Peter Kirby

I asked how we rule out Matthew's use of Luke...

What's you understanding of what "the middle term" means, and why is it relevant?

Sanders and Davies write, "Points 2 through 6 show that, in the triple tradition, Mark is the middle term. It is closer to both Matthew and Luke than the are to each other." (Studying the Synoptic Gospels, p. 54)

Obviously, if the term "the middle term" refers to the document that has more similarities with each of the other two than the other two have with each other, then there will be a middle term only where there are parallels in all three gospels. If Luke used Mark and Matthew used Mark and Luke, why would there have to be an instance in which Matthew is far from Mark while Luke is close to both Mark and Matthew?

Perhaps you are asking for agreements of Matthew and Luke with each other against Mark?

Before I go searching in my synopsis for a case where Luke is the middle term, I'd like to know what you mean and why it matters.

best,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Vinnie
This is Crossan's stratification and he doesn't see it as interpolated as best as I can tell so the lack of it is curious at any rate. But yes, further correlation would have to take out or remove what is seen as an interpolation for each individual person. I still don't know why people think that passage was interpolated?

Price has a number of interesting arguments. Have you seent the article here at Infidels? The interpolation thesis solves a lot of problems with that passage -- unPauline language, the presence of seams, the folktale reference. See Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 As a Post-Pauline Interpolation

They weren't quoted as first stratum material. They were used as independent witnesses (e.g. like Mark or John were).

But 1&2 Tim are not independent in any sense.

Crossan does date them to about 120 ad. Of course, a text by 120 could have been influenced by that text. I think it depends on what texts are being used. I'd like to do my own inventory with a cut off of 100 ad. That would take a lot of time and I am not even convinced on whether or not some works are 1st stratum or not. Stratification has to come before inventory.

But Vinnie, you can't separate the two issues, because in order to have multiple attestation, you've got to have independence. And to know that, you have to have an inventory. The two issues are intertwined. For example, I happen to follow Streeter and Powell in believing that John 21 is very possibly the original ending of Mark, greatly reworked. So without the inventory I can't assign that to the first stratum. But if I assign it to the first stratum, away goes the independence of John. I don't think any of the gospels are independent of each other, anyway.

Another problem would be that I don't think any of it is worth a damn, historically. It's all fiction. Further, I think Crossan switches back and forth between positions here. At one point in tBoC he's arguing that the Passion Story is made up from the OT at the level of detail, scene, and deep structure. Yet at the same time, he wants to believe that the post-Resurrection stories preserve something historical. Can you see that these two views are deeply in conflict?

Have you read, or do you have access to Crossan's work, The Historical Jesus?

No, and no. I only have tBoC.

Further, I am not sure how Crossan turned into an "apologist" who is "lumping stuff together"?

I assumed it was you who had done the lumping. Never did I dream that Crossan had lumped all those disparate passages together.

his inventory even if you don't agree with it and Crossan can hardly be blamed for including a text you feel is interpolated when he doesn't think so.

Right, but interpolation is not the issue here so much as the text itself won't work. If it is not an interpolation, it is Paul indulging in typical missionary braggadacio. How does it attest to "bread and fish?"

MA when dealing with Jesus is not so simple and naive as "two people said so it must have occured". It is complex and scholars usually see multiple sources when we amatuers a lot of the times do not.

Yes, the problem is that this is how it is presented here. We have several stories, whose themes, purposes, and details are all different, and they attest to "bread and fish." But what's that supposed to mean? What's the historical criterion for lumping a passage without bread or fish (1 Cor 15) with the Feeding 5,000 miracle AND the post-resurrection story that is obviously a later anti-Docetic. I guess I must put that book on my list (the only university with HJ books here doesn't let them out the door, so I can't get them over the interlibrary loan)

See, you can link them thematically by linking the bread and fish of the post-resurrection appearance in Luke 24/John 21 (originally Mark 17?) but there are a couple of interrelated problems there, Vinnie. Any such move is theological and literary, not historical, and worse, it is founded in a theology that believes the gospels are more or less fundamentally real stories. No matter how well argued it is, historically, these lists simply seem to reflect theological rather than historical arrangements of data. In other words, the HJ doesn't emerge from them, they emerge from the assumption of an HJ.

