Gospel priority

[Philologus]

I call this this approach that Sanders summarizes as 'nothing was ever omitted and nothing was ever created' the conservation of matter and energy approach to the synoptic problem.

Thanks for the excerpts. It's a fair criticism but I never took that tendency literally as a principle, but rather a matter of probability.

It's not impossible that Mark would have omitted a birth narrative, but rather improbable. "Jesus was born of a virgin? Doesn't seem important. Let's skip that."

On the addition side, categorizing something L or M is merely a tool. We don't know who wrote it, and we have to call it something. But given that we know the authors were engaged in assembling material from other sources (as the clear overlaps show), and given that they themselves seem to hint at it -- though admittedly, they wouldn't have confessed to having made it up if they did -- the tendency to presuppose "sources" seems warranted, especially since the material was composed decades after the fact and the many traditions it refers to must have been "floating around" anyway.

[dabber]

I kind of think this continuing effort to solve the synoptic problem with science whilst interesting and admirable is perhaps asking the wrong question.

Whether is Mk Mt Lk Jh Thomas or Marcion which came first doesn't matter.

The important point is most of the NT had *no clue* there was a Jesus of Nazareth, a rabbi living in the recent past.

Surely that's the answer to the "problem" ie it was made up stuff later on

[StephenGoranson]

You, dabber, know what they all didn't know?
Rookie assertion.

[DCHindley]

I don't yet know the answer, but I am most often looking at the gospel relationships as follows:

Mk -> *Ev
Mk and/or *Ev -> Jn
*Ev and maybe Mk -> Mt

Then finally Luke is aware of all the preceding gospels:

Mk -> Lk
*Ev -> Lk
Mt -> Lk
Jn -> Lk

No Q?

"No Q for you!" says the "Q Nazi" (think "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld).

I'm not accusing you or anyone here of being a real Nazi of the kind being forged even now in the politics across the world (whatever that means), but I am curious to know why it is so important to dispense with Q.

Personally I equate the hypothetical Q with the double tradition, but I think that efforts to seek bits of Q in Mark, etc., are overreach. I am not convinced that the Double Tradition was a single document but on that I am open to suggestions.

Going back to John Kloppenborg-Verbin's The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Jan 1, 1987), he compared Q to some other unrelated wisdom literature ("sapient sayings" collections), and cites several examples from Ancient Near East.

There was an alleged Synoptic-l online seminar I participated in (around 2000) where K. discussed his Q research. I asked him whether the source(s) behind the double tradition were introduced into Matt & Luke to soften Jesus's rough edges. I noted that the choice of (a) relatively bland collection(s) of wisdom sayings was possibly imported from non-Judean literature in order to redirect the public perception of Jesus away from association with Judean rebellion, and towards association with peaceful, and fairly harmless, folk sophists like Cynics.

This elicited some comments from other participants to the effect that "Q is plenty Jewish" and shows signs of having been "Judaized." I suggested back that the "judaizion" was due to the final editor, not the source(s). Kloppenborg himself was non committal, saying he was "developing something."

IIRC, this was shortly before he published Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Aug 4, 2000), when it was pretty clear that he had adopted the wandering itinerant Jesus thesis of Didache researchers like Gerd Theissen and Kurt Niederwimmer, (which started in earnest in the 1970s), to help him propose his explanation of the development of a hypothetical Q community which produced it.

There was influence from his protoge, William Arnal, in Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q (Oct 2, 2001), who modified Theissen's position to explain the composition of the Didache to explain how village scribes could have summarized Jesus' oral teaching into the source(s) we now call Q. IMHO, this was a mistake on K.'s part, but he's since published several books that discuss the subject of the "Q community" and his reconstruction of the full extent of "Q," so his course is set.

I have suggested in the past that what seems to have set off the likes of Michael Goulder & Mark Goodacre to oppose the very concept or need for Q, was that it implied that Church tradition was <shudder> wrong. Even though these two profess to be agnostics themselves, they are strongly attached to the social-gospel teachings of the western European Christianity the were brought up in. If church traditions can be wrong about the source for the double tradition, can it also be wrong about social justice teachings?

They sure hoped not, that was unthinkable. The Christian social-gospel was more important and valuable than the actual role Jesus played in the establishment of it.

What do you think of this?

DCH

[Ken Olson]

I have suggested in the past that what set off the likes of Michael Goulder & Mark Goodacre, to oppose the very concept, was that it implied that Church tradition was <shudder> wrong. Even though they profess to be agnostics themselves, they are strongly attached to the Christian social gospel teachings. If church traditions can be wrong about the source for the double tradition, can it also be wrong about social justice teachings?

They sure hoped not, that was unthinkable.

What do you think of this?

DCH

I think it's wrong.

Michael Goulder has rather famously argued, in Midrash and Lection in Matthew, that the Matthean additions to Mark are mostly Matthew's own expansions of Markan material (through the lens of the Old Testament). He is (was) completely unconcerned, or, rather, opposed, tracing the so-called Double Tradition, M, and L material back to Jesus. He thinks it is the creative work of the evangelists. The Double Tradition plus M came from the mind of Matthew. Luke took the Double Tradition from Matthew and added the L material himself (much or most of the L aterial can be traced to Markan or Matthean material which Luke has creatively rewritten).

