Solo

I fail to see how that would improve on the realism of the story. Jesus in Mark is asked to prophesy (i.e. foretell) the future. This mocks Jesus' prophetic capacity, in a situation where he knows he is going to be killed. See Pilate's take on the Sanhedrin's motives in 15:10.

But you forget Bernard that Jesus by Matthew and Luke is made to prophesy (foretell) an event that has already happened. That does not make sense whether or not Jesus was blindfolded.

There has to be another explanation.

Best,
Jiri

yalla

JonA

You quote this below:
"R. Stein in The Synoptic Problem (1987):
One of the strongest arguments against the use of Matthew by Luke is the fact that when Matthew has additional material in the tripple tradition ("Matthean additions to the Markan narrative"), it is "never" found in Luke. (p. 91)"


Ken Olson covers this sort of claim made by Q proponents.

There are, in fact, several such cases in Luke where he has material from Matthew in the triple tradition.
I gave an example in a post above [the two words common to Luke and Matthew but not Mark in the wine skins parable] and 'the who struck you" example is yet another.
There are many more.
The claim by Stein does not stand up to scrutiny.


In his article Olson is critiquing the work of F.G. Downing who makes a similar claim to Stein above.

Downing States:
"Luke hardly reproduces any passage where Matthew and Mark are word for
word the same, and none where they are in agreement for more than 20 words at a stretch,” (Ibid., 188).page 15 of Olson.

But Olson notes:
"His observation that Luke never reproduces any passage where Matthew and Mark agree for 20 or more words in sequence is a bit misleading. By my count, there are six such passages and Luke has parallels to five of them."


The key factor is all of this is that ancient writers had physical constraints when attempting to incorporate multiple sources into their works.
Downing claimed that the idea that Luke had read Matthew and presented such material was atypical of normal practice of ancient writers.
But Olson shows that looking at Downing's examples and case studies reveals Downing's conclusions are not factually correct and based on his own analysis.
"It seems, however, that something has gone astray between the theory and the application ......"
Olson concludes thus:
"What I hope I have shown is that Downing’s conception of how the Farrer theory must work, though widely accepted by advocates of the Two-Document Hypothesis, is based on an unsympathetic, and in fact
mistaken, understanding of how that theory works and how it relates to the methods of composition used by other Hellenistic authors."

The article "How Luke was Written" is worth a read.

JonA

I really didn't examine your quote all that well. I was simply trying to make the point that in cases where Matthew and Luke agree with one another against Mark it is perfectly feasible that the non-Markan material comes from a Q document containing the same story as Mark but being slightly different—the non-Markan version being independently chosen by both Matthew and Luke for inclusion in their own gospels.

Obviously some cases of agreement are instances of harmonization. No one would deny this. I can see the argument you are trying to make, however, and it doesn't hold water. You are merely caricaturing the Q hypothesis by accusing Q proponents of blindly attributing all non-Markan material shared by Matthew and Luke to the Q document(s) when this is not at all how scholars work to reconstruct gospel source materials. There may be buckets of amateurs who operate in this method, but it is not the M.O. of professional critics.

Jon

JonA

It may well be, but the author has done such a horrible job of presenting the material that I'm finding it difficult to read more than a sentence or two between doing other tasks. Perhaps a summary would be helpful.

Huon

Here is Matthew's Special Material, especially the parables.
Mt 2: 1-12 Magi Visit
Mt 2:13-23 Flight into Egypt and Return
Mt 5:15-16 Light Parable
Mt 7: 6 Pearls Before Swine
Mt 9:27-31 Two Blind Men Healed
Mt 9:32-34 Mute Demoniac Healed
Mt 10: 5- 6 Lost Sheep of Israel
Mt 10:16 Wise/Innocent as Serpents/Doves
Mt 10:41-42 The Reward of the Righteous
Mt 11:28-30 Comfort for the Weary
Mt 12:36-37 By thy words thou shalt be justified
Mt 13:24-30 Tares Parable
Mt 13:36-43 Tares Parable Interpretation
Mt 13:44 Hidden Treasure Parable
Mt 13:45-46 Pearl Parable
Mt 13:47-50 Dragnet Parable
Mt 13:51-52 Treasures New & Old
Mt 15:29-31 Many Sick Healed
Mt 18:10-11 Despise Not the Little Ones
Mt 18:23-35 Unmerciful Servant Parable
Mt 20: 1-16 Vineyard Laborers Parable
Mt 23:24 Strain a Gnat/Swallow a Camel
Mt 23:32 Fill up the Measure of Your Fathers
Mt 25: 1-12 Ten Bridemaids Parable
Mt 27: 3-10 Judas' Death

