire thing, he is testing his hypothesis.

It's his personal opinion.

Yes, I'd call that misleading and biased, but for it to be apologetics he has to be defending whatever he was talking about. That's the nature of apologetics - it's the defense. I'd hardly call it "unavoidable" but it's a possibility. And the bias comes in when he fails to recognize Matthew and Mark and Egerton etc... as possible influences on John. But I don't see how Vinnie has done that here, nor do I see it that often in mainstream New Testament scholarship.

Not as often as you think, at least not that comes to my mind. Most reputable scholars are more flexible.

So they build their arguments within the Q framework. Perfectly acceptable, and quite different than your previous example.

I have given many reasons to reject Q, and I've been given many reasons to accept it. But I wouldn't expect you to use Q in your papers that you write. Instead, I would naturally assume you're working within the framework of Farrer-Luke, right? I mean, why would you have to "prove" your framework if that's not the scope of your paper?

S.C.Carlson

Strike one!

Strike two!

Home run!

(or at least a ground-rule double).


I'm not really happy with most of the current reasons for Markan priority, but the ones that appeal to me the most include:

• Mark Goodacre's fatigue argument and
• the tight plotting of Mark that is interrupted with additional material in Matthew and Luke, especially the triple passion prediction cycle. (This is the same argument that Scott Brown showed--correctly--that Secret Mark is based on Mark, rather than the other way around.)

Stephen

yalla

Chris Weimer: "It's actually quite common, believe it or not, in all fields to use the current existing theoretical framework with which they believe in, especially if the evidence contrary is still built on shaky grounds,.."

I've corrected the spelling..sorry.

We have a paradigm....Q...it explains the common material of Mt and L that is not Mark.

So does one of them copying the other.

But the second does not allow scholars to relate that material back BEFORE Mt and L to the "authentic voice of the historical Jesus".
It stops at the first of Mt. or L.

Q can be used to go back further than the first of Mt and L, to imply a direct line to an historical Jesus.

Scholars use it that way.

B. Ehrman "Jesus Apocalyptic prophet of the New Millenium"
"I suppose everyone would agree that the gospels of the NT in some way or another go back to the reports of eyewitnesses" p.46. No, not everyone.
"As we have seen the NT gospels were based on oral traditions that had circulated among Christians from the time JC died to the moment the gospel writers put pen to paper' p.48
Well that's oral tradition in general but you can see the process of going back to JC in operation.

"Lost Gospel Q'' Ed. M Borg

"Q is the product of a developing tradition and some of the material in it is unlikely to go back to JC'' p. 18
Which implies that some [most?] does.

So it is being used to validate a HJ.
Q functioning as a validating device for an HJ paradigm.

"Q...the scholar's best attempt to render the pure voice of the gospel Jesus" Intro [T.Moore]
Notice the aim, the motivation and the presumption.
There was an HJ and this is how we can get to him.
"In the judgment of most scholars [99% plus apparently- my addition in case it's not obvious] it is the FIRST CHRISTIAN GOSPEL" p.13 Argument from alleged authority.

So now Q is being used to go back to pre-Markan times.

R.Funk "Honest to Jesus"
"... behind Mark lay several decades when stories about JC were circulated orally...told and retold in varying sequence and combination." p.128-9 [or there abouts, I kept imperfect notes when I read this book]
Really? Evidence for this assertion? It's untestable. We don't know what people were saying.

" Q and gThomas closest to JC" p. 41.

B Mack "Who Wrote the NT?"

"Q will put us in touch with the first followers of Jesus....it documents the history of a single group of Jesus people for a period of about 50 years from the time of JC in the 20's until after..the 70's".
Note...pre any of the gospels, Q is being used to go back to an HJ.
Mt or L copying the other cannot do that.


Now I think I have given enough examples to show that some 'liberal" scholars DO use Q as a way of getting back to the 20's.
That's why I call Q an apologetic device.

