andrewcriddle

I agree that that is a very real possibility, on the other hand I deliberately chose passages where not only is Luke IMHO prima-facie more primitive but also shorter. On the whole passages grow longer as the tradition develops although there are clear and important exceptions.

In the case of the Lord's Prayer most late manuscripts assimilate Luke to Matthew, in the case of Luke 6:20 the Caesarean text reads "poor in spirit".

Andrew Criddle

Solitary Man

Why do you feel that way? We're missing 90% of all ancient literature, why is Q the exception?

robto

I'm still in the Q column.

- Crossan emphasizes gMark's "sandwich stories"- where he begins one story, then sandwiches another story in before finishing the first. gMatt and gLuke both keep some of these stories, but they keep different ones. It's hard to see how that could happen unless Luke knew gMark.

- You could still argue that Luke knew BOTH gMark and gMatt. But then it's hard to explain why Luke broke up the double tradition material the way he did. He seems to take verses out of a perfectly logical context in Matt and distribute them to other places in his gospel.

mg01

Nothing more than a gut feeling. But that we have found so many copies of the manuscript traditions that were preserved, if there were other underlying material as simle as a "sayings" documnent it seems surprising that it was't preserved somewhere in some form. We have four major traditions of the passion narrative plus many other gospels based on the same primary events. Considering the volume that has been recovered, that nothing like it has been found to me indicates the probabilities lean against it. Occam's razor would also suggest one simply copied from the other. I recognize that doesn't rule out the Q may have really existed.

Solitary Man

Then why bother? I thought this was a place for critical inquiry, not faith and belief systems?

It might have been, if it were a fully written document. It may be partially oral. Look up


Then you are mislead by numbers. Not a substantial volume has been found. We're missing a lot of work. Where's the original Epistle to the Laodiceans? Where's the original Corinthians letter? We know those existed because Paul himself wrote that he had written those, but we didn't find them.

Occam's Razor does not postulate that the simplest answer is the best answer; it's that the simplest answer which accompanies for all the facts is the best answer. Luke using Matthew doesn't account for places where Luke is more primitive.

yalla

I think it was Streeter who popularized the idea that "Luke" was 'simpler' than "Matthew"
Whatever that means.
It really boils down to an expectation that "Luke" has to slavishly follow "Matthew", cannot display a different theological or political agenda and has to faithfully shadow his predeccessor. That he is less creative and imaginative and merely a poor redactor/editor of existing material. No room for imagination and creativity or his own agenda.
Its subjective.
And follow the logic, Q exists because "Luke" has more 'primitive' or "simple' versions [again, whatever that means] than "Matthew" when they both copy the sameunknown document!
To get away with that pea and shell trick there has to be 2 Qs, or more.
They multiply according to the gaps in the hypothesis.

Notice the same growth and change of definition trick is also utilised with the unfortunate realization that Q, defined as: "that material which is common to both "Luke" and "Matthew' which is [I]not based on "Mark", became redundant when some such double material is found integrated with "Markan' material.
Oops.
Change the definition time....it becomes ""that material which is common to both "Luke" and "Matthew' which is [I]not based on "Mark, and sometimes is based on "Mark".
Nonsensical.
Its a sign of distress within a hypothesis when it has to have patches put on it to save its credibility.
Note also that if "Luke' did copy "Matthew' and both copied "Mark" then occasional material from all 3 would be expected, material which was not forseen by the original Q hypothesis. Hence the patches being applied.

On the rationalization that Q could be 'lost' cos we know lots of documents were lost, I suggest that we need to firstly establish that Q did exist, so that it could subsequently be lost.
Otherwise we could postulate the 'loss' of anything we care to imagine and point to loss of other known or suspected documents as evidence that that for which we have no evidence must have existed.
Establishing a case against either "Luke' or "Matthew' copying the other should be the first step.
Establishing a case for Q as the only viable alternative should be a [second] part
of that.
Then wondering why such an influential document available in multiple copies to its readers in 2 [or 3 if you wish to assert that "Mark' also had access to a copy] different times and places and milieus at least without drawing attention from anyone else, was subsequently, conveniently, 'lost' without trace.

Solitary Man

It means that Luke's saying are shorter and less theologically defined that Matthew's are. The rest of your post is a non sequitur.

Huon

Claude (usually called Marie-Émile) Boismard (14 dec.1916-23 april 2004) vas a french dominican exegete. He belonged to the french Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem from 1948 to his death.

The theory of Boismard (1972) is a three-stage hypothesis :

First phase :
There are four primitive documents :
document A : palestinian and judeo-christian, around 50 CE
document B : interpretation of A for converts, before 58 CE
document C : palestinian written in aramean, very archaic, source to John. This document is very hypothetic, since it contains above all what cannot be ascribed to the other documents.
document Q1 : what is common to Matthew and Luke, not exactly the well-known Q of Weisse (1838) and Streeter (1924).

Second phase :
Writing of three intermediary documents, sources to the final gospels.
Intermediary Matthew : depends of A (judeo-christian) and Q1 (common Luke-Matt).
Intermediary Mark : depends of A (judeo-christian), B (new converts) and C.
Intermediary Luke : depends of B, C and Q1, and also Intermediary Matthew.

Third phase :
Final Matthew : Revision of Intermediary Matthew, influence of Intermediary Mark.
Final Mark : Revision of Intermediary Mark.
Final Luke : Revision of Intermediary Luke, influence of Intermediary Mark.

As a conclusion, it is not possible to say that "our" gospels can be ordered by antiquity, all of them are mixtures of older texts, now vanished.

yalla

Shorter?
Really?
What does 'theologically less defined' mean?
Actually it does follow, maybe you just have a problem following.

the_cave

I've said it before and I'll say it again--the solution to the Synoptic Problem is far more complicated than most people realize (and, I would argue, involves non-canonical works, some of which are largely lost to us, so it's no wonder we can't solve it). Personally I would argue for a proto-Mt/Lk that both used (though not necessarily directly...), and which in turn is derived from a proto-Mk. But there are many more threads to it.