Gospel priority

[StephenGoranson]

DCHindley wrote, above, Sat Mar 16, 2024 3:49 pm, in part:

"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?"

What DCH wrote there is false, and compounded by speculation.

"Church tradition"--including Saint Augustine!--has Matthew as the earliest Gospel.
Those who say Mark was first did not "shudder" and fail to give a different view.

[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?

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.

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,

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

Hi Ken,

That particular statement, written late at night and kept short, was directed at your statement that

"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."

That statement was, IMO, incorrect. They actually do use variants of the Marxist exploitation model. I do not mean to disparage the Marxists' approach, it was proposed with good intentions and refined by a capitalist (Engels), and is one of many things that influenced sociologist Max Weber's work that is still influential today in "Biblical criticism," but I am pretty sure that its proposed processes have since been disproved.

What's replaced it? Good question. Specialists like Finley (Ancient Economy), et al., don't seem to be cited a lot by scholars involved in Roman era Judaism and early Christian development and NT research. Horsley's Jesus & the Spiral of Violence, for which I had high hopes of a BC&H themed study addressing real sociological issues, turned out to be more or less a sociological veneer to make Jesus a popular local prophet and explaining (away) how the fairly volatile social picture evidenced by Josephus did not affect the work of Jesus other than to suggest that he was a revered prophet like figure preaching social justice, certainly not a Judean rebel leader.

Moving on to your point, I did not address what might have motivated G & G to reject Q so vehemently. They have proposed a means, a very complicated means with several steps, that could explain the development of the synoptic gospels as we have them without Q, when the Q hypothesis is a much more direct solution, only without a preserved document or even a hint of it.

Yet, vehement denunciation of the very idea of an undocumented hypothetical solution to the synoptic problem is expressed like a religious mantra by some folks, including scholars. This suggests to me that a psychological process is at work. "Where there is smoke, there is fire ..."

There have been several discussions here on BC&H about the the process by which folks reason things out, which goes by the name "Cognitive Dissonance." There are several ways it can be reduced, both positive ("Ahh, I see the problem ... I need to change my mind, and the world will still be spinning on its axis as before") and negative ("That simply cannot be the case, it is impossible to conceive, so I must double down and circle the wagons"). It is an error correction routine programmed into our brains. The thinker may not always select the most beneficial coping strategy, but the stronger response will probably in time win out in larger groups, simply because it is a variant form of natural selection.

It is not voodoo science, but documented process. I own & read Festinger's published books and several books in response, and think I have my head around it (was a social science major in college, so I am a bit familiar with the way such research is conducted). There have been tweeks to Festinger's original theory to explain the phenomenon, but it is not idle speculation, but research into a real phenomenon, one that all, including scholars, employ. But it is something a researcher should think about, if only for the epistemological implications.

Yes, it is kind of iffy to suggest (really guess at) psychological processes behind decisions important scholars have made in their research, but in hindsight, we saw this play out with figures involved with the preservation and research into the DSS (extreme emotions over the validity of Israel and the relative value of the sectarian DSS, and in criticism of Morton Smith's research (the homosexual angle, real or imagined). In each case, something fundamental was felt to be threatened and somehow overturned, and that is reflected in their statements. At the time, their statements were in line with many peoples' prejudices, so it passed muster, then. Today, in hindsight, we can see anti-semitism, anti-Arab, and anti everything sentiments that today would raise alarm.

I'm not equating defense of the cultural norms of the eras we were brought up with badness, Nazism, hidden agendas, or what have you, but we reflect the cultures we were brought up in. Goulder & Goodacre are products of their age, same for Smith, DeVaux, etc.

DCH

PS: This devolved into a discussion about Q research as the OP was asking whether others thought that Marcion was involved in that development process. I'm fairly sure G & G would say "Umm, no..." if only because that was not an actively considered option in the late 20th century when these Q-less solutions were worked out. They way they have it worked out, it doesn't seem to leave any room for Marcion to have been a source for the canonical synoptics.

[Ken Olson]

Moving on to your point, I did not address what might have motivated G & G to reject Q so vehemently. They have proposed a means, a very complicated means with several steps, that could explain the development of the synoptic gospels as we have them without Q, when the Q hypothesis is a much more direct solution, only without a preserved document or even a hint of it.