Don't worry, I won't ask you to post the 8 pages of Crossan here! I'll see if I can track down a copy.

Vorkosigan

Peter Kirby

Vork, I agree that something look fishy when I read the list of verses in Crossan's inventory without knowing what Crossan means by "bread and fish." There is no bread and no fish in 1 Cor 15:6. End of story, right?

Although Crossan hadn't crossed my mind when I wrote it (in fact I was thinking of a comment by Steven Carr), here is something I once speculated that might put this into perspective.

Here is some of what Crossan says about "Bread and Fish" and what he means by it. First, he argues that it goes back to his lifetime, that it was not uniquely instituted in the Last Supper. "I argued earlier that, if Jesus himself had ritualized a meal in which bread and wine were identified with his own body and blood, it would be very difficult to explain the complete absence of any such symbolization or institutionalization in the eucharistic texts of Didache 9-10. It was, therefore, open commensality during his life rather than Last Supper before his death that was the root of any such later ritualization. This is confirmed by the bread and fish Eucharists in the early tradition. For how could such have ever been created if a bread and wine symbolization had already officially antedated them? But, despite the eventual ascendancy of the bread and wine Eucharist, it is impossible to emphasize too greatly the early importance of the bread and fish alternative." (p. 398) Crossan refers to some late second century catacombs in which two fish and five loaves appear in Christian funerary carvings. Interestingly, some of them depict seven apostles! Unexpected corroboration of my thesis of a Seven Apostles tradition.

Crossan goes on: "For me, then, two different traditions, one of bread and fish, another of bread and wine, symbolically ritualized, after his death, the open commensality of Jesus' lifetime. That disjunction possibly represented a Jewish Christian and a Gentile Christian development. It might be considered, however, whether bread and fish for the crowd and abundant fragments left over is a better ritualization of Jesus' own life than bread and wine for the believers, with abundance now completely irrelevant." (pp. 398-399) In other words, instead of wafers and a sip of wine, churches should pool their money for pizza and beer during the service.

OK, here is where Crossan sets up his main point in the section: "What is, however, of present interest is to watch how general community, leadership group, and specific leader intertwine with that Eucharist of 3 Bread and Fish [1/6]. And in what follows I make no distinction between bread and fish Eucharists before or after the death of Jesus. There are two independent versions of the former, in Mark 6:33-44 and John 6:1-15, and two independent versions of the latter, in Luke 24:30-31, 42-43 and John 21:9, 12-13. Those bread and fish Eucharists and their institutionalization stories went back before anyone ever through to writing a biographical narrative of Jesus and hence of having to decide what happened 'before' and what 'after' his death." (p. 399)

There is some support for tying together the "Eucharist" narratives before and after the resurrection. Consider the parallel structure.

Mark 6:41. "Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to [his] disciples to set before the people; he also divided the two fish among them all."

Luke 24:30. "And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them."

John 6:11. "Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted."

John 21:13. "Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish."

I take it that Crossan is not taking a universal stance on whether these Eucharist traditions were ripped out of the context of the life of Jesus and placed in a resurrection story or perhaps rather transposed from post-resurrection to pre-resurrection. That's somewhat irrelevant, Crossan might say, because the "Bread and Fish" tradition attests to a continuous practice of open commensality practiced during the life of Jesus and in the lives of his followers. Let me jump over some stuff where Crossan explains this point a bit more:

"In summary, therefore, the bread and fish Eucharist was originally a postresurrectional confession of Jesus' continued presence at the ritualized meals of the believing community. Open commensality survived as ritualized meal. Once narrative Gospels were composed that tradition was placed both before the resurrection, in the common source for Mark 6 and John 6, and after the resurrection, in Luke 24 and John 21. Even more fascinating, however, are those fleeting but tantalizing glimpses we catch across the bread and fish tradition as it moves from general community toward leadership group and on to specific leaders." (p. 402)

