Johnny Skeptic

Since I know little about the issues in this thread, I do not know if this will help, but Elaine Pagels briefly discusses Q at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...othetical.html.

EarlDoherty

That’s it? This is the narrative in Q? The opening Baptist pericope takes place earlier than everything else (which I acknowledged), so Q has a narrative structure and intent? I think any concept of “narrative” has to involve a little more than that. Especially since this does nothing to support the claim that John sounds like he is talking about an expected future apocalyptic figure because he didn’t know the historical Jesus yet and didn’t realize he was actually prophesying a man who didn’t fit his prophecy and was in fact someone who had already been walking the earth for some 30 years. (And didn’t he even jump inside his mother when he recognized the one he would be heralding inside a nearby womb?)

Whatever this relationship between the opening pericope and what follows (specifically the Dialogue between Jesus and John), it would be the only case of any narrative element spanning more than one pericope in Q. But to have any significance at all, such a relationship would have to be deliberate on the part of the Q compilers or redactors. And yet, as I pointed out in my rebuttal article, such a thing would be so unlikely as to be impossible. Let me quote again a passage from that article:

There is a further reason for rejecting the whole idea of a deliberate narrative intent here. (Narrative doesn’t happen by accident; it has to be purposely created by the writer.) If the Q redactor had any intention to make the progression of thought make sense over successive pericopes, he has also failed to align John’s prophecy of the “coming one” with the activities of Jesus as offered in the Dialogue. The Baptist in the 3:17 saying has his erchomenos engaged in baptizing (“with fire”); this figure is a dangerous one, full of dire promise. Nothing is said about him performing miracles to herald the kingdom, raising the dead, preaching hope to the poor—which would be positive predictions, things to look forward to. When we get to the Dialogue, Jesus “answers” John’s query as to whether he is the coming one, not by pointing to anything John has forecast about his expected figure, but by pointing to things he did not forecast, miracles and preaching, clearly expecting that this would satisfy John and answer his question, with no allusion whatever to the things the Baptist was expecting. How could a compiler or redactor possibly have felt that this made any “narrative” sense? Yet Zeichman would have us believe that the same redactor who could overlook such glaring anomalies was nevertheless concerned with portraying John in the opening passage of Q as not showing any understanding about the figure he was prophesying in order to preserve the ‘narrative’ situation that John at this time didn’t know the erchomenos was a human man already on the scene.

In any case, what would this say for the ability of John to understand his role, or to enjoying any divinely-inspired insight as to what was going on around him and in God’s plan of which he was such an important part? Could any writer/redactor anxious to portray the sect’s wisdom and divine pipeline, origin and history in a “narrative” setting possibly have consciously created such a contradictory muddle? Zeichman and others may accept such a thing and gloss it over in their own minds, but I cannot.

(I find it genuinely ironic that Chris refers to this anomaly between what John is evidently expecting of his “coming one” and what Jesus actually delivers in the Dialogue as something “ironic”. I would prefer to label it a “contradiction” which is never explained, probably not even recognized. It could hardly have been tolerated by any Q redactor if he had the kind of sophistication which many scholars and others here seem to want to attribute to him.)

On the other hand, if Q has no narrative intent, and evolved on an ad hoc basis, it is much easier to understand how a redactor, adding a pericope that essentially serves to align the previously-present John (as a prophet of the End-time erchomenos/Son of Man, and regarded as the original mentor of the Q community who began the preaching of the kingdom) with the newly-introduced founder Jesus, could have created compatibility problems which he either failed to recognize or simply reinterpreted according to the new understanding.

And once again, viewing the postings of the last few days, I have to reiterate that we are not talking here about “narrative” that exists within individual pericopes. That is irrelevant to the argument at hand and Zeichman’s statements in his critique. If he is trying to protest my claimed incompatibility between pericopes by recourse to alleged “narrative” considerations, then that “narrative” must span multiple pericopes, and make sense within the context of Q and Q stratification as a whole. On these points I have demonstrated that he is wrong. If he can point to other evidence not previously mentioned, then let’s discuss that when he supplies it. Further, I note from yesterday:

I’m sorry, but you need more than the simple word “plot,” (especially as you admit you don’t know how Kloppenborg distinguishes this from “narrative”), since without explaining what he means by this and how it supports your arguments, I’m hardly going to roll over and play dead. He may be using the word in a different sense than the one you would like it to be. It’s also quite possible that I would not agree with him.