DCHindley,

I'll try to write a response to the other parts of your long post, but I have a few immediate questions: which of these books have you read and would be prepared to discuss:

Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (1971)

Luke: A New Paradim (1989)

Mark S. Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze (2001)

The Case Against Q (2002)

The way you represent Goulder and Goodacre seems to me completely at odd with what they have argued. In particular, Goulder's argument that the so-called M and Q material (including The Lord's Prayer!) was Matthew's creative expansion of Mark and the so-called L material in Luke (including The Parables of the Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan) were products of the creative mind of Luke, and not from Jesus, seems to be irreconcilable with your claim that they oppose Q because that would mean traditional Christian teaching is wrong.

I think perhaps you may have drawn a conclusion about Q skeptics in general, which would include many traditional Christians who reject discussion of written sources for the canonical gospels at all, with the particular work of Goulder and Goodacre.

I'm not equating defense of the cultural norms of the eras we were brought up with badness, Nazism, hidden agendas, or what have you, but we reflect the cultures we were brought up in. Goulder & Goodacre are products of their age, same for Smith, DeVaux, etc.

And David C. Hindley as well, right? And the scholars who advocate the Q theory? Or have you and they somehow transcended your eras and are able to speak from a privileged position about what is true?

Best,

Ken

[DCHindley]

DCHindley wrote, above, Sat Mar 16, 2024 3:49 pm, in part:

"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?"

What DCH wrote there is false, and compounded by speculation.

"Church tradition"--including Saint Augustine!--has Matthew as the earliest Gospel.
Those who say Mark was first did not "shudder" and fail to give a different view.

Hello StephenG,

IIRC, Mark as 1st gospel was fiercely rejected by traditionalists at first, only later gaining ascendancy as the majority view. So, yes, my statement was a simplification.

I do think that forgiving the fathers for getting the order of the creation of received sacred documents is one thing, and proposing a hypothetical document that has left no physical trace in the historical record to explain the double tradition, is another. We all want to revere our received sacred literature (the NT for Christians, "OT" in Greek, Tanakh and perhaps also Mishna for Jews). These are thus approved (preserved) documents to utilize.

"Q" violates that safety zone, placing it in the "risky" category. This has obviously raised the dander of some, and like many, I speculate why this dander raising occurs.

Unfortunately, not every early draft, or sources and such, some of them anecdotal notes, are preserved for famous works by well known modern authors, so why should we expect that in ancient sources, the majority of which would have long ago perished? Even today, such relics might be found in archives or public library in a small town, but that is pretty rare.

DCH

[DCHindley]

Moving on to your point, I did not address what might have motivated G & G to reject Q so vehemently. They have proposed a means, a very complicated means with several steps, that could explain the development of the synoptic gospels as we have them without Q, when the Q hypothesis is a much more direct solution, only without a preserved document or even a hint of it.

DCHindley,

I'll try to write a response to the other parts of your long post, but I have a few immediate questions: which of these books have you read and would be prepared to discuss:

Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (1971)

Luke: A New Paradim (1989)

Mark S. Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze (2001)

The Case Against Q (2002)

The way you represent Goulder and Goodacre makes seems to me completely at odd with what they have argued. In particular, Goulder's argument that the so-called M and Q material (including The Lord's Prayer!) was Matthew's creative expansion of Mark and the so-called L material in Luke (including The Parables of the Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan) were products of the creative mind of Luke, and not from Jesus, seems to be irreconcilable with your claim that they oppose Q because that would mean traditional Christian teaching is wrong.

I think perhaps you may have drawn a conclusion about Q skeptics in general, which would include many traditional Christians who reject discussion of written sources for the canonical gospels at all, with the particular work of Goulder and Goodacre.

[box=]I'm not equating defense of the cultural norms of the eras we were brought up with badness, Nazism, hidden agendas, or what have you, but we reflect the cultures we were brought up in. Goulder & Goodacre are products of their age, same for Smith, DeVaux, etc.[/box]

And David C. Hindley as well, right? And the scholars who advocate the Q theory? Or have you and they somehow transcended your eras and are able to speak from a privileged position about what is true?

Absolutely. We are all doing it.

Years ago I followed Hayden V White's way of examining Renaissance literature, since he identifies many of the tropes and emplotments applied by these writers, as originating in Classical times. My opinion was that this general principal can be applied to ancient writers as well as modern interpreters (historians, literary types, etc.). He lays out the principals of his methodology in the 40 page introduction to Metahistory (1974).

