In Mk 1:2 par, both Mt and Lk do not have the Malachi quote.
Both cite it later at Mt 11:10/Lk 7:27, but not here. Did they both omit it,
because it is not from Isaiah? Did they read it at all in their copy of
Mark? Did they have a different source?
What do you think?


Best wishes
     Wieland
     <><
--------------------------
Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
mailto:wie@...
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie
Textcritical commentary:
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/

Last time I looked at this one I remember it looked like an insertion in Mark's
text. I think Fledderman makes the argument that the "Q" version is earlier, and
may have some valid points. Also, it looks like an interpolation in Mark. You
can take it out and the text is smoother.

My hypothesis would be that it is originally authored in Matthew and/or a saying
source. Luke picks it up from there, and it is a late addition to the text of
Mark.

Dave Gentile
Naperville IL

--- In Synoptic@yahoogroups.com, "Wieland Willker" <wie@...> wrote:
>
> In Mk 1:2 par, both Mt and Lk do not have the Malachi quote.
> Both cite it later at Mt 11:10/Lk 7:27, but not here. Did they both omit it,
> because it is not from Isaiah? Did they read it at all in their copy of
> Mark? Did they have a different source?
> What do you think?
>
>
> Best wishes
>     Wieland
>     <><
> --------------------------
> Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
> mailto:wie@...
> http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie
> Textcritical commentary:
> http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/
>

Wieland & Dave,

Just a few comments on this rather complex case.

Firstly there is no textual evidence for the omission of the Malachi
quotation in Mk 1:2.

Secondly it appears quite natural in the text of Mark (apart from the
erroneous attribution to Isaiah), where it was probably the author's prior
plan to present John the Baptist as God's messenger.

Thirdly the hypothetical "Q" appears to have led some commentators astray.
Thus Davies & Allison (Matthew, II, 250) observe the closeness in wording
between Mk 1:2b and Mt 11:10, but struggle to explain it because they are
constrained to see the latter as Q, and so cannot admit the simplest
explanation, i.e. that Mt 11:10 was influenced by Mk 1:2b.

Fleddermann puts forward four arguments that Mark was here dependent on Q
(Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary, 370). His confidence is not justified.
In all four he claims in effect that 'Q' has the better (more natural) text
or context and therefore Mark was dependent on Q. If one were to assume that
Mt 11:2-11 // Lk 7:18-28 was part of Q as he does, then his arguments seem
plausible. But his synoptic theory does not allow him even to contemplate
the simpler view that here Matthew could have made improvements to Mark just
as he did, for instance, in many of the 'Minor Agreements', and most notably
in the prologue to Jesus' ministry with the grand genealogy and birth
narratives.

My conclusion is that Matthew omitted Mk 1:2b in the parallel Mt 3:3 mainly
because of the incorrect attribution and perhaps partly because he was
intending to use the Malachi quotation later. Luke had his eye on Matthew as
well as Mark in omitting it in Lk 3:4 (c.f. "and fire" in Lk 3:16), though
he may also have been influenced by the same motivations as Matthew.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

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

----------

On 27/8/09 3:10 pm, "gentdave1" <gentile_dave@...> wrote:

> Last time I looked at this one I remember it looked like an insertion in
> Mark's text. I think Fledderman makes the argument that the "Q" version is
> earlier, and may have some valid points. Also, it looks like an interpolation
> in Mark. You can take it out and the text is smoother.
>
> My hypothesis would be that it is originally authored in Matthew and/or a
> saying source. Luke picks it up from there, and it is a late addition to the
> text of Mark.
>
> Dave Gentile
> Naperville IL
>
> --- In Synoptic@yahoogroups.com, "Wieland Willker" <wie@...> wrote:
>>
>> In Mk 1:2 par, both Mt and Lk do not have the Malachi quote.
>> Both cite it later at Mt 11:10/Lk 7:27, but not here. Did they both omit it,
>> because it is not from Isaiah? Did they read it at all in their copy of
>> Mark? Did they have a different source?
>> What do you think?
>>
>>
>> Best wishes
>>     Wieland
>>     <><
>> --------------------------
>> Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
>> mailto:wie@...
>> http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie
>> Textcritical commentary:
>> http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Synoptic-L homepage: http://NTGateway.com/synoptic-lYahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Dave G / Wieland Willker / Ron Price
From: Bruce

Partly from another angle, in response to Dave G and (later) to Ron (see at
end for the joke implicit in this):

RON: Firstly there is no textual evidence for the omission of the Malachi
quotation in Mk 1:2.

BRUCE: Meaning, no manuscript variant evidence from the public period of the
text. But we may here be talking about the growth period of one or more of
these texts, in which case the manuscript evidence, helpful as it always is,
may not be the end of the matter. It surely lets us fine down the discussion
to an early period, but that seems to be where the discussion was already.

DAVE: Last time I looked at this one [Mk 1:2] I remember it looked like an
insertion in Mark's text. . . You can take it out and the text is smoother.

BRUCE: That is a valid part, and in simple cases a necessary part, of the
test for an interpolation. So far so good. But it is perilous to use without
its other part, namely, that the piece in question is also in some way at
odds with its context. Mark is so episodic in structure that there is hardly
a passage which could not be removed without benefit to the surrounding
text, up to and including removing the whole thing (perhaps the simplest
solution of all to the Synoptic Problem, but still). We need a second
criterion.

I don't myself see that this piece is out of place in Mark. So also:

RON: Secondly it appears quite natural in the text of Mark (apart from the
erroneous attribution to Isaiah), where it was probably the author's prior
plan to present John the Baptist as God's messenger.

BRUCE: Exactly. And we might note the erroneous attribution to Isaiah. It is
typical of many of the Minor Agreements (which is what you have left when
the Major Agreement have been moved to another part of the worktable, thus
preventing an integral approach to the problem) that they tend to correct
Mark's errors, make good his shortcomings, or clean up his references. This
detail would be in the third category. Nothing remotely surprising. As Ron
later put it:

RON: But his [Fleddermann's] synoptic theory does not allow him even to
contemplate the simpler view that here Matthew could have made improvements
to Mark just as he did, for instance, in many of the 'Minor Agreements', and
most notably in the prologue to Jesus' ministry with the grand genealogy and
birth narratives.

DAVE: I think Fleddermann makes the argument that the "Q" version is
earlier, and may have some valid points.

BRUCE: Fleddermann, Mark and Q, 25-31. I find the argument thin, in that it
omits some aspects, and begins with the "Q" end, that is, it assumes Q. For
me, Q still requires to be demonstrated. And if demonstrated de novo, I
suspect that it would wind up quite a different document (M Goulder thinks
that it would vanish altogether. He may be right, but I am not quite ready
to go that far).

RON: Thirdly . . . Fleddermann puts forward four arguments that Mark was
here dependent on Q (Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary, 370). His
confidence is not justified. In all four he claims in effect that 'Q' has
the better (more natural) text or context and therefore Mark was dependent
on Q. If one were to assume that Mt 11:2-11 // Lk 7:18-28 was part of Q as
he does, then his arguments seem plausible. . .

BRUCE: Right. These discussions tend to ignore that the placement of the
Malachi saying is different in all three texts, but that they all have it
(in Mt and Lk without an attribution, but at least not with a wrong
attribution). Wieland's original statement of the problem actually included
this important datum:

WIELAND: In Mk 1:2 par, both Mt and Lk do not have the Malachi quote.
Both cite it later at Mt 11:10/Lk 7:27, but not here.

BRUCE: Exactly, and this is important. The rearrangements of Mk in Mt, and
of both Mk and Mt in Lk, are among the clearest indications we have of what
the respective authors were up to, and also of what they relied on, *and
reacted against,* in carrying out their respective intentions. If we have
explained the relocation of Mk's Malachi saying in Mt (no longer at the
beginning, but following the socalled Sermon on the Mount), and its further
relocation in Lk (amid a bunch of original Lk compositions, be it noted),
then we are well along toward understanding the Synoptic process.

RON: Luke had his eye on Matthew as well as Mark in omitting it in Lk 3:4
(c.f. "and fire" in Lk 3:16), though he may also have been influenced by the
same motivations as Matthew.

BRUCE: Right. This is the kind of thing we need. A larger view of the
passage, and the factors that bear on its use by the respective authors, is
a much healthier way of going about these things. I think that only so are
we likely to get anywhere. (Always assuming that somebody *wants* to get
anywhere).

There are larger issues also. Joseph Verheyden, in his review of "Mark and
Q," pointed out one of the major problems with including this passage in Q,
namely, that it violates the supposed "sayings" genre, and makes Q a
narrative of the life of Jesus; that is, a narrative gospel in the sense of
Mark et al (Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Dec 1966 p413: "What is
presented as a support turns out to be a frontal attack on the Two-Source
Hypothesis; the refinement indeed leads to its end").