The same thing applies to Arnal. What is his “logical progression”? In fact, I have already pointed out (and so has Kloppenborg, as I outlined in one of my excerpts from my rebuttal) that the progression between these three passage in Q is anything but logical, and involves contradictions which Kloppenborg makes no attempt to resolve, and for all I know neither does Arnal, or he does so in a way I would regard as fallacious.

But we do not have this kind of “logical progression”. What we have is more like:

1) John goes to the furniture store to buy a sofa.
2) When entering the church, the priest comes up to John and asks if he is satisfied with his life insurance.
3) John enrolls in a trade school to become a sofa manufacturer.

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

In Q?

Ben.

EarlDoherty

No, Ben, not in Q. In Luke's midrashic imagination.

By the way, are you satisfied with your life insurance?

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

Whew. For a minute there you had me thinking the Lucan narrative of the birth of John had something to do with Q.

Ben.

Zeichman

So you're just objecting to my use of the word "narrative"? Then use the word plot. I don't care. My point is still the same.
Sure, I wouldn't be the first person to suggest it. Wendy Cotter has done so. Are you implying that there is no real organization to the Q clusters? This would render moot Kloppenborg's hypothesis. His work (along with Piper and others) has tried to show quite the opposite: Q is a carefully constructed document, and not the naively-constructed reminiscence that Harnack and Meier seems to think/thought it was.
Is there any evidence that the Q1 editor had any cares about John the Baptists' preaching? Q 16:16 sure doesn't look like it. Besides, it seems pretty likely to me that the preaching attributed to John is just a reflection of the Q2 redactor's theology, not being especially accurate in terms of historicity (see Arnal's "Redactional Fabrication and Group Legitimation"), which renders moot this objection.
How do you figure this? I'm tending towards the opposite.
This is a false dichotomy. If anyone of the readers knew of the disparity between John's preaching and Jesus, Q1's Jesus and Q2's Jesus, or simply appreciated literary irony, there is no real objection here.

The use of Isaiah in both John's preaching and John's dialogue is doubtlessly intentional. I'm not sure how you could overlook this, as it has been pointed out numerous times. Additionally, there is a clear connection between Jesus' identity and John's preaching as I pointed out earlier in this thread:
Jesus, later in Q (12:49f), clearly embraces John's prophecy. I'm not sure how this could be construed as being attributed to some future figure, as the speaker is clearly referring to the present.

Kloppenborg's hypothesis more or less assumes that such a naive treatment of the Q redactors' composition is untrue. I'm not sure how you can accept both Kloppenborg's hypothesis and say this. The Q2 editor was probably quite intelligent and literarily adept, as Ron Cameron's essay about Q 7:18-35 has shown and Kloppenborg's hypothesis implicitly assumes. If it's all hodge-podge, there would be no way to identify layers of composition at all.

My point is, the word chosen is irrelevant. The progression isn't. I could say your interpretation defies the "donut" of Q, but my point would still stand. Word choice isn't particularly relevant since I think I have fairly clearly laid out my point. You only have spent time refuting something that I didn't really claim in the first place.

1) prediction
2) identification (x2)
3) future coming

I'm not sure what's hard to understand, so you'll need to elaborate. The order of the first two points is all that matters, and I think it is the far more clear of the plot. If this is fallacious, then I'm not sure how you assuming that 3:16-17 is talking about the son of man is any less question-begging (I would contend that Q 12:49f strongly supports what I and others have been saying). I'm not trying to prove this particular reading, only to show that your objection about John's preaching has already been addressed with a very plausible solution. Sure, one could read it your way, too. I don't care. I only note that it would be misrepresenting Q scholarship to say that it hasn't been addressed with plausibility and accompanying arguments. Claiming a total contradiction with contemporary scholarship is one option, plausibly identifying its place within the methods and conclusions of scholarship is another. I suspect that you haven't been entirely empathetic to my point, and are more concerned with refuting it than understanding the content of what I'm saying. I've tried to treat you that way (e.g., my lack of discussion of the cross saying, the fact that I cite a few unpublished things you wrote), though often unsuccessfully, but your refusal to answer my questions about the pre-Q1 source and your method for Q 7:18-35 will undoubtedly mean that I'm going to misunderstand you and consequently misrepresent you.