Theoretically, Q does not contain these parables.
Of course, the Visit of the Magi, and the Death of Judas are not parables...
The Q hypothesis does not explain how Luke's special material and Matthew's special material were written in only one gospel.

Note also that Tatian the Assyrian felt (around 150-180 CE) that it was necessary to "harmonize" the four important gospels through the Diatessaron.

yalla

Here this may help.
Its a section of Downing and one of his criticisms of the Farrer theory [Luke and Matthew read Mark and Luke read Matthew].

In his thesis Olson analyses this section of Downing and you will be able to see the weaknesses of Downing's analysis and why it actually supports the Farrer theory rather than, as he asserts, that of the Q hypothesis.

Remember in ancient times, as Downing showed, authors who used multiple sources usually followed one per section and maybe only tacked on a bit from
their lesser source. They did not conflate nor amalgamate the two as modern historians are able to do.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/q-exist.html

Note:
"This web page is a summary of the arguments for the existence of Q."

JonA

And how exactly are we defining 'section'?

Matthew or Luke, wishing to write an account of the life of Jesus including his recorded sayings, would find it difficult to do so based on a single source, and it is obvious that they made no such attempt to do so.

They used multiple sources. This is obvious.

But, who is to say there was any conflating? Each author writes a 'section' based on Mark, then a 'section' based on Q, then a 'section' based on Mark, then a 'section' based on Q. Seems simple enough.

Further, anyone arguing that Luke knew Matthew based on the assumption that ancient authors didn't 'conflate' their sources cannot escape the fact that if Luke used Matthew, he did nothing but 'conflate'—the material Luke would have taken from Matthew is scattered and mixed up all over the place!

Arguments for Luke knowing Matthew just don't hold water.

Jon

outhouse

exactly


lived in different places with different cultures, and wrote to a different audience

EarlDoherty

I hate to disturb the fireside chat where Q has been consigned to the flames, and I’d rather chew tin foil than discuss Q yet again, but I need to raise some contradictions involved in some postings on the first page of this thread (which is as far as I’ve gotten). Someone pointed to Mark 2:19-20:

Matthew (9:15), in taking this pericope from Mark, eliminated the middle sentence:

Luke 5:34-35 also takes from Mark, but shows the same deletion of the middle idea of Mark as is found in Matthew:

The problem with taking examples like this and using them to confidently declare that “there is no need for Q” or “this shows Luke used Matthew” is that it ignores two things: Can these examples be explained otherwise? And are there greater problems in postulating a use of Matthew by Luke which would override any confident use of examples like the above as though there were no other explanation for them? After all, Goodacre himself is rife with ad hoc explanations for the problems he faces in the no-Q position which are far more difficult to accept than alternate explanations for passages like the above.

For example, there is nothing unreasonable about postulating coincidence to explain both Matthew’s and Luke’s independent deletion of the middle sentence in Mark. Why? Because it is obviously redundant. It is virtually a repeat of the first sentence. Matthew and Luke could easily have both recognized this each on their own.