If the hypothesis of a sayings source leads, in its working out, to a source
that is not after all a sayings source, then the hypothesis is certainly in
some trouble. At minimum, it needs initial restatement. If the initial
restatement says that Q is a narrative gospel, then the paucity of other
narrative material in Q comes up for notice, and its lack of a Crucifixion
narrative becomes after all a problem, perhaps a crux. Fleddermann does not
seem to recognize these problems, but there they are all the same.

DAVE: My hypothesis would be that it is originally authored in Matthew
and/or a saying source. Luke picks it up from there, and it is a late
addition to the text of Mark.

BRUCE: Well, but that and what else? I need to see more before I can take
"late addition to the text of Mark" as a serious possibility. How many other
passages would be subject to the same possibility, and how similar are they,
and to what extent can a single intelligible motive be found for their
addition?

One of the hardest things for Markan posteriorists to explain is: How could
Mark have copied/conflated Mt/Lk, a situation in which all he needed to
write good Greek was just to keep his eye fixed and his pen moving, and yet
nevertheless, without any precedent in his exemplars, come up with what is
universally regarded as inferior Greek? A second is, How could Mark have
conflated Mt/Lk, which are both extremely respectful to the family of Jesus
(especially if you include Luke in Acts, where the Brother of Jesus has
become the acknowledged Head of the Christian Church), and yet come up with
a text which not only omits the family of Jesus at all places where his
exemplars have them, but includes a brand new and thus gratuitous incident
which puts them in the worst possible light - as unbelievers and indeed as
opponents?

Such cases, to me, are reminders of why we need to require a rational, a
conceivably real, scenario for a hypothesis before we entertain that
hypothesis seriously. Otherwise, the whole thing is too easy, and too
subject to systematic whim and momentary convenience.

To come at last to Wieland's original questions.

WIELAND: Did they both omit it, because it is not from Isaiah?

BRUCE: No. They don't omit it, they move it elsewhere. For reasons which can
be supplied if desired.

WIELAND: Did they read it at all in their copy of Mark?

BRUCE: That seems to be the simplest solution: the one that adequately
covers the observed facts with the least waste motion.

WIELAND: Did they have a different source?

BRUCE: Same answer: Not proved, and to my mind, not indicated. The best
evidence for Mt/Lk having based themselves on a slightly different text of
Mk than the Mk we now have is surely the Minor Agreements. But these turn
out to be, for the most part, capable of explanation within the scenario Mk
  > Mt > Lk. There may be a residue of cases which are better explained
otherwise, but its extent and implications remain to be demonstrated.

FINAL COMMENT

Looking back on the above before sending it, I guess I have to smile. I have
just mentioned as a very natural scenario Mk > Mt > Lk, with many little
Minor Agreements where Lk agrees with Mt's improvements in Mk, but wants to
state them in his very own way. We can read the above note as an example of
that relationship, with Dave G playing the role of Mk, Ron (so to speak, Mt)
coming along with disagreements, and myself (Lk) largely agreeing with Ron,
but restating his points in my own way, and with some additional and
original material.

Those who were at SBL 2007 (or who save their Synoptic messages) are
entitled to an extra dose of amusement, since on those occasions I have held
that Luke was composed in two phases, one before he had encountered Matthew,
and one after. Similarly, my comments above were originally composed in
response to Dave, but were not posted until Ron's message had appeared, and
were accordingly revised and somewhat rearranged from their original form,
in order to take account of Ron's remarks.

Seems to be nothing new under that particular sun.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

I note a couple of points about this passage that incline me towards my view.

First of all by saying this is an addition to Mark, I mean an addition made
after it has left the authors full control, that is after "publication" date, or
at least after the date where it shifted from "private" to "proprietary".
Obviously, the change still has to be early enough, however, for it to
eventually replace the original text in all existing copies.

One thing that fits with this is the misattribution. The early layers of Mark,
in my view, show a deep familiarity with the OT, in fact he seems, in my view,
to assume more on the part of his audience than may seem reasonable to us. I see
it as unlikely that this author made this mistake.

Another point is that Luke groups this material outside of the material he
gathers from Mark, and with material he gathered from elsewhere
(Matthew/Q/Luke's mind, etc...). At other points when this happens, I find the
best solution to be that Luke did not see this bit of text in his copy of Mark.
This passage seems to fit that pattern, in my view. That is - Luke tells us he
didn't see in in Mark, by not placing it with the material he got from Mark.

Finally, Fledderman's argument about the word SOU, sticks in my mind. Without
going back to review in detail, he argues that SOU is not in the OT passages,
and is a slightly poor fit in Mark, but well suited to its "Q" environment. This
may indicate that the passage in Mark is dependent on a "Q-like" passage
containing the word SOU.

Not exactly an iron clad case, but that's why I'm inclined to see it the way I
do.

Dave Gentile
Riverside, IL

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Dave G
On: Mk 1:2
From: Bruce

DAVE: I note a couple of points about this passage that incline me towards
my view.

First of all by saying this is an addition to Mark, I mean an addition made
after it has left the authors full control, that is after "publication"
date, or at least after the date where it shifted from "private" to
"proprietary". Obviously, the change still has to be early enough, however,
for it to eventually replace the original text in all existing copies.

BRUCE: If the book has left its protected state (in the care of a person or
institution, with limited distribution outside), then it is in the "copying"
period. More or less by definition, changes made at this level are copyist
changes or improvements, and should show up in manuscripts. But as Ron
points out, there is no confirmation on that side. Not even Bezae, whose
ancestor diverged very early from the ancestor of Vaticanus, shows a
difference (of this type; there are some tiny changes that don't affect the
present argument, or at least I think they don't). The proposed addition is
still possible, but I wouldn't say it is strongly supported.

If such a copyist improvement WERE made, what was its agenda? I cannot but
think that the supposed copyist was aware of one or both of the Mt/Lk
parallels, and is here conflating one or both with Mk. Since neither of
those passages identifies the source of the quote, our copyist might have
felt is was OK to stick it under Mk's "Isaiah" rubric. Can we say which of
Mt/Lk was the immediate source? No, since the quote is identical in Mt/Lk.
Then it might have been either, or both together. But the wording if that
identical quote differs slightly from the form in Mk, so we are positing an
altered addition. (Both have a final EMPROSQEN SOU "before you" which is
lacking in the Mk version).

Here is a problem for the Markan Posteriorists, and I think also for the
present theory of a single late addition to Mark. I thus don't regard this
first argument as tending weightily toward the given conclusion.

DAVE: One thing that fits with this is the misattribution. The early layers
of Mark, in my view, show a deep familiarity with the OT, in fact he seems,
in my view, to assume more on the part of his audience than may seem
reasonable to us. I see it as unlikely that this author made this mistake.

BRUCE: I guess it depends on one's layer theory. I note in passing that it
is welcome news that someone HAS a layer theory. My own impression is that
the early layers of Mk are written by someone, probably the same person
updating himself, who is a little off-center in his Greek, a little
breathlessly oral (rather than written) in his delivery, and a little
careless with his facts, including his quotes. The later layers of Mk, as I
see them, depart from all these details, and that perhaps second accretional
author is pretty adroit with his OT allusions (not quotes), which he works
subtly into the texture of things.

DAVE: Another point is that Luke groups this material outside of the
material he gathers from Mark, and with material he gathered from elsewhere
(Matthew/Q/Luke's mind, etc...). At other points when this happens, I find
the best solution to be that Luke did not see this bit of text in his copy
of Mark. This passage seems to fit that pattern, in my view. That is - Luke
tells us he didn't see in in Mark, by not placing it with the material he
got from Mark.

BRUCE: I doubt that Luke is trying to tell us anything at all in the way of
self-source criticism; he is probably trying to convince us that his
integrated account of salvation history is the one to go with. Given that
Luke is after Mark and also after Matthew, the question of why he puts the
piece which Matthew removed from its Markan location into a still different
location needs to be assessed against Luke's attitude toward Matthew; it
doesn't directly relate to Lk vis-a-vis Mark.

But the determinative case is surely that of Mt: How can we explain what
changes he made in Mk? I haven't an answer to propose (nor one to cite; the
only detailed studies of the Mt ~ Mk relation I have so far found are those
by Bacon, Farrer, and Goulder), except that I notice that Mt has invented a
scene with John in prison, hearing about the doings of his former protege,
and sending to inquire about them. The historical plausibility of this is
somewhere near nil, but anyway, Matthew is in charge, and that is what he
does. Two things may be relevant to Matthew's state of mind. (1) He is aware
of the gaucherie in the original Mark quotation, and rather than have Mark
cite two scriptures by name, he silently removes the erroneous one, leaving
a more correct but perfectly adequate Mark. He improves Mark. (2) He notices
that John the B drops out of sight after Jesus begins preaching (save for
the highly unlikely execution story in Mk, which reads like a late, if still
authorial, addition to Mk), and he thinks the story would be stronger if
John not merely predicted great things for Jesus at the beginning, but
verified his own prediction later on. Again, he doubtless feels that he is
strengthening the story this way, and mirabile dictu, here is this stray bit
of mislabeled prediction from Mark which he can slot into his story, by way
of reintroducing John to his readers. [I here decline to follow out the
details of the mixed Malachi/Exodus citation; maybe later].