Each communication has:

DEEP LEVEL	SURFACE LEVEL	SURFACE LEVEL	SURFACE LEVEL
TROPE: Figures of speech that deploy words in such a way as to turn or translate meaning. Operates at the deep level of human thought in the sense of 1) creating meaning through binary opposition (Saussure) or 2) otherness, or difference in any historical period (Foucault). As used by White, becomes a means to distinguish the dominant modes of historical imagination (in 19th century Europe in his case). By extrapolation to the cultural level, identifies the figurative structure that underpins the surface tiers that are employed to describe its historical imagination. Can be extended to include creation of large-scale metaphors (such as the base-superstructure metaphor of Marx) that rely upon the basic relationships of part-whole/whole-part that serve that in turn as models used as the basis of a total explanation of historical change.	EMPLOTMENT: Story line or plot structure that imparts meaning to a historical narrative. A technique that relates a sequence of events with their contextual or colligatory connections. Turns a sequence of events into a story of some kind. Either employed to discover the meaning, or imposing a meaning, on that sequence of events. White conceives this tier as the historian's vehicle(s) of historical explanation.	ARGUMENT: A set of premises and the conclusion drawn or inferred from them. An argument is "valid" (although not necessarily true) if the conclusion follows either inductively of deductively from the premises.: Ideology is a coherent set of socially produced ideas that lend or create a group consciousness. Time and place specific, ideology represents the dominant mode of explanation and rationalism that saturates a society, transmitted through various social and institutional mechanisms such as media, church, education and law. Some commentators find ideology imbedded in all social artifacts such as narrative structures (like written history), codes of behavior and patterns of belief. Can be viewed as a means employed by the dominant class to maintain its dominant position by obscuring the reality of its economic exploitation of other classes. Suggests to readers the import of their studies of the past for the comprehension of the present.	IDEOLOGICAL IMPLICATION: Ideology is a coherent set of socially produced ideas that lend or create a group consciousness. Time and place specific, ideology represents the dominant mode of explanation and rationalism that saturates a society, transmitted through various social and institutional mechanisms such as media, church, education and law. Some commentators find ideology imbedded in all social artifacts such as narrative structures (like written history), codes of behavior and patterns of belief. Can be viewed as a means employed by the dominant class to maintain its dominant position by obscuring the reality of its economic exploitation of other classes. Suggests to readers the import of their studies of the past for the comprehension of the present.

Emplotment (what gives a narrative format from into which to fit interpretations of evidence) includes these common types:
Romance,
Tragedy,
Comedy
Satire.

I think we all can bring to mind of examples where these emplotments have been utilized by critical authors, such as S Carlson wrt Smith & Secret Mark. Actually, he notes that more than one emplotment can be nested in another, so several could be in use.

The Surface aspect of Arguement, White summarizes into four basic groups:
FORMIST: Identifies the unique atomistic or dispersive character of events, people and actions in the past. Permits historians to graphically represent vivid individual events from which it is possible to make significant generalizations.
MECHANIST: Identifies events, people and actions in the past as subject to deterministic extra-historical laws, usually cast in the form of equivalent part-part relationships. Tends to be reductive rather than synthetic.
ORGANIC: Identifies past events, people and actions as components of a synthetic process in a microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship whereby a single element or individual is just one element among many. Tends to be integrative.
CONTEXTUAL: Identifies events, people or actions in the past by their presumed connections to others in webs of colligatory relationships within an era, or with a complex process of interconnected change. Tends to be moderately integrative.

By varying the argumentative strategy employed for the historian's work as a whole, as well its sub-parts, the writer directs the analysis through their narrative.

Then there is the Ideological Implication. The whaaat? Yes, the Ideological Implication.

Per White, literary types (including historians) have, since the renaissance to present at least, related their ideological implications in their narrative.

White summarizes them into four general categories:
Anarchist, Demands rapid, perhaps even cataclysmic, social change in order to establish a new society.
Radical, Welcomes imminent social change, but are more aware of the effects of inherited institutions, and are thus more exorcised by the means to effect change than are anarchists.
Conservative, Oppose rapid change by supporting the evolutionary elaboration of existing social institutions. Are most suspicious of change than the other ideologies.
Liberal. Prefers the fine tuning of social institutions to secure moderately paced social change.

Again, there can be more than one type of these implications employer in a narrative, often used to frame the positions of mothers differently than their own.

Good golly, most people have seen what they believe are a scholar's Ideological Implications evident in the historical narrative they relay.