I am not sure whether Crossan claims this as the tradition-historical development or simply the development of his own analysis of the traditions. In any case, Crossan gives only a passing reference to 1 Cor 15:6 before he goes on to a detailed treatment of Luke 24:

"First of all, then, consider Jesus' bread and fish Eucharist with the general community. This is the most difficult of the three relationships, and it must remain by far the most speculative. But it is quite understandable if it is also the most suppressed. What we are dealing with here is the possibiltiy of very early traditions about a resurrected and ritualized meal of bread and fish involving Jesus and the believing community as a whole, that is, about the eucharistic pressence of the Risen Lord but without any discriminating emphasis on leadership in general or on any one leader in particular. On the one hand, there are five hundred brethren of 1 Corinthians 15:6, clearly distinguished from leadership groups and specific leaders, but with no mention of bread and fish anywhere. On the other, there are the two travelers of Luke 24:13-35, at best a minimally symbolic community, but possibly with an original connection to a bread and fish Eucharist. That latter narrative requires more detailed scrutiny." (p. 399)

Here is a snippet of that scrutiny: "I think, in other words, that Luke himself broke a bread and fish Eucharist originally associated with the general community into a bread Eucharist of resurrectional presence and a fish vindication of resurrectional physicality, but still connected with general community as Luke envisioned it, that is, a Jerusalem core group from which missionaries went out in twos." (pp. 400-401)

I understand Crossan under the "Bread and Fish" rubric to be gathering together materials in which people met together for a ritualized meal in the spirit of Jesus. Since 1 Cor 15:6 gives no detail on the appearance/presence to the five hundred at once, that it was "Eucharistic" in nature can only be speculated. That is why Crossan puts a ? next to the verse in his inventory. The inventory aims to be comprehensive, and so errs on the side of the inclusive.

best,
Peter Kirby

Llyricist

Of course, all that goes straight to what Vork suggested as multiple attestation of Theology, not historocity.

And as I have said before, it should be no surprise to find the same beliefs, traditions, ceremonies, etc.. across the reaches of the movement called Christianity.

It really bothers me to see the arguments being made about whether authors were aware of eachother or not, THEY did NOT make up the religion, it existed before anyone wrote about it (that WE know of anyway). So they didn't HAVE to be aware of a particular author to be aware of a particular belief in the movement. Even to the point of finding the same or very similar wording, if they just be reporting what is widely believed. And also, it would be much stranger to find surviving records of widely divergent beliefs in one movement, though funnily enough, some actually do survive (the Gnostics, Docetics, etc...)

Vinnie

The unpauline language threw me. If Paul is relaying an earlier creed unPauline language would not be an issue. Price also said the same thing: "Third, though stylistic and linguistic difference, often a sign of interpolation, appear in the text, they are not pivotal for my argument, since they could just as easily denote pre-Pauline tradition over by the apostle."

Was the "otherwise" the actual argumentation of Wisse and O'Connor? I wish there was an easier way to obtain journal articles?? Blah!

At any rate, I'll read the article in full later and I'll even read Turkel's rebuttal of it and let you know what I think.

http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_01_05_02.html

They can still contain independent material. What complex(es) did you have in mind? I'll check it out and see what Crossan has to say on them.

I wasn't trying to separate the two issues. Luke, who copied Mark's material on "The Twelve", can have material here that is independent of Mark. For instance, Luke's list of the apostles may be considered independent because the names differ.