I think what Mt has seemingly done to Mk here is authorially intelligible,
in both of its aspects well-intentioned toward Mk, though determined to
leave the reader with a less incorrect and more persuasive document.

DAVE: Finally, Fledderman's argument about the word SOU, sticks in my mind.
Without going back to review in detail, he argues that SOU is not in the OT
passages, and is a slightly poor fit in Mark, but well suited to its "Q"
environment. This may indicate that the passage in Mark is dependent on a
"Q-like" passage containing the word SOU.

BRUCE: So much for attempts to banish the OT angle. See, ad interim,
Beale/Carson 38f, 114f. It has been noted by previous generations that Mt is
strictly Septuagintal in his OT, save for a special group of passages,
possibly to be attributed to a second redaction of Mt, in which there is
unmistakable contact with the MT; that is, we may have a second authorial
hand in Mt who knows Hebrew as well as Greek. But again, this is not the
paragraph in which to follow out these possibilities.

DAVE: Not exactly an iron clad case, but that's why I'm inclined to see it
the way I do.

BRUCE: It seems to me that there are other possibilities here, all of which
look stronger to me on present evidence. Not that all relevant aspects have
yet come up for discussion.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

I'm only going to comment on one point here. I don't have time to look at the
specific details of Mark 1:2 at the moment. But I think it is a near certainty
that some of the original published versions of NT documents have been altered
in all surviving copies. One way we could look at this is to look at some small
set of our best surviving copies, then look at a list of details and see how
many times the earliest version survives in say 1,2, or 3 copies. We could
estimate the distribution and from that estimate how often the original text
should be expected to have survived in zero copies. We don't have to do the
calculation to know the answer is clearly not zero.

However, it is still a difficult case to make that something we find in all
surviving copies is not original. It can be done of course, but it is difficult.
This is easier in some parts of Mark, however, I believe, because I think Luke
does provide us a witness to an earlier version of Mark at some points. Thus on
occasion the original text of Mark survives in Luke but not in Mark. Mark 1:2
may be an example of this (or not), but there are better examples, I believe.

Dave Gentile



David Gentile
Statistician

Context4 Healthcare, Inc.
2056 Westings Avenue
Suite 220 Naperville, IL 60563

Phone: (630) 321-2985
Fax: (630) 654-1607
Email:
David.Gentile@...<mailto:David.Gentile@...\
>

________________________________
From: gpg@yahoogroups.com [mailto:gpg@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of E Bruce
Brooks
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 12:37 PM
To: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com
Cc: GPG
Subject: [GPG] Re: [Synoptic-L] Re: Mk 1:2



To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Dave G
On: Mk 1:2
From: Bruce

DAVE: I note a couple of points about this passage that incline me towards
my view.

First of all by saying this is an addition to Mark, I mean an addition made
after it has left the authors full control, that is after "publication"
date, or at least after the date where it shifted from "private" to
"proprietary". Obviously, the change still has to be early enough, however,
for it to eventually replace the original text in all existing copies.

BRUCE: If the book has left its protected state (in the care of a person or
institution, with limited distribution outside), then it is in the "copying"
period. More or less by definition, changes made at this level are copyist
changes or improvements, and should show up in manuscripts. But as Ron
points out, there is no confirmation on that side. Not even Bezae, whose
ancestor diverged very early from the ancestor of Vaticanus, shows a
difference (of this type; there are some tiny changes that don't affect the
present argument, or at least I think they don't). The proposed addition is
still possible, but I wouldn't say it is strongly supported.

If such a copyist improvement WERE made, what was its agenda? I cannot but
think that the supposed copyist was aware of one or both of the Mt/Lk
parallels, and is here conflating one or both with Mk. Since neither of
those passages identifies the source of the quote, our copyist might have
felt is was OK to stick it under Mk's "Isaiah" rubric. Can we say which of
Mt/Lk was the immediate source? No, since the quote is identical in Mt/Lk.
Then it might have been either, or both together. But the wording if that
identical quote differs slightly from the form in Mk, so we are positing an
altered addition. (Both have a final EMPROSQEN SOU "before you" which is
lacking in the Mk version).

Here is a problem for the Markan Posteriorists, and I think also for the
present theory of a single late addition to Mark. I thus don't regard this
first argument as tending weightily toward the given conclusion.

DAVE: One thing that fits with this is the misattribution. The early layers
of Mark, in my view, show a deep familiarity with the OT, in fact he seems,
in my view, to assume more on the part of his audience than may seem
reasonable to us. I see it as unlikely that this author made this mistake.

BRUCE: I guess it depends on one's layer theory. I note in passing that it
is welcome news that someone HAS a layer theory. My own impression is that
the early layers of Mk are written by someone, probably the same person
updating himself, who is a little off-center in his Greek, a little
breathlessly oral (rather than written) in his delivery, and a little
careless with his facts, including his quotes. The later layers of Mk, as I
see them, depart from all these details, and that perhaps second accretional
author is pretty adroit with his OT allusions (not quotes), which he works
subtly into the texture of things.

DAVE: Another point is that Luke groups this material outside of the
material he gathers from Mark, and with material he gathered from elsewhere
(Matthew/Q/Luke's mind, etc...). At other points when this happens, I find
the best solution to be that Luke did not see this bit of text in his copy
of Mark. This passage seems to fit that pattern, in my view. That is - Luke
tells us he didn't see in in Mark, by not placing it with the material he
got from Mark.

BRUCE: I doubt that Luke is trying to tell us anything at all in the way of
self-source criticism; he is probably trying to convince us that his
integrated account of salvation history is the one to go with. Given that
Luke is after Mark and also after Matthew, the question of why he puts the
piece which Matthew removed from its Markan location into a still different
location needs to be assessed against Luke's attitude toward Matthew; it
doesn't directly relate to Lk vis-a-vis Mark.

But the determinative case is surely that of Mt: How can we explain what
changes he made in Mk? I haven't an answer to propose (nor one to cite; the
only detailed studies of the Mt ~ Mk relation I have so far found are those
by Bacon, Farrer, and Goulder), except that I notice that Mt has invented a
scene with John in prison, hearing about the doings of his former protege,
and sending to inquire about them. The historical plausibility of this is
somewhere near nil, but anyway, Matthew is in charge, and that is what he
does. Two things may be relevant to Matthew's state of mind. (1) He is aware
of the gaucherie in the original Mark quotation, and rather than have Mark
cite two scriptures by name, he silently removes the erroneous one, leaving
a more correct but perfectly adequate Mark. He improves Mark. (2) He notices
that John the B drops out of sight after Jesus begins preaching (save for
the highly unlikely execution story in Mk, which reads like a late, if still
authorial, addition to Mk), and he thinks the story would be stronger if
John not merely predicted great things for Jesus at the beginning, but
verified his own prediction later on. Again, he doubtless feels that he is
strengthening the story this way, and mirabile dictu, here is this stray bit
of mislabeled prediction from Mark which he can slot into his story, by way
of reintroducing John to his readers. [I here decline to follow out the
details of the mixed Malachi/Exodus citation; maybe later].

I think what Mt has seemingly done to Mk here is authorially intelligible,
in both of its aspects well-intentioned toward Mk, though determined to
leave the reader with a less incorrect and more persuasive document.

DAVE: Finally, Fledderman's argument about the word SOU, sticks in my mind.
Without going back to review in detail, he argues that SOU is not in the OT
passages, and is a slightly poor fit in Mark, but well suited to its "Q"
environment. This may indicate that the passage in Mark is dependent on a
"Q-like" passage containing the word SOU.

BRUCE: So much for attempts to banish the OT angle. See, ad interim,
Beale/Carson 38f, 114f. It has been noted by previous generations that Mt is
strictly Septuagintal in his OT, save for a special group of passages,
possibly to be attributed to a second redaction of Mt, in which there is
unmistakable contact with the MT; that is, we may have a second authorial
hand in Mt who knows Hebrew as well as Greek. But again, this is not the
paragraph in which to follow out these possibilities.

DAVE: Not exactly an iron clad case, but that's why I'm inclined to see it
the way I do.

BRUCE: It seems to me that there are other possibilities here, all of which
look stronger to me on present evidence. Not that all relevant aspects have
yet come up for discussion.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst



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

Thanks to all who contributed to this question.
I haven't anything to add.
The beginning of Mk poses several, at present, unsolvable questions.

I agree with David that there are points where "something we find in all
surviving copies is not original".
This has been suggested earlier for Acts where D has large lacunae. Since at
several points D alone preserves the original text (acc. to NA), one can
calculate how many times the original is lost at those passages where D is
not extant.

