Do Efforts to Deny Q (Indirectly) Help the Case Against Jesus's Historicity?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Secret Alias
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Do Efforts to Deny Q (Indirectly) Help the Case Against Jesus's Historicity?

Post by Secret Alias »

Now that my previous thread on the likelihood of Jesus's historicity has morphed into a discussion of James the Just, I'd like to revisit the situation with respect to the gospel and its impact on the likelihood is historical. In the years leading up to the destruction of the temple a Galilean who was claimed to be a messiah or God was crucified for predicting the destruction of the temple and being the messiah or God or both. His small circle of followers make their way to Rome where a gospel - the gospel of Mark - was written down in Greek by a certain Mark for 'Caesar's knights', with tactic approval from this messiah or god's chief disciple. This is the clearest and best preserved understanding of how the historical information about Jesus was preserved 'from the very beginning' i.e. a non-witness who lived thousands of miles from the events he recorded in a language which was likely not spoken by the original disciples. A century after Mark wrote his gospel, another Christian living or active in Rome claims that an Aramaic or Hebrew gospel existed independent of Mark's authorship. This text supposedly went on to form the canonical gospel of Matthew. But most scholars reject this explanation for the origin of Matthew. Matthew is dependent on Mark's original composition which as noted was written for an audience and language which seems to be wholly alien to the rustic Galilean setting of the narrative.

If there is no 'getting behind' Mark and all we have is this Greek narrative about a 'barbaric culture' written by and for a semi-aristocratic audience rooted in another continent and culture - how credible is this as 'documentary evidence'? It isn't even clear that the gospel form is intended to be a historical document. There is no background information provided in Mark for the main character or indeed any of the characters. While it is possible that Mark used 'eye-witness testimonies' the dependence on Peter couldn't have been that convincing if Papias denies the correctness of Mark's understanding of basic chronology and Clement reports even Peter's ambivalence to the exactness or accuracy of the final product.

While it can be argued that Peter's doubts and Papias's interest in 'eyewitnesses' proves at least that there were eyewitnesses to Jesus (and thus Jesus was a real person) this isn't necessarily accurate. Papias only spoke in terms of a preference for "the living voice" to what could be found in books like Mark. These are not necessarily actual witnesses to an actual historical Jesus but - given Papias's provenance and Eusebius's low estimation of Papias's intelligence - prophetic witnesses to a Jesus divinity who continues to 'speak' in living witnesses.1 Irenaeus's low estimation of the value of viva voce - a terminology used to describe 'mystery religion mumbo jumbo' is supportive of this hypothesis. Clement's report about Peter's ambivalent attitude toward Mark's gospel might only be a statement of Mark's independence of any sort of established (written) tradition.

It would seem that everyone claimed Peter as their own. Mark's written document isn't particularly kind to Peter's legacy. The tradition that Mark was written with help from Peter might have been a specifically Roman tradition which Clement had to embrace on some level even if he didn't wholly accept that tradition. Clement's report about Peter's ambivalence toward the gospel might be as far as Clement could go down the road toward the actual historical situation in the early Church - viz. Mark's independence and originality.

To speak in terms of Papias's attitude toward Mark, it is worth noting that Irenaeus's depreciation of viva voce traditions immediately precedes his discussion of the gospel four - itself rooted in Papias's writings.2 It is Irenaeus who establishes the four as proof for the underlying historicity of the common or underlying narrative. Before Irenaeus it would have been natural to suppose that Mark and Papias were the products of the same mysterious viva voce culture. In other words, Mark wrote 'according to the spirit' just as all of Papias's witnesses spoke according to the spirit. Papias's preferred gospel being identified as speaking in logia reinforces this understanding of its 'historicity' and - moreover - the fact that Mark's rival text is criticized for its ordering might be nothing more than a denial or rejection of any ordering of Jesus's activities.

As we see in modern American politics, those who attack rivals for lacking principles, for making the wrong decisions or enacting the wrong policies doesn't necessarily imply that they themselves have greater principles, have better leadership qualities or a better solution to the same issues which prompted those aforementioned 'bad policies.' They might simply want 'the freedom' to have no policies, no solutions and to foster an environment were 'anything goes' - where they are no rules. Papias might have liked a creative 'Montanist' environment where 'the living voice' came forth redefining Christianity in ever new forms.3 Maybe Papias didn't like Mark's authority which had the effect of limiting his own innovations to the new religion.

Whatever the case Mark seems to have been the first attempt to lay down an actual 'history' of Jesus. Papias reacted against this 'history' preferring a gospel rooted in a less historical 'logia' concept. But we shouldn't necessarily see Papias's 'living voice(s)' or their 'utterances' as offering a rival historical chronology to Mark. He and his followers might simply have disliked being 'boxed in' by Mark's chronology. That Mark was so influential on Matthew and Luke might speak to the lack of a rival chronology. That John introduces new non-synoptic narratives and concludes with a reference to 'many more' stories not contained in the canon (as per Trobisch) is clearly a dog-whistle to Papias's followers (both in terms of being a gospel of John and the many more stories).

All signs then point to an environment where Mark - almost arbitrarily - created a defining chronological narrative on his own and through his own imagination. The creation of Matthew and Luke and their addition to a multi-gospel canon might well be only deny the original Papian argument that Mark was just 'another witness who spoke viva voce' - in other words one of many creative minds speaking through the spirit without reference to any real 'underlying history.' In other words Irenaeus changed the way Mark was interpreted by tacking on an 'earlier' Matthew and a tertiary Luke. Mark is now one of many 'histories' of a historical Jesus, historical in the sense that he was born, had a certain mother, moved from various places at a young age before his ministry - because of the context of the 'other gospels' of the new canon.

But does this situation make Mark a good source of information about a historical Jesus? Again, was Mark in its original context, in original setting, in its original purpose a historical text? Not so sure. You wouldn't need to have developed a fake canon if this was so obvious or if there weren't strong arguments to the contrary.

1. Papias's claim that these witnesses 'knew' various disciples is no different than the author of the Acts of Paul's relationship to Paul. https://books.google.com/books?id=jISAz ... sm&f=false
2. the paradox is not easy to explain but it is there nonetheless cf Watson https://books.google.com/books?id=23NyC ... on&f=false. Watson's statement that "according to Papias, Mark wrote first and Matthew wrote to remedy his defects. According to Irenaeus, Matthew wrote first" is problematic though. I am not so sure that the logia of Matthew were understood by Papias to have been written after Mark or as the remedy for the shortcomings of Mark. This is Watson reading into the situation.
3. "the Montanists followed Papias's interpretation of the Book of Revelation, which included a literal interpretation of the so-called millennium, and which the majority of the Church would reject." https://books.google.com/books?id=FWM1b ... sm&f=false
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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