Ted Hoffman

Why do you need other arguments? Is there a certain checklist or list of criteria you are referring to that you check against in order that an "argument" be considered an "argument"?
If there is none, your demands for "arguments besides" appears arbitrary raising of the bar. If there is, please provide it. If there is none, dear Ben, then you are arguing from a vacuum.
Doherty explains why he makes the argument:
You mean "finding no argument based on Markers?"
What about his arguments regarding equating the son of man with John's ho erchomenos?

K is careful to point out that Q has no narrative framework and no narrative format. That leaves room for narrative only within the individual pericopes.
But in your article you make no such distinction and instead appear to be incorrectly assuming that Q has a narrative:
Since we agree that there is no such thing as "narrative of Q", it means that K's careful distinctions were lost on you and this exposes you to the possible charge of not reading K carefully - a charge you have countlessly leveled against Doherty.
Carlson, apparently, only pointed out K's "careful writing" purposefully to allow you wriggle room for using the word "narrative" in your arguments. He sought to expose Doherty as having missed K's nuanced distinction while at the same time incorrectly aiming to absolve you from using the word "narrative."
The word "plot" does you no good either because it assumes that the components in question posess some form of unity and a chronological sequence, which goes against K's "careful writing." You may want to consider using "plots." (plural)
You cant just say you "dont care" Chris. We are here because we all care. As soon as you stop caring, then you may end up being reckless and engaging in arbitrary argumentation. Besides, remember that Carlson helpfully pointed out that K is a careful writer. Surely we cannot use his arguments whilst we are unabashedly "careless"? We dont want to be square sticks standing in round holes do we now?

Zeichman

Because the only one that he offers is question-begging.
Wrong. Formation of Q, 94 says the same thing that I have.

Has anyone shown where Kloppenborg rejects the word "narrative" altogether when describing certain aspects of Q? You're getting ahead of yourself.
Kloppenborg doesn't define "narrative" as far as I can tell; if I'm wrong, show me, and then you can level this charge. (Wouldn't this also mean that Doherty hasn't read him carefully since he is unable to demonstrate this claim? I'm not suggesting this is the case, since I gave Doherty the benefit of the doubt regarding the narrative-biographical introduction.) Otherwise, you're once again getting ahead of yourself. You're going to need to define narrative as distinct from "plot" and "plot points" before I agree to anything. My point was that Doherty was objecting to the word that I used and not its connection to my argument, with which it seems Kloppenborg and others agree. Since I used the word "narrative" but may have been describing something else, his quoting of Kloppenborg, which doesn't even say what he claims it does, could not be less relevant. Since it seems that this is unclear to several people:

1) I used the word narrative in an argument
2) What I may have meant to use was the word "plot" or "plot points" or one of many other words, and my discussion works with the definition of these words and not "narrative"
3) Objections to my use of the word "narrative" is thus inconsequential to my argument

How do you figure? Kloppenborg himself uses the word "plot," and does not eschew the word "narrative" from what I have seen, only noting its deficiency when compared to the canonical gospels. Anyone who can read will agree with this.

I don't care about him quibbling over a single word that I used which was irrelevant to my point. As I said, I could have said "Doherty's objection fails to take into consideration the donut of Q" because I clearly wasn't talking about donuts and had a very specific thing in mind and explained it. At best, (and this is yet to be demonstrated) I may have used the wrong word. I used the word "preclude" when I meant "require" in my son of man e-mail to Doherty last year, but it was irrelevant because context indicated that I meant something else (indeed, quite the opposite) and he was able to correct what I meant. This, if one DOES demonstrate that I used the wrong word or that Kloppenborg rejects the word narrative, would be no different. Thus, I don't really care about this until someone indicates that it is of significance to my argument.

EarlDoherty

In large measure, we are talking past one another simply because we have different standards and expectations. Of course, I don’t agree with your own, but I know there’s not much I can do to change them. But I will continue to argue against them when I feel they are poorly founded. You offered the term “plot” as though this is something significantly different from “narrative.” (If it isn’t, then why are you bothering?) It’s difficult for me to see how one can have plot without narrative, unless “plot” is being used in a highly irregular or metaphoric fashion—which is why I asked you to explain how Kloppenborg is defining and using this term.