Best wishes
     Wieland
     <><
--------------------------
Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
mailto:wie@...
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie
Textcritical commentary:
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/

To: GPG
Cc: WSW; Synoptic, various
In Response To: Dave I
On: Lk 7:46
From: Bruce

Dave asks about the meaning of three words omitted by Bezae in Lk 7:46. This
query raises a sympathetic echo in people like myself, who know no Greek and
have to guide themselves through these things by touching the walls. But in
default of other and necessarily more learned answers, let's see what comes
out that way in this case.

1. Swanson's Luke. Of the manuscripts he includes, both Bezae and Freer =
Washingtoniensis omit from the end of Lk 7:46 TOS PODAS MOU (so Vaticanus,
Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus. Many others have MOU TOS PODAS, whence UBS 4 = NA
27 MOU TOS PODAS). The translation of those words in my bilingual NT is "my
feet," and so without that phrase, we would presumably read for 7:46, You
did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed me with perfume." The
result of the elimination is to make the two anointings more analogous; it
does not change the *story,* from which the "feet' motif has not been
eliminated, but it makes the *words* more parallel, and is thus a
rhetorical, if not exactly a narrative, improvement. That's my suggestion in
response to Dave.

2. Continuing on (not that I was asked to continue on, but it seemed sort of
interesting), we find a similar situation in 7:47. Bezae, and this time
Bezae alone, omits the last phrase, corresponding to "for she loved much,
but to whom little is forgiven, he loves little." What was the point of
omitting this Jesuine explanation of the parallel between his own parable
and the woman before them all? I think we need only look at the knots into
which Fitzmyer (ad loc) ties himself in trying to resolve the theology of
forgiveness in this story. It's manifestly very uncomfortable, and I suggest
accordingly that the Bezae variant may plausibly be seen as a local
omission, made late in the history of Bezae (not early; unlike the
Noninterpolations, it has no standing as the original reading, and instead
belongs to the later vagaries of [the antecedent of] Bezae, like the Acts
expansions), and made in order to ease interpretation by at least not
highlighting a theological difficulty.

3. Like most in the field, Synoptic theory or no Synoptic theory, Fitzmyer
apparently believes that everything in all the Gospels really happened; the
incidents have merely come down to the various Evangelists in separate
streams of "tradition," thus accounting for the variants in parallel
versions, or the lack of parallels for some versions. The unspoken but
universal assumption behind the word "tradition," both NT-ishly and
Sinologically, is that all traditions are rooted in fact. So Jesus, in
Fitzmyer's view, must really have said this or something like it, and it is
his task to explain it.

The task is nothing if not formidable. As Fitzmyer himself honestly enough
conveys, and one can only admire his completeness, the theology of the
parable and the theology of the woman are irreconcilably different. Fitzmyer
must conclude (honoring the parable) that the woman has already been
forgiven when she enters, but in the immediately following story, Jesus in
fact forgives her sins, so there can have been no prior forgiveness. At this
point hermeneutical ingenuity comes into play, but I deplore hermeneutical
ingenuity, as merely a way of reaching a conclusion against what the text
evidence, if left to itself, would have implied.

One thing the text evidence here implies, as I read it, is that Luke has
been assiduous in introducing theological motifs into his story, but has not
been equally tidy in reconciling their mutual relationship. In a similar
way, he has wrenched the Nazareth story out of its Markan moorings, and
moved it to the beginning of his version of the Ministry of Jesus. In doing
so, he has made a symbolic point of great importance to his grand master
Luke/Acts narrative (the point being the consistent rejection of Jesus by
his own people), but he has left in his wake severe inconcinnities in the
narrative sequence, since the moved version of the Nazareth story continues
to imply a prior Capernaum story.

Why did he not fix this inconcinnity? Is he stupid? Or is he out of his mind
and ready for institutional commitment?

I suggest that he did not fix it for the same reason that I did not
eliminate a text box from chapter 3 of my current book when I moved it
instead to Chapter 2 - just the limitations on human awareness. One does the
thing one focuses on at that moment, and some static may be left in the
things one is, at that moment, less focused on.

4. I think that many things get easier to explain if we acknowledge that the
Gospels do not in their various garbled ways reflect a single and ultimately
historical tradition, but rather, that each Gospel reflects a stage in a
later, nonhistorical, imputed, and evolving tradition. That is, Christian
doctrine is something which is developing in this period, both rapidly and
diversely, and to arrest that development, to put on paper (in narratively
complete form) a certain stage reached or a certain version recommended in
that development, is probably the real purpose of the Gospels. Each in its
turn.

This, it seems to me, is why they are so competitive; why they sometimes get
so mad at each other, why they sometimes respect (to the point of copying
verbatim) some older version, and why at other times they scream and yell
and tear the older version to shreds and either leave it out altogether or
creatively reconstitute it at one or more other places in their own story.
This is inconsistent or unintelligible behavior only to someone who (like B
H Streeter, apparently) has never watched an author at work. It should be
immediately and unproblematically intelligible to any working author.

5. I thus see Luke as coming after Mark, and also after Matthew, and
minutely aware of Matthew's changes in Mark. I did not invent this idea;
Farrer/Goulder did. But if they hadn't, I would have: it fits the totality
of the evidence very convincingly; it leaps up at you out of any decent
Synopsis. Some of these Matthean changes in Mk, Luke admires (he is, after
all, a member of the same theological generation as Matthew). Other Matthean
changes he hates and omits, and still others he envies and thus seeks to
retain (they are too good to leave out altogether), but *differently;* he
insists on putting his own stamp on them, for better (as in the case of the
Annunciation Narrative) or (as in the case of the Sermon on the Mount) for
worse.

If we understand this triple attitude of Luke to Matthew, plus an original
(if later diluted) respect for Mark, plus a certain aspiration to widen the
culture of the Jesus story so as to make it more cosmopolitan (acceptable
not only in Jewish circles, but much more than previously in the bazaars and
hostelries and taverns of the trade centers) - if we understand these five
things, then I think we are getting close to a sense of Luke's mind and
motives, his Sitz im Argument, his reason for doing.

5a. Sinologically, the same thing is going on in the Shu documents,
conventionally accepted as transcripts from remote antiquity, but in their
substance showing all the marks of 04c political theory controversies and
legal developments. Many of the Shu were rewritten or extended to better
represent late 04c or early 03c theories than they did in their original 04c
versions. A generation passes, and the argument moves on to a different
stage, or reshapes itself around different hot-button issues. The texts, or
such texts as are still being actively maintained by their respective
sponsoring bodies, tend to move with the argument, and to continue to take
part in it.

6. It then seems that the two Bezae omissions, from the ends of Lk 7:46 and
Lk 7:47, have the result, and probably also the purpose, of making things
rhetorically or theologically easier for the preacher who has to recount,
and then explain, this story.

7. I wasn't asked, but I may venture to ask on my own account, What is Luke
doing by putting these difficult things in? What is he up to? I think he is
here rejecting what for him was a theological crux in Mark, in the story of
the Healing (properly, the Forgiveness) of the Paralytic. The paralytic in
Mark has done nothing whatever but lie there and be paralyzed; his friends
have shown love to him and faith in Jesus by bringing him to Jesus (and
through the roof - here is an attention-getting device if ever there was
one; no child of eight will ever forget it). But all that even the friends
ask for is healing. What they get, and get not by deserving it or by asking
for it, but out of Jesus's irritation with those bystanders who object to
the whole procedure, is forgiveness of sins. Luke had no trouble, I imagine,
with the idea of Jesus forgiving sins (as I mentioned, he is of a
theological generation later than Paul, during whose time Jesus was already
evolving into a forgiver of sins; that is, evolving into God). But the
arbitrary nature of the forgiveness in the Mark story must have bothered
Luke; for him, forgiveness must follow from repentance. And it must issue in
gratitude. Forgiveness is not a stone thrown in anger, to discomfit some
momentary opponent (which is what Mark makes it in his Paralytic story); it
is a relationship.

8. If so, can we get any hints or confirmations out of the way Lk treated
the original Mk "Paralytic" story in situ? Perhaps a few. First, Lk does
repeat that story. He follows some of the Matthean improvements (as in the
famous KRABBATOS crux, which he agrees in omitting as unbecomingly vulgar),
but not others (he preserves in altered form the final comment of the
onlookers in Mk, which Mt omits). So far, he is just taking sides as between
his sources, and tinkering slightly with the wording of his sources. Routine
moves of the worktable. But he does introduce one suggestive change. In Mk
(and Mt), only the onlookers glorify God; the paralytic himself simply gets
up and goes home, providing the occasion for the onlookers' amazement, but
not, as it were, participating in it. Whereas in Lk, and only in Lk, we have
the Paralytic himself, as he goes home, "glorifying God." That is, it would
appear that the gratitude of the one forgiven is important to Lk. For Mk and
for Mt after him, the impressiveness of the miracle was enough. Their story
was about Jesus, and was meant to document the power of Jesus. Lk reaches
inside the story and emphasizes (and, in his terms, makes more orthodox) the
feelings of the one who, for him, is the focal character in the story: the
Paralytic - the person who, in the story as Luke reads it, represents Luke
himself, and every other individual member of the Jesus community in his
time.

