To: GPG
In Response To: Jeffery Hodges
On: OT in John
From: Bruce

Jeffery had mentioned (from memory) that Jn 13:18 (quoting Ps 12:9b) is
closer to the Masoretic than to the Septuagint text. That seems to be a very
accurate epitome. K�stenberger (in Carson et al) finds 14 explicit OT
citations in John, of which only the one in Jn 13:18 seems unambiguously to
be from the Hebrew. The other near candidate is Jn 19:37 (quoting Zec
12:10), where the LXX is a mistranslation, not followed by John, but it is
possible, albeit not likely, that John here "drew on a Christian testimonium
with which he was familiar," so Menken 185. Several other Jn quotes *seem*
to be closer to the Hebrew, but there are alternate explanations available.
One that clearly covers some cases is conflation of more than one OT
passage; another is influence from elsewhere in John's own narrative (which
is heavy with Passover symbolism among other things). As with Lk's use of
Matthew, so John's use of OT seems to be more magisterial than strictly
nose-to-paper scribal.

For convenience, here is the K�stenberger list of specific OT quotes (not
echoes):

Jn 1:23   < Isa 40:3
Jn 2:17   < Psa 69:9a
Jn 6:31   < Ps 78:24b
Jn 6:45   < Isa 54:13a
Jn 10:34 < Psa 82:6a
Jn 12:13 < Psa 118:26a
Jn 12:15 < Zec 9:9
Jn 12:38 < Isa 53:1
Jn 12:40 < Isa 6:10
Jn 13:18 < Psa 41:9b
Jn 15:25 < Psa 35:19 or 69:4
Jn 19:24 < Psa 22:18
Jn 19:36 < Exo 12:46 / Num 9:12; Psa 34:20
Jn 19:37 < Zec 12:10

The OT total (including an additional 2 Psa quotations proposed by
Daly-Denton) is 1 Exo/Num, 11 Psa, 4 Isa, and 2 Zec.

There are several considerable stretches where no explicit OT quotes occur.
Presumably these coordinate with the narrative strategy of gJn, and though I
haven't checked in detail, that seems to be generally so.

The list of echoes PLUS quotations is very long (Carson 419-420), and
includes all books of John except Jn 11 (the Raising of Lazarus), 14 (Jesus'
Admonitions to his Disciples), and 18 (Arrest and Conviction).

Bruce

[E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst]

Bruce wrote: "Jeffery had mentioned (from memory) that Jn 13:18 (quoting Ps
12:9b) is
closer to the Masoretic than to the Septuagint text."
�
I wouldn't go quite that far, for I'm not certain that the Hebrew text was used.
The fourth evangelist might have been using a different Greek translation.
�
What does seem to have been going on was a link between the use of trogein
in�John 13:18 and the use of trogein in�several verses in�John 6:51-60.
�
That 'fed into' my hermeneutic on food symbolism in John.
�
Jeffery Hodges

Ewha Womans University
Seoul, South Korea

Blog: http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/

Doctoral Thesis: Food as Synecdoche in the Gospel of John and Gnostic Texts

Ph.D., History, U.C. Berkeley
M.A., History of Science, U.C. Berkeley
B.A., English Language and Literature, Baylor University

Home Address:

Dr. Sun-Ae Hwang and Dr. Horace Jeffery Hodges
Gunyoung Apt. 102-204
Sangbong-dong 1
Jungnang-gu
Seoul 131-771
South Korea

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

BRUCE wrote:


Some adoption from Mt, some free composition to develop the Mt precedent,
and a high-handed redo of the ethnically limited Mt genealogy. There are
only a few passages where words or phrases are unmistakably drawn from Mk,
but these compel us to conclude that in addition to following Mt with a
respectful but free pen, Lk was also simultaneously aware of Mk.

LEONARD: "Unmistakably drawn from Mk," only for one who has a predisposition,
not to say prejudice, in favor of Markan priority.
Otherwise the logic here is hardly compelling. Many of the changes to Matthew in
Luke's presentation of John are demonstrably Lukan, in the sense that they can
be verified from elsewhere in Luke and/or Acts as characteristically Lukan
perspectives. No neutral observer of the evidence would feel compelled to
attribute these changes to the influence of Mark.

Leonard Maluf
Blessed John XXIII National Seminary
Weston, MA







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To: NLN
Cc: WSW, Synoptic
On: Directionality Between Analects and Jung Yung
From: Bruce

We had a question arise in the small discussion which brings up the question
of directionality judgements, whether they can be made, and if made, how
reliable they are, and if reliable, what they may mean for larger issues.
All this is fundamental to text philology in general, and as a sample of
fundamental issues, I venture to share my response outside the group as
well.

THE QUESTION

In Jung Yung 20:9, we have:
「
或生而知之；
或學而知之；
或困而知之：及其知之，一也。

and in Analects 16:9, we have:

孔子曰：「
生而知之者，上也；
學而知之者，次也；
困而學之，又其次也。
困而不學，民斯為下矣！」

The question was: which of these is later than the other, and, quote, "Can
this be demonstrated unambiguously?" I must say as usual that demonstrations
in the human sciences are not like the Pythagorean Theorem; they are most
probable conclusions from present evidence, always open to new evidence, or
to a more convincing reading of present evidence. Just like astrophysics.
With that qualification, I think that a most probable (least improbable)
result can be obtained in this case, and that the result once obtained is
useful beyond the problem which gave rise to it.

SOLUTION 1

For the traditionally nurtured, the Analects reflects Confucius, and the
Jung Yung was written by Confucius's grandson and supposed linear
intellectual heir, Dz-sz. This being so, then any part of the Jung Yung must
be later than any part of the Analects (Lun Yw; LY), so the directionality
can only be

LY > JY

This is irrespective of the contents of either passage.

But it can easily be shown that the idea of Dz-sz as the lineal intellectual
heir of Confucius is chronologically untenable, so we need to go back to the
drawing board.

SOLUTION 2

Since upon chronological scrutiny the real Dz-sz turns out to be much later
than the Dz-sz of pious traditional belief, it is all the more obvious that
JY is later than LY, and so, but now even more positively,

LY > JY,

whatever the content of the two passages.

The next problem is that it can easily be shown (to those who are accessible
to the evidence in the text, and admittedly we here come to a parting of the
ways within the Sinological field) that the Analects is not all of one date,
some of it (more precisely, LY 16-20, the part identified by Tswei Shu
centuries ago as the latest part) is even from the 03c. Then even if JY is
later than Confucius, it might still be earlier than *some parts* of LY, and
LY 16, the chapter here in question, is indeed from this latest portion of
the Analects. The question thus remains open and unsolved.

SOLUTION 3

Another complication is that the JY is *also* not of one date; the
highest-numbered chapters contain clear references to the Chin
administrative system (the Chin empire dates from 0221), whereas the
lower-numbered chapters have echoes in texts from the first half of the 03c
(that is, from 0299-0250). JY 20 is not from the oldest layer of JY, nor yet
from the youngest and latest; its affinities are with texts from the middle
of the century (say 0250 plus or minus 10 years), whereas LY 16 mostly
predates 0285, and was interrupted in mid-composition precisely by an event
of 0285; the passage in question (LY 16:9) was part of the previous
material, and thus might be from any time in the vicinity of 0290 plus or
minus 5. On this clearer sense of the respective dates of the chapters in
question, we have

LY 16:9 > JY 20:9.

SOLUTION 4

The Analects, in addition to its accretional structure, is known to contain
self-interpolations made at different times in order to bring a little more
retrospective homogeneity to the evolving text. The LY 6:29 reference to the
JY is precisely such a later interpolation. (Interestingly enough, the
*next* interpolation to that otherwise early = 05c chapter is 6:30, one of
several Analects formulations of the Golden Rule, this one a vertical one).
This being so, it is not out of the question that JY might also have such
interpolations. But since an interpolation cannot be earlier than the thing
into which it is interpolated, and the Jung Yung chapter in question is
already demonstrably later than LY 16, this possibility would not affect the
relative age of LY 16:9 and LY 20:9. The known complications at this point
therefore cease to impugn the solution previously reached, and we can say
with reasonable (operational) confidence that

LY 16:9 > JY 20:9.

SOLUTION 5

But you never know, sometimes text relationships can be more complicated
than at first expected, and it will do no harm to look at the contents of
the two sections. They are similar in form, but drastically different in
import. LY 16:9 establishes a hierarchy of knowledge: the highest type is
innate knowledge, next is knowledge acquired by study (in this case, "study"
probably means book learning, which was not its content a century or so
previously), and next after that is study pursued under difficulty, and so
on. The JY passage recognizes three, not four, divisions, and far from
establishing or reaffirming a hierarchical order among them, it explicitly
seeks to equate them. It says that once you know something, you know it, and
all knowledge is identical. Your *route* to that knowledge does not matter.
This may remind some of the Parable of the Workers, whose analogical meaning
is, those who believed early are saved, and those who believed late are
saved, and all who are saved are saved; there is no distinction of early or
late. The Equality of all Belief in the one is matched by the Equality of
all Understanding in the other.

So there is a difference, but which way does it go? It might be thought
intrinsically likely that an obliteration of previous distinctions is more
likely than a differencing of a previous unity. Would the JY 20:9 passage
need to be the way it is, going to lengths to argue for the equality of
knowledge, without the previous differentiation of knowledge to react
against? I would say, not very likely. The argument seems to be
intrinsically reactive. Then if we had to make a decision based solely on
content, and without reference to any external facts about the respect texts
in which these passages occur, my judgement would be

LY 16:9 > JY 20:9.

SOLUTION 6

One of my previous guidelines for interpolation noted that if a common
passage is well integrated in text A but not in text B, then it may be
intrusive (and thus interpolated, and thus late) within B. We do not have
that situation here. But it is still useful to see if the passage in
question has, or does not have, similar material elsewhere. In judging some
passages in Luke to be later than corresponding passages in Matthew (such as
the elaborate and reverential Annunciation to Mary, vs Matthew's much more
perfunctory and less reverential Annunciation to Joseph), it helps the
judgement, or supports it once made on other grounds, to note that the
Annunciation to Mary and in particular her response (the Magnificat)
strongly articulates the theme of the hatred of the poor for the rich, a
motif which finds wide expression in Luke (nowhere more radically than in
the uniquely Lukan Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, in which wealth
itself is a sin deserving of eternal damnation), whereas it is muted or
absent in the corresponding parts of Matthew (eg, the respective Beatitudes,
which are proletarian and gritty in Luke but spiritualized and vague in
Matthew).

In the present case, there are other homogenizations and equivalences in JY
20. One very striking one is the claim, in the very next sentence of JY
20:9, that "some do it spontaneously, some with a view to advantage, and
some with extreme effort, but once they have done it, their achievement is
the same." Neither motive nor method matters; the only thing that matters is
to do it, and once you have done it, it is done.

Of course the equation between doing it out of inner impulse and doing it
for reasons of advantage would be anathema to Analects readers, for whom
(see LY 4:2) only the "savvy" person (pejorative) acts out of advantage.
Here again, JY is concerned to eliminate hierarchical differences that are
established, or respected, in LY.

LY 4:2 is an actual saying of Confucius, remembered and recorded by one of
his disciples as part of the core of what later was expanded to make our
present canonical Analects. The reversal of that difference in the unifying
JY is certainly outrageous. Can there be any impudence that exceeds it?

