Porphyry “That is an overstatement. Evidence that Mark knew (and used) Q renders one line of argument for Markan priority irrelevant (as bren noted in his last post). But obviously that line of argument is not the whole case for Markan priority, and, at least in my estimation, it isn’t even a particularly strong line of argument.”
What do you think is a strong line of argument for Markan priority?
The simplest explanation that accounts for what we see is that Mark did not know Q. (Because Mark was a gentile and Matthew had sources in Jewish Christianity simply unavailable to Mark? That’s a question not an assertion.)
If Luke knew Matthew as well as Mark then the passages where Luke agrees with Matthew against Mark lose their mystery. There were no overlaps.
Stephen, I agree that the Farrer hypothesis elegantly solves a lot of problems.
I’m just not sure that the alternatives have been conclusively ruled out.
Just one consideration: one of the big advantages of the Farrar hypothesis is that it accounts for the minor agreements. But those very well might not have been original: it could be that, early on, scribes inadvertently harmonized them. Early scribal corruption is a big issue, as we look for smaller and smaller details to figure out who is copying whom, the noise of the textual history begins to overwhelm the signal.
When I consider just how crumby the data we have to work with are, how much we simply can’t know about the initial textual history, I don’t have much confidence that we will ever really be able to answer the synoptic problem; Maybe one of the Oxyrhynchus papyri will, once identified, blow the whole problem open, or maybe some very clever person will notice some irrefutable internal evidence that I can’t even imagine, but I’m not betting on it. I suspect we will be forever stuck making guesses based on assumptions.
Observing the discussion, I have the impression that the problems raised in it are best solved by the hypotheses of many sources and intensive exchange of evangelical material. Here the period around 140 CE is imposed, when the leaders met in Rome and convinced each other of their own priority. They bragged about the literary achievements of their anonymous ghostwriters and the missionary progress of their organizations.
The problem with such solutions is the postulate of many no longer existing documents.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Robert “That’s a very poor understanding of the scholarly basis for Markan priority. The scholarly literature that you have always chosen to ignore is the plausible redactional profiles of Matthew and Luke revising Mark.”
Well yes but this must be coupled with the implausibility of the redactional of Mark writing second. If all three writing second are plausible then plausibility is no longer useful when deciding on priority.
Its one of the strongest arguments for Markan priority. “Why would he leave out so much?”
But if Mark knew the Q material he would then have the very redactional profile that at first seemed so implausible.
Robert (I don’t know how to copy bits of your comment)
The plausible scenario proposed by Fledderman is that Q was known and in use by the Markan community as a compilation of the teachings of Jesus, but the gospel written by Mark is a very different genre of literature, written for a very different purpose.
If Q was known and in use by the Markan community, then this goes back to the original question. Who wrote Q and when?
The author was literate and if it was written at any time after the crucifixion and was known by Paul’s followers then there should be some reference to this material by Paul.
Even if the document was not actually written until after Paul’s death, the hypothesis of an oral tradition among Paul’s followers seems dubious.
It is more probable that Paul and the gospel writers had very little information about the life and sayings of Jesus (only what Paul learnt from his brief visits to the disciples) until people fled from Israel in the 60’s CE.
In response to Porphyry (Comment #20)
1. Paul may have heard some of the Q sayings from the disciples.
2. If there was an oral tradition that preserved the gist of Jesus’s teachings, why do Mark and Paul omit the information from Q?
3. The real names of the authors of Matthew and Luke are irrelevant.
4. There are endless possibilities but the aim of historical research is to decide which possibility is most probable.
The hypothesis of an oral tradition available to Q and Mark is unsatisfactory for the reasons given above.
5. If the object of the Q author was to record sayings by Jesus, then after the crucifixion there were no more Sayings to record.
There is no reason to suppose that the author knew anything more than the general public about the crucifixion.
Why add material which was already common knowledge?
I think “Q” is a piece of literature, not a transcript of conversations. Like the rest of Matthew it has compositional structure. Paul and Mark didn’t know about it because it hadn’t been written yet. Sometimes the easy boring answer is the right one. The author had sources in Jewish Christianity which was still a going concern in the last third of the first century.
It’s interesting to consider Luke using both Matthew and Mark in his composition. Would Luke have needed to have both Matthew and Mark in front of him, or could he write his gospel with just Matthew? From the way Luke uses Mark it seems like he would have needed to be able to distinguish Mark’s text from Matthew’s. Here’s a fanciful suggestion. What if the person we call “Luke” not only edited the material from Mark and Matthew, but also had a pre-existing gospel that began with Luke’s third chapter and had an adoptionist orientation? It seems pretty clear that our Luke has been worked over a bit. Perhaps besides our Luke there was yet another unknown gospel writer lost to history whose work survived by being absorbed.