In addition, there is a logical anomaly involved in the discussion. In the example above, it is claimed that Luke’s deletion of Mark’s middle sentence was the result of Luke seeing it deleted in Matthew. This rejects the idea that, as I said above, Luke could have come to the conclusion on his own that the sentence was not needed. However, such a rejection implies that Luke was motivated by an urge/need/propensity to follow Matthew’s direction. If Matthew made a change to Mark, Luke saluted and said: “Read and obeyed!” However, this is simply not the case in Luke as a whole. One of the strongest arguments against the no-Q position is the fact that Luke in so many cases does precisely the opposite (requiring an endless ream of ad hoc explanations by Goodacre for why this is so). Luke in fact never reproduces Matthew’s positive redactions of Mark. What gives here? He only followed Matthew’s lead in *deleting* elements of Mark, but never in *adding* Matthew’s enlargements of Mark? (For example, Matthew’s insertion (16:17-19) of the “upon this rock” saying to Mark’s scene of Jesus asking “Who do men say that I am?” (8:28f). But Luke does not take over this Matthean addition to Mark’s scene. Goodacre’s ‘explanation’ for why Luke fails to do so is particularly lame, thus making the omission (and others like it) a very good argument against Luke having used Matthew.

Why is it that those here, and no-Qers in general, are willing and able to ignore or set something like that aside (and they are many since, as I said, Luke never takes over Matthean redactional additions to Mark, nor his ‘improvements’ of Markan expression that can otherwise be explained); instead they seize on a passage where both Matthew and Luke could easily have independently deleted a clearly redundant sentence in Mark and call this ‘proof’ no Q need have existed?

DNA’s statement: “He [Luke] is then treating this early Matthian text with the same sort of respect he shows Mark, but feels free to amend and alter the later redacted Matthian material to suit his own theological purposes” is thus groundless, for rarely if ever does Luke actually show any amendment or alteration of a Matthean redaction of Mark. In fact, in a further unlikely idea, Luke often shows a more primitive version of a Matthean passage. Is Luke going to “amend and alter” Matthew in a more primitive and difficult direction? Is he going to show a less developed form of a Matthean passage if he is taking it from Matthew? This is another of the strong arguments against a Lukan use of Matthew. (Of course, now we are seeing the postulation of an Ur-Matthew containing none of these redactions of Mark for Luke to take over. Fine, I suppose, anything is possible; but then why not accept the same state of affairs on the Q side, in which the agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark can be explained by them taking from an Ur-Mark which subsequently underwent some alterations of its own, destroying the triple agreement?)

There was some discussion here about the procedure by which an ancient writer used multiple sources in creating a new text. It seems the accepted wisdom has become the theory that rather than having both Mark and Matthew open on his desk at the same time, Luke redacted Mark first and then took up Matthew to make a further expansion and alteration. (I wonder at the wisdom of that theory, when wholesale alteration and insertion in an already written preliminary text would have been extremely difficult given the nature of writing materials at that time. No handy word processor on a computer screen.) But let’s suppose that were the case. Luke first gets to Mark 2:19-20. He either recognizes Mark’s middle sentence as redundant and doesn’t use it—in which case we have identified why it does not appear and we don’t need Matthew’s similar deletion of it to explain things. Or he has not considered it redundant and includes it. Then when his preliminary gospel has been written, he takes up Matthew. In the passage in question, he finds that Matthew did not reproduce Mark’s middle sentence. What is he liable to do? Say: “Gee, I didn’t see anything wrong with it, but I guess Matthew considered it redundant so I better eliminate it. Hand me that strigil, Onesimus, I gotta scrape off those words…oops, would you patch up this hole in the papyrus, Ony? I guess I should have just used up some of my precious ink to blot out the sentence and leave an ugly black mark across the manuscript…”?

Or would he simply have left the bloody sentence in?

Earl Doherty

andrewcriddle

I don't think any single example could refute the Q framework.

If the example stands all on its own then it is very plausible that something unusual has happened in this case which is irrelevant to the general synoptic problem.

A convincing argument here has to be cumulative. It is a matter of judgment how impressive the 'minor agreements' are in total, but in principle enough impressive 'minor agreements' would refute the Q framework.

In the case of who is it that struck you ? one does not need to appeal to conjectural emendation. There is a Caesarean textual tradition (earliest representative codex W) in which Mark has the phrase as well as Matthew and Luke. It is most unlikely IMO that this is original, but this is a possible (but implausible) way to resolve the issue without conjectural explanation.

Brown in Death of the Messiah explains this 'minor agreement' by suggesting that both Luke and Matthew are making explicit the implicit reference in Mark to a rough game in which someone is blindfolded and has to guess who has slapped him.

Andrew Criddle