Yes, and it comes in the next paragraph, JY 20:10, where Confucius himself
is brought on to refute himself. He is made to say this: "To love study is
to be near to wisdom; to act energetically is to be near to benevolence, to
feel shame is to be near to courage." That is, the first prompting is
equivalent to the achievement to which that prompting might eventually lead
in practice. (Or might not, as many passages in the Analects are there to
remind us). Here again is a unification which reverses the whole tone of
thought in the Analects. It rewards intention equally with achievement.

On the whole, then, it seems reasonable to say that the general thrust of JY
20:9 is consistent with other statements in that chapter, and that (1) we
have not misinterpreted the passage in question, always a good thing to
know, and that (2) the meaning of that passage is not eccentric, but
typical, in this part of JY.

IMPLICATION

It seems to follow, not only that the directionality

LY 16:9 > JY 20:9

is confirmed, but that it has a larger implication: JY at this point is
consistently seeking to reverse hierarchies and differentials that were
important to Confucius (LY 4:2) and to his Analects tradition down to the
early 03c (LY 16:9), and to establish instead a much greater equality of
knowledge and effort.

Besides the Analects, the other strong point of contact with JY in general
is with the northern Mencians (the splinter group whose text is MC 4-7), and
it would now be interesting to examine the tenor and temperature of that
relationship in more detail; it should catch JY at an earlier stage of its
growth process. That task is here deferred. I note instead some similarities
of origin: The Analects was for long the mainstream and authoritative
tradition of Confucius, but beginning in the late 04c, that tradition began
to divide itself into several independent and sometimes mutually critical
streams. The historical Mencius probably defined the first departure (in
0320, for a public career beginning in Lyang and peaking in Chi). The
splitting of the Mencian school not long after the death of Mencius is a
further event of similar type. The appearance of the Jung Yung, whose first
echoes outside itself are precisely in the earliest of the splinter Mencian
writings (MC 4), is yet another event of the same kind. The rise of Sywndz,
who never was a part of the Analects school but came to Confucianism via a
quite different route, makes a fourth stream, the most contentious of all
(he hated the Mencians, and he had no use for Dz-sz (by which he probably
meant the Analects tradition) either. Not only were these people diverging,
they were contesting the leadership among themselves. Who, in the rapidly
evolving world of the 03c, with only decades to run until the politically
unified Empire was in fact achieved, had the right to speak for Confucius
and for the tradition associated with him? That was the underlying question.
It adds about a quart of acid to the arguments over mere philosophical
principles, whose point is that they are foci of the larger political
rivalry.

In this larger light, the evolution of the Jung Yung from a mildly
compatible if daringly meditation-prone sect within Confucianism (early 03c)
to an openly revisionist Confucianism (mid 03c) makes approximately all the
sense in the world.

Respectfully submitted,

Bruce

[E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst]

To: Synoptic
Cc: WSW
On: Crediting an E-List
From: Bruce

I had asked, on 8 Feb 2009, "A propos, has anyone ever cited, or seen anyone
else cite, in scholarly context, a contribution to this list? If not, I am
going to have to reconsider the wisdom and utility of my own contributions,
such as they may be." There was no response to this, and I am therefore
assuming that, in fact, nothing posted to the Synoptic-L list has ever been
cited, as such, in the NT literature.

In which case, my own pending citation of a contribution thereto will
presumably be the first. The contribution in question is my Two in Matthew
bit, posted on 23 Jan 2009 in response to two notes by Chuck Jones earlier
that day. As I understand the protocols and conventions of scholarship in
general, I am free to simply publish that note (as later revised and
rearranged) as my own, without mentioning Chuck or Synoptic-L, since the
argument of my note is self-contained, and uses Chuck's list of passages
only as a point of departure. I may yet do it that way. My preference,
however, is to give credit where it is due, and also to preserve something
of the atmosphere out of which the piece came. The present first page of the
article, mentioning Chuck and Synoptic-L in a footnote, has just been posted
to the Files section of the Synoptic-L web site, where it is available for
inspection as to propriety and accuracy by Chuck, the list managers, or
anyone else who may be interested.

Comments accordingly welcome. There will be a little time to take them into
account, since my final copy deadline is not for some days yet.

Thanks in advance,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

On Mar 5, 2009 1:22 AM, E Bruce Brooks <brooks@...> wrote:
>I had asked, on 8 Feb 2009, "A propos, has anyone ever cited, or seen anyone
>else cite, in scholarly context, a contribution to this list? If not, I am
>going to have to reconsider the wisdom and utility of my own contributions,
>such as they may be." There was no response to this, and I am therefore
>assuming that, in fact, nothing posted to the Synoptic-L list has ever been
>cited, as such, in the NT literature.

Apologies for missing your post of Feb. 8, but Synoptic-L has been cited
(at least?) twice in NT literature.  In particular:

Robert A. Derrenbacker, Jr. and John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, "Self-Contradiction
in the IQP? A Reply to Michael Goulder," Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol.
120,
No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 57-76.

and

Michael Goulder, "The Derrenbacker-Kloppenborg Defense," Journal of Biblical
Literature, Vol. 121, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 331-336.

Stephen Carlson

--
Stephen C. Carlson
Ph.D. student, Religion, Duke University
Author of The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Baylor,
2005)

Stephen,

Thanks for the references. For those who may not have their back JBL issues
handy, here is the footnote on p335 of Michael Goulder's piece, which gives
an interesting rationale for and against web citations, as well as a test
case of citation practice. My own comments follow.

GOULDER n13

Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin are up-to-date, citing Mark Goodacre
(n36) in a discussion on his Synoptic-L, an academic e-mail discussion list
on the Internet, for Sept. 17, 1999
(http://www.egroups.com/message/synoptic-l/3102?&start=180); but they are
unfortunately not up to the minute. Such discussions are an opportunity for
proposing and criticizing ideas, and Stephen Carlson argued along the lines
I have given above, causing Goodacre to withdraw his comments (Carlson,
Sept. 19, 1999: http://www.egroups.com/message/synoptic-l/3104?. Goodacre,
Sept 20, 1999:
http://www.egroups.com/message/synoptic-l/3109?&start=3104?. Carlson, Sept
22, 1999, ibid . . .  synoptic-l/3112?&start=3104. Goodacre, Oct. 4, 1999,
ibid . . . synoptic-l/3164?&start=3104). I think it is best to cite from
published work, whether in print or on web pages or web sites, where the
conclusions may be taken to be matured.

COMMENTS

1. The blizzard of precise URL's is obviously unwieldy, and since in print
(JBL) there is no option of clicking on them to bring up the comment in
question, they are somewhat frustrating. This is why our recommendation is
simply for the author, date, and name (not also the self-characterization)
of the E-list in question. Since the Synoptic-L archive is in fact open to
the public, a search by the URL could be useful; one would have to type it
in, but in this way, as with a printed book, the correctness of the citation
could be verified, and the context investigated if desired. Much better
would be a situation where a Google search merely on the name "synoptic-l"
yielded the home page in question. My test of that possibility got me this
message:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /~goodacre/synoptic-l/ on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an
ErrorDocument to handle the request.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/2.2.3 Server at www.duke.edu Port 80

Maybe Mark G could speak to his tech people about this. It is highly
impolite at best, and mendacious at worst, since everybody and his
brother-in-law, members or no, can in fact get into the Synoptic-L archive.

2. Michael's recommendation to cite "matured" opinions applies of course to
printed as well as volatile media, and the only way to apply that principle
is to cite the latest available utterance of the person in question. The
question of volatile media as such, as distinct from print media, does not
arise.

3.In their previous n34, Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin say, of the
Goodacre comment there cited (again with an unwieldy URL), "Cited by
permission of the author." I do not think that the permission of any author
of a public document is required to cite that document. If Synoptic-L had a
closed archive (as would be consistent with an "opportunity for proposing
and discussing ideas," then the document is in fact private, shared only
within a limited circle (the circle itself requiring a definite admission
process), and as with a predraft circulated on paper, permission to cite
would indeed be required. Does the open archive policy of Synoptic-L need to
be reconsidered in the light of these considerations? At present, anything
anybody says to anybody else immediately becomes part of the public record.

(For contrast, my Sinological list WSW, which is designed explicitly as a
prediscussion medium - the acronym expands to Warring States Workshop -
consistently has a closed archive, available only to those who are currently
in the discussion).

Just thinking out loud.

Any more examples of a Synoptic-L citation in the real world?

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

On Mar 5, 2009 2:21 AM, E Bruce Brooks <brooks@...> wrote:
>1. The blizzard of precise URL's is obviously unwieldy, and since in print
>(JBL) there is no option of clicking on them to bring up the comment in
>question, they are somewhat frustrating. This is why our recommendation is
>simply for the author, date, and name (not also the self-characterization)
>of the E-list in question. Since the Synoptic-L archive is in fact open to
>the public, a search by the URL could be useful; one would have to type it
>in, but in this way, as with a printed book, the correctness of the citation
>could be verified, and the context investigated if desired. Much better
>would be a situation where a Google search merely on the name "synoptic-l"
>yielded the home page in question.

Agreed that the "blizzard of precise URL's is obviously unwieldy."  I have
toyed with the idea that archived mailing lists ought to be cited like
newspapers; for example: Stephen C. Carlson, "Re: [Synoptic-L] "Self-
Contradiction in the IQP": A Response," Synoptic-L, Sep. 19, 1999, no. 3104.
As long as it is findable by Google, it should be OK.  In fact, being
findable by Google seems to be stable for longer than precise URLs.

>My test of that possibility got me this
>message:
>Forbidden
>You don't have permission to access /~goodacre/synoptic-l/ on this server.
>
>Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an
>ErrorDocument to handle the request.
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-
>
>Apache/2.2.3 Server at www.duke.edu Port 80
>
>Maybe Mark G could speak to his tech people about this. It is highly
>impolite at best, and mendacious at worst, since everybody and his
>brother-in-law, members or no, can in fact get into the Synoptic-L archive.

Duke has been having some computing problems lately.  Mark G is aware--and
frustrated--by these problems.

>2. Michael's recommendation to cite "matured" opinions applies of course to
>printed as well as volatile media, and the only way to apply that principle
>is to cite the latest available utterance of the person in question. The
>question of volatile media as such, as distinct from print media, does not
>arise.

Yes, I would agree.  I took it as a warning that an author may change his
mind (which also happens for print publications) and one must be watch out
for that possibility.  In this case, Mark's modification of his position
was made on list shortly after the cited message.

>3.In their previous n34, Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin say, of the
>Goodacre comment there cited (again with an unwieldy URL), "Cited by
>permission of the author." I do not think that the permission of any author
>of a public document is required to cite that document. If Synoptic-L had a
>closed archive (as would be consistent with an "opportunity for proposing
>and discussing ideas," then the document is in fact private, shared only
>within a limited circle (the circle itself requiring a definite admission
>process), and as with a predraft circulated on paper, permission to cite
>would indeed be required. Does the open archive policy of Synoptic-L need to
>be reconsidered in the light of these considerations? At present, anything
>anybody says to anybody else immediately becomes part of the public record.

If it's on the web and publicly accessible, then I think it is citable.  I
don't see "permission" being necessary.  I do see, however, that for the
best scholarship some inquiry ought to be made to determine whether this is
the author's mature opinion and he has not changed his mind -- but I would
advise this for printed references as well.

>(For contrast, my Sinological list WSW, which is designed explicitly as a
>prediscussion medium - the acronym expands to Warring States Workshop -
>consistently has a closed archive, available only to those who are currently
>in the discussion).