The rest of this book are case studies of different authors and historians, which I think is well worth the read for everyone.

The application of this methodology is discussed by historian of history Alun Munslow in Deconstructing History (1997). He looks at the matter of history from an epistemological POV, and he summarized his classification of modern historians into types:
*Reconstructionists - Traditional Conservative critics, they have reconstructed facts from relics, despite their fragmentary nature.
*Constructionists - Uses social models to help reconstruct the facts from the incomplete evidence. He warns that there are dangers of using this approach, as there is more than a hint of subjectivity involved. Isn't this what Theissen and Q Community researchers are doing now? That is why I brought it up.
*Deconstructionists - as Munslow calls them, where he places H V White, use literary theory and contemporary history and literature to interpret the historical or literary narratives of writers, including historians, and make an effort to get into the writer's heads, without judgement.

<puff, puff, wheese, that was a lot to say in one breath>

So you see, I am looking at this from several perspectives, using methodology published by qualified scholars, and have been posting on these subjects on Crosstalk, Synoptic-l, etc., IIDB, FRDB and here since the late 1990s. While you may disagree with my generalizations, they were not just pulled out of my hat recently and without reflection.

I recognize that a feedback loop is constantly interpreting the past from the perspective of the present. It is inescapable, but I am confident that we as human beings can recognize these factors and take them into consideration when creating historical narratives. Folks like White do believe that actual facts can be established from historical relics, but for those who do historical or narrative criticism, he warns them like the sergeant on Hill Street Blues TV show "Be careful out there."

Like many, I am not always careful out there.

DCH

Peter, if you want to move this whole discussion over Q methodology to it's own thread, that would be fine with me.

[StephenGoranson]

David, here is one reason I am wary of some assumptions made here:

"... SG, you and I have different political POVs re state of Israel...."
by DCHindley
Tue Feb 27, 2024 4:12 am
in the thread "Should we rename...."

I appreciate many of your posts as helpful, but,
as far as I can recall, though I do have political views on the state of Israel,
I have not expressed them here.
So, if I may, a note suggesting caution on assumptions.

[DCHindley]

David, here is one reason I am wary of some assumptions made here:

"... SG, you and I have different political POVs re state of Israel...."
by DCHindley
Tue Feb 27, 2024 4:12 am
in the thread "Should we rename...."

I appreciate many of your posts as helpful, but,
as far as I can recall, though I do have political views on the state of Israel,
I have not expressed them here.
So, if I may, a note suggesting caution on assumptions.

Hi Stephen,

I responded in private post.

While I thought we had once discussed Israel/Palestine issue, perhaps off-list or in a board lounge that was not indexed, I could find no hint that we ever discussed this, so my apology.

I am removing the offending part of the Feb 27, 2024 post with an edit.

Regards,

DCH

[StephenGoranson]

Thank you, David.

[Peter Kirby]

Peter, if you want to move this whole discussion over Q methodology to it's own thread, that would be fine with me.

Discussion of Q is appropriate to the thread IMO.

[Ken Olson]

Moving on to your point, I did not address what might have motivated G & G to reject Q so vehemently. They have proposed a means, a very complicated means with several steps, that could explain the development of the synoptic gospels as we have them without Q, when the Q hypothesis is a much more direct solution, only without a preserved document or even a hint of it.

DCHindley,

I'll try to write a response to the other parts of your long post, but I have a few immediate questions: which of these books have you read and would be prepared to discuss:

Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (1971)

Luke: A New Paradim (1989)

Mark S. Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze (2001)

The Case Against Q (2002)

The way you represent Goulder and Goodacre makes seems to me completely at odd with what they have argued. In particular, Goulder's argument that the so-called M and Q material (including The Lord's Prayer!) was Matthew's creative expansion of Mark and the so-called L material in Luke (including The Parables of the Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan) were products of the creative mind of Luke, and not from Jesus, seems to be irreconcilable with your claim that they oppose Q because that would mean traditional Christian teaching is wrong.

I think perhaps you may have drawn a conclusion about Q skeptics in general, which would include many traditional Christians who reject discussion of written sources for the canonical gospels at all, with the particular work of Goulder and Goodacre.

[box=]I'm not equating defense of the cultural norms of the eras we were brought up with badness, Nazism, hidden agendas, or what have you, but we reflect the cultures we were brought up in. Goulder & Goodacre are products of their age, same for Smith, DeVaux, etc.[/box]

And David C. Hindley as well, right? And the scholars who advocate the Q theory? Or have you and they somehow transcended your eras and are able to speak from a privileged position about what is true?