Luke does not object to the idea of the power of Jesus. He merely insists
that forgiveness is a two-part process: magnanimity on one end, and
gratitude on the other. The one forgiven contributes more to the process
than just his sins.

9. That is one confirmation of the suggestion, above, about how Luke felt
about the forgiveness process. Is there a second? I think so. I have earlier
suggested that though we can often discern Luke's disagreements and
preferences in the way he handles previous material, he can probably see him
clearer in the stuff he makes up himself, where he is not constrained by
prior text, some of which was already reverentially regarded within the
community of his hearers, but is authorially free to pick and choose, to
include or to invent as he may feel inclined. In that spirit, we may take up
the Story of the Ten Lepers. Why ten? For amplification, or course, but also
in order that a tiny minority of them, one man, a symbolic tithe of the
healed many, who comes to give God his due. That man returns afterward to
thank Jesus for the gift of salvation. Lk 17:11-19. No precise Mk or Mt
parallels. But here the theme of gratitude becomes not only visible, as it
faintly is in Lk's remake of the Markan Paralytic story, it becomes the
whole point of is own story.

10. Granted that there is no precise Synoptic parallel to this story, but of
course there is an *imprecise* parallel, the early Healing of the [One]
Leper in Mk 1:40-45 || Mt 8:1-4, Lk 5:12-16. Does Lk sabotage this story by
introducing the element of gratitude? No, he doesn't. He pretty much follows
his Vorlage. He does touch things up a little, but for different reasons.
For one, he does not follow Mt in omitting the sequel (the fact that the
healing became known), but at the same time, he *does* absolve the leper of
the guilt for its *becoming* known (Mk: But he went out and began to talk
freely about it, and to spread the news. Lk: But so much the more did the
report go abroad concerning him). So though there is no overt gratitude of
the healed person in this story, there is at least no overt disobedience,
and to that extent the story is tilted a little in the direction of the
sympathies and expectations that Lk elsewhere shows. Obedience is the best
gratitude.

11. As I once tried to point out in a published paper (but the editor of the
volume eliminated that section of the paper), it is not always enough to
read the passage, or even to read the context of the passage, you may
sometimes need to read the whole corpus, in order to get the sense and
import of some line or other.

11a. It is not enough to see that one Dzwo Jwan passage vacates a previous
idea of the relation between Heaven and Man, it is not even enough to see
that stories scattered throughout the Dzwo Jwan reflect one or the other
side of that great moral theory schism; it is maybe a little more adequate
when we have gone far enough with the question to see that an initial idea
of the Justice of Heaven is also abandoned, and also, at the same period - a
real time synchronism - in the Mician writings, the third largest corpus of
Warring States texts (the Dzwo Jwan itself is the largest). The Micians, to
be sure, diverge in a different direction (in what I might call a low-class
KRABBATOS direction: reliance not on Heaven but on avenging spirits for the
righting of injustices), but they diverge from the same starting point. The
great theory change of the 04c is away from Heaven as a direct and
sufficient actor in human affairs to something else, some other agency, or
some other way of explaining the fortunes of individuals and the rise and
fall of states. In the 03c, this "rejection of Heaven" development
culminates very beautifully in the Sywndz essay on Heaven, which argues
gently that Heaven indeed has its regularities, but that those regularities
have nothing to do with the affairs of men. The Mencians of that period, for
their part, retain more of a sense of Heavenly determinism in the affairs of
men, a stance for which they are roundly and explicitly abused by Sywndz.

11b. Again, if we notice that a long section has been inserted into the Kang
Gau (one of the most quoted of the Shu documents), we are doing well. But we
are doing even better if we also notice that there are similar extensions
and insertions in the Jyou Gau, in the Li Jvng, in the Lw Sying, and in many
of the Shu texts that purport to be transcripts from the Jou dynasty. We are
doing better yet if we notice that many of these insertions and extensions
involve the classical theory of law, or the classical idea of the history of
law, and that similar trajectories of evolution can be detected in other
texts contemporary with the Shu (again, the Mwodz is conspicuous among those
contemporary texts). It is at about this point, it seems to me, that we can
say we are beginning to understand the Kang Gau.

12. Insofar as may now be possible, we need to watch the whole of classical
Chinese culture moving, or the whole of early Christian doctrine evolving.
If we listen to the wind, that bloweth where it listeth, we can better
understand the more constrained motions of a single leaf.

Respectfully suggested,

Bruce

In his "The Case against Q", pp. 165-69, Mark Goodacre argues that if the
Minor Agreements were to be accepted as valid evidence that Luke knew
Matthew, then this would vindicate his case against Q. In a footnote (p.167,
n.51), he claims that the fact that a handful of scholars [Simons et al.]
accept Luke's dependence on both Q and Matthew is a red herring because
these scholars had reasons other than Mt/Lk independence for postulating Q.
He goes on to claim that Luke's knowledge of Matthew would take away the
very reason for postulating Q.

I see no red herring. Indeed the fact that even a handful of scholars have
other reasons for accepting Luke's dependence on both Q and Matthew should
have acted as a red flag, for it plainly contradicts Mark's claim in the
last sentence of my previous paragraph.

The heart of the problem is semantic. "Q" is a hypothetical and secondary
construct which means a whole range of different things to different
scholars. To get back to basics, we should surely try to minimize our
references to "Q".

Therefore, given the priority of Mark's gospel, I would like to see the
'case against Q' presented instead as (1) the case for Luke's knowledge of
Matthew (the details of which Mark G. presents very well, but regrettably
not in a distinct section) and (2) the case for/against the existence of a
written sayings source. Farrer supporters tend to avoid facing up to the
latter, preferring to hide behind the semantically confusing mantra that
Luke's knowledge of Matthew 'takes away the very reason for positing Q'. If
the intention is to claim that Luke's knowledge of Matthew 'undermines the
case for a written sayings source', then they should say so, and present the
arguments against the 'other reasons' for such a source. Perhaps they are
reluctant to choose between abandoning the claim that Sanders & Davies are
on the side of Farrer (for they expressed confidence in [unspecified]
sources for the sayings material), and admitting that there is/are such
source(s) and therefore there is no 'undermining'.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

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

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Ron Price
From: Bruce

I feel we are in deja vu country here, but sometimes repetition has its
point, especially if nothing happened last time. Let me then repeat my
earlier agreement with Ron, that the removal of the assumption that Lk did
not know Matthew DOES NOT not necessarily entail the vanishing of the Q
hypothesis. What it does probably do is require the Q hypothesis to be
reformulated, and Q to be reconstructed entirely de novo, consistently on
the new assumptions.

As I have earlier remarked, my own take on the extended Goulder explanation
of Luke from Matthew, which let me again say seems to me one of the
important monuments of 20c NT, is that not all the explanations on the model
Mt > Lk are equally convincing. There are a few cases where, to the neutral
philological eye, the other sequence is more convincing. What someone needs
to do next, it has always seemed to me, is (a) Agree in at least a
preliminary way on the identity of these passages, what I will call the
Goulder Residue. (b) Examine them to see if they make a plausible text, or
if they appear to be disparate. (c) Frame a hypothesis or hypotheses to
account for the existence of this material prior to both Lk and Mt.

Any takers?

I have separately called for more attention to the question of how Mt uses
Mk. There were no replies to my request for previous studies on this. My own
range of awareness includes Bacon, Farrer, and again Goulder. If someone
recalls another, I would still be interested to know of it. In my mind, this
study should precede the other, as clearing the ground, introducing
ourselves to Matthew and his way with previous texts, and the points at
which he was, and was not, comfortable with the narrative and theological
points reached by his chief predecessor.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Bruce wrote:


I have separately called for more attention to the question of how Mt uses
Mk. There were no replies to my request for previous studies on this. My own
range of awareness includes Bacon, Farrer, and again Goulder. If someone
recalls another, I would still be interested to know of it. In my mind, this
study should precede the other, as clearing the ground, introducing
ourselves to Matthew and his way with previous texts, and the points at
which he was, and was not, comfortable with the narrative and theological
points reached by his chief predecessor.


An inauspicious day to make the above comment, the feast-day of Saint Matthew,
who I am sure resents the idea that he was largely a plagiarist any day of the
year, but would hope for?relief?from this hypothesis once a year, at least,?on
September 21. Requiescat in pace!



L.M.




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

To: Synoptic
In Response To: Leonard
On: Matthew
From: Bruce

LEONARD: . . .Saint Matthew, who I am sure resents the idea that he was
largely a plagiarist . . .

BRUCE: No matter whose feast day this may chance to be, this remark is
completely uncalled for. Is it customary to refer to Vergil as a plagiarist
because his work is massively shaped around, and extrapolated from,
something by Homer? Is the only term of approbation for an Evangelist going
to be that every word in his work is made up completely out of his own head?
It would surely create something of a revolution in systematic theology, to
mention no other areas, if this attitude were adopted.

