I have three quick questions for you all. They are not related but asking them all in one place seems best to me.
What, in your view, is the best scholarly reconstruction of or best secondary source to read about “Q?” I am very familiar with the basic hypothesis, and am aware that’s it’s still a contentious issue, but I’d like to have a better picture of what the scholarly consensus is on what was in it.
Second; Could someone point me to a good resource on the dating of Mark’s Gospel? I’d like to get a better idea of why scholars place its date at somewhere around 65-70.
Finally, can you point me to good sources on the most plausible hypothesis for why the original manuscripts of Mark ended the narrative at 16:8?
Many thanks for your suggestions!
anvikshiki said
What, in your view, is the best scholarly reconstruction of or best secondary source to read about “Q?” I am very familiar with the basic hypothesis, and am aware that’s it’s still a contentious issue, but I’d like to have a better picture of what the scholarly consensus is on what was in it.
Partial suggestion. I just listened to two Mark Goodacre’s NT podcast on Q, and they are excellent.
The first, simply titled Q (episode 25) lays out the arguments for Q. You can find it on iTunes with the date of May 16, 2016.
The second, titled The Case Against Q (episode 26) lays out Goodacre’s argument against Q. You can find that on iTunes with the date of June 11, 2010.
I’d give it a listen for a really succinct description of the mainstream arguments for and against.
I find the topic quite fascinating.
Could just ask Bart on the main blog. Alternatively, just check out the Wikipedia articles on these and related subjects, which cite all kinds of useful sources–those articles are vetted by qualified people, and nobody is allowed to just type something in there without citing reputatable sources.
Geez, one time I edited the Wikipedia article for the song ‘You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby’ to say that it was used as a frequent leitmotif by Carl W. Stalling in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons–an indisputable fact, as all cultured people know–and whoever was monitoring that article wouldn’t let the edit stand until I found a source to cite. Which wasn’t easy, let me tell you. But I found it. New Testament scholarship is important and all, but Bugs and Daffy–that’s serious stuff, man. 😐
anvikshiki said
I have three quick questions for you all. They are not related but asking them all in one place seems best to me.What, in your view, is the best scholarly reconstruction of or best secondary source to read about “Q?” I am very familiar with the basic hypothesis, and am aware that’s it’s still a contentious issue, but I’d like to have a better picture of what the scholarly consensus is on what was in it.
Second; Could someone point me to a good resource on the dating of Mark’s Gospel? I’d like to get a better idea of why scholars place its date at somewhere around 65-70.
Finally, can you point me to good sources on the most plausible hypothesis for why the original manuscripts of Mark ended the narrative at 16:8?
Many thanks for your suggestions!
anvishiki For the Gospel of Mark there is no better source than Prof Joel Marcus’ two volume Anchor Yale Bible commentary. Everything you ever wanted to know. They’re pricey but well worth it. And you can find used copies online. (I did.)
Robert said
anvikshiki said
… What, in your view, is the best scholarly reconstruction of or best secondary source to read about “Q?” I am very familiar with the basic hypothesis, and am aware that’s it’s still a contentious issue, but I’d like to have a better picture of what the scholarly consensus is on what was in it. …
The English translation of the reconstruction by the International Q Project (IQP) is available and easily found on the Internet, eg, ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
What is the position of the IQP as to whether Q is purely a sayings Gospel?
Does the IQP essentially take the position that Q is comprised of all the parallel material in Matthew and Luke, which is absent from Mark; or is there a short of bright line between “Jesus sayings” material and non-sayings material?
Thanks!
Thank you, Robert, I will certainly consult all of this material. Another thread in “New Testament Manuscripts” introduced a 2017 essay by Zeichmann that places Mark after 71 because of Jesus’ reference in chapter 12 to a tax levelled in denarii, which was presumably introduced after mid ’71. But it also seems likely that Mark was composed by drawing on traditions of older dates, and so dating the composition with great precision seems hard. Probably dating all the Gospels with great position is difficult.
Thanks also to vergari for pointing me to Mark Goodacre’s NT podcasts. I’ve listened to several, on a number of topics, and enjoy them very much. Goodacre’s position on the non-existence of Q and Luke’s direct reliance on Matthew is apparently not a majority position in the scholarship, but he puts forward at least some plausible arguments for that view, it seems.
…the Hermeneia commentary in Mark by Adela Yarbro Collins
Yeah!
While Marcus tends to a post 70 CE dating of Mark, Collins tends to date the gospel slightly earlier, shortly before the destruction of the Temple. While I have always agreed with the later dating, Collins does make worthwhile points. By considering both options as complementary, one might be able to get a sense of how some of the older material Mark was using was being actualized over a span of time during which Mark was planning and writing his work and reworking the traditions inherited by his community.
