Peter Kirby

Yuri writes: I'm really not saying anything new on this subject now, because most of this work had already been done by Loisy. So I would simply refer those interested to his books.

Unfortunately, I cannot read French. The non-translated work of Loisy in which I am most interested is Quatrieme Evang., which should obviously have material related to the four gospels. Is there any chance that you might spearhead a project to bring this work to those in the English-speaking world?

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Yuri writes: The simple fact of the matter is that our canonical Mk is a 4c text.

True or false: the simple fact of the matter is that our Annals of Tacitus is a ninth century (or later) text.

best,
Peter Kirby

Ted Hoffman

Yuri
Well, this would be too much work...
It was also too much work to formulate the arguments that support the theory of Markan priority.
Since you cannot refute them, its nonsensical of you to claim the two source theory is false.
Pure and simple.
You don't expect people to beleive you just because you disagree - you have to demonstrate that you have good grounds for claiming the 2ST is wrong. You claim its too much work, that is so irresponsible of you! You expected it to be little work? You expected us to agree with you without putting you to task?

I am beginning to think you just want attention so you choose to be polemical.

To me only two of your so-called "six big fallacies" were of interest. I can see you have no case.
"See" you around.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Peter,

I think you're talking about the following volume.

A. Loisy, LE QUATRIÈME ÉVANGILE, Paris: Picard, 1903 (960 pages).

But as you can see, this was published way back in 1903, i.e. still before Loisy was excommunicated by the Vatican. I've read parts of this book, but I can't say that it has a lot to do with the subjects that especially concern me at this time.

It seems like Loisy became a lot more radical and outspoken after he was excommunicated by the Pope -- when he no longer had to observe the appearances. And he got especially more radical after WWI, when he rejected the authenticity of these "7 Epistles of Paul that everyone knows are authentic", and about which no questions still seem to be allowed in our polite academic company...

So I don't know that I can do all that much at this time about translating this very long book. Sorry about this. Perhaps in the future I might prepare some sort of a summary of it, but even this will be a very big project.

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Yes, Peter, the Annals of Tacitus, as we have them now, is a ninth century text. Without a doubt this text had been corrupted during its transmission. But the amount of corruptions is probably not great, since there was no obvious reason for the copiers to intentionally corrupt the text.

But when we're talking about early Christian gospels, the main problem is certainly not the accidental corruption like in the case of Tacitus. It's not even the matter of copying corruptions at all, for the most part. The key here is the _deliberate theological corruption by later editors_. Read Ehrman, and that will give you a taste of what I'm talking about. Except that Ehrman just barely scratched the surface with what he did...

So when you bring up Tacitus, it's not even like apples and oranges -- it's like apples and watermelons.

Yours,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Intensity,

Who said I "cannot refute" Markan priority or 2ST? I've already presented some specific arguments against these, and I'm still waiting for some constructive rebuttals. And also, I'm still waiting for some specific rebuttals of some other of those 6 big fallacies.

You see, my friend, I'm now speaking as a veteran of the Synoptic-L, and I was a member there right from the start (and still lurk occasionally). This is the place where all Synoptic theories, including 2ST, have been debated in infinite and often excruciating detail by some of top scholars in the field. And guess what? In the last couple of years or so, I don't think there's been even one 2ST supporter who's shown up there and wasn't shouted down right away, by lots of very angry critics, coming from all sorts of perspectives.

If you want my honest opinion, at this point, I look at refuting 2ST in the same way as if this were shooting fish in a barrel. Do me a favour, go to the Synoptic-L yourself, and try to present some of your arguments there for "Q" or for 2ST in general. Let's see how long you will last there...

People who are still quite new to this whole Synoptic area are often under the impression as if 2ST is some sort of a gold standard in the field. Well, the truth of the matter is that, among _the Synoptic specialists per se_ -- and there's not really all that many of those -- the majority probably have already given up on the 2ST long ago, as the current situation on Synoptic-L illustrates all too well. So it's only the "NT generalists" who're still often under the impression that 2ST is just bee's knees...

So by now I just think that the whole thing is ridiculous. And I've already indicated in my previous posts what I think the real situation with the history of the Synoptic gospels may have been. It's not really all that complicated, in any case.

All the best,

Yuri.

Ted Hoffman

Yuri
I've already presented some specific arguments against these, and I'm still waiting for some constructive rebuttals

With all due respect, all I have seen are objections. Nothing in the form of an argument. Nothing in the form of premises and conclusions.

I don't think there's been even one 2ST supporter who's shown up there and wasn't shouted down right away, by lots of very angry critics, coming from all sorts of perspectives

Their approach to argumentation is "shouting down" people they do not agree with?

Do me a favour, go to the Synoptic-L yourself, and try to present some of your arguments there for "Q" or for 2ST in general. Let's see how long you will last there...

You have given me no reason to go there except that I should expect to be shouted down. I have better things to do with my time other than find out that there exists a group of people who shout down those supporting 2ST.

Its a shame I am not familiar with your arguments against Q and 2ST, yet you actually expect that you are reknown world over for having made very trenchant arguments against 2ST and Q. You resolve this by asking me to join some board?
Are you serious?

People who are still quite new to this whole Synoptic area are often under the impression as if 2ST is some sort of a gold standard in the field.

And these people who are new to the field, why do they end up with that impression that 2ST is some sort of a gold standard in the field if 2ST is that unpopular? Don't you find your argument self-defeating?

