Oh Stephen–so disappointed by your sloppy argument.  Yes, we have what many (not all) scholars believe to be Q in Matthew and Luke–and we can posit that’s what it is because we can see they read Mark, and yet didn’t get all their material from him–but that doesn’t answer the question of where Mark got his material.  Oral history?  We believe Matthew and Luke got most of their material from written sources.  Why are we assuming Mark didn’t do the same? 

Interestingly, there’s a post by Bart where he talks about something very interesting–when you translate certain sayings of Jesus from Greek to Aramaic, they actually make more sense. 

** you do not have permission to see this link **

Bart has gone to some pains to say that oral history tends to degrade rather quickly in terms of its resemblance to the original source.  Written sources much less, but they can be lost for lack of interest in copying them–very influential and famous works, gone, because nobody cared enough to preserve them (because they were replaced by more widely accessible and possibly better-written sources that took with both hands from the earlier ones). 

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” doesn’t work in the context of ancient aliens, Scottish lake monsters, or giant hairy anthropoids in North America–but it works just fine here.  The fact we don’t have Christian writings in Aramaic proves nothing except that we don’t have them.  You want this to be a settled matter, but it’s not.  Only way to ever settle it would be to find the writings, which means scholars may be debating this for the rest of history, which I’m thinking might not be so long, but we’ll see. 

The one thing we can be sure of is that no real scholars care what either of us thinks–the fact is, ‘consensus’ is a moving target, and without consensus being continually challenged, most real scholars would be out of a job. 

It’s fine to ask questions.  Just don’t treat the questions like they’re answers.  I don’t know there were any Aramaic writings that influenced Mark, but right now, it’s the most convincing explanation I’ve seen.  He did not make it all up, and he did not just go around talking to old people who didn’t live anywhere near him anyway.  He had written sources, and we just can’t do the textual comparison deal, because we don’t have the earlier texts.  Q is a viable theory because Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke.  But if they had sources, so did he.  And you can hardly be saying those sources were not relevant. 

And I work in a library.  With internet access, and a fairly unstructured schedule, so long as I get the job done. 

No disrespect, but if I had the day off, I’d have better things to do than this.  Be out with my dog, probably.  Heat wave finally broke. 

We’re not going to do the “Have you no life?” thing, are we now?  Because anybody who asks that question on an unmoderated internet forum he had to pay to participate in has a log the size of the General Sherman Sequoia stuck in his eye.  😀

Well thanks very much for making us all feel so special, Robert.  Hope you feel better.  🙂 

If we had a gospel before Mark that Mark clearly drew from, we could cross-compare the two, and then we’d have to ask ourselves if the earlier source drew from a still earlier source, and then we’d have the Q2 theory. What’s missing is the ability to compare texts to create the outline of a lost text.  This is not possible with many if not most lost texts. 

That’s what’s missing here, and it’s a serious problem for NT scholars specifically focused on Mark’s gospel.  Obviously the author of Mark didn’t just wake up one morning and say “I feel like writing a gospel from scratch!”  He did no such thing.  He had sources.  And we don’t know what they were.  Maybe they were in Greek, maybe Aramaic, maybe even Hebrew.  Maybe somebody else translated Aramaic sources to Greek, if Mark lacked the language skills. 

Though you know, Aramaic isn’t some regional Jewish dialect indigenous to Palestine.  It was itself a lingua franca, spoken over a wide swath of territory–a transnational tongue, just as Greek was–far less widespread than Greek by the time the gospels were written, and largely replaced by Arabic by around the 7th century CE.  Meaning that in the 1st century, there were still a lot of Aramaic speakers nowhere near Palestine.  But also meaning that the number of literate Aramaic speakers (never large to begin with, as was the case with all other languages) was declining, and of course only Christian Aramaic speakers would be reading (and copying) Aramaic books about Jesus.  So the books just disappear. 

None of which is to say the entire language died out–there are millions of people still speaking a version of Aramaic today.  And not in Palestine, either. 