If Q is a piece of Literature, do you consider that the author made up the sayings?
Whoever wrote Q, Luke and Matthew considered that the material was authentic or they would not have copied it,
unless they knowingly used fictional material, which seems unlikely.
You say that the author had sources in Jewish Christianity. What sources? Do you mean the disciples, people in Galilee or some other group?
What evidence is there that any literate follower of Paul spent time in Jerusalem or Galilee gathering information?
If there was another unknown gospel as suggested, who could possibly have written it and when?
If Paul and Mark didn’t know about it because it hadn’t been written yet, that narrows down the possibilities.
This hypothesis seems to be full of inconsistencies.
“Luke and Matthew considered that the material was authentic or they would not have copied it”
Perhaps, but don’t assume that Matt and Luke were especially diligent in checking the authenticity of their material. We don’t know that they were competent historians; random laymen believe all sorts of historical nonsense; as one of an almost endless supply of examples: many American’s believe the story about Washington cutting down the cherry tree, even though we *know* that it was fabricated because the person who invented it admitted to making it up.
“unless they knowingly used fictional material, which seems unlikely.”
I don’t think we can say how likely that is. I think it is entirely possible that they weren’t that concerned with historical accuracy. In fact it seems quite likely to me that they weren’t especially concerned with historical accuracy, based on what we see in their use of Mark.
“What evidence is there that any literate follower of Paul spent time in Jerusalem or Galilee gathering information?”
How much evidence do you expect there to be? We don’t have diaries from all Paul’s converts; how could we possibly rule out the possibility that one of his converts traveled to Jerusalem to talk to the community there? At any rate, Paul himself tells us that at least some of his party went to Jerusalem; he also tells us that some, more Jewish Christians were in contact with some of his churches behind his back (e.g., the super-apostles of 2 Cor 11).
“If there was another unknown gospel as suggested, who could possibly have written it . . .”
Who couldn’t have written it?
“Luke and Matthew considered that the material was authentic or they would not have copied it unless they knowingly used fictional material, which seems unlikely.
I don’t think we can say how likely that is. I think it is entirely possible that they weren’t that concerned with historical accuracy. In fact it seems quite likely to me that they weren’t especially concerned with historical accuracy, based on what we see in their use of Mark.”
I think we can say that it unlikely that Luke and Matthew thought that Q material was fiction. No one suggested this at the time.
“What evidence is there that any literate follower of Paul spent time in Jerusalem or Galilee gathering information?
How much evidence do you expect there to be? We don’t have diaries from all Paul’s converts; how could we possibly rule out the possibility that one of his converts traveled to Jerusalem to talk to the community there? At any rate, Paul himself tells us that at least some of his party went to Jerusalem; he also tells us that some, more Jewish Christians were in contact with some of his churches behind his back (e.g., the super-apostles of 2 Cor 11).”
Few people were literate at that time so if one such follower of Paul was making notes about sayings of Jesus, I would expect Paul to know about it and comment in his epistles to say whether he agreed with these records. He does complain about people from Jerusalem trying to influence his followers to follow traditional customs but nothing about sayings of Jesus.
“If there was another unknown gospel as suggested, who could possibly have written it . . .
Who couldn’t have written it?”
There are of course endless possibilities but some are improbable. I think it is unlikely that anyone could have written a gospel during Paul’s lifetime without his knowledge. It is also unlikely that anyone could have done so in Israel after 60CE with war conditions. If another gospel had been written by someone in the diaspora between 60CE and 85CE (probable dating for Luke), then where did they get their material and how come no one mentions it? So this is also unlikely.
There were many other “gospels” which appeared later (as noted by Bart Ehrman) but no evidence that Matthew or Luke copied from them.
If Q is a piece of Literature, do you consider that the author made up the sayings?
Whoever wrote Q, Luke and Matthew considered that the material was authentic or they would not have copied it,
unless they knowingly used fictional material, which seems unlikely.
I don’t think the process was so absolute. You probably have a combination of sayings passed down and passages creatively composed by the gospel writers. But the thing to remember is that the approach for these ancient writers was different than modern historical writers. Leaving aside their theological emphasis the ancients were interested in verisimilitude, being “true to life”. They were willing to compose narratives and speeches that captured the gist of what they were trying to convey.
You say that the author had sources in Jewish Christianity. What sources? Do you mean the disciples, people in Galilee or some other group?
Unknown. We know there were Jewish Christians active well into the second century.
What evidence is there that any literate follower of Paul spent time in Jerusalem or Galilee gathering information?
None that I’m aware of but that doesn’t mean there weren’t at some point. It’s likely there were folks more interested in Jesus’ earthly life than Paul.
If there was another unknown gospel as suggested, who could possibly have written it and when?
It was just a speculation. We have no evidence.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert