No, I was not suggesting that the Gospel of Mark postdated either Matthew or
Luke. I was asking if, having better and/or earlier witnesses to the texts of
Matthew and Luke, whether our reconstructed/critical text of Mark (NA27) more
likely reflected a later text than what we have been able to do for Matthew &
Luke. I.e. whether our reconstruction of Mark gets us, say, a reasonable mid-3rd
century resemblance, while our recontructions of Mt & Lk push us half a century
or so earlier? Has anyone made use of such an argument before? Perhaps this is
more so a text critical question which would better suit a different E-list?
Cheers,
Tim


----- Original Message -----
From: E Bruce Brooks
To: synoptic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] Anyone reading the conference papers? I want to
discuss age of reconstructed Mk


To: Synoptic
In Response To: Tim Lewis
On: Reconstructed Gospels
From: Bruce

TIM: In answer to Bruce's second question (what is meant by "reconstructed
gospels?"): yes, it refers to text critics' best attempts at reproducing the
alleged 'earliest' texts (i.e. autographs of Mark, Matthew & Luke) i.e.
NA27(+).

BRUCE: OK. If I rephrase the question this way:

"what is the relative age of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as we know them via
Nestle-Aland 27?"

am I asking the same question? Otherwise, I think one is simply asking for
the publication date of NA27. I would proposed to answer it thus:

"The order of the final compositional versions of these texts is Mark,
Matthew, Luke."

Whether right or wrong in fact, does this qualify, in form, as an answer to
the question?

Tim's original question was: "Isn't our reconstructed text of Mark later
than that for Matthew and/or Luke?" I still find that perplexing. The signs
in the text (as known via the most up-to-date text criticism) seem still to
point to the conclusion that Mark is earlier than both Matthew and Luke.

Peter Head (mentioned by Stephen Carlson in his reply, not by Tim) on p259
of his book has this: "Our first and perhaps most obvious conclusion is that
*the traditional Christological argument for Markan priority is fatally
flawed and unable to support on its own the priority of Mark in relation to
Matthew*" [his italics, my capitalization]. It might then seem that he
claims to have refuted Markan Priority. Not at all. His second and third
conclusions are:

[2] "*the data we have surveyed provide little encouragement for modern
defenders of the Griesbach hypothesis.*" [ditto]

[3] "*the Christological argument, if transformed in such a way as to focus
on the positive redactional interests of the Evangelists, provides powerful
support for Markan priority.*" [ditto]

Peter's Oxford paper (cited by Stephen) seems minus its conclusion, but much
of what is extant does discuss the effect of text criticism on Synoptic
theory, particularly the fact that certain text critical decisions affect
the number of "minor agreements" to be dealt with by that theory. That is,
some MA are referred, by some text critics, to subsequent scribal
corruption, and not to the respective supposed originals (or better,
archetypes). I don't get the impression that Peter thinks that the MA vanish
as an issue, but we should let him speak for himself, presumably in the form
of a more complete draft. (Perhaps he already has; I notice that Oxford has
not freshened this portion of its web side since the middle of March).

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst





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