Yes, that is an alternative.

>Any more examples of a Synoptic-L citation in the real world?

Not that I'm aware.  Those posts were from the golden age of the list, when the
medium was still fresh and one of the regular contributors was still alive.  It
is only just recently (past year or so) that the list has started having its
renaissance.

Stephen

--
Stephen C. Carlson
Ph.D. student, Religion, Duke University
Author of The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Baylor,
2005)

To: GPG
Cc: Synoptic
On: Authorial Luke [L4]
From: Bruce

I continue to accept the general implications of the Trajectory arguments
(Mk > Mt > Lk), though leaving it open if there are local crosscurrents or
exceptions. The project is to see what the color coding in the Farmer
Synopsis suggests about the way Lk used his two precursors, Mt (here, T),
and Mk (K)>

CONVENTIONS: K = many links to Mark (k = few); T/t ditto Matthew
B/b ditto Both. L = no other Synoptic parallel save Luke himself.

The inconcinnities in this part of Luke are famous; they come from Luke's
later rearranging material which originally stood, *in the text of Luke,* in
their Markan order. For several of the segments included here, see my
earlier inconcinnity analysis at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Synoptic/message/210

LUKE 4

4:1-13 . . . [Tk] . . . Temptations of Jesus
4:14-15 . . [Tb] . . .Return to Galilee
4:16-30 . . [Ltb] . . Preaching at Nazareth
4:31-32 . . [K] . . . .Preaching at Capernaum
4:33-37 . . [K] . . . .The Capernaum Demoniac
4:38-39 . . [Kt] . . . Healing Peter's Mother-in-Law
4:40-41  . .[Kt]  . . .Mass Healing That Evening
4:42-44 . . [Kt] . . . Departure for Preaching in Judea

In general, the influence of T [Matthew] is stronger at the beginning (up to
the Return to Galilee), and
that of K [Mark] from the Preaching at Capernaum to the end, but except for
passages where only one parallel
exists, there are slight echoes of the wording of the other text. Some of
those echoes border on the trivial (eg, AUTOIS), but others are not easily
dismissed, and the impression remains that whichever of the two Luke has
chiefly in mind, the other one is also present in a supplementary way.
Despite the seeming shift in primary attention (T > K), there turns out to
be no support in these relationships for a scenario in which Luke lays down
one source and then picks another up. Where both exist in a given passage,
the usual result in Lk is a preference for one but with elements and
recollections and persistences of the other.

DIRECTIONALITY

Lk has rearranged the increasingly grand Matthean Temptations [mostly no Mk
||] and adjusted some content in line with his intention to climax the story
at Jerusalem. This is a detail in the larger Jerusalemizing Trajectory
pattern, and agrees with all the other elements of that pattern, which
begins in Mt but is strengthened in Lk.

For Nazareth see above. The form Nazara (Lk 4:16) is distinctively Matthean,
and the later HRXATO "he began" (4:21) is distinctively Markan, though in Mk
4:2 it precedes a different verb ["preach" rather than "say"]. We may
perhaps detect an increasing acknowledgement of Joseph:

Mk "Is this not the carpenter?"
Mk "Is this not the carpenter's son?"
Lk "Is this not Joseph's son?"

Luke's new addition to both preceding versions, citing the favors of God not
to Israel but to other nations, is also unique in Luke, who (see further
Acts) regards other nations as the ultimate recipients of the message of
salvation. This Gentile Trajectory has many parallels, all of them with Luke
as their last member.

4:33f. Only Luke retains Mk's incident of the Capernaum Demoniac, and
closely follows Mk's wording also.

4:40f. Ignores Mt's abridgement of this scene, including his added OT quote.

4:42f. No Mt parallel

4:44. Luke's extension of Jesus's early preaching to include Judea is a
departure from all precedent, but again suits his purpose to lay a
foundation for Jesus in the Jerusalem area, and to provide narratively
consecutive reasons for everything Jesus or anyone else does in the story
(in Mark, Jesus seems to be asking prearranged favors from people who, in
the Markan narrative itself, he has never met or otherwise previously
contacted, and these loose ends Lk seems concerned to provide for). In the
preaching of Jesus in Judea we have a Jerusalemizing factor, which will be
carried much further in John.

4:44. The Lk parallel to Mt 4:23 is actually found elsewhere, in Lk 6:18f
(|| Mk 3:10). The word identities there are heavily Markan. This set of
passages involves an interesting knot of mutual rearrangements, and place
name variants, not here analyzed.

There are in Lk 4 no unambiguous and substantive contradictions to the
general Trajectory pattern Mk > Mt > Lk.

SCENARIO

The key item for scenario purposes is the Nazareth episode. The wording of
that episode in our Luke is at least in part unchanged from the time when it
stood in its Markan sequence in Luke's narrative. I do not here develop (but
cf SBL 2007) the implication that Luke has two compositional phases, an A
which takes events in Markan order, and a B which rearranges them for a
variety of thematic and narrative completeness reasons.

GOULDER

The argument that the Mt order of the Temptations follows the OT order of
the events symbolized in the Temptations, and is thus prior, is cogent.
Luke's change

Goulder has missed the import of the rearrangement phenomenon in Lk, but
nothing in his discussion of Lk 4 raises problems for the impressions here
recorded.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

I have just come across the book entitled "Dictionary of Jesus and the
Gospels" (1992) by Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight and I. Howard Marshall,
courtesy of a Google search.

Page 790 (available via Google) sets out five arguments why the authors
think Luke could not have used Matthew. Most rely on 'Why' statements. In
other words, the authors appear (from my standpoint) to be expressing a lack
of reading or a lack of imagination or both. Viewed from the 3ST, the
answers are trivially easy.

(1) Why does Luke lack the Matthean additions to the Triple Tradition?
    Answer: because Luke chose to base his narrative on the older gospel of
Mark.

(2) The "Q" material is found in a different context in Luke. Why destroy
the 5-discourse framework?
    Answer: the scholarly Luke chose to use the older 'logia' as the main
source for Jesus' sayings.

(3) At times the Q material is less developed in Luke, e.g. "poor" (6:20);
"hunger now" (6:31); no reference to law and prophets (6:31); "Father"
(11:2); "hate" (14:26).
    Answer: as (2) above.

(4a) If Luke used Matthew, why does the order never agree against Mark?
    Answer: as (1) above.
(4b) and why are there so few verbal agreements in Mt-Lk against Mk?
    Answer: Schnelle estimates there are around 700 of them. By any
reasonable standard this constitutes "many", not "few".

(5) Why did Luke not use any of the 'M' material?
    Answer: impossible by definition. (Where Luke used Matthew's non-Markan
material, 2ST scholars labelled it 'Q'.) If we look at Matthew's non-Markan
material, we can see that he did use some pericopes (e.g. The Temptation and
the Centurion's Servant) and rejected others (e.g the Ten Bridesmaids and
the Last Judgment). It would be easy to suggest possible reasons for Luke's
choices here.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG; WSW
In Response To: Ron Price
On: Green, McKnight & Marshall
From: Bruce

Again on method, or so it seems.

I entirely agree with Ron that the GM&M arguments against Luke's use of
Matthew are weak if not circular. Whether that instates his 3SH or some
other alternate as the preferred solution is a corollary that can be left
for next week. On the way to next week, I think that Michael Goulder's
argument (recently cited) against the way IQP has set up Q is decisive
against that variant. His key point is that IQP defines Q *in the first
place* as non-Matthean, and thus refers Matthean qualities in the joint
Mt/Lk material to "Matthean redaction signs." Well, "Matthean redaction" is
a presupposition, and not a well grounded one. If the Matthean qualities in
that material were left in, we would instead have "Matthean authorship
signs."

The question, post-Goulder, is, how far can you get with a theory that
requires Mt > Lk directionality in points of substance as well as points of
style? My answer is, Most of the way. Meaning not that Goulder is wrong, but
that his theory only explains *most* of the data; there is in my opinion an
unexplained or unconvincingly explained residue which requires at least one
supplementary theory. That is simply to say that there is more than one
thing going on as between Mt and Lk. Nothing outrageous there; it would be
strange if Luke was fiddling with only one string to his redactional violin.
I have made my own suggestions about that possibility (they are not, at
bottom, all that different from Ron's, though they do not presuppose a third
document). That too can be left for the future. But I think we are at this
point moving up a little toward the future. Bringing it nearer.

My take on GM&M specifics is again similar to Ron's, but perhaps with some
useful variants. Offered on that assumption herewith. Their p790:

(1) Why does Luke lack the Matthean additions to the Triple Tradition?

BRUCE: This reduces to a question of the type Why did Luke not . . . .
[include certain material available to him in Mt and Mk together, as it is
here supposed he had]. The answer to all such question requires a previous
careful study of Luke's predilections as an author. The old view does not
undertake such a study, because it regards Luke as a copyist, and not as a
person with any personal characteristics whatever. This is a bad assumption;
Luke is very assertively his own man in all this, as a modicum of reading in
the actual Luke will reveal. And I note that the Q assumption requires also
that Luke take THIS, but not THAT, from his supposed Vorlage. The question
of what Luke likes and does not like thus arises again. It cannot be gotten
rid of. We can only choose to meet it on one or another ground. The best
ground is the one that yields the most convincing solution. The "copyist
Luke" ground is about as unfavorable for decision as could be imagined. A
recipe for defeat. We are currently trying to pull ourselves out of that
slough of defeat.

(2) The "Q" material is found in a different context in Luke. Why destroy
the 5-discourse framework?

BRUCE: Words like "destroy" display the anger of the writer, and thus convey
a sense of indignation that anybody should tamper with what the writer
memorized in childhood. Such sentences have no scholarly value, and should
not occur in scholarly writing. The prior emotional question, if one is
going to approach the subject emotionally, and it is one which also arises
for Q proponents, is, Why did Mt CONSTRUCT the 5-discourse framework? Or in
terms more obviously emotion-compromised, Why did Mt tear up previous
material and pack it into 5 manifestly Torah-referential discourses, all of
them too long and miscellaneous to be plausible in real life?

People who like to indulge their faculty for anger should dump it on Mt.
Then, when they come to Lk, they may well find themselves sympathizing at
many points with what Lk accepts, and what Lk rejects, of Matthew's
extensive tampering with the tradition previous to him. Meaning: The average
analyst simply takes Matthew as a given in the question. But Matthew is not
a given, neither in priority (it is not the first of these attempts to write
a convincing Gospel) nor in any other way; it is redaction product, or as I
think it better to say, an authorial and theological product. It too has
characteristics; it is not the Way of Nature in modo Synoptico. It is not
just the sound of rain on the roof. It does things, and not other things,
for reasons agreeable to itself. Like everybody else in the Synoptic arena.

(3) At times the Q material is less developed in Luke, e.g. "poor" (6:20);
"hunger now" (6:31); no reference to law and prophets (6:31); "Father"
(11:2); "hate" (14:26).

BRUCE: This is merely descriptive (except that the phrase "less developed"
is aetiologically prejudicial); it does not ask a question, it merely
records details. If there is a question in the details, it has to be asked
in more precise form. That Matthew is big on (eg) his reconception of' the
Law, and Luke is not, is one of the manifest differences of taste and
temperament between them. So is Luke's strident favoritism for the poor,
whereas Matthew goes about clad as a bishop, and bowing deferentially to
cardinals. His chain clanks as he walks.

There ARE, as it seems to me, some Mt < > Lk directionality problems in here
(previously noted; one of them involves the Beatitudes, another the Lord's
Prayer) - places where it does indeed seem, taking things in the way a
directionally sensitive reader naturally would take them, that the Lukan
form is somehow developmentally prior to the Matthean form, and not simply
(as Goulder, following one explanatory mode, would have it) a social
reaction to the overfed Matthean one. Here is where the supplementary theory
I mentioned above comes in rather nicely. But the supplementary theory
itself has no ground, no purchase, until this scatterbrain question is pared
down to a consistent data set, and then asked in something like answerable
form.

(4a) If Luke used Matthew, why does the order never agree against Mark?

BRUCE: Sometimes it does. And where it does not, we have the precedent that
Luke also messes up *Mark's* order when he feels like it (including the
order of statements within a single narrative unit). Large scale or small;
all the time. Then (sparing our overstressed emotions for a moment) we enter
in the lab notebook the established fact that Luke likes to tinker with
other people's sequences of statement. Sometimes for what he thinks (not
always correctly, to my taste, but taste is not the point of the exercise)
is a more effective sequence of presentation, sometimes for reasons which,
sound or unsound, may not always be clear. But THAT he does so is manifest
to the greenest reader. We then log in the fact that, whatever his thinking
may be at a given point, he is very restless with the sequence of other
people's prose. (As a journal editor, I know the feeling, and try to resist
it - most of the time).

Once that fact is aboard, and has become part of our thinking, the question
either vanishes or is reduced to a form in which it is more readily
answerable than in this inexact blanket indictment.

4b) and why are there so few verbal agreements in Mt-Lk against Mk?

BRUCE: Ron cited Schnelle, pointing out that there are in fact many such
agreements. So we have here another nonquestion, a demand that one address a
situation which does not in fact exist.

(5) Why did Luke not use any of the 'M' material?

BRUCE: As Ron in effect notes, this is basically a definition question. The
prior difficulty is simply with reading Matthew. How do you account for the
stuff in Matthew that is not in Mark? Since to the 19th century (and in many
ways we are still in the 19th century) the very idea of origination was
unpalatable, we got the idea of a "special source" which the faithful Mark
copied with his nose half an inch off the page. Of course, there is an
irreducible element of originality in Matthew's DECIDING TO USE that
"source" in the first place, so the problem is not really banished (cf
Luke's interference with prior narrative order, above), but it was evidently
reduced to a point where the 19c was prepared to shrug it off as solved.

Coming now to Luke (and here as elsewhere, I accept the Trajectory argument
about the basic, overall, gross sequence of composition Mk > Mt > Lk), we
have in effect the question, Why does Luke not use the things he does not
use? The only answer, as to many other questions in this none too impressive
series, is, Because he has his own distinctive preference profile as an
author and Christian expositor. The job is to ascertain just what Luke is
like as an author. If we start there, and proceed diligently and without
residual Sunday School emotions, and if we are a little lucky (some problems
in antiquity are simply insoluble for lack of sufficient information), we
will reach the point where that question can be asked with some hope of
giving an answer to it. I have been trying myself to work toward that point;
M Goulder (in my considered estimation) took us a long way in a mostly right
direction, and the thing should be possible. If not by next Tuesday, then at
least in time to get something in the 2011 issue of whatever journal any
individual investigator is aiming at.

If we are going to ask questions about Luke, it makes sense to first make
Luke's acquaintance, on his own terms and in extenso. This is not, on the
whole, how the thing seems to have been handled in the history of NT. Luke
has most conspicuously been the dumping ground for Synoptic reactions and
discomforts (he stands a good deal higher with the general public, including
the Hallmark Greeting Card Company, but we are here talking about the
clerical public).

My Goodness, there is even stuff published on the much-defended Mahabharata
that is more adult than the questions about Luke that Ron is here quoting,
and a good deal of other stuff that he has kindly refrained from quoting.

But hopefully that is ending. If so, it is not a moment too soon.

Comes the day when someone like Schnelle routinely includes, for each of
these texts, a profile of its authorial practices and predilections, and
asks the question of text integrity *before,* not *after,* bringing up any
other question whose answer depends on a conclusion about text integrity,
and it will be a pleasure to get up in the morning.

Yours faithfully meanwhile,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

2009/3/5 Stephen C. Carlson <scarlson@...>:

> On Mar 5, 2009 2:21 AM, E Bruce Brooks <brooks@...> wrote:

>>My test of that possibility got me this
>>message:
>>Forbidden
>>You don't have permission to access /~goodacre/synoptic-l/ on this server.
>>
>>Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an
>>ErrorDocument to handle the request.
>>
>>
>>----------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Apache/2.2.3 Server at www.duke.edu Port 80
>>
>>Maybe Mark G could speak to his tech people about this. It is highly
>>impolite at best, and mendacious at worst, since everybody and his
>>brother-in-law, members or no, can in fact get into the Synoptic-L archive.
>
> Duke has been having some computing problems lately. Mark G is aware--and
> frustrated--by these problems.

Thanks for noting these.  Yes, the Duke servers suffered some kind of
meltdown this week and my pages were offline for days.  I decided to
move my pages to a new URL at markgoodace.org and I have moved the
Synoptic-L page there too, at http://www.markgoodacre.org/synoptic-l.

Best wishes
Mark

--
Mark Goodacre            Goodacre@...
Associate Professor
Duke University
Department of Religion
Gray Building / Box 90964
Durham, NC 27708-0964    USA
Phone: 919-660-3503        Fax: 919-660-3530

http://www.markgoodacre.org

Mark, this is missing the second�"r":
�
markgoodace.org
�
Here's the full, corrected�address:
�
http://markgoodacre.org/

Jeffery Hodges
�

--- On Sun, 3/8/09, Mark Goodacre <Goodacre@...> wrote:


From: Mark Goodacre <Goodacre@...>
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] Crediting An E-List
To: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, March 8, 2009, 3:52 PM


2009/3/5 Stephen C. Carlson <scarlson@...>:

> On Mar 5, 2009 2:21 AM, E Bruce Brooks <brooks@...> wrote:

>>My test of that possibility got me this
>>message:
>>Forbidden
>>You don't have permission to access /~goodacre/synoptic-l/ on this server.
>>
>>Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an
>>ErrorDocument to handle the request.
>>
>>
>>----------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Apache/2.2.3 Server at www.duke.edu Port 80
>>
>>Maybe Mark G could speak to his tech people about this. It is highly
>>impolite at best, and mendacious at worst, since everybody and his
>>brother-in-law, members or no, can in fact get into the Synoptic-L archive.
>
> Duke has been having some computing problems lately. Mark G is aware--and
> frustrated--by these problems.

Thanks for noting these.� Yes, the Duke servers suffered some kind of
meltdown this week and my pages were offline for days.� I decided to
move my pages to a new URL at markgoodace.org and I have moved the
Synoptic-L page there too, at http://www.markgoodacre.org/synoptic-l.

Best wishes
Mark

--
Mark Goodacre� � � � � � Goodacre@...
Associate Professor
Duke University
Department of Religion
Gray Building / Box 90964
Durham, NC 27708-0964� � USA
Phone: 919-660-3503� � � � Fax: 919-660-3530

http://www.markgoodacre.org


------------------------------------

Synoptic-L homepage: http://NTGateway.com/synoptic-lYahoo! Groups Links





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Just wondering if  we have any reason to believe  that the reality that
Jesus speaks of in  Matt. 26:29 and parallels ("my father's kingdom") is
not the same one  that he  proclaims in Matt.  4:17 ("the Kingdom of
heaven/God")?

The reason I ask is that I have a suspicion that we might be wrong to
assume, as most exegetes do,   that the "kingdom" whose "coming" Jesus
tells his disciples to pray for ((which, in context, is strictly
speaking,  not the Kingdom of God, but their "Father's kingdom") is the
reality that he designates elsewhere in the Synoptic tradition as the
basileia tou theou..

If there is a difference in referent between "my father's kingdom" and
"the kingdom of God" (which, BTW, is never used in conjunction with the
verb "to come), then  there may be something else going on in the
"kingdom petition of the LP than what is usually supposed.

Any thoughts?

Jeffrey

--
Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon)
1500 W. Pratt Blvd.
Chicago, Illinois
e-mail jgibson000@...



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To: Synoptic
Cc: WSW
In Response To: Offlist Query
On: Jesus and James
From: Bruce

JESUS

Keith,

Thanks for your note on the previous Emotions of Jesus topic; I am glad you
found my analysis useful. Frankly, so did I, and accordingly, that is one of
the segments which I may presently be preparing for publication. Against
that possibility, I thus ask you, as I earlier asked in connection with my
Two in Matthew bit, which was in response to a post by Chuck Jones, if you
are willing that your original post be mentioned in the eventual article,
simply to suggest the context in which my own statements arose. While you
were away, you may have missed my query to Synoptic on that general subject,
but to get an idea of the sort of thing that would be involved (it is really
no big deal), you can consult the tentative first page which I posted in PDF
form to the Files section of this list; go to

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Synoptic/files/

click on the last of the icons there visible, and let me know what you
think.

A propos, to Chuck: Personally, I found the discussion in the few days after
I posted my Two in Matthew stuff to be relevant and helpful; it brought out
some points which I think would be useful to the eventual reader. Here we
are dealing with your own comments as well as mine, and your personal
permission would be required to include that discussion (or more likely an
abridgement of it) as an appendage to the article proper. This is something
of a tradition with our journal, where some of the articles grow out of
conference (or sometimes E-list) discussion, and are preserved at least in
part *as* discussion. Does this in general meet with your approval? If so, I
will go ahead, and send you a PDF of the draft, for your correction and
formal agreement (naturally, we need to have these things in writing, before
actually going to press). If not, I will work my own comments into the
article proper, not mentioning yours. But to me, the preservation of the
original dialogue form is desirable, as suggesting the original milieu, and
perhaps helping to establish the occasional fruitfulness of prepublication
discussion, a point on which the great majority of NT scholars (to mention
no other fields) seem not to be convinced.

JAMES

[Back to Keith]:

As for the James paper from SBL/NE 2007, about which you asked, I recall
that at the time it attracted some interest from Harold Attridge, who
chaired that particular session, another reason (besides my own merely
internal opinion) to think of saving it for the published record. That
thought has been pursued, and the published version will hopefully appear
later this year, in the first volume of the journal being issued by our
research institute at UMass. That journal will be called Warring States
Papers; be sure to tell your local serials librarian to leave budget room
for it. Meanwhile, yes, there is an online abstract (I am afraid no more
than that), which is available in the News section of our institute's
website; see

http://www.umass.edu/wsp/conferences/sbl/2007/james.html

Comments from yourself or any others who may be interested would be more
than welcome, but I must add that there is not much time for me to take
account of them (with credit to any useful suggestions or criticisms), since
that issue of the journal will be closing in a matter of weeks, after which
all comment is, well, to coin a term, merely academic.

HOPEFUL TEXTS

I very much agree that James is one of the key witnesses to the early Jesus
movement and its internal traditions and practices. So, in my opinion, is
the Didache. Both these texts have two layers, and it is the earlier of the
two (in the case of the Didache, only the included Two Ways document,
namely, the part of the Didache with which Barnabas deals) that is of
special interest. Those, and the core of the tradition which is much
overlaid by later stuff in the fragmentary Gospel of Peter, and of course
the earliest layers of Mark (always assuming that they can be objectively
and responsibly identified), together constitute what I consider to be the
only really strong reflections of the earliest Jesus tradition - earlier
than Paul, and in any case representing a tradition which, unlike that of
Paul (which began with himself), really had a connection to the followers of
Jesus, during the lifetime of Jesus. Here, if anywhere, ought to be the
thread which many over the years have been seeking.

But all that is mostly for the future. For the present, best wishes,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

To: Synoptic
Cc: WSW
On: The First Question
From: Bruce

In a recent note in response to Ron Price, I had mentioned what I think must
be the first question we ask about any text in which we are interested. Why
is this so?

RESTATEMENT

Let me put the question this way. There is a Chinese text called the Jung
Yung, of modest length and much beloved by what we call the
Neo-Confucianists, who come into being a thousand years after the end of the
classical period. The text is attributed to the grandson of Confucius, which
would put it in the 05th century.  Some have pointed out that the Jung Yung
contains clear references to the institutions of the Chin unified empire,
which was not established until 0221, near the end of the 03rd century.

Someone will then say, Therefore this cannot be an 05c text; it must be a
Chin Imperial text from after 0221. And others will applaud this judgement,
as learned and scrupulous.

Why are they wrong to do so?

THE FIRST QUESTION

Because that conclusion contains the unstated premise that the text is
integral, all of a piece, and that therefore evidence from any part of it
bears with full force on all other parts of it. Only on that premise does it
follow that the whole of the Jung Yung is a Chin (post-0221) text, and not a
classical (pre-0221) text at all.

But the premise is foolish, given the probabilities for ancient texts in
general. And what are those? Here are some examples at random:

EXAMPLES

1. A given book of the Mahabharata may be as much as three-fourths addenda,
in which the original war tale is augmented by later ritualist objections to
war, or revisionist ritualist objections to sacrifice (one of them proposes
to substitute vegetable for animal offerings), and these in  turn further
extended by separate treatises arguing *against* that substitution, not as
it happens on the merits of the matter, but by impugning the wisdom of the
previous speaker (who happens to be a mongoose). And if we put our pencil
down in the middle of the celebrated Bhagavad Gita, the proportion of new
rather than old material is not 75%, it is 100%.

2. The parts of the Analects of Confucius which consistently show linguistic
markers for the period of Confucius (very early 05c) amounts to less than 1
of the 20 books of the Analects, or in terms of numbers of sayings, about 3%
of the whole. It is thus risky to pick up a ritual saying of "Confucius" and
conclude that Confucius was a ritualist. It is more cogent to note that the
chapters directly after the one containing the probably genuine sayings have
never heard of the concept, or even the word, "ritual" (li) at all. The
non-integral nature of the book must be first determined and accepted,
before any statement drawn *from* the book can be used as a description of
the Historical Confucius. Most of them instead are descriptions of the
evolved persona of "Confucius," the enabling myth of what later, thanks to
the efficacy of the myth, evolved into Imperial Confucianism.

3. Emil Wendling sought to identify the early lays within the Iliad. His
core Iliad, by his own count, amounts to about a quarter of the present
work. If that or something like it is anywhere near right, statements about
the poetic merit or the ideology of "Homer" based on passages drawn at
random from the Iliad are likelier than not to be untrue of the first author
of the text. They may of course be true of the later author or authors of
the text, but in this case, it being now known that the text is not a single
composition by one man, we are going to have to decide which of them we are
going to mean by "Homer."

4. Following out the implications of the obviously interpolated parts of
Mark, I reach the conclusion that our present canonical Mark consists of a
much overlaid original narrative. That original narrative looks like being
about half the size of our present Mark. If so, then statements about Jesus
drawn from Mark have only a 50% chance of being based on the earliest
available material.

5. The Arthashastra contains some sayings attributed to the early Maurya
statesman Kautilya, and a great deal else. Hartmut Scharfe sought to show
that the entire work is late, not early, within the Maurya period. He argued
at length, not only that there are Pali-isms (linguistically later than the
Sanskrit in which the text is ostensibly written) in the Arthashastra, but
that they occur in every chapter of the work. This is seemingly conclusive.
What Scharfe did not notice was that the portions of the text which purport
to record judgements and advices of Kautilya, along with those of his Vedic
predecessors, are entirely free of those Pali-isms. Then the huge bulk of
the Arthashastra is indeed an expansion of the time of Asoka or even later,
a reflection of a great commercial empire, but the Kautilya part is early,
and may reflect the historical position of Kautilya. Why is this likely?
Because the India implied by Kautilya's remarks is itself much simpler, and
therefore much earlier, than that implied by the remainder of the work. It
gives, in fact, a rather good match with early Mauryan India as described by
Megasthenes, a Greek visitor to that court. Then the odds that any random
passage of the Arthashastra reflects the time of Kautilya are very low. If
we stick to the parts which directly ascribe judgements and advices to him,
they are on the contrary very high. We can increase our chance of relevance
to Kautilya and to early Maurya by being guided by the previously
established growth pattern in the text.

None of these texts proves on examination to be integral. Accordingly, a
statement based indiscriminately on a random passage from any of them has a
high probability of being wrong about the person or tradition with whom the
work is conventionally associated.

CONCLUSION

That is why any judgement based on sampling an unexamined text is
injudicious and likely to be wrong. The first task in studying any text must
thus be to determine whether the text is in fact one thing or many, a
homogeneous whole or an organic growth or a diverse assemblage. If either of
the latter two, the boundaries of the various segments or strata must be
determined. Only then can the evidence *in* the text be validly converted to
information *about* the text, and thence into information about the world
from which the text comes, and to which it witnesses. To bypass this first
step is to remain in the methodological playpen.

THE CASE OF THE JUNG YUNG

So what would be a better treatment of the Jung Yung, the example with which
we started?

The observation about Chin institutions of the late 03c (if carefully
checked) is valid as part of the acquaintance process. So is the observation
that other parts of the text seem to be echoed in writings of the Mencians
that can for other reasons be assigned to the early 03c. To proceed no
further in this simplified example, there are then two positive indications
of date in the text, both based on external evidence, and both pointing in
different directions. We may then notice that the post-0221 indications in
the work occur in the higher numbered sections, whereas the passages that
seem to be echoed in earlier texts occur in the lower numbered sections.
Following up on this hint (or simply scrutinizing the whole text, as
properly we should, even without hints to guide us), we will sooner or later
discover that there seem to be ending points within the text, following
which the ideology or address of the succeeding portion has a detectably
different character. In the end, we find one scenario which can explain
these results: the Jung Yung is accretional, and grew in discoverable
stages, from a rather modest tract in the early 03c to a very extended, if
by then also heterogeneous, treatise in the late 03c.

SECONDARY KNOWLEDGE

This in turn tells us much about the conditions under which the work was
begun and carried on. We learn about the text, and the text itself teaches
us about things outside the text.

The Jung Yung was not, in the first place, since chronologically it cannot
have been, a work of Dz-sz, the grandson of Confucius. But it is worth
knowing that a splinter movement of the 03c found it useful to associate it
with him. We then put the Jung Yung in the large pile of previously studied
texts which represent late attributions to persons regarded as early within
a movement - the disciples or descendants of Confucius, the disciples of
Jesus, you name it. The temptation is constant, and examples of yielding to
it occur in all the major ancient literatures.

We then remember that a text almost exactly contemporary with the early Jung
Yung is a very short independent anecdote found in the Gwodyen 1 tomb and
thus dating from c0288, which records an interview of Dz-sz with Mu-gung,
the Prince of Lu. (Dz-sz argues for remonstrance as the highest loyalty, a
very interesting position). Here is further evidence for the viability of
the Dz-sz brand in public discourse at the beginning of the 03c. Things are
coming together for us.

On the other hand, who would dare to continue to extend a Confucian text in
the Chin dynasty, when Confucianism and its classical books were banned?
Hard question. But we then recall (and if we have no recall, we can go word
by word through Ma Fei-bai's massive compilation of facts about Chin and the
personages known to have been associated with Chin) that besides the
populace, among whom it was punishable (by hard labor, not as the romantic
story has it by live burial) to possess Confucian writings, there were the
favored scholars of Chin, in fact the Chin Academy, who had considerable
freedom to read, to write, and to recommend.

It is their pronouncements, in all human likelihood, their advice from a
privileged position near the throne, which gives so markedly Confucian a
tone to the First Emperor's public pronouncements, engraved on stone and set
up at several mountains at the edges of his unified domain. So now we not
only understand the Jung Yung, we also understand those monumental
inscriptions. We are making progress.

At both ends.

ENVOI

I submit, in general, that the only way to make progress, in any text-based
matter, is to begin with an assay of the text, in order to determine its
degree of homogeneity or diversity, and then to make use of the contents of
the text *only in light* of that previous determination. If we do, other
conditions being favorable, we can hope to put the information in the text
into the context of information otherwise and elsewhere derived, and to
emerge, in the fullness of time, with a coherent and plausible account of
the history of that period.

If we don't, we get into an endless loop of conflicting statements drawn
from the texts, all of which may indeed be true, but none of which can be
matched with any of the others, pending a better understanding of exactly
where, in a possibly composite or accretional text, they are coming from.

VOCATION

Text study is hard. Fortunately, we live in an enlightened and liberal age,
and there is no reason on earth why anyone needs to devote themselves to
text study. It is purely voluntary. But those who do so choose incur thereby
an obligation to be honest with the texts in question. The only excuse for
studying texts is to find out what they say, and the only reputable way of
studying them is one which will permit them to in fact *say* what they say,
even if this involves admitting that, in some cases, they speak with more
than one voice, and bear witness to more than one aspect of life outside the
text.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Jeffrey asks whether "Kingdom of my father" might
have a different reference from "Kingdom of God".
Matthew 26.29 "until that day when I drink it new
with you in the kingdom of my father" //
Mark "until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" //
Luke "until the kingdom of God comes"

Using different assumptions in turn:
a) Mat adapts Mark. Evidence: texts of Matt normally offer "of heaven",
occasionally "of God", here "of my father".  Yes it is puzzling
that Matthew should switch to a different alternative when avoiding
just one more direct reference to God sitting in his source.

b) Ignoring Mark - just looking at Matthew - again it doesn't
look much different from a) except that we wouldn't know what
any source might have had.

Lohmeyer notes at this point the almost Johannine usage
of "My father , I and you"

Where else are kingdom and father in proximity?  1Cor 15.24
is one such place.  Are there others?   Would this offer any
hints as to why Matthew writes what he did?
Lk.22.29 "as my father has
allocated to me the/a kingdom" is much
more crucial as it shares a similar context of
eating and drinking.

Then there is the issue of "come" in proximity to kingdom
in Mat 6.10.  We need to bear in mind that Lk 22.18 has
the same aorist stem, Mk 11.10
the participle of the (different) present stem, and other words
with similar but not identical meanings are at Mat.10.7 and
12.28 - on the latter verb I think Caragounis has some interesting
comment in his recent tome on the Greek language.
Surely we need to take account of related verb stems, and of
other verbs with similar but not identical sense.

Somewhat more tangentially on coming and going is
the variation between the kingdom coming, or arriving, or being near,
and people coming or going or entering into the kingdom.  Is this
variation of imagery the kind of fluidity we should actually
expect in texts full of symbols, metaphors and images where
divergent perspectives even turn up in close proximity?

David M.



def


---------
David Mealand,     University of Edinburgh


--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

Fleddermann appears to take a 'source doublet' as a pair of similar sayings
of which one member looks as if it was derived from Mark and the other
member from another source ('Q: A reconstruction and commentary', pp.54-58),
and goes on to state that doublets help to establish the existence of Q.