Maybe we could use a more workmanlike list of days.

As a start on one, I might note that 19 Sept 1740 was the birthday of Tswei
Shu, the most systematic critic of ancient texts and historical traditions
that traditional China ever produced. His moment of untruth (he tells us)
occurred before the age of twenty, when he began to doubt the authenticity
of certain Analects passages, but he went far beyond mere authenticity
questions, and far beyond the focus on one text. He took up the whole of
ancient tradition, and asked how much of it was credible. His lifework,
collectively titled Kau-syin Lu (Investigations in Credibility), was his
answer to that question. Tswei Shu worked in poverty all his life. He died
leaving a few published sections of his work. His one disciple, Chvn Li-hv
(1761-1825), devoted the remaining ten years of his own life to trying to
publish a few more.

So far my old Philology Calendar, now offline. Tswei Shu is not exactly an
encouraging model, and better so. It would be wrong to be encouraging, since
this is a hard business. It does not run parallel, for any great distance,
with the way of the great world. But I intend it to be an inspirational
model. Tswei Shu inherited a scholarly tradition almost totally stultified,
and he let some air of reason into it. The moral is that the thing can be
done. By anyone, or by any six, who are prepared to make the effort, and to
pay the price.

But name-calling is not going to get us there. Would anyone who is
interested in taking up these matters in an analytical vein care to get in
touch with me privately?

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Bruce Brooks wrote:

> I feel we are in deja vu country here, but sometimes repetition has its
> point, especially if nothing happened last time.

It's true that I've made this general case before, but not in exactly this
way. In making a measured criticism of a passage in Mark's most important
book on the Synoptic Problem, I was (maybe even 'am') hoping to provoke a
response from Mark himself (if you're reading this, greetings from
Derbyshire!).

> Let me then repeat my
> earlier agreement with Ron, that the removal of the assumption that Lk did
> not know Matthew DOES NOT not necessarily entail the vanishing of the Q
> hypothesis.

Thanks for the expression of agreement, though the assessment would be less
ambiguous if "Q hypothesis" were replaced by "hypothesis of a written
sayings source" if indeed that's what you mean, Bruce, according to the 'get
back to basics' principle I tried to advocate in my original post in this
thread.

> What it does probably do is require the Q hypothesis to be
> reformulated, and Q to be reconstructed entirely de novo, consistently on
> the new assumptions.

This I have done, and it's all set out on my Web site.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

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

Some of my previous arguments for the synoptic use of a sayings source do
not necessarily apply to Luke. So I have now extended and clarified the
arguments for Luke's use of a sayings source. They are set out on the page
indicated below under the title: "Evidence that Luke also used a sayings
source".

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/syno_LkMt.html

My dear brother Leonard

Matthew does not rest in peace but beholds the glory of Jesus Christ forever.

As for Matthew using Mark, huh!

Prove it!

As far as I am concerned all markers (pun intended) and pointers show Matthew
was written well before Mark.

BTW, this is not a contest, or protest. Since all four Gospels were written by
the Catholic Church by the original eyewitnesses by the authority of the Church
in concert there is no Synoptic Problem, and obviously a solution to your
perceptions is very easy to document and explain.

John



John N. Lupia III

New Jersey, USA; Beirut, Lebanon

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Roman-Catholic-News/

God Bless Everyone

--- On Mon, 9/21/09, Maluflen@... <Maluflen@...> wrote:

From: Maluflen@... <Maluflen@...>
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] Re herring or red flag?
To: Synoptic@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, September 21, 2009, 7:53 PM






 





                   Bruce wrote:



I have separately called for more attention to the question of how Mt uses

Mk. There were no replies to my request for previous studies on this. My own

range of awareness includes Bacon, Farrer, and again Goulder. If someone

recalls another, I would still be interested to know of it. In my mind, this

study should precede the other, as clearing the ground, introducing

ourselves to Matthew and his way with previous texts, and the points at

which he was, and was not, comfortable with the narrative and theological

points reached by his chief predecessor.



An inauspicious day to make the above comment, the feast-day of Saint Matthew,
who I am sure resents the idea that he was largely a plagiarist any day of the
year, but would hope for?relief?from this hypothesis once a year, at least,?on
September 21. Requiescat in pace!



L.M.



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































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

Surely one argument for some sort of Q is that of Bussmann, rehashed
entertainingly by Casey: ie that the Q material can be seen to fall
into two types: one where verbal agreement is tight (implying a common
Greek source, which could of course be Matthew!) and one where the
greek agreement is much less close, implying a common non-greek source
(ie in the mind of both of these authors, an Aramaic source).  Casey
says in his monograph on Aramaic sources and Q that it is important to
pay attention to the distinction between these two types of "Q" and
its relationship to the order of the Q material in Matthew and Luke,
which sounds very intriguing but is not expanded further as far as I
can see.  Any suggestions here gratefully received!

In extremis, one could use this to shrink Q down to i) passages of
Matthew that Luke inserted (including Mark-Q overlap) and ii) common
knowledge of an Aramaic source that they either independently
translated or had access to different translations of.  Given that
there is precise linguistic contact in the Passion narrative twice
("who was it who struck you?" and "Peter went out and wept
bitterly"*), the suggestion would be that passion narrative minor
agreements would be from Matthew, not a Q source.


Graham Budd

*the latter of which has some textual "issues" however...

_____________________________________
On 21 sep 2009, at 16.16, Ron Price wrote:

> In his "The Case against Q", pp. 165-69, Mark Goodacre argues that
> if the
> Minor Agreements were to be accepted as valid evidence that Luke knew
> Matthew, then this would vindicate his case against Q. In a footnote
> (p.167,
> n.51), he claims that the fact that a handful of scholars [Simons et
> al.]
> accept Luke's dependence on both Q and Matthew is a red herring
> because
> these scholars had reasons other than Mt/Lk independence for
> postulating Q.
> He goes on to claim that Luke's knowledge of Matthew would take away
> the
> very reason for postulating Q.
>
> I see no red herring. Indeed the fact that even a handful of
> scholars have
> other reasons for accepting Luke's dependence on both Q and Matthew
> should
> have acted as a red flag, for it plainly contradicts Mark's claim in
> the
> last sentence of my previous paragraph.
>
> The heart of the problem is semantic. "Q" is a hypothetical and
> secondary
> construct which means a whole range of different things to different
> scholars. To get back to basics, we should surely try to minimize our
> references to "Q".
>
> Therefore, given the priority of Mark's gospel, I would like to see
> the
> 'case against Q' presented instead as (1) the case for Luke's
> knowledge of
> Matthew (the details of which Mark G. presents very well, but
> regrettably
> not in a distinct section) and (2) the case for/against the
> existence of a
> written sayings source. Farrer supporters tend to avoid facing up to
> the
> latter, preferring to hide behind the semantically confusing mantra
> that
> Luke's knowledge of Matthew 'takes away the very reason for positing
> Q'. If
> the intention is to claim that Luke's knowledge of Matthew
> 'undermines the
> case for a written sayings source', then they should say so, and
> present the
> arguments against the 'other reasons' for such a source. Perhaps
> they are
> reluctant to choose between abandoning the claim that Sanders &
> Davies are
> on the side of Farrer (for they expressed confidence in [unspecified]
> sources for the sayings material), and admitting that there is/are
> such
> source(s) and therefore there is no 'undermining'.
>
> Ron Price
>
> Derbyshire, UK
>
> Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm
>
>



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

I don't know where to begin! First, little or none of Mr.Lupia's post is the
official teaching of the Catholic Church and as I understand it not the common
position of Catholic scripture scholars. But a note or two:



1. Many of us Catholics -- both those of us trained in Scriptures and those not
-- would argue for Markan priority, and in my case preach it.



2. He also says "Since all four Gospels were written by the Catholic Church by
the original eyewitnesses by the authority of the Church
in concert". None of this is offical Church teaching and?is a rather odd
understanding of the way that the Gospels were written. No one would claim they
were written BY the Church as official Church documents are today. It's not like
Pope Peter or Linus called Matthew Mark Luke and John and said -- hey guys write
me some Gospels. And the fact is that, as we all?know,?they were not all written
by eyewitnesses.



I want tobe sure everyone is clear: This is not in any way shape or form the
official position of the Catholic Church.



Rev. Charles M. Schwartz, administrator

Saint Dorothea

Eatontown, NJ



My dear brother Leonard

Matthew does not rest in peace but beholds the glory of Jesus Christ forever.

As for Matthew using Mark, huh!

Prove it!

As far as I am concerned all markers (pun intended) and pointers show Matthew
was written well before Mark.

BTW, this is not a contest, or protest. Since all four Gospels were written by
the Catholic Church by the original eyewitnesses by the authority of the Church
in concert there is no Synoptic Problem, and obviously a solution to your
perceptions is very easy to document and explain.

John







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

Charles Schwarz wrote:
He [John Lupia] also says "Since all four Gospels were written by the Catholic
Church by the original eyewitnesses by the authority of the Church
in concert". None of this is offical Church teaching ...

To be honest, when I read John's words, I thought it was a joke.  It really does
look like a total cariciature (you know, on the lines of "if St Paul used the
KJV, it's good enough for me...").  The problem is that humour doesn't always
translate clearly in email, and especially across cultures.  He was responding
to Leonard Maluflen, who has argued Matthean priority on this list for a very
long time, and (while he has himself done so from a clear academic standpoint)
has occasionally given the impression that it is or should be RC orthodoxy.  His
final comments about the feast of St Matthew and "requiescat in pacem" may have
been the ones which pressed John's button to make the comment he did.

Perhaps I should have said a long time ago, if you really want to get it right,
you have to ask the Methodists.  (Grabs coat, and runs for cover...)

Cheers,
Rev Tony Buglass
Superintendent Minister
Upper Calder Methodist Circuit

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

Graham Budd wrote:

> Surely one argument for some sort of Q is that of Bussmann, rehashed
> entertainingly by Casey: ie that the Q material can be seen to fall
> into two types: one where verbal agreement is tight (implying a common
> Greek source, which could of course be Matthew!) and one where the
> greek agreement is much less close, implying a common non-greek source
> (ie in the mind of both of these authors, an Aramaic source).

Graham,

I'm sure there is some truth in this. However 'degree of verbal agreement'
as a criterion is not as useful as one might think. If there is very close
and reasonably extensive verbal agreement, we can be confident that the
source was Greek (and Luke could have been using Matthew). But the opposite
is not necessarily true, for a synoptic writer could have chosen to vary
considerably from his source. Also if Luke used Matthew as well as an
Aramaic source (which I believe), and if these sources overlapped (as they
probably did), there may be a few cases in which Matthew had translated a
saying from Aramaic, then Luke made use of Matthew's translation. One such
case seems to be the Signs saying (where the 'Queen of the South' and 'men
of Nineveh' passages are especially closely worded). Matthew's text would
have been open at the right place after copying 'Unclean Spirit' (Mt
12:43-45 // Lk 11:24-26).

A more useful criterion for separation is on the one hand Semitic aphorisms
(indicated e.g. by the use of parallelism), and on the other hand narrative,
and/or the presence of Matthean style in Luke.

> ..... Given that
> there is precise linguistic contact in the Passion narrative twice
> ("who was it who struck you?" and "Peter went out and wept
> bitterly"*), the suggestion would be that passion narrative minor
> agreements would be from Matthew, not a Q source.

And most other minor agreements, for that matter.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

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

Ron's web page does list some of the problems with
some of the theories.

There are problems esp over minor agreements on the Q view.
There are also problems over why Luke should have done what he did
on the view that Luke used Matthew.  To propose the latter
view AND some kind of sayings source retains the second set
of problems and adds the problem of multiplying hypotheses
by positing a further entity.

If I changed my view that the difficulties for Q are less
weighty than the difficulties in holding that Luke used
Matthew, then I think I would go for the latter "straight".

So my first question is why go the trouble of proposing
a further source if one thinks that Luke used Matthew?

My second question is this:
Is it really the case that where there are cogent
arguments for some sort of sayings source these
do not also reveal some of the
difficulties for the view that Luke used Matthew?

David M.



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


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

David Mealand wrote:

> There are problems esp over minor agreements on the Q view.
> There are also problems over why Luke should have done what he did
> on the view that Luke used Matthew.

David,

You don't spell out the latter problems. If you refer to Luke's treatment of
Matthew's birth and resurrection narratives, then my explanation would be
similar to that provided by advocates of the Farrer Theory.

If you refer to Luke's treatment of the Sermon on the Mount, then my
explanation is different. For on the Three-Source Theory Luke did what any
good scholar would have done, namely to base his document primarily on the
earliest sources available. These were Mark's gospel (ca. 70 CE) for his
narrative, and the logia (ca. 45 CE) for the sayings. Thus his 'destruction'
of Matthew's sermon was simply a side-effect of good practice.

Luke's preference for the Markan order over the Matthean order (Kloppenborg)
was also because Luke had chosen Mark as his primary source for narratives.

> To propose the latter
> view AND some kind of sayings source retains the second set
> of problems and adds the problem of multiplying hypotheses
> by positing a further entity.

If this 'further entity' were entirely hypothetical like Q, then you would
have a valid point here. But the source is historically attested. For the
most natural understanding of Papias' "logia" or 'oracles' is that it was a
collection of sayings attributed to Jesus. I am aware that Kloppenborg calls
Papias' statement "legendary at best" ("Excavating Q", p.80). But I can't
help thinking that his conclusion was influenced by the fact that it doesn't
match his deduction of a Q which originated in Greek.

This last deduction was based mainly on texts which the Three-Source Theory
can take as cases of Luke copying Matthew directly. Thus for example the
Temptation story with its quotations from the Septuagint, the only two
probable cases of genitive absolute (Mt 11:7 par.; Mt 9:33 par.), and the
majority of passages with a high degree of verbal agreement, all occur in
texts which I assign to Luke's direct dependence on Matthew. The removal of
such texts as candidates for the sayings source will almost certainly
undermine any case against the translation hypothesis. The remainder of the
Double Tradition texts will be seen to be aphorisms, many of which exhibit
Semitic parallelism, and a few of which exhibit either paronomasia, or signs
of mistranslation in the Greek of Matthew and/or Luke. There is thus no bar
to their Aramaic origin, and no reason to disparage Papias' statement.

> If I changed my view that the difficulties for Q are less
> weighty than the difficulties in holding that Luke used
> Matthew, then I think I would go for the latter "straight".
>
> So my first question is why go the trouble of proposing
> a further source if one thinks that Luke used Matthew?

On the page cited below under "Evidence that Luke also used a sayings
source" I've given a set of reasons for thinking there was a sayings source,
and longer set indicating Luke's use of it. Even if the odd reason is
rejected, the cumulative set of reasons is surely weighty.

> My second question is this:
> Is it really the case that where there are cogent
> arguments for some sort of sayings source these
> do not also reveal some of the
> difficulties for the view that Luke used Matthew?

Not as far as I know. On the contrary, positing that the Double Tradition
was dual-sourced not only leads to the solution of the main problems
associated with both the 2ST and the FT, but by removing the barriers to an
Aramaic source it opens up again a perspective which has been gradually
stifled during the last 50 years or so, and brings to light a crucial
historical link between the Aramaic-speaking Jesus community in Jerusalem
and the authors of the Greek-language synoptic gospels.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/syno_LkMt.html

Maurice Casey liberated a much-needed cat among the synoptic pigeons when he
set out detailed evidence that an Aramaic source lay behind the 'Woes' ("An
Aramaic Approach to Q", pp. 64-104). It is to be hoped that advocates of the
Two-Source Theory will take it as a serious challenge to their posited Greek
Q.

This said, there are some aspects of Casey's method which could be improved.
Concentrating on the details of one or two aphorisms (Mt 12:30 // Lk 11:23
is dealt with later in the book) among many means that some of the original
context is lost. Thus for example "from town to town" is dismissed as a
Matthean elaboration, whereas I have found it to have a clear parallel
elsewhere in the sayings (saying B7 // saying D7 in my reconstruction on the
Web page cited below).

Also it seems to me that he (like others) is too ready to use the opponents'
terminology. His phrase "Q material" leads almost predictably to a
requirement for "at least two layers of Q" (p.103) when observing that some
of the other material is verbally identical in Matthew and Luke. Had he
referred to the 'Double Tradition' instead of 'Q', he might have proposed
straightaway a division in the origin of the Double Tradition material
rather than jumping to a conclusion about layers in a document he doesn't
really believe in (the latter revealed on p.189).

Also two of the woes (Mt 23:4 // Lk 11:46 and Mt 23:13 // Lk 11:52) were
omitted. It would be nice to hear his reason for these omissions.

Finally, Casey appears to have missed the majestic poetry of the original
woes. I invite readers to compare my English-language reconstruction of
saying D7 on the Web page cited below (together with the corresponding notes
on the following page), with Casey's reconstruction on p. 65 of his book. It
is as if Casey's cat is in a high-definition black-and-white photograph,
whereas mine is in a low-definition colour photograph. Ah well. Perhaps
someday we'll be treated to a high-definition colour photograph of this cat.
:-)

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/syno_sQet.html

Casey's book on Q does indeed offer a
number of very valuable insights into
the possible development of the tradition
prior to its translation into Greek.
It does this not least in illuminating more clearly
the nature of the issues in some of
the controversies recorded in the
Synoptic tradition.

It makes a good case
that there is a prophetic protest
against the extension of purity requirements
where these conflict with other weightier
demands.  It is not so clear that this
_all_ took place at the first rather than
the second stage of the tradition.

Were there no Aramaic
speaking disciples who ever clarified or
amplified this criticism in disputes with
those who held to the extended purity rules?
Was it only the evangelists who altered
the traditions, and not those who transmitted
the tradition between the first and the third stages?
Were there not some disciples who took a fiercer
line than their master when confronted by opposition?
(e.g. Lk 9.54)

C seems to assign almost all of the recovered
Aramaic stratum to the Sitz im Leben of Jesus,
but it is not clear that controversies which
fit the period of around +29 to +33 did not also
continue (in Aramaic) through the next
twenty or thirty years.  After all the
issues of preservation of identity and of
hostility to Gentile domination were very
powerful factors, and were accentuated after
the death of Herod Agrippa.

David M.

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


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

"Q as Hypothesis: A Study in Methodology"
Francis Watson
New Testament Studies (2009), 55:397-415

Abstract
Arguments for the Q hypothesis have changed little since B. H. Streeter. The
purpose of this article is not to advocate an alternative hypothesis but to
argue that, if the Q hypothesis is to be sustained, the unlikelihood of
Luke's dependence on Matthew must be demonstrated by a systematic and
comprehensive reconstruction of the redactional procedures entailed in the
two hypotheses. The Q hypothesis will have been verified if (and only if) it
generates a more plausible account of the Matthean and Lukan redaction of
Mark and Q than the corresponding account of Luke's use of Mark and Matthew.



Best wishes
     Wieland
     <><
--------------------------
Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
mailto:wie@...
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie
Textcritical commentary:
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/

Amen, amen, and amen.

It must, and it does.

Rev. Chuck JonesAtlanta, Georgia

--- On Tue, 11/3/09, Wieland Willker <wie@...> wrote:

From: Wieland Willker <wie@...>
Subject: [Synoptic-L] New article on Q and method
To: "Synoptic-L" <Synoptic@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 4:42 AM

"Q as Hypothesis: A Study in Methodology"

Francis Watson

New Testament Studies (2009), 55:397-415

Abstract

Arguments for the Q hypothesis have changed little since B. H. Streeter. The

purpose of this article is not to advocate an alternative hypothesis but to

argue that, if the Q hypothesis is to be sustained, the unlikelihood of

Luke's dependence on Matthew must be demonstrated by a systematic and

comprehensive reconstruction of the redactional procedures entailed in the

two hypotheses. The Q hypothesis will have been verified if (and only if) it

generates a more plausible account of the Matthean and Lukan redaction of

Mark and Q than the corresponding account of Luke's use of Mark and Matthew.



Best wishes

     Wieland






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

> "Q as Hypothesis: A Study in Methodology"
> Francis Watson
> New Testament Studies (2009), 55:397-415
>
> Abstract
> Arguments for the Q hypothesis have changed little since B. H. Streeter. The
> purpose of this article is not to advocate an alternative hypothesis but to
> argue that, if the Q hypothesis is to be sustained, the unlikelihood of
> Luke's dependence on Matthew must be demonstrated by a systematic and
> comprehensive reconstruction of the redactional procedures entailed in the
> two hypotheses. The Q hypothesis will have been verified if (and only if) it
> generates a more plausible account of the Matthean and Lukan redaction of
> Mark and Q than the corresponding account of Luke's use of Mark and Matthew.

Thanks to Wieland for passing on this information.

The argument in the second sentence in the abstract above is probably true
(depending on one's definition of 'sustained'). Unfortunately the third
sentence is patently false. It is as if we were to claim that a careful
comparison of the land area of Canada with that of China, showing that
Canada is bigger, would verify that Canada is the biggest country in the
world. It would not, for it is not.

Watson should be given credit for implicitly discounting outlandish
hypotheses. But why do he and so many others insist on seeing the problem in
black and white? Can't they see that:

*the weakness of the 2ST is primarily in its handling of narrative text, and
the weakness of the FT is primarily in its handling of the sayings*?

Isn't the solution obvious? It seemed obvious to me over 10 years ago, and
my detailed studies since that time have confirmed it. The Double Tradition
didn't all come from the same source!! (For the detailed arguments, start at
the Web page below.)

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/syno_home.html

With apologies for cross posting.

It's that time of year again when the Society of Biblical Literature's
Annual Meeting is just around the corner (Nov. 21st - Nov. 24th in New
Orleans) and I begin to arrange the now traditional (13th annual!)
gathering of all those NT and Biblical and Biblically related e-list
members (i.e. XTalkers, B-Greeks, and members of Corpus Paulinum,
John-Lit, Kata Markon, Biblical Studies, T-C List, Ioudaios, Synoptic-L,
Aramaic, ANE-2, etc. ) who will be going to Boston for the SBL conference.

[For those of you who do not know what the Society of Biblical
Literature is and/or are unfamiliar with the SBL Annual Meeting, go
first to http://www.sbl-site.org/

and then to

http://www.sbl-site.org/congresses/Congresses_AnnualMeeting.aspx].

The informal E-Listers' meeting is planned for Saturday, Nov. 21st at
11:30 a.m.  the Eisenbrauns  Press booth  (# 704)  in the  the New
Orleans Marriott Exhibit Hall.

As attendees of previous meetings know, this gathering is a great
opportunity to place a face to an one hitherto known only as an
electronic personality and/or to renew acquaintances made at previous SBLs.

As I've done in the past 12 years in arranging this meeting, I'd like to
get an advance head count of those of you who are intending to attend
this year's SBL.

I'd also like to know who among the intended attendees is presenting a
paper during the conference (and at what time and place and within what
SBL group or section and under what title).

So this is the first call to write me OFF LIST at jgibson000 at
comcast.net and let me know the following:

(a) if you will be attending;

(b) if and when and under what aegis (i.e., SBLSection and Session #)
you are presenting a paper,

(c) your paper title, AND

(d) what you consider to be your "home" E-List.

I'll keep everyone updated as the info comes in to me.

Again, write to me OFF LIST (jgibson000@...) and please use a
header that says something like "SBL e-listers' meeting".

May I ask that if you are letting me know that you are giving a paper,
that you adhere as closely as possible to the SBL/AAR Program Book
Format when you do so. That is to say, I'd be grateful if you'd compose
your information according to this formula:

Name and Institution
Section #
Title of Section
Date
Time
Room
Paper title

For example:

Stephen C. Carlson, Duke University
SBL 24-112
Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and
Early Christianity Section
Tuesday,  11/24
11/24/2009
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Bayside A - SH
Origen's Use of the Gospel of Thomas

Looking forward to seeing you in New Orleans!

Yours,

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]

Of course when I said:

> I begin to arrange the now traditional (13th annual!)
> gathering of all those NT and Biblical and Biblically related e-list
> members (i.e. XTalkers, B-Greeks, and members of Corpus Paulinum,
> John-Lit, Kata Markon, Biblical Studies, T-C List, Ioudaios, Synoptic-L,
> Aramaic, ANE-2, etc. ) who will be going to *Boston* for the SBL conference.
>
I meant I begin to arrange the now traditional (13th annual!)
gathering of all those NT and Biblical and Biblically related e-list
members (i.e. XTalkers, B-Greeks, and members of Corpus Paulinum,
John-Lit, Kata Markon, Biblical Studies, T-C List, Ioudaios, Synoptic-L,
Aramaic, ANE-2, etc. ) who will be going to *New Orleans* for the SBL
conference.

Just more proof that everyone needs a proof reader!

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]

This is the second notice of the 13th annual E-Lister's that will take
place at SBL on  Saturday, Nov. 21st at 11:30 a.m.  the Eisenbrauns
Press booth  (# 704)  in the  the New Orleans Marriott Exhibit Hall.

As attendees of previous meetings know, this gathering is a great
opportunity to place a face to an one hitherto known only as an
electronic personality and/or to renew acquaintances made at previous SBLs.

As I've done in the past 12 years in arranging this meeting, I'd like to
get an advance head count of those of you who are intending to attend
this year's SBL.

I'd also like to know who among the intended attendees is presenting a
paper during the conference (and at what time and place and within what
SBL group or section and under what title).

So if you haven't done so already, please write to me OFF LIST at
jgibson000@... and let me know the following:

(a) if you will be attending;

(b) if and when and under what aegis (i.e., SBL Section and Session #)
you are presenting a paper,

(c) your paper title, AND

(d) what you consider to be your "home" E-List.

I'll  publish a list of E-Lister's attendees on Nov. 20th.

Again, write to me OFF LIST (jgibson000@...) and /please use a
header that says something like "SBL e-listers' meeting"/.

May I ask that if you are letting me know that you are giving a paper,
that you adhere as closely as possible to the SBL Program Book
Format when you do so. That is to say, I'd be grateful if you'd compose
your information according to this formula:

Name and Institution
Section #
Title of Section
Date
Time
Room
Paper title

For example:

Stephen C. Carlson, Duke University
SBL 24-112
Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and
Early Christianity Section
Tuesday,  11/24
11/24/2009
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Bayside A - SH
Origen's Use of the Gospel of Thomas

Looking forward to seeing you in New Orleans!

Yours,

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]