spin

I can appreciate the convenience, but I find people tend to coalesce all the work as the responsibility of the one eponymous writer. I simply talk about Luke (the gospel) and the author(s) and redactor(s) (of the gospel).

And if this Luke wrote the John Mark incident, what else did he write? My worry is the confusion that such labeling can lead to. Someone stitched together various works about 1) the Peter-led apostles, 2) Paul, and 3) the We sections, plus the interpolations of various stripes (including interpolations in interpolations). So there are signs of several writers. Your Luke wrote the section the thread is currently dealing with. I can see that next time you talk about Acts, you'll talk about Luke, though probably for some very different passages, probably not the work of the same person who gave us the John Mark material.

It seems to me like a convenience that has a price tag.


spin

Ben C Smith

That does happen, and wherever it matters to the affair at hand I certainly try to be more specific.

I am not exactly following. The Luke I am referring to is the final editor of the gospel pretty much as we have it reconstructed in our eclectic texts. Whether he wrote the John Mark incident or merely carried it over from somebody else, he is responsible for its inclusion in the text. In the case at hand, which exact stage of editing was responsible for the exact wording of this incident does not matter to my point (since whoever it was is, in my judgment, suppressing something about Paul and Barnabas); therefore, in this context, speaking about what Luke wrote or about what the author(s) of Acts wrote or about what the collective editors and redactors of Acts and Luke wrote all amount to the same thing. Unglossing Luke as the editor(s) of Acts still does not tell us which editor we have in mind without further explanation.

Not sure what you mean by interpolations in this context, but yes, somebody stitched everything together into pretty much what we have today, and I am, in this context and for convenience, calling that person Luke. Just as I call, in many contexts and for convenience, the author of a certain Coptic Nag Hammadi text Thomas, even though I am just as convinced that there are layers to be found in that text as I am that there are layers to be found in Luke-Acts.

Yes.

That is quite possible. And, again, if it matters to the topic at hand, I will mention it and explain. If not, then my designation will simply be, again, a matter of convenience.

Of course. Convenience always has a price tag.

Ben.

spin

I'm not too involved in the discussion you were engaged in per se. What interests me is the apparent ease with which you seem to switch between significances of what you attach to "Luke", while notionally accepting the differences between them. You might know what you mean at any particular moment, but do you expect your audience to?

The reason why I originally put my comment in parentheses is because it was a digression from the topic.

But it might prevent you from an apparent inconsistency in your usage. (See below.)

Acts 1:14, 2:44-5, 47b, 4:4, 5:14 in 5:12-6, 9:42, 11:21, 24b, etc. You know, interpolations.

The stitcher-together? Well, why refer to this Luke "invent[ing] the John Mark incident"? Either he's a stitcher-together or a writer of incidents. It's as though you're confusing yourself or not conveying your ideas clearly.

Luke-Acts is a sort of semi-meaningless artifice that guarantees confusion. Besides a snippet of prologue that indirectly relates one to the other and a few shared characters (and I'm sure you can find a few more clues), I don't see any benefit in yoking them together. At some stage a redactor attached a prologue to one and perhaps the same redactor (or perhaps not) attached a related prologue to the other. Hmmm, useful.


spin

Ben C Smith

I expect my audience to keep up with the discussion enough to know whether it matters or not.

Yes, I realize that.

Is it your view that these verses were added after the author gave his identification (such as it is) in the prologues (by a creative scribe, for example)? Or were they added by this same author while he was editing his materials?

Because inventing the incident was only one of the options I gave; the other was exaggerating its significance. Again, it did not matter to my original point whether the composer of this incident was writing from tradition or inventing wholesale, or whether he or she was an initial, a medial, or a final redactor of the book of Acts. My only point was that whoever composed this incident seems to be suppressing the real reason (or at least a more important reason) for the fallout between Paul and Barnabas.

What is confusing to me is introducing distinctions that do nothing for the discussion at hand, even if those distinctions are completely valid in other contexts.

Then you are, IMHO, seriously underestimating the interconnections. But that is a topic for another day.

Ben.

spin

I expect you are giving a message you don't want to.

Beats me. (And you.)

I could have put both in if you'd liked. It wouldn't change the comment.

"[W]hoever" is a more meaningful reference, isn't it? Or "the writer responsible".

A neutral term would be wiser, wouldn't it? Otherwise you give the impression over a range of your posts that this Luke -- because you refer to him one way in one context and perhaps another way in a different context -- is responsible for more than what you yourself might want it to be.

Like those in Bram Stoker's Dracula and Bela Lugosi's Dracula?

But I've sidetracked the discussion long enough....


spin

Ben C Smith

I agree no certainty is to be had. But for me the terminology changes depending on how we reconstruct the insertions. If the same author who identified himself as a friend of Theophilus in the prologues also inserted your verses, then I would not call them interpolations; they are the products of editing (maybe invented, maybe lifted from tradition). I do not think an author can interpolate his or her own work; any changes made by the originally identified author are called editing. An interpolation occurs when a later author leaves the attribution alone (a friend of Theophilus, in this case) but adds text as if it were written by that original author.

Thus, for example, (the author of the gospel of) Luke modifying (the gospel of) Mark is not interpolation; (the author formerly known as) Luke is editing or even plagiarizing; but, since he is not passing the new work off as if it were the old, it is not interpolation. A western scribe or editor adding a story to Luke 6.5, however, counts as interpolation, since the attribution to a friend of Theophilus remains intact, and the effect is to make the reader think that the new story was written by that original author.

Then I do not know what your comment was trying to convey.

Neutral terms are fine when they are not too cumbersome. When they begin to inflate paragraphs and simultaneously do not affect the point being made, I often default to the traditional attributions. If this is a weakness on my part, it is one I am fairly consistent about. I call the first canonical gospel Matthew, for example, even though I am pretty rootedly opposed to the notion that it is the text that Papias referred to as Matthean.

Ben.

spin

Interpolations can occur before an act of redaction or after it. You are confusing me with the rest.

There is no reason to assume your final redactor. Your terminology is opaque.

It's better safe than sorry. Falling back on well-worn paths just leads to ruts.

There is a difference between your consistently using "Matthew" for the first gospel and your inconsistent use of "Luke", the final redactor, the writer of material or whatever else.


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Ben C Smith

Likewise on the confusion.

So is this comment.

What do you perceive the difference to be?

Ben.

spin

The first is a relatively discrete entity, a text written in Greek which had its form clearly defined before the end of the second century. We have no real difficulty in communicating about it. When you get to mister Luke things get fuzzy and you start giving mixed messages, indicating the weasel nature of the term. Communication languishes. As I said it sometimes equals "the final redactor, the writer of material or whatever else."


spin

Ben C Smith

I seem to recall you talking about layers of and interpolations in Matthew, too.

Ben.