Absolutely. We are all doing it.

David,

So far this sounds like Bulverism (a term coined by C. S. Lewis). You first claim that Goulder and Goodacre have made an error and then proceed to explain why they made that error.

There’s a Wikipedia entry on Bulverism:

Bulverism is a type of ad hominem rhetorical fallacy that combines circular reasoning and the genetic fallacy with presumption or condescension. The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake or to be so silly (even if the opponent's claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism ... descension.

There is also a YouTube video of C. S. Lewis’s original essay on Bulverism here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUyNbowJGGg

I am still back at the part where you claim that Goulder and Goodacre are in error. I’d like you to demonstrate the truth of the claim that they are in error before going on to explain why they made the error in terms of psychological or sociological factors.

I have broken this overarching question down into four smaller questions.

1)

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?

You didn’t answer the question I asked earlier. Goulder has famously argued that that the so-called Q material, along with the so-called M material are Matthew’s own creative expansions of Mark. This means the sayings, including the Lord’s Prayer, did not originate with Jesus but with the author of the Gospel According to Matthew and the material in, for example, the Temptation and the healing of the Centurion’s Boy were unhistorical. It seems that Goulder is saying church tradition is wrong about the double tradition. How do you reconcile this with your claim that he opposed the concept of Q because it would mean church tradition about the source for the double tradition were wrong? This doesn’t seem to make any sense.

2)

Moving on to your point, I did not address what might have motivated G & G to reject Q so vehemently. They have proposed a means, a very complicated means with several steps, that could explain the development of the synoptic gospels as we have them without Q, when the Q hypothesis is a much more direct solution, only without a preserved document or even a hint of it.

In this paragraph you make a further claim that Goulder and Goodacre ‘have proposed a means, a very complicated means with several steps … when the Q hypothesis is a much more direct solution.’

I would need to see you demonstrate your claim before I could accept it as true. How is the theory that Matthew used Mark and then Luke used Mark and Matthew more complicated than the theory that Matthew and Luke used Mark and the hypothetical Q document, and in what way does it require more steps? How is the Q hypothesis a more direct solution?

Goulder lays out enumerated steps for both the existing paradigm (assuming Q) and then the new paradigm he proposes (not assuming Q) in Luke: A New Paradigm (p. 5, 22). Do you have that? If not I can post them.

3)

"Q" violates that safety zone, placing it in the "risky" category. This has obviously raised the dander of some, and like many, I speculate why this dander raising occurs.

You speculate on why this dander raising occurs? Is your speculation grounded in what Goulder and Goodacre have written in their published work? You did not answer my question about whether you have read and are prepared to discuss Goulder’s Midrash and Lection and Luke or Goodacre’s Case Against Q or Maze.

Could it be that the reason that they argue against Q is that Luke’s use of Matthew is plausible and the Q hypothesis is unnecessary? I think you need to show that the reasons Goulder and Goodacre themselves put forward for not believing in Q are not credible before you start speculating on what other reasons there might be.

4)

Unfortunately, not every early draft, or sources and such, some of them anecdotal notes, are preserved for famous works by well known modern authors, so why should we expect that in ancient sources, the majority of which would have long ago perished? Even today, such relics might be found in archives or public library in a small town, but that is pretty rare.

I grant that this is true. Nonetheless, the fact that there were documents that existed in antiquity but no longer exist does not excuse you from having a burden of proof to establish that it is necessary to think that this particular hypothetical ancient document, called Q by modern scholars, existed.

I have recently posted on this topic in another thread:

viewtopic.php?p=167017#p167017

viewtopic.php?p=167166#p167166

viewtopic.php?p=167547#p167547

So you see, I am looking at this from several perspectives, using methodology published by qualified scholars, and have been posting on these subjects on Crosstalk, Synoptic-l, etc., IIDB, FRDB and here since the late 1990s. While you may disagree with my generalizations, they were not just pulled out of my hat recently and without reflection.

I am not really interested in how long you have held the ideas you express in your generalizations, nor where you have posted them. I am more interested in whether you can show that what you have said about Goulder and Goodacre is true.

Best,

Ken

P.S. Surely you have read Goulder's Luke: A New Paradigm (1989) and examined the aruments in it if you have been researching this issue since the late 90's.