As John Meier wrote: "The lists of the Twelve can shed further light on the question. While Matthew and Luke are almost entirely dependent on Mark for their references to th Twelve, the slightly different lists of names of the Twelve that they record (Mark 3:16-19// matthew 10:2-4// Luke 6:14-16 // Acts 1:13) may indicate that in this material Matthew and/or Luke represents an independent tradition about the Twelve." [Vol 3 marginal p129]

After Meier compared the lists in a chart he went on to say, "Far from the variations in the lists of the Twelve disproving the group's existence during Jesus' lifetime, the Synoptists' disagreements within the basic agreements of their lists argue for a basic oral tradition that underwent some changes before the gospels were written."

Meier goes on to argue that Matthew's list can probably be attributed to his redactional activity but we are not certain. Luke probably gives us solid evidence for a list of the Twelve independent of Mark's list. [128-141, Marginal V3 for a discussion of Multiple Attestation and the Twelve]

At any rate, do you see what I am getting at?

Crossan didn't assign it to the first stratum. His lists of independent start with first stratum material and move up. All the matrial occurs in at least one first stratum source. He is not claiming all 6 bread and fish references are first stratum material.

But if I assign it to the first stratum, away goes the independence of John. I don't think any of the gospels are independent of each other, anyway.

Its not all fiction. At any rate, sweeping claims like this aren't going to get us anywhere.

Until you actually read Crossan's discussion of these its hard for you to say this. Where does he want to believe that the post-Rez stories preserve something historical? At any rate, it is commonly held that the first followers "experienced Jesus". Sander's deems Re experiences a fact. Crossan will say that "Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens." There is nothing supernatural here. Christians had strong religious experiences which would have given rise to this (amongst other factors

Are you referring to the +/- of complex 6? If so this is what Crossan says on p. 410: "the names of Cephas and James, especially as read within such complexes as 6 Revealed to Peter[1/5] or 30 Revealed to James [1/3], indicate questions, debates, and even controversies over direction, leadership, and authority within the early communities."

I'm not sure what you are claiming?

Gasp! Appendix 1 was worth $19 American dollars itself!

Thanks LOL

Actually, PK was nice enough to type up some of Crossan's material on this (on his birthday too when he should have been out partying!) So I'll let you respond to that and won't respond to your final two paragraphs since you now have more information to go on.

And as PK pointed out, look at complex 3
3±. Bread and Fish: (1?)

Watch for those question marks. It wouldn't be good to draw conclusions about Crossan's list from a complex where he puts a question Mark on the first stratum source. It indicates his own hesitance on it.

I'd be willing to at least go through Crossan's material in order. Not in much depth due to time constraints but we could at least check them if you want. I'd add to it as well.

One a day until we get through the multiply attested first stratum material? If so we better hurry because I'm starting to lose interest since no mythicists are showing up in here. But for those lurking, say it with me, stratification and inventory play a pivotal role in questions of historicity. far from there being a huge silence, Crossan has a host of early overlapping material which I am willing to go through because I accept the brief stratification we are working under now.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Did you read the whole section?

On 84: "It is a fundamental feature of the synoptic gospels that usually Mark is the middle term. We saw that this fact oes not necessarily decide whether Mark was first or third, but any solutions must explain why there are lots of triple agreements, lots of mark-Matthew agreements, lots of Mark-Luke agreements, but relatively few matthew-Luke agreements. Yet in a few passages Matthew takes the place of Mark: there are triple agreements, Matthew-Mark agreements, Matthew-Luke agreements, but very few Mark-Luke agreements."

I take it that if Mark, most of the time is the middle term and Matthew some of the time, the simpler solution could not posit Matthean dependence on Luke. I could be wrong.

Skim (or read if you have time) pages 84-87.

Also read page 97 (the top) which briefly discuss the possibility of Matthew using Luke. It was also said that there are Mattheanism in Luke but not vice versa.

No. The agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark are something different.

I don't think that is necessary. S&D said there are only very few cases of these so we may take it that a few are in there.

What do you make of S&D' arguments as a whole? Mark without Q? Have you read Goodcare's, The Case Against Q?