It is scholars like Crossan and the members of the Jesus Seminar who want to make Jesus a social justice teacher - hence the emphasis on the Wisdom material in Q. And by positing the independence of the different sources, they can use the criterion of multiple attestation to make at least much of the material historically proven.

Best,

Ken

[Secret Alias]

I vote for DCH. Also likely explains his opposition to Secret Mark. So smart and that face.

[Peter Kirby]

Hi Guys, as you may know I've recently joined the forum. I'm a bit confused what the general consensus view is on gospel priority.

Please can someone explain as I'm picking up in the midst of heavy conversations.

I'm in the Marcan priority camp (unless any proof otherwise), not really believing there was anything written prior to then. I find Marcan priority compelling.

Does Giuseppe believe in Marcion priority? Is *ev the Evangelicon? But that's a minority view? In simple summary what's that based on?

Do some forum members believe in a written or oral Q, or earlier lost gospel? Thanks

I don't yet know the answer, but I am most often looking at the gospel relationships as follows:

Mk -> *Ev
Mk and/or *Ev -> Jn
*Ev and maybe Mk -> Mt

Then finally Luke is aware of all the preceding gospels:

Mk -> Lk
*Ev -> Lk
Mt -> Lk
Jn -> Lk

I am usually comparing this hypothesis against Farrer (and *Ev posteriority) or Klinghardt (and *Ev priority) when it comes to thinking of synoptic problem solutions.

The relative order of Jn and *Ev is a difficult question. Maybe *Ev preceded Jn, maybe vice versa.

Since for whatever reason this post launched a bunch of posts about Q, it seems appropriate to mention that the typical concepts of "double tradition" as being either (a) the material Luke took from Matthew or (b) the material that Matthew and Luke took from Q do not fit well into the outline of a synoptic problem solution that I made above. Unlike the Farrer hypothesis that can speak about Luke's use of Matthew as the 'double tradition' (and which can be debated as being instead from Q), the hypothesis that I outline has a more complex set of sources prior to Luke for this "double tradition," to the point where understanding the problem as explaining the "double tradition" is inadequate. That is because the material generally called "double tradition" is now divided into *Ev // Matthew // Luke overlaps and (non-*Ev) Matthew // Luke overlaps. A hypothesis of Luke's use of *Ev, along with a hypothesis that *Ev did not contain all the "double tradition," requires us to reckon with some kind of distinction between the material that has previous parallels both in Matthew and in *Ev and the other material that has parallels only in Matthew. And while it is possible to postulate additional hypothetical sources (i.e. sources other than Mk, *Ev, and Mt) in this context, these differences make it at the very least confusing to describe such additional hypothetical sources as "Q." There may be additional hypothetical source(s), but in the scenario that I describe, their shape would have to be reevaluated under the very different set of hypotheses outlined above, where there is no category of the "double tradition" as being only just Luke's use of Matthew (or a single source for the same).

There are also a few comments made that really have nothing to do with me, where people reflect on their own personal stances with respect to the conventional debate between the two source hypothesis and the Farrer hypothesis. For whatever reason, finding a way to read "no Q" into what I write gives people license to make commentary about wanting to dispense with Q or not liking hypothetical sources. People can think what they want, but I did give a link to some of my previous writing where I certainly like well enough the two source hypothesis.

[DCHindley]

I have suggested in the past that what set off the likes of Michael Goulder & Mark Goodacre, to oppose the very concept, was that it implied that Church tradition was <shudder> wrong. Even though they profess to be agnostics themselves, they are strongly attached to the Christian social gospel teachings. If church traditions can be wrong about the source for the double tradition, can it also be wrong about social justice teachings?

They sure hoped not, that was unthinkable.

What do you think of this?

DCH

I think it's wrong.

Michael Goulder has rather famously argued, in Midrash and Lection in Matthew, that the Matthean additions to Mark are mostly Matthew's own expansions of Markan material (through the lens of the Old Testament). He is (was) completely unconcerned, or, rather, opposed, tracing the so-called Double Tradition, M, and L material back to Jesus. He thinks it is the creative work of the evangelists. The Double Tradition plus M came from the mind of Matthew. Luke took the Double Tradition from Matthew and added the L material himself (much or most of the L aterial can be traced to Markan or Matthean material which Luke has creatively rewritten).

It is scholars like Crossan and the members of the Jesus Seminar who want to make Jesus a social justice teacher - hence the emphasis on the Wisdom material in Q. And by positing the independence of the different sources, they can use the criterion of multiple attestation to make at least much of the material historically proven.