So by now I just think that the whole thing is ridiculous

That seems to be a dark corner you have been coiled at alone for quite some time now. You should ask yourself why no one is joining you. Especially given you can't even provide a link where you have refuted 2ST and Q (I would expect that, given you sound passionate about this).
Just claims that some disembodied group of people share the same position as yours.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Intensity,

I've brought up the question of those "anti-Markan agreements", which are seen traditionally as the biggest problem with 2ST. How can anyone rebut this argument? There are 1000 such agreements, so this is a huge burden for 2ST.

Usually, 2ST apologists try to deal with this problem by dividing these 1000 cases into various categories, and then they try to supply the reasons why "anti-Markan agreements" belonging to each one of these categories -- if taken apart from all the others -- might not be a problem. So then we get an accumulation of such categories (I think Neirynck has suggested up to 20 of them?), each with its own set of reasons why they may not be improbable, after all. In short, the whole thing does look very much like a big house of cards... In plain language, this would be nothing else but the ad hoc fallacy.

But as all of us should know, proliferation of ad hoc explanations is a sure sign of a scientific theory in crisis. In fact, in his classic works on the history of science, Thomas Kuhn lists this as one of prime indicators that some establishment theory may be in big trouble. This is exactly what was happening in astronomy before Galileo came upon the scene -- all sorts of complicated new categories and hypotheses were being created in order to shore up the belief that the sun rotates around the Earth, contrary to the increasingly more precise astronomical observations.

There are actually lots and lots of professional NT scholars who are unhappy with 2ST, and especially with Q. I'm certainly not the only one there, who's been coiled up "all alone in that dark corner", as you put it so colourfully...

The problem with all these often highly credentialled critics of Q and 2ST is not that they have too few arguments against Q and 2ST. They do have lots of such arguments. The problem with them, usually, is that what they offer instead is only slightly better, or not even better at all. (For example, these critics often adhere to the canonical Matthean priority, which is just as problematic as the Markan priority, or they reject Q but still accept Markan priority, etc.)

In general, I think it would be a lot more productive if we don't try to take the extreme positions in this debate, such as either Q and 2ST are all wrong, or that they are absolutely correct. For example, "Skeptical" has already indicated to me that it's possible that Mark _as we currently have it_ "has been reworked and has material dating later than Mt. and Luke". So I see this as a step in the right direction, i.e. towards the realisation that the real picture of the history of NT gospels was a bit more complicated than the mainstream 2ST would allow.

In fact, the main reason why I'm interested in this whole subject is something that I picked up from Loisy. It was he who suggested that the earliest Christian gospels were all Jewish-Christian gospels, that were later heavily reworked to reflect a more Gentile-oriented agenda. So this is why I'm interested in these proto-gospels, such as proto-Mk, or the proto-Luke.

All the best,

Yuri.

CX

It seems to me that 2ST is just a convenient simplification of the real state of affairs. It fits the most evidence of any available theory without being so cumbersome as to stymie text critical study. I don't know of too many 2ST proponents who dogmatically assert that AMt and ALk used GMk and Q and that's it. Even so what purpose does it serve or in what way does it advance text critical study to start hypothesizing about proto-gospels and other sources? Clearly the canonical texts we have are nontrivially modified from the originals. Even so, any theory is an approximation that serves to illustrate what has occured. This is no less true in biblical studies than it is in the hard sciences. Real life and human history is far too complex to exhaustively describe with any theory. The whole point is to arrive at an approximation that helps to illustrate the real state of affairs in the knowledge of the fact that it would be infeasible to perfectly duplicate objective reality.

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: CX ]</p>

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, CX,

Allow me to point out a bit of a contradiction in what you've said.

So you're saying that it's not a good idea "to start hypothesizing about proto-gospels and other sources". But isn't this exactly what the Q experts do all the time? Indeed, they spend all of their time hypothesizing about some mythical "lost gospel Q", and they write hundreds of boring volumes about what it may have contained... (And they _really_ go on a limb by even trying to hypothesize about what it _didn't_ contain!).

So I suggest that either we should completely avoid "hypothesizing about proto-gospels", or we might as well begin hypothesizing about the proto-gospels that really existed...

<strong> Couldn't agree with you more here...

<strong> Sure, all theories are approximations, so what I'm suggesting is that my theory is a better approximation than the others. In fact, what I'm saying is that the real picture of what happened with the history of the earliest gospels is actually quite simple. One may even say that the truth lies right on the surface of things, but these so-called Big Textual Experts are refusing to acknowledge the obvious. Because they still mostly engage in the apologetics for the ancient Catholic dogma (that, of course, since the Reformation, has also become the mainstream Protestant dogma as well).

And so, what I'm saying is that, in fact, the Synoptic Problem, as it's generally known at this time, is a hoax. In the real world, there remains no such thing as the Synoptic Problem. And instead of still trying to solve this mythical "Synoptic Problem", what we really need is a new hard look at the Textual Problem.

So perhaps now is the time for a whole new era in Textual Criticism... How about the New Textual Criticism -- something quite similar to what happened in early and mid-nineteenth-century Germany, when Lachmann and others began to formulate the fundamentals of what is now considered as the mainstream textual theory.

Thus, what I'm really pushing for is a whole New Textual Criticism -- the honest Textual Criticism!

All the best,

Yuri.