But he disqualifies Mt 5:29-30 // Mt 18:8-9 on the grounds that Luke has no
parallel. Why so? Presumably because for Fleddermann the absence of a
parallel in Luke means the saying could not belong to Q.

It is wholly illogical to presume that Q equates to the Double Tradition, as
part of an argument that there exists a Q which equates to the Double
Tradition.

The logical procedure is to take the source doublets at their face value,
namely as evidence for a sayings source, and only when the source doublets
have been assembled, to decide whether the sayings source could be equated
with the Double Tradition. Any impartial observer will surely then come to
the conclusion that the sayings source contains at least around a score of
Double Tradition sayings, plus at least four sayings from outside the Double
Tradition: Mt 5:29-30 // Mt 18:8-9; Mt 10:22 // Mt 24:9b,13; Mt 23:11 // Mt
20:26; Mt 24:11 // Mt 24:24.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm

Ron,

I think your post is not really taking into account where Fleddermann is coming
from on this.

1)  Fleddermann is not really presenting an argument against Luke's use of
Matthew (or Matthew's use of Luke)  here.  I think he's *presuming* that and
presenting arguments for reconstructing Q as a written source.  In that context,
where we have extensive verbatim resemblances between Matthew and Luke against
Mark in one version of a pericope, while there is also a version of that
pericope where either Matthew or Luke agrees with Mark against the other, it
supports his case.

2)  If we accept Fleddermann's presumption of the independence of Matthew and
Luke (which I don't), then the doublets found once in the triple tradition and
once in the double tradition must necessarily be *source* doublets, i.e., they
are not the redactional work of Matthew or Luke.

3)  You want to take a doublet found only in Matthew as a *source* doublet, but
one of the versions could be a redactional doublet, i.e., Matthew could have
used the same material twice, perhaps rewriting it more extensively in one case
or another.  Fleddermann is using Matthew and Luke as independant witnesses. 
Since they don't know each other's redaction, the doublets must come from a
source.  In the case of doublets for which we don't have two or more independent
witnesses, you would have to have some other grounds to demonstrate that a
particular version is not redactional.

Best,

Ken

Ken Olson
PhD Student
Duke University

To: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com
From: ron.price@...
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:07:23 +0000
Subject: [Synoptic-L] A circular argument re doublets





















             Fleddermann appears to take a 'source doublet' as a pair of similar
sayings

of which one member looks as if it was derived from Mark and the other

member from another source ('Q: A reconstruction and commentary', pp.54-58),

and goes on to state that doublets help to establish the existence of Q.



But he disqualifies Mt 5:29-30 // Mt 18:8-9 on the grounds that Luke has no

parallel. Why so? Presumably because for Fleddermann the absence of a

parallel in Luke means the saying could not belong to Q.



It is wholly illogical to presume that Q equates to the Double Tradition, as

part of an argument that there exists a Q which equates to the Double

Tradition.



The logical procedure is to take the source doublets at their face value,

namely as evidence for a sayings source, and only when the source doublets

have been assembled, to decide whether the sayings source could be equated

with the Double Tradition. Any impartial observer will surely then come to

the conclusion that the sayings source contains at least around a score of

Double Tradition sayings, plus at least four sayings from outside the Double

Tradition: Mt 5:29-30 // Mt 18:8-9; Mt 10:22 // Mt 24:9b,13; Mt 23:11 // Mt

20:26; Mt 24:11 // Mt 24:24.



Ron Price



Derbyshire, UK



Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm























[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ron,
�
Excellent point.
�
Assuming the 2S hypothesis, Mt uses something like 80 percent of Mk, whereas Lk
uses only about 60 percent (I'm going by memory here).� If these were general
tendencies (and I know one data point does not make a trend), then it would make
sense that a good portion of M material was in Q, and Lk chose not to include
it.� If there was a sayings source, we cannot know what was in; we can only
speculate about what material can from it.
�
Rev. Chuck Jones
Atlanta, Georgia

--- On Thu, 3/12/09, Ron Price <ron.price@...> wrote:

From: Ron Price <ron.price@...>
Subject: [Synoptic-L] A circular argument re doublets
To: "Synoptic-L elist" <Synoptic@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, March 12, 2009, 11:07 AM






Fleddermann appears to take a 'source doublet' as a pair of similar sayings
of which one member looks as if it was derived from Mark and the other
member from another source ('Q: A reconstruction and commentary', pp.54-58),
and goes on to state that doublets help to establish the existence of Q.

But he disqualifies Mt 5:29-30 // Mt 18:8-9 on the grounds that Luke has no
parallel. Why so? Presumably because for Fleddermann the absence of a
parallel in Luke means the saying could not belong to Q.

It is wholly illogical to presume that Q equates to the Double Tradition, as
part of an argument that there exists a Q which equates to the Double
Tradition.

The logical procedure is to take the source doublets at their face value,
namely as evidence for a sayings source, and only when the source doublets
have been assembled, to decide whether the sayings source could be equated
with the Double Tradition. Any impartial observer will surely then come to
the conclusion that the sayings source contains at least around a score of
Double Tradition sayings, plus at least four sayings from outside the Double
Tradition: Mt 5:29-30 // Mt 18:8-9; Mt 10:22 // Mt 24:9b,13; Mt 23:11 // Mt
20:26; Mt 24:11 // Mt 24:24.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage. virgin.net/ ron.price/ index.htm



















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ken Olson wrote:

> I think your post is not really taking into account where Fleddermann is
> coming from on this.
>
> 1)  Fleddermann is not really presenting an argument against Luke's use of
> Matthew (or Matthew's use of Luke)  here.  I think he's *presuming* that and
> presenting arguments for reconstructing Q as a written source.

Ken,

This seems to me to be a strange and unnecessary presumption. Surely it
would be better to work from first principles rather than rely on one
debatable hypothesis in order to help to prove another one.

> .......
> 2)  If we accept Fleddermann's presumption of the independence of Matthew and
> Luke (which I don't), then the doublets found once in the triple tradition and
> once in the double tradition must necessarily be *source* doublets, i.e., they
> are not the redactional work of Matthew or Luke.

This is true.

> 3)  You want to take a doublet found only in Matthew as a *source* doublet,
> but one of the versions could be a redactional doublet, i.e., Matthew could
> have used the same material twice, perhaps rewriting it more extensively in
> one case or another.

Yes it *could* have been. Your argument here seems to leave its status
uncertain. Fleddermann is certain that it was redactional. It's this
certainty that seems so out of place. Surely he needs to show evidence for
this if he ends up concluding, as he does, that the Q pericopes are
precisely the Double Tradition pericopes. The absence of a version in Luke
provides no evidence for the saying's absence from the *source*, unless he
assumes that the source is limited in extent to Double Tradition material.
But this would be yet another assumption over and above the assumption that
Matthew and Luke wrote independently.

Clearly Mt 5:27-28 is redactional (Matthean style). But it could well have
been inserted in an attempt to illuminate 5:29-30. It is notable that
5:27-30 is sandwiched between Double Tradition material, and this tends to
support the view that it may have come from the same source, i.e. that the
doublet of which it is one half is a source doublet. The scholarly Luke
could well have omitted the saying from his gospel because he was repelled
by its barbarity (if taken literally).

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm

Chuck Jones wrote:



"I fielded a brief, failed effort to suggest to the group that Mk used
sources rather than wrote from scratch"



I'm not sure what kind of sources you are referring to, but when you later
refer to "editorial/authorial choices and goals" then this sounds to me as
though you are referring specifically to written sources. If so, then there
is a reasonable assumption that Mt and Lk were written by people who had
access to at least some of the same sources. In this scenario then the
synoptic authors could have made different "editorial/authorial choices and
goals" in the way you describe.



However, I see no reason to restrict aMk to using only written sources. If
he had access to verbal sources as well (whether eyewitness or not) then in
my mind it's quite likely that the "almost cinematic details" are as likely
to be evidence of verbal transmission as they are evidence of different
editorial/authorial decisions.



David Inglis

Lafayette, CA, 94549

   _____

From: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Synoptic@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Chuck Jones
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 5:38 AM
To: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] Jesus and disciples



Leonard,

I fielded a brief, failed effort to suggest to the group that Mk used
sources rather than wrote from scratch (I kept waiting for you to weigh
in!).

I agree with you that Mk is the dramatist, the playwrite of the group.  He
presents fewer total scenes, but his scenes are usually longer than their
parallels, enlivened with almost cinematic details:  "he took her hand and
helped her up,"  "he looked around at them in anger, etc."

I believe this is a result of Mk's editorial/authorial choices and goals,
just as I believe the shorter (blander) scenes in Mt and Lk are the result
of their decisions (gotta make room for more of those teaching passages!).

So I do not believe that this particular stylistic difference suggests
directionality among the three, in any direction.  Directionality clues are
to be found elsewhere.  Seems to me.

Rev. Chuck Jones
Atlanta, Georgia
________________________________

Leonard wrote:

Since the primary function of these emotions [attributed to Jesus and others
in Mk] is to heighten the dramatic effect of the story, it is not surprising
that they are found not only in Jesus himself but in others as well,
especially as they relate to Jesus. What is interesting in this case is the
number of times emotions in others than Jesus are found in Mark and not in
the triple-tradition parallels. It is difficult to make the argument here
for the absence of the expressions in Matt and Lk having anything to do with
a supposed Christological trajectory. For instance, why does Mark alone
speak of Pilate (15:44) as being "amazed" that Jesus was already dead (a
text that you?missed in your list)? The case of 16:5 and 8 is similar, as is
that of the chief priests and scribes "fearing him" in 11:18, or even more
to the point,?Mk 10:24, etc. These are cases where emotions in the story
heighten the Christological drama, by comparison to Matt and Lk, and are
a possible?indication of a late Mark.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.10.23/1953 - Release Date: 02/25/09
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Much of "eyewitness sources" would have to do with the provenance of Mark and
the date of Mark. If Mark was written after or during the first Jewish Roman war
(as it seems many set the writing), odds of eyewitnesses would be very low, I
would think, if one begins with the notion that life expectancy was not as high
in times of antiquity. This, combined with the mortality rates in Galilee, Judea
and even in the diaspora during the war would make it unlikely that there would
have been eyewitnesses.

(We have "almost cinematic details," I believe, in chapter thirteen, similar in
content to Josephus in "Wars of the Jews," though in Mark it is told as a
"prophecy." Note Daryl Schmidt writing about it in The Scholars Version of The
Gospel of Mark, p. 4: "We know enough about the Roman-Judean War of 66-70 c.e.
from the historian Josephus to be able to picture it as the context for at least
some of Mark's readers. This description is so vivid that Mark must have been
written while the war was still being fought, or even possibly as it was just
beginning.")

Dennis Dean Carpenter
Dahlonega, Ga.



David stated, " However, I see no reason to restrict aMk to using only written
sources. If
he had access to verbal sources as well (whether eyewitness or not) then in
my mind it's quite likely that the "almost cinematic details" are as likely
to be evidence of verbal transmission as they are evidence of different
editorial/authorial decisions."