Vinnie "It is self evident that any discussion of Q and Mark overlaps requires either an acceptant of the 2DH or an agreement to argue from within that framework."

True.
My comment was disagreeing that that is the only frame work that can be used. newton may not be relevant but non Q is.
Vinnie I did not mean to imply you are an apologist.
Only that the Q paradigm functions as an apologetic device.
Sorry. I was trying to be "flippant''

Have I shown that at least some major scholars use it in that way?

I have a large helping of misgivings about the integrity of biblical scholars.


Scholarship in religion, especially in the biblical field is all but bankrupt.


They are not my words.
They are the words of Robert Funk, from the book above pages 59 and 7.

And I would not accuse scholars of lying but I would suggest [apparently inappropriately] that the explanation of why Mt and L have 200 verses the same is being coloured by an apologetic element.

And I am happy to be involved in a discussion of the relative merits of Q vs other.

Vinnie

Mark without Q proponents are coming out of the woodwork!

I think I am in the:

Mark to MT + Lk

Sayings, miracles and other Sources to Matthew

Matthew to Luke who may have also known a major source that is behind some of the double tradition.

I would not call this Q for the simple fact that this text cannot be reconstructed as double tradition material. It may be very much smaller than Q as we now know it. It may have narrative more elements or none. It may have more miracle accounts or none. In fact, once Luke knows Matthew any double tradition material is potentially from Matthew.

But I think some instances where it may appear Luke has an "earlier reading", or Luke looks really different, or the argument from the lack of similar order, etc suggest Luke may have known some of Matthew's source material directly or indirectly and possibly a substantial source. The exact nature and scope is unknown, however. So this might be a weak three-source theory.

Does Luke show a lot of Matthean fatigue? As much as Markan?

Neither am I.

Fatigue is good and the critical one for me. I would actually like to see a Greisbach proponent's response for balance. I like the omission argument. Why would Mark leave out so much? Can this objection be escaped via something to do with length considerations in antiquity? Are there any examples of later texts in the 2nd and 3rd centuries that may have abbreviated and stripped lots of material down? Even still it would be difficult to envision Mark dropping the sermon on the mount and other features considering that his audience apparently underwent hardships and the sermon on the mount would have been right up their alley.

The "better redaction critical readings" arguments is somewhat tenuous at times. I think it works more for once we have Mark as the first source we can use this to explain things that we otherwise would possibly miss.

Is it possible an author could take a work and make it more structured and make the plot tighter than the work it is apparently "correcting"?

Vinnie

Vinnie

A question for all Mark without Q proponents:

If Luke knew Matthew then why did Luke follow Mark so closely? Why would Luke sit there writing with two texts in front of him, rather than just Matthew which incorporates the majority of Mark?

There are a lot of agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark. How many verbatim agreements are there between Luke and Mark against Matthew?

Does the Mark as the middle term argument show that Luke knew Mark as well? Is Luke ever the middle term? Is there ever any fatigue in Luke that can be shown to be exclusively Markan rather than Luke having read Matthew?

Also, how do we know Luke had not simply read or heard Mark in the past and sat down with it in front of him? Does Luke preserve anything such as an intercalation that Matthew does not?

Vinnie

Zeichman

This is absurd. Doherty would be considered an apologist by your standards. That is, unless your definition of "apologist" is so different from the standard one that it is a completely useless term.

yalla

Does Doherty use alleged Q to retroject gospels material back to "the authentic words of Jesus"?
How many of the quotes from the 4 authors cited in my previous posts would Doherty accept as valid comments?

Does he use only one of 2 possible explanations for a literary phenomena to make assertions that strengthen the credibility of the claim that JC existed and that there is an unbroken oral, and in the case of alleged Q written, tradition that connects a JC of the 20's to all 3 synoptic gospels?
Does he not actually argue the opposite? That between the alleged time of an alleged HJ there is a "silence" with respect to all that myriad of detail involved in the gospels version supposedly transmitted partly by Q?
I fail [obviously] to see your objection.