These “datings” I find a bit anachronistic because they treat the material as if it had been published rather than distributed. My view, based on equal parts inference and whimsy, is that the composition of Mark was begun in the late sixties in the afterglow of the Neronian persecution (perhaps motivated by the deaths of the first generation of believers), extended through the period of the Revolt, and what we have is one of the later versions. It was probably distributed in stages for the internal use of a community and subsequently copied for outside use. The fact that it did not disappear even after being absorbed by Matthew and Luke I find very telling. (I tend to support Roman provenance.)
Goodacre’s position on the non-existence of Q and Luke’s direct reliance on Matthew is apparently not a majority position in the scholarship, but he puts forward at least some plausible arguments for that view, it seems.
I get a little impatient with this argument. Even if “Q” did not exist as a separate document, the material came from somewhere. Somewhere that Mark did not have access to. This is a much more provocative issue to me. How come Mark doesn’t know the sayings material if it indeed goes back to Jesus? What this indicates to me is that you had Jesus traditions that did not include the material that most Christians would assume is the heart of the Christian message. Interesting idea!
Technically, distribution is publishing, just like posting something to a blog is called ‘publishing’. We all understand there were no publishers in the modern sense, and no copyright either. (We all understand that, right?) So to use the term publish at all is anachronistic, to some extent. What you mean is that something by Galen might actually be for sale in shops, turned out by professional copyists (along with a whole lot of Pseudo-Galenic literature), and this probably isn’t how early Christian texts (or religious texts in general) was distributed in the early days. It was more along the lines of ‘samizdat’, which is anachronistic as well, I suppose, but some things never change.
It’s nice you can get impatient with the arguments of renowned scholars who know vastly more than you. I’m glad you have that privilege, Stephen. 🙂
Stephen said
Goodacre’s position on the non-existence of Q and Luke’s direct reliance on Matthew is apparently not a majority position in the scholarship, but he puts forward at least some plausible arguments for that view, it seems.
I get a little impatient with this argument. Even if “Q” did not exist as a separate document, the material came from somewhere. Somewhere that Mark did not have access to. This is a much more provocative issue to me. How come Mark doesn’t know the sayings material if it indeed goes back to Jesus? What this indicates to me is that you had Jesus traditions that did not include the material that most Christians would assume is the heart of the Christian message. Interesting idea!
I have very much a minimum of expertise to rely on (though I do textual work in other traditions). I myself tend to favour the “Q” hypothesis in principle, as it seems to elegantly explain a lot of things. But it does seem at least plausible that there were a number of “sayings” traditions, and different communities at different periods may have been partially or differently aware, or unaware, of one another’s materials. That hypothesis would not be dispositive of whether or not “Q” or Matthew or some other logia text was available to the author of Luke, but it might help explain some discrepancies. The Thomas Gospel seems an instance of this.
I run into this problem in texts like the Confucian Analects, for example. There, you have a bunch of “sayings” material that originally belonged to distinct lineages of Confucians thrown together by Han Dynasty editors. But the directly contradictory nature of a lot of the sayings material in the Analects seems to clearly demonstrate that a number of the Confucian lineages who provided the material for the eventual collection could not possibly have been aware of one another’s collections. Same with early versions of the Dao De Jing, which are found with different wordings, different interspersed phrases, in different orders, combined with different collections of texts in each case.
Stephen said
Goodacre’s position on the non-existence of Q and Luke’s direct reliance on Matthew is apparently not a majority position in the scholarship, but he puts forward at least some plausible arguments for that view, it seems.
I get a little impatient with this argument. Even if “Q” did not exist as a separate document, the material came from somewhere. Somewhere that Mark did not have access to. This is a much more provocative issue to me. How come Mark doesn’t know the sayings material if it indeed goes back to Jesus? What this indicates to me is that you had Jesus traditions that did not include the material that most Christians would assume is the heart of the Christian message. Interesting idea!
Even in the genre of modern biography, the earliest published work on any particular subject is never considered exhaustive.
To take a famous example, the 1884 biography of John Adams by John Torey Morse (though hardly the earliest biography of the man) is considered a classic, but by no means is the complete story on Adams. David McCullough’s modern classic biography (published in 2001) relied on Morse, and other earlier biographies, but also developed his own research.
Going back to ancient biography, there is no reason we should expect that Mark would have had access to all of the varying accounts of Jesus spread through Hellenistic territories.
Nor is there any reason to assume that accounts from Hellenistic territories were all he had access to.
I think Q is a good working theory, but the fact remains that if it was a collection of sayings, we still need to know where the stories came from, and clearly many did not come from Mark. I have some questions as to whether any stories originated with Mark, though certainly his iterations of pre-existing stories could be specific to him. He would be tailoring the material to his specific agendas, as all the gospel authors did. In some cases, linking material could end up adding to the narrative, and therefore changing it.
A working theory is not a proven fact–if you can dismiss Aramaic sources because we don’t have them, I would dearly love to see your copy of Q. Could I borrow it? 🙂
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