Vinnie

Peter Kirby

I take it that if Mark, most of the time is the middle term and Matthew some of the time, the simpler solution could not posit Matthean dependence on Luke. I could be wrong.

Well, I don't understand the logical connection. Why does Luke being used by Matthew require that Luke be the middle term in some cases?

What do you make of S&D' arguments as a whole? Mark without Q? Have you read Goodcare's, The Case Against Q?

Yes, I have read Goodacre. Part of me wants to apply Occam's razor and say that the necessity of Q is obviated by Luke's plausible use of Matthew. Another part of me wants to say that any solution to the Synoptic Problem is likely to be complex and thus that the Two Source Hypothesis is not hypothetical enough. And then another part of me wants to go with the flow and assume the 2SH...

best,
Peter Kirby

Vinnie

No mythers want to play?

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

The unpauline language threw me. If Paul is relaying an earlier creed unPauline language would not be an issue. Price also said the same thing: "Third, though stylistic and linguistic difference, often a sign of interpolation, appear in the text, they are not pivotal for my argument, since they could just as easily denote pre-Pauline tradition over by the apostle."



Quite true -- by itself, non pauline language indicates nothing. However, taken with everything else, it is indicative of later interpolation.

Was the "otherwise" the actual argumentation of Wisse and O'Connor? I wish there was an easier way to obtain journal articles?? Blah!

Here's what they said:

• Otherwise, if we had to take seriously interpolation or redaction theories based on internal evidence alone, "the result [would be] a state of uncertainty and diversity of scholarly opinion. Historians and interpreters [in such a case] can no longer be sure whether a text or parts of it represent the views of the author or someone else

It's a non-argument, Vinnie. Think about it -- the contrary argument says that if we take internal evidence of interpolation seriously, then we'd find it difficult to assign anything with surety. Hey, no shit. That's why I am agnostic on the Pauline corpus. Turn the argument around, it reads, "we should reject this evidence so that we can have a stable interpretation of Paul." That's a nonsense argument. It says we should reject the argument because we don't like the conclusions. That's not an academic position.

I quite agree with you about the state of articles on the Net. It's high time everything was publicly available, 24-7.

At any rate, I'll read the article in full later and I'll even read Turkel's rebuttal of it and let you know what I think.

http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_01_05_02.html

I'll take a look-through. Turkel's generally a waste of time, though.

They can still contain independent material. What complex(es) did you have in mind? I'll check it out and see what Crossan has to say on them.

Vinnie, how can 1 & @ Tim contain "independent material." They are later forgeries written as theogoligcal and political propaganda. They can't be trusted as historical documents. Any material that cross-references with earlier traditions echoes them. If you want to claim that there is some independent material in those texts, I think you'd have to bear a very strong burden of proof.

Anyway, I think this is a very minor point....

[b]I wasn't trying to separate the two issues. Luke, who copied Mark's material on "The Twelve", can have material here that is independent of Mark. For instance, Luke's list of the apostles may be considered independent because the names differ.

• As John Meier wrote: "The lists of the Twelve can shed further light on the question. While Matthew and Luke are almost entirely dependent on Mark for their references to th Twelve, the slightly different lists of names of the Twelve that they record (Mark 3:16-19// matthew 10:2-4// Luke 6:14-16 // Acts 1:13) may indicate that in this material Matthew and/or Luke represents an independent tradition about the Twelve." [Vol 3 marginal p129]

I have vol 1 on the way! Can't wait to read it. I am glad you emphasized the may here.

After Meier compared the lists in a chart he went on to say, "Far from the variations in the lists of the Twelve disproving the group's existence during Jesus' lifetime, the Synoptists' disagreements within the basic agreements of their lists argue for a basic oral tradition that underwent some changes before the gospels were written."

If there was an oral tradition....if there were twelve....if it didn't start with Mark. The only evidence for "twelve" prior to Mark is the interpolated comment in 1 Cor.