Aramaic is the sacred tongue of Mandeanism, weirdly enough–the religion that reveres John the Baptist. 

For what it’s worth, which isn’t much, I am inclined to believe Mark’s was the first attempt at a history of Jesus’ life from his baptism to the crucifixion.  For the time, that was pretty ambitious.  Earlier texts might have been more focused on individual chapters from that time period. 

No, it’s not a point if the person you’re talking to is already well aware of the fact you are presenting.  If you suggest otherwise, you are making a ‘strawman argument’, which is not to be taken seriously.   

We know for a fact that early Christian texts were lost (and some were recovered, many centuries later).  Therefore, the unavailability of such texts is not proof of anything.  As to ‘Q’ we know Matthew and Luke had sources, but we don’t know they were just one source.  Q is theorized to be a collection of sayings, but Matthew and Luke have stories Mark doesn’t.  Just as clearly, Mark had sources they didn’t, since they needed him for the stories that weren’t in their source(s).  Where did Mark get his stories from?  Conservative Christian scholars can say he got them firsthand, or secondhand, through close association with early followers of Jesus.  But we don’t believe that, do we?

We can intuit the existence of Q because we can compare Mark’s gospel with two that were directly influenced by it.  But unless you want to argue Mark made it all up (or was out there doing some first century oral history project), we have to intuit he had some written sources of his own that Matthew and Luke did not.  The odds that all the original written sources have survived is basically nil.  

Bart is likewise skeptical of lost Aramaic gospel narratives, but doesn’t reject them out of hand.  We can’t prove they existed.  I understand that.  But if we positively reject everything we can’t prove for a fact on this subject, might as well close up shop.  I’m sorry historical speculation is so disturbing for you.  😉 

Mark wouldn’t have had to translate directly, though, would he?  Maybe his Aramaic was very poor, or non-existent, but he knew people who did know the language (of which there were many outside Palestine, please remember–Aramaic was a widespread tongue in that part of the world until about 700 CE, a lingua franca as much as Greek, though less common), or he had just enough to puzzle it out.  We don’t have to assume he copied it out directly, the way Matthew and Luke sometimes copied him.  So that’s definitely a good argument, but not a conclusive one.  Bart didn’t say the matter was closed.  You can’t say for sure something you haven’t found never existed.  What we can say is that Mark had sources Matthew and Luke didn’t. 

Roger David Aus knows Aramaic extremely well, and he claims to find ample evidence of Aramaic influence on Mark’s gospel.  There is ample evidence that translation doesn’t always leave a discernible trace (Josephus is one example).  You and I don’t know any of these languages, so why are we arguing over something we know nothing about?  🙂

Stephen, you take this all so personally. It’s a problem with you.  🙄

I know everything you’ve just wasted time typing, and I’ve said as much already.  But the fact remains, we don’t know Mark didn’t have written Aramaic sources, and there are people who are competent who think he did.  They may someday be proven right, but hard to see how they could ever be proven wrong, if the sources are lost (or never existed). Much like your contention that Jesus was a ‘naive religious fanatic’ who was also a ‘prodigy’ (but not a genius–even though it means the same thing–never mind).   Point is, we don’t pretend to know what did or DID NOT happen, on the basis of this much evidence.  We form opinions, we discuss them, and we hope for clarity further on down the road, but sometimes it never comes. 

You also take minority positions when it suits you.  It’s kind of cheap to hide behind consensus when it happens to tell you what you want to hear, then reserve the right to champion minority views, while chiding others for doing so.  Truthfully, you just want me to stop posting here.  Maybe next year when my subscription elapses. 

And no, you don’t have to be a scholar to understand scholars, but please note that I’m the one who spent three years studying with real historians in graduate school, and they thought I understood just fine.  I have more background than you do in how history is studied.  You’ve probably read more articles in this specific field, which is admirable, except you’re doing it with an axe to grind, and that’s why you’re not learning the right lessons. 

You can have the last word.  This has gone far enough.  And you never had much to say in the first place.  🙂