How did the gospel writers — let’s use Mark as an example — actually write their gospels? Is there perhaps a “Mark’s First Draft” out there, maybe in some jar in some cave? Were there multiple drafts? How long did it take Mark to compose this gospel? And he probably had multiple sources which he needed to merge into a whole, right?
I myself am addicted to electronic composition and certainly to electronic editing. It’s hard for me to comprehend how someone could have put a whole gospel together without these tools.
My understanding is that they are the written form of oral tradition, or at least some element of oral tradition(s). As such, there were presumably no initial drafts, per se. (The expense of writing materials would certainly argue for a composition process that is very different than, for example, the Declaration of Independence is depicted in the movie of the musical 1776, with the floor littered with discarded drafts.) As much discussion has shown, there certainly appears to have been some revision made during copying, which would not have been attributable, in any meaningful sense, to the original writer (who might be thought of as the original composer, but perhaps more a transcriber). I suppose that the identical phrasing of some parts of the gospels does suggest that they were, in a sense, composed as they were committed to a written form, or perhaps adapted with the additional material. But I don’t think anyone should expect anything like Dicken’s manuscripts or personal copies of his novels with lots of changes marked. Think instead more like Shakespeare’s works, where we have no original manuscripts but a series of revisions of uncertain origin in various printed editions. (Although, of course, the gospels began life before printing, so those are necessarily manuscripts, just of a different sort.)
Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I realize now I should have maybe used Luke as an example, since we “know” he used at least 3 different sources: Mark, Q, and Luke-only material. And it is apparent that he moved events around to better fit within his vision of the gospel.
So, how did he do that, from a purely mechanical perspective? Maybe — and I’m not kidding — he wrote a particular scene and used good old scissors (yes, they had scissors back then) to cut off the scene. When he had everything written down and cut apart, he would arrange the scraps together in the way he wanted. And then he wrote his final draft.
Or course I’m just speculating — perhaps fancifully. But it seems that we don’t have any info as to how the gospel writers — or Plutarch or Josephus or any ancient writer for that matter — composed their works.
Thanks folks.
Madman2001 said
Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I realize now I should have maybe used Luke as an example, since we “know” he used at least 3 different sources: Mark, Q, and Luke-only material. And it is apparent that he moved events around to better fit within his vision of the gospel.So, how did he do that, from a purely mechanical perspective? Maybe — and I’m not kidding — he wrote a particular scene and used good old scissors (yes, they had scissors back then) to cut off the scene. When he had everything written down and cut apart, he would arrange the scraps together in the way he wanted. And then he wrote his final draft.
Or course I’m just speculating — perhaps fancifully. But it seems that we don’t have any info as to how the gospel writers — or Plutarch or Josephus or any ancient writer for that matter — composed their works.
Thanks folks.
Goodacre’s “The Case Against Q” convinced me that the author of Luke had Mark and Matthew as his sources. Given that the author of Luke invented stories in Acts, I believe what is called “L” is also his invention (although I can’t rule out that it was oral tradition).
The book “Paul and the First Century Letter” says that washable notebooks made of wood or ivory were used for taking notes and preparing a rough draft.
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