I see no way to legitimately regard the sequence of 3:17—7:11-35—13:33-34 as something “plotted”, even if it were considered to have no narrative intent. That would be like saying that three Picasso self-portraits from three different periods in his life, which happen to be hung on a museum wall in chronological order of their painting, somehow embodied a “plot”—and a deliberate one—even if it contained no “narrative” element. (I wouldn’t agree it contains either.) And suppose those three portraits were in three different styles, representing Picasso’s current style at each stage. Would you call that a narrative? A plot? Just as those three paintings represent different ideas and techniques at different stages of the painter’s career, I regard the 3:17—7:11-35—13:33-34 (the last two not necessarily in that order) as representing three different stages of ideas about the object of the Q community’s expectations/traditions. And just as three paintings in three different styles may be incompatible in terms of inspiration, style and effect on the viewer, those three Q pericopes are themselves incompatible in many ways, even contradictory. They don’t gel, and they certainly don’t make sense in the alleged context of a deliberate plot or narrative that was consciously fashioned by any redactor.

What it boils down to is that in this 3-part sequence, one cannot distinguish between an alleged deliberate plot/narrative and the absence of such a thing. My presentation of a jerrybuilt sequence of ideas in regard to future and present figures in those elements of Q which contain so much apparent incompatibility makes just as much sense, if not more, than the opposite claim that somehow this sequence was deliberately crafted and constitutes a logical progression. Since you still haven’t explained what Kloppenborg, or anyone else, means by “plot” (rather than just seizing on the word like a life preserver), you haven’t even made a case. I guess I’ll have to investigate it myself and find out just what Q’s plot is.

You think a choice of word isn’t important? That it doesn’t matter what a word being used actually means? No wonder we are talking past one another. No wonder there was so much misinterpretation in your critique of what I was saying. If your “progression” doesn’t fit either the word “narrative” or “plot”, then you have to explain by using some other descriptive just what this “progression” is. Let’s look at your latest rendition of it:

So it doesn’t matter if the type of “prediction” made in No. 1 is entirely different from the type of “identification” made in No.2? What kind of “progression” is this? If a psychic tells me I am about to receive an important visitor, and a week later I get an unexpected tax bill in the mail, is this a logical progression? Does it fulfill my expectation based on the psychic’s prediction? Would it fit any feasible concept of plot or narrative? And if this was actually being formulated later as an account of what had happened to me, written by another psychic who wanted to make a good impression on the reader about the reliability of psychics in general, would he have crafted such an obviously contradictory “progression”? Other psychics who came along even later might strive to come up with an explanation for how this apparent contradiction was not so, claiming some kind of “plot” structure to it, perhaps making the strained interpretation that, well, the tax department was my “important visitor”. But could we really regard that as an acceptable or likely explanation, a “plausible solution” as you put it? Could we really distinguish between that “solution” being intended in the document, as opposed to it simply being a case of the original psychic having gotten it wrong?

You also claim that Luke 12:49 represents an ‘alignment’ of the 3:17 prediction by John with its fulfillment in Jesus, if I may put it that way. First of all, 12:49 is by no means universally accepted as part of Q. In fact, Kloppenborg implied (admittedly in 1987, perhaps you can bring me up to date on that) that it was so by only a minority (see p.151, n.213). Certainly that verse has no equivalent in Matthew, and just because it has a commonality of one phrase (on the earth) or a similar brand of thought, hardly rules out that Luke pre-inserted 49 (and 50, which is acknowledged to be later than Q) under the inspiration of the 3:17 prediction. There is also no apparent reason to explain why, if it was in Q, Matthew would not have used that verse as well.

It is not a case of my not understanding the content of what you are saying, or ignoring “plausible solutions” put forward by scholarship for points I have raised. I am arguing against those “plausible solutions” because I find fault and often fallacy with them, just as I find fault within the entire range of scholarly argument in support of an historical Jesus. And if you are going to simply appeal to those “solutions” and present them without any backing of your own, or counter-argument to my objections to them, other than simply pointing to them yourself, you are hardly justified in your complaints. And I don’t know what questions I have “refused to answer” about Q1’s source or the Dialogue. I have done my best to explain how I see the derivation of Q1 and why I think I am justified in treating the Dialogue as I have. As I said at the outset, I think we are talking past each other—maybe, dare I say it, because we live in different conceptual universes. Perhaps Ben is right, though he probably wouldn't agree with my description of what those differences are.

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

Ben.