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

David,
�
I may have misunderstood my conversation partners, but the concensus seemed to
be that Mark free-composed the gospel, and that it is not correct to think of
him has having made editorial decisions towards sources, written or oral.
�
My point is simply that Mk is written in the same style and structure as Mt and
Lk, which suggests strongly that all three were�based on written sources.
�
Rev. Chuck Jones
Atlanta, Georgia


--- On Sat, 3/14/09, David @ Comcast <davidinglis2@...> wrote:

From: David @ Comcast <davidinglis2@...>
Subject: RE: [Synoptic-L] Jesus and disciples
To: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com
Cc: gpg@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 1:23 PM






Chuck Jones wrote:

"I fielded a brief, failed effort to suggest to the group that Mk used
sources rather than wrote from scratch"

I'm not sure what kind of sources you are referring to, but when you later
refer to "editorial/authoria l choices and goals" then this sounds to me as
though you are referring specifically to written sources. If so, then there
is a reasonable assumption that Mt and Lk were written by people who had
access to at least some of the same sources. In this scenario then the
synoptic authors could have made different "editorial/authoria l choices and
goals" in the way you describe.

However, I see no reason to restrict aMk to using only written sources. If
he had access to verbal sources as well (whether eyewitness or not) then in
my mind it's quite likely that the "almost cinematic details" are as likely
to be evidence of verbal transmission as they are evidence of different
editorial/authorial decisions.

David Inglis

Lafayette, CA, 94549

_____

From: Synoptic@yahoogroup s.com [mailto:Synoptic@yahoogroup s.com] On Behalf
Of Chuck Jones
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 5:38 AM
To: Synoptic@yahoogroup s.com
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] Jesus and disciples

Leonard,

I fielded a brief, failed effort to suggest to the group that Mk used
sources rather than wrote from scratch (I kept waiting for you to weigh
in!).

I agree with you that Mk is the dramatist, the playwrite of the group. He
presents fewer total scenes, but his scenes are usually longer than their
parallels, enlivened with almost cinematic details: "he took her hand and
helped her up," "he looked around at them in anger, etc."

I believe this is a result of Mk's editorial/authorial choices and goals,
just as I believe the shorter (blander) scenes in Mt and Lk are the result
of their decisions (gotta make room for more of those teaching passages!).

So I do not believe that this particular stylistic difference suggests
directionality among the three, in any direction. Directionality clues are
to be found elsewhere. Seems to me.

Rev. Chuck Jones
Atlanta, Georgia
____________ _________ _________ __

Leonard wrote:

Since the primary function of these emotions [attributed to Jesus and others
in Mk] is to heighten the dramatic effect of the story, it is not surprising
that they are found not only in Jesus himself but in others as well,
especially as they relate to Jesus. What is interesting in this case is the
number of times emotions in others than Jesus are found in Mark and not in
the triple-tradition parallels. It is difficult to make the argument here
for the absence of the expressions in Matt and Lk having anything to do with
a supposed Christological trajectory. For instance, why does Mark alone
speak of Pilate (15:44) as being "amazed" that Jesus was already dead (a
text that you?missed in your list)? The case of 16:5 and 8 is similar, as is
that of the chief priests and scribes "fearing him" in 11:18, or even more
to the point,?Mk 10:24, etc. These are cases where emotions in the story
heighten the Christological drama, by comparison to Matt and Lk, and are
a possible?indication of a late Mark.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.10.23/1953 - Release Date: 02/25/09
06:40:00

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Rev. Chuck Jones wrote: "the concensus seemed to be that Mark free-composed
the gospel"



Is "free-composed" just another way of saying "made it up," because I can
see only a limited number of possibilities for how ANYTHING is written:



1.       The author wrote about personal experiences.

2.       The author made it up (e.g. a novel).

3.       The author used verbal sources (e.g. a ghost writer writing an
autobiography).

4.       The author used written sources (e.g. a research paper).

5.       Divine intervention (which would be a mental source?).

6.       Some combination of the above.



Now, with the possible exception of 5), I would assume that editorial
decisions would be made in any of the above scenarios. For example:



1.       Which experiences to include, and how to present them.

2.       Everything here is editorial (the author makes all the decisions
about what is written or not).

3.       Does the author use the exact words spoken, 'improve' the language,
write from a memory of a conversation/speech, etc.

4.       Which parts of the sources to include or not, whether to change the
order, paraphrase, etc.

5.       Probably N/A

6.       Some combination of the above.



If we assume that the author feels free to make editorial choices at all (or
is the consensus that aMk did not feel free to do this?) then I would
suggest that we should start by assuming scenario 6 (Some combination of the
above), and look for markers in the text to help us determine which parts of
Mk (and also Mt and Lk) were created using which kinds of sources.



Perhaps I'm just missing something important here, in which case could
someone please explain to me (or point me at previous conversations)
explaining why "the concensus seemed to be that Mark free-composed the
gospel," because I don't see the evidence for it.



David Inglis

Lafayette, CA, 94549



   _____

From: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Synoptic@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Chuck Jones
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:14 AM
To: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Synoptic-L] Jesus and disciples



David,

I may have misunderstood my conversation partners, but the concensus seemed
to be that Mark free-composed the gospel, and that it is not correct to
think of him has having made editorial decisions towards sources, written or
oral.

My point is simply that Mk is written in the same style and structure as Mt
and Lk, which suggests strongly that all three were based on written
sources.

Rev. Chuck Jones
Atlanta, Georgia

--- On Sat, 3/14/09, David @ Comcast <davidinglis2@
<mailto:davidinglis2%40comcast.net> comcast.net> wrote:

From: David @ Comcast <davidinglis2@ <mailto:davidinglis2%40comcast.net>
comcast.net>
Subject: RE: [Synoptic-L] Jesus and disciples
To: Synoptic@yahoogroup <mailto:Synoptic%40yahoogroups.com> s.com
Cc: gpg@yahoogroups. <mailto:gpg%40yahoogroups.com> com
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 1:23 PM

Chuck Jones wrote:

"I fielded a brief, failed effort to suggest to the group that Mk used
sources rather than wrote from scratch"

I'm not sure what kind of sources you are referring to, but when you later
refer to "editorial/authoria l choices and goals" then this sounds to me as
though you are referring specifically to written sources. If so, then there
is a reasonable assumption that Mt and Lk were written by people who had
access to at least some of the same sources. In this scenario then the
synoptic authors could have made different "editorial/authoria l choices and
goals" in the way you describe.

However, I see no reason to restrict aMk to using only written sources. If
he had access to verbal sources as well (whether eyewitness or not) then in
my mind it's quite likely that the "almost cinematic details" are as likely
to be evidence of verbal transmission as they are evidence of different
editorial/authorial decisions.

David Inglis

Lafayette, CA, 94549

_____

From: Synoptic@yahoogroup s.com [mailto:Synoptic@yahoogroup s.com] On Behalf
Of Chuck Jones
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 5:38 AM
To: Synoptic@yahoogroup s.com
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] Jesus and disciples

Leonard,

I fielded a brief, failed effort to suggest to the group that Mk used
sources rather than wrote from scratch (I kept waiting for you to weigh
in!).

I agree with you that Mk is the dramatist, the playwrite of the group. He
presents fewer total scenes, but his scenes are usually longer than their
parallels, enlivened with almost cinematic details: "he took her hand and
helped her up," "he looked around at them in anger, etc."

I believe this is a result of Mk's editorial/authorial choices and goals,
just as I believe the shorter (blander) scenes in Mt and Lk are the result
of their decisions (gotta make room for more of those teaching passages!).

So I do not believe that this particular stylistic difference suggests
directionality among the three, in any direction. Directionality clues are
to be found elsewhere. Seems to me.

Rev. Chuck Jones
Atlanta, Georgia
____________ _________ _________ __

Leonard wrote:

Since the primary function of these emotions [attributed to Jesus and others
in Mk] is to heighten the dramatic effect of the story, it is not surprising
that they are found not only in Jesus himself but in others as well,
especially as they relate to Jesus. What is interesting in this case is the
number of times emotions in others than Jesus are found in Mark and not in
the triple-tradition parallels. It is difficult to make the argument here
for the absence of the expressions in Matt and Lk having anything to do with
a supposed Christological trajectory. For instance, why does Mark alone
speak of Pilate (15:44) as being "amazed" that Jesus was already dead (a
text that you?missed in your list)? The case of 16:5 and 8 is similar, as is
that of the chief priests and scribes "fearing him" in 11:18, or even more
to the point,?Mk 10:24, etc. These are cases where emotions in the story
heighten the Christological drama, by comparison to Matt and Lk, and are
a possible?indication of a late Mark.

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Chuck:

I think I am one of your conversation partners on this, and you have
misunderstood (in part).

I actually do think Mark probably used oral sources, and some of these may have
been eyewitness.  And I wouldn't rule out of hand the idea of written sources --
though I kind of doubt it.

My concern is that there is very little basis, if any, for making any assertion
about (a) whether any sources were actually used, or especially (b) if they were
written.  We have no clear criteria to deconstruct Mark's narrative.  It works
as it stands.  And so it might well have been the "creative" work of Mark who
wove together oral materials, his own organization, and a rhetorical aim that
imagined an audience response, into a unified satisfying narrative.


Mark A. Matson
Academic Dean
Milligan College
http://www.milligan.edu/administrative/mmatson/personal.htm






> Chuck Jones wrote:
>
>
> David,
>
> I may have misunderstood my conversation partners, but the concensus
> seemed to be that Mark free-composed the gospel, and that it is not
> correct to think of him has having made editorial decisions towards
> sources, written or oral.
>
> My point is simply that Mk is written in the same style and structure
> as Mt and Lk, which suggests strongly that all three were�based on
> written sources.

On Mar 16, 2009 10:13 AM, Chuck Jones <chuckjonez@...> wrote:
>My point is simply that Mk is written in the same style and structure
>as Mt and Lk, which suggests strongly that all three were based on
>written sources.

The way that I see it is that Matthew and Luke have a similar style
and structure as Mark is not merely because they used written sources
but because the written source that they used was Mark.

Stephen Carlson

--
Stephen C. Carlson
Ph.D. student, Religion, Duke University
Author of The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Baylor,
2005)

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG; WSW; Adela Yarbro Collins
On: Marcus Mark v2
From: Bruce

I suppose if I had been asked to name the NT book I would most like to see
published in 2009 (always excepting a few of my own), it would have been the
long delayed second volume of Joel Marcus's Anchor Bible commentary on Mark.
It has now gone clunk in my mailbox, and I give a few not quite random notes
by way of an initial response, and as a first report of the process of
acquaintanceship.

1. It is very like the previous one. Yale has seemingly done a good job
taking over the series, right down to the paper stock and the style of the
cover illustrations, which aren't necessarily pretty, but serve as a sort of
continuity marker: a signature of the series, and evocative (for better or
worse) of the decade of its inauguration. I remember it well.

2. If Marcus has changed his mind, big time, about anything in Mk 1-8:21,
the point reached in the previous volume (2000), he does not say so in his
Preface. I await a further reading of the fine print, and will report as may
be required.

3. Pagination of this volume is continuous with that of the last; the
non-Roman numerals presumably begin with [571], the halftitle, and the final
page is 1182.

4. I sided much with David Noel Freedman, until lately the editor of this
series, on his suggestion (reported in the Preface) that people should bite
the bullet and render an original Iakob by a translated Jacob, like the
civilized nations, and drop this James nonsense. That suggestion was not
followed. I register disappointment. Where one stalwart leads, a thousand
milquetoasts may follow. Defamiliarizing the text is the first step in
gaining the possibility of understanding the text. Familiarity is merely one
more kind of encrustation of the ages, as much to be removed as some 14c
scribal error.