Meier goes on to argue that Matthew's list can probably be attributed to his redactional activity but we are not certain. Luke probably gives us solid evidence for a list of the Twelve independent of Mark's list. [128-141, Marginal V3 for a discussion of Multiple Attestation and the Twelve]

At any rate, do you see what I am getting at?

Sort of. I think a lot of this argumentation is simply hypnotizing oneself and the audience with rhetoric. The differences between the two may well represent differences in Luke's sources that he is struggling to harmonize. That itself is no argument for historicity. We know that Luke used forged sources -- I think Hemer has uncovered Luke's reliance on the bogus Pastorals. Additionally, Luke wrote after 110 -- I personally suspect after 125 based on the pastorals -- based on his heavy reliance on Josephus. So Luke is so late that any source he has is already adumbrated by the legend.

Crossan didn't assign it to the first stratum. His lists of independent start with first stratum material and move up. All the matrial occurs in at least one first stratum source. He is not claiming all 6 bread and fish references are first stratum material.

Then the "multiple attestation" problem gets even worse.

But if I assign it to the first stratum, away goes the independence of John. I don't think any of the gospels are independent of each other, anyway.

Me neither.

Its not all fiction. At any rate, sweeping claims like this aren't going to get us anywhere.

My bad. I only meant the story of Jesus as we have it is all fiction. So is Acts.

Until you actually read Crossan's discussion of these its hard for you to say this. Where does he want to believe that the post-Rez stories preserve something historical?

Isn't that the whole point of the multiple cross-references he listed in number 3? I mean, he's not just piling up interesting synchronicities. He thinks that there is something historical in the bread and fish references.

Are you referring to the +/- of complex 6? If so this is what Crossan says on p. 410: "the names of Cephas and James, especially as read within such complexes as 6 Revealed to Peter[1/5] or 30 Revealed to James [1/3], indicate questions, debates, and even controversies over direction, leadership, and authority within the early communities."

Yes, I quite agree. But note that the story itself is not historical, but the interplay of claim and counterclaim and position might be. Although since the victors are writing history, it is hard to tell.

One a day until we get through the multiply attested first stratum material? If so we better hurry because I'm starting to lose interest since no mythicists are showing up in here. But for those lurking, say it with me, stratification and inventory play a pivotal role in questions of historicity.

No, Vinnie, that's simply an assumption. The assumption is that if you can stratify and inventory properly, somehow you can get to some history. But all you do with that is construct the first iteration of the legend. Just look at Tolkien again. Thanks to Christopher Tolkien we can now stratify and inventory precisely the development of LotR. But no matter how precisely we can do that, it remains fiction. Likewise, no matter how perfectly you stratify and inventory the Jesus material, you aren't anywhere. the Gospel Jesus' historicity is an assumption you have to bring to your process of stratification and inventorying. You can never discover that in the text; you have to bring it to the text. So what you need are justifications for your assumption of historicity, not for your methodology of doing the gospels.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Vork, I agree that something look fishy when I read the list of verses in Crossan's inventory without knowing what Crossan means by "bread and fish." There is no bread and no fish in 1 Cor 15:6. End of story, right?

Right.....I rather expected you might go the route below...

In passing, I'd like to note that the reason John 21 and Luke 5 are related is that John 21 was originally part of Mark copied by Luke, then taken from Mark and switched to John. So the argument made in the quote doesn't really work. The relationships are not at the level of "differing expressions of the same underlying ideas" but are simply texts copied from and modified from each other.

I understand Crossan under the "Bread and Fish" rubric to be gathering together materials in which people met together for a ritualized meal in the spirit of Jesus. Since 1 Cor 15:6 gives no detail on the appearance/presence to the five hundred at once, that it was "Eucharistic" in nature can only be speculated. That is why Crossan puts a ? next to the verse in his inventory. The inventory aims to be comprehensive, and so errs on the side of the inclusive.

Thanks, Peter, for all the effort you put into that. It's hard for me to formulate a response that would be as lengthy as your post! I'll get back to it tomorrow!

Vorkosigan