Best,

Ken

Hi Ken,

Didache studies and Q Community studies tend to share the idea that thoroughgoing economic exploitation had set the stages. Arnal objected to some aspects of Theissen's model and proposed new ones to get his desired result wrt Q. He applied a social model to fill in the blanks left in the historical record. This model (widespread social exploitation by Roman rulers & client princes) is IMO questionable in light of work by folks like Fabian Udoh and Morten Hørning Jensen. Herod the Great the King of all taxers ever, and "Herod" Antipas the destroying angel of death for his peasant subjects, are largely fictions invented for Sunday School class consumption, and employed to support the extreme exploitation model, not a little hyped in the process.

Here is the publisher's blurb at Fortress press:

This volume challenges Gerd Theissen's dominant thesis of "wandering radicals" as the earliest spreaders of the Jesus tradition. Several conclusions emerge: (1) the textual evidence for the "wandering radicals" hypothesis is not tenable and it must be replaced with one that more closely comports with the evidence: (2) the immediate context of the Jesus movement, and of Q in particular, is the socio-economic crisis in Galilee under the Romans; and (3) the formation of Q is the product of Galilean village scribes in the Jesus movement reacting to the negative developments in Galilee that affected their social standing.

Arnal moves decisively beyond earlier Q studies, which focused almost exclusively on literary history without dealing with the social realitites (sic) of the first century.

I was a little off about his contribution, but the social exploitation theory he is employing is very much the same. It is that of sociologist Max Weber, who was using the socio-economic work of early Marxists like Engels and Kautsky, and Monists like Kalthoff. The conservatives loved Rostovtzeff, who adamantly saw the economics of the Romans as if another form of good ol' modern Capitalism. The more radical economics went on to empower studies in colonial exploitation of resources.

DCH

[Philologus]

They sure hoped not, that was unthinkable. The Christian social-gospel was more important and valuable than the actual role Jesus played in the establishment of it.

What do you think of this?

I prefer to not ignore any hypothesis because of the possibility that it comes with a hidden agenda. That could be used to dismiss every hypothesis, including the ones you like. It suffices to judge on the merits.

I'm not attached to Q. I'm just really curious about what best explains the synoptic problem.

[Ken Olson]

I have suggested in the past that what set off the likes of Michael Goulder & Mark Goodacre, to oppose the very concept, was that it implied that Church tradition was <shudder> wrong. Even though they profess to be agnostics themselves, they are strongly attached to the Christian social gospel teachings. If church traditions can be wrong about the source for the double tradition, can it also be wrong about social justice teachings?

They sure hoped not, that was unthinkable.

What do you think of this?

DCH

I think it's wrong.

Michael Goulder has rather famously argued, in Midrash and Lection in Matthew, that the Matthean additions to Mark are mostly Matthew's own expansions of Markan material (through the lens of the Old Testament). He is (was) completely unconcerned, or, rather, opposed, tracing the so-called Double Tradition, M, and L material back to Jesus. He thinks it is the creative work of the evangelists. The Double Tradition plus M came from the mind of Matthew. Luke took the Double Tradition from Matthew and added the L material himself (much or most of the L aterial can be traced to Markan or Matthean material which Luke has creatively rewritten).

It is scholars like Crossan and the members of the Jesus Seminar who want to make Jesus a social justice teacher - hence the emphasis on the Wisdom material in Q. And by positing the independence of the different sources, they can use the criterion of multiple attestation to make at least much of the material historically proven.

Best,

Ken

Hi Ken,

Didache studies and Q Community studies tend to share the idea that thoroughgoing economic exploitation had set the stages. Arnal objected to some aspects of Theissen's model and proposed new ones to get his desired result wrt Q. He applied a social model to fill in the blanks left in the historical record. This model (widespread social exploitation by Roman rulers & client princes) is IMO questionable in light of work by folks like Fabian Udoh and Morten Hørning Jensen. Herod the Great the King of all taxers ever, and "Herod" Antipas the destroying angel of death for his peasant subjects, are largely fictions invented for Sunday School class consumption, and employed to support the extreme exploitation model, not a little hyped in the process.

Here is the publisher's blurb at Fortress press:

This volume challenges Gerd Theissen's dominant thesis of "wandering radicals" as the earliest spreaders of the Jesus tradition. Several conclusions emerge: (1) the textual evidence for the "wandering radicals" hypothesis is not tenable and it must be replaced with one that more closely comports with the evidence: (2) the immediate context of the Jesus movement, and of Q in particular, is the socio-economic crisis in Galilee under the Romans; and (3) the formation of Q is the product of Galilean village scribes in the Jesus movement reacting to the negative developments in Galilee that affected their social standing.

Arnal moves decisively beyond earlier Q studies, which focused almost exclusively on literary history without dealing with the social realitites (sic) of the first century.

I was a little off about his contribution, but the social exploitation theory he is employing is very much the same. It is that of sociologist Max Weber, who was using the socio-economic work of early Marxists like Engels and Kautsky, and Monists like Kalthoff. The conservatives loved Rostovtzeff, who adamantly saw the economics of the Romans as if another form of good ol' modern Capitalism. The more radical economics went on to empower studies in colonial exploitation of resources.

DCH

DCH,

What does this have to do with your suggestion about Michael Goulder and Mark Goodacre or my response to it?

Best,

Ken