5. Working inward from the rear, I of course checked out the treatment of
16:7 and the associated 14:28. There was no hint in either place of the
possibility that these passages, past which the people on either side of
them most conspicuously talk, was intrusive. People in the present century
are subtle enough with the OT nuances of the text, and there is much along
these lines to ponder in the pages of this second volume (fans of Zechariah
will be especially gratified; see p969). But they seem to be losing touch
with the texture of the text.

6. This loss affects interpretation in some subtle ways. Marcus says at
p1084, of the women at the tomb, "They are not thinking of Jesus as the
Davidic Messiah whom *God* has anointed but as a corpse that needs to be
anointed *by them* - apparently unaware that a couple of days before Jesus'
death, an anonymous woman had made their action redundant." Meaning, the
Woman at Bethany. Here was a missed opportunity. The Women at the Tomb are
trying to make good a previous lack; the Woman at Bethany is trying to
*anticipate* that lack (as Jesus himself, no less, talk about authoritative
interpretations, says at the time). Does the one necessarily preclude the
other? No, not in Mark of all places, but admittedly it would be neater for
the symbolically sensitive reader if only one of these stories were present.
Acknowledging (as Marcus does not) the possibility of earlier and later
material within Mark, there is then a real possibility that one of these
stories was written before, and thus necessarily in ignorance of, the other.

If so, which of the two is earlier, and which is later? The pattern of
interpolations as such does not directly tell us the answer. I have
previously suggested, from other traits of the Woman at Bethany and several
stylistically kindred passages, that the Bethany story is very late. Then
the Women at the Tomb are earlier, and the author's idea of their mission is
indeed not in conflict with the Bethany Anointing, which had at that time
not yet been added to the text. This is useful information. Marcus makes his
hint (about mutual ignorance between these two Anointings), and then passes
on. Had he lingered a few minutes more, he might instead have made it a
conclusion, and become famous accordingly.

7. But of course if he *had* lingered a few minutes more, here and at every
other passage of like scope in v2, it would now be 2013, and that is not
exactly a consummation to be wished. Better to take the work as we at last
have it, and use the signposts it contains precisely as signposts, to the
next level of understanding. The virtue of a signpost is that it points
beyond itself.

8. Postscript: The Markan Ending. 1091, "The style of John 21:1-14, however,
is basically Johannine." Maybe, just as many (not all) of the intrusions in
Mark can be said to be in some sense basically Markan. All the same, Jn 21
is an addendum to Jn 1-20, and it only confuses discourse to treat the two
segments as being on the same level of analytical relevance. Jn 21 and the
Gospel of Peter need serious consideration at this point, but Marcus's view
of the integrity of Jn 21 is not the right basis for that consideration.

9. The conclusion to that Postscript is inspirational rather than
analytical. Following a cinematic analogy, the Postscript ends thus: "Since
Mark does not wrap up all the loose ends, we have no alternative but to
return to the inception of his narrative, "the beginning of the good news of
Jesus Christ (1:1), and to start to read it again as *our* story (cf
Bartlett, Fact and Faith, 104). Mark's Gospel is just the *beginning* of the
good news, because Jesus' story has become ours, and we take it up where
Mark leaves off."

This is nicely put, in a homiletic sort of way. Analytically, it is a
copout. One can only conclude that the tools here brought to bear on this
perennial problem were insufficient for the task, and have left the problem
very much where they found it. As have a hundred commentaries before it. The
series, at least as typified by this crux, remains indeed firmly anchored in
the past, and at such points the past is not good enough.

10. Appendix: Historical Problems in the Markan Sanhedrin Trial. Marcus
lists (p1129) the Doublets in the Markan Trial Scenes, without seriously
suspecting that one passage is a derivative of the other. Yarbro Collins did
pursue that implication, and her commentary accordingly stands higher at
this point. Marcus concludes: "All of this is not to argue that the Markan
portrayal of Jesus' Sanhedrin trial is completely unhistorical. Rather, the
historical memory of a nighttime interrogation by the high priest, perhaps
assisted by some advisors (a "sanhedrin"), has been elaborated in line with
early Christian convictions - including those of Mark himself (cf the
introduction to the COMMENT on 14:53-65). The result, here again, is that
everything in Mark is ultimately historical, and that nothing in Mark is
later than anything else in Mark. To this reader, that is comforting rather
than convincing.

11. The volume is dedicated to Dale Allison, with fulsome backup in the
Preface, but as those scanning the in-line references and chart captions
will discover (see also the above quotes), Marcus is perhaps more indebted
to the preceding work of Raymond Brown, and particularly Brown's commentary
on John (Anchor, 1966 and 1970). The idea that John is relevant to Mark, and
perhaps even that, as one pastor of my acquaintance put it, "John finally
got it right," seems to turn up now and then in this commentary. That idea
is delusory. The Johannine literature, in all probability Ephesian rather
than Palestinian or Syrian in origin, and highly distinct in theological
tendency, is the furthest removed from Mark in every readily ascertained
sense. That aJn struggled to make chronological sense of what (by his
lights) was chronologically confused in Mark or earlier traditions
generally, is indubitable. That he has succeeded in getting past Mark to the
real actual literal events, however, is not a plausible proposition. Every
successive Gospel tries to clean up at least some of the inconcinnities of
the previous one or ones, and John is no exception. But in doing so, they
only get further away from the most previous one of all. Improvement is a
different game than preservation. Even if we happen to like the
improvements, as of course we are meant to - that is what they are there
for.

12. Marcus is very tempted, a propos the Naked Young Man, by Morton Smith's
alleged discovery; it is only at the end of the Appendix: The Youth Who Ran
Away Naked (p1125) that he acknowledges the "increasing suspicion" (citing
Ehrman and Carlson) that "Smith himself forged the Secret Gospel." I would
call it not a suspicion, but a demonstration. Marcus concludes, more
wistfully than manfully, "the evidence provided by this "Gospel" may be
irrelevant to the question at hand." Yes, and to any other imaginable
question. Not only the inconsistencies of Mark, but the perpetrations of
more modern times, are difficult for Marcus to accept, and indeed to
relinquish. It is a limitation.

13. The arrangement of the volume, with translation in front, then a series
of Comments on the passages, interspersed with Notes on those same passages,
does not exactly facilitate reference. It also leads to duplication, or in
the absence of duplication, potential contradiction, between Notes and
Comments. In the case of the Note and then immediately following, the
Comment on Mk 14:51-52 (the naked young man), the suggestions are on
essentially the same level, and would have been better combined. Much page
turning is a weariness of the index finger, not to mention any higher
faculties.

14. The Note (*not* the Comment) to 14:47 (*not* 14:51-52), after settling
on an original reading HEIS DE TIS, mentions the possibility that this idiom
has in mind "someone whom the author knows but does not wish to mention."
Lagrange is quoted to the effect that Mark knows that the swordsman is
Peter, but suppresses the fact "for prudential reasons." Theissen is quoted
as rejecting the identification with Peter, but as thinking that this and
the "young man who runs away naked in 14:51-52 is a protective device for
still-living followers of Jesus and thus an indication of the early
provenance of the pre-Markan passion narrative." On my dating, the same
argument could be made for the *Markan* passion narrative. This
name-suppression proposal has its interest, but it needs to be brought to
bear against the conspicuous and narratively unnecessary naming of the sons
of Simon of Cyrene at 15:21. On p1048, Marcus says of these names, "For
Markan readers, this interpretation of Simon as an honorary disciple
probably would have been helped by the circumstance that his sons, Alexander
and Rufus, later became members of the Markan community itself (see the
INTRODUCTION in v1 p27-28)." Some internal collation might have been welcome
at this point. Or even, perish the thought, some further thought. Though I
have already conceded that further thought would have mitigated against the
larger goal of getting the book out of Marcus's door, and onto my doorstep.

15. p995, at the end of the first paragraph: "The reading with EPI GYMNOU,
therefore, best explains the other texts and is to be preferred." This is
the Tischendorf principle, the beginning and end of philological wisdom. You
can't talk about the text until you know exactly what text it is you are
talking about, and this is how you decide what text you are talking about.
Admirable.

16. Salt. The salt sequence is another thing which it is tempting to look up
in a new Mark. In passing (p671/2), we have "It is jarring, moreover, that
Jesus addresses the disciples in 9:33-34, but then calls "the Twelve" to him
in 19:35 (see Gnilka, 2.55." The desirable consequence of being jarred is
that one is jolted out of one's comfortable assumptions about what one is
reading. Not only is this "Twelve" jarring and intrusive, so is *almost
every other* reference to the Twelve in Mark. The obvious implication is
that the Twelve were not known to the original Markan narrative. Marcus is
not open to this obvious implication. He is merely jarred. That he is jarred
is most definitely evidence, but not, apparently, evidence that he himself
is prepared to use.

Marcus instead concludes, "It is likely, then, that the evangelist himself
is responsible for much of 9:33-34. It is also probable that Mark has added
the concluding sayings in 9:50b, "Have salt in yourselves and be at peace
with each other," which forms an inclusion (see the GLOSSARY) with the theme
of intracommunity strife in 9:33-34 (cf Lane, 339)."

I would agree (with Lane) that the last "salt" saying is meant to link the
preceding keyword-linked series to the previous bit where the disciples are
competing with each other. I note in passing that this addition is very much
in the spirit of Proto-James, another very early Christian document. Where
the sayings in the middle came from is another matter. Dave Gentile (of this
list) has his theory, and others are perhaps possible. See the table of
keyword links on p672 as a way of starting to think about this segment of
Mark. Some of the "links" look like nothing more than discourse continuity,
though it seems at least possible that we have here, at some point, previous
material incorporated into Mark by the first author of Mark (this is the
only place in Mark where I find such an assumption actually suggested by the
form of the text). The question is where the incorporated series begins and
ends. On that, and related matters, further discussion might be helpful. I
would suggest, as a possible element in that discussion, that the narrative
matter might with profit be separated from what looks like the preaching
matter. The latter evokes what I have elsewhere called the Hellfire Jesus, a
figure very far removed, and in the nature of things probably much earlier,
than the Nice Jesus of Mt/Lk (or any common segment extracted therefrom).

Other suggestions might be made, but this is a comment on Marcus and not a
comment on Mark, and I will leave it, if at all, for another occasion.

The function of a book is to tell you the answer, or failing that, to make
you mad enough to try to seek the answer yourself. Marcus v2 seems to meet
both criteria, and its place on the shelves of the faithful (including those
faithful to the canons of philology) is thus doubtless secure. Order while
you can. If past practice is any guide, there is no guarantee that the HB
will be kept in print.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Stylometric tests show Marcan narrative
closer _in usage of function words_
to 4 Kingdoms and Revelation than
to Matthew or Luke, though some later sections
of Mark are very slightly "more Hellenic"
as Voelz correctly noted.

David M.

------SC's reply to C.Jones ran-----------
>> My point is simply that Mk is written in the same style and structure
>> as Mt and Lk, which suggests strongly that all three were based on
>> written sources.

> The way that I see it is that Matthew and Luke have a similar style
> and structure as Mark is not merely because they used written sources
> but because the written source that they used was Mark.

> Stephen Carlson




---------
David Mealand,     University of Edinburgh


--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

To: Synoptic
In Response To: David Mealand
On: Stylometrics
From: Bruce

David had said: "Stylometric tests show Marcan narrative closer _in usage of
function words_
to 4 Kingdoms and Revelation than to Matthew or Luke, though some later
sections of Mark are very slightly "more Hellenic" as Voelz correctly
noted."

Exact reference please?

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst