Why would you assume that Matthew follows Luke under the theory of Markan priority? It is true that Bauer asserts it in the quotation you provide, but what is the argument that establishes it to be true? Why do you assert that the question is in its natural place in Luke while bing terribly dislocated in Matthew?Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 6:57 ampersonally, if there is something I would assume under any Gospel X priority, is that Matthew follows Luke and not vice versa. Bruno Bauer has given a good example of this just talking about Luke 7:18 (being in its natural place in Luke, while being terribly dislocated in Matthew). See here:
The riddle is solved. Luke, the first successor of Mark, is also the first to have dared to assume, besides the mere fact of baptism, a personal connection of the Baptist with Jesus as the Messiah and to include it in the type of the Gospel history. But he still has him doubtingly ask whether he is the Messiah. Matthew is bolder, already drawn much more into the train that led the religious category of their completion, and ascribes to the Baptist the knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah even before the baptism; he should therefore actually leave out the story of his message, but he writes it, without noticing the contradiction, following Luke, because he is interested in the statements that Jesus is said to have made on the occasion of the Baptist’s doubting question.
(my bold)
So yes, I conclude that the hypothesis Q is even worse than the Matthean Posteriority Hypothesis.
Bauer's point in the quotation is is that there is a tension between John the Baptist's question in Matthew 11.1-3/Luke 7.18-20 and earlier passages in Matthew and Luke in which John seems to have already acknowledged Jesus's nature:
Matt 3.13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.” Then he consented.
and the scene in the Lukan infancy narrative in which Mary, following the revelation of the angel Gabriel about the child to whom she would give birth goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth:
Luke 1.39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechari′ah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
(Parenthetically I think John's question to Jesus 'do you come to me?' and Elizabeth's question 'Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" have the same function - to establish that Jesus is greater than John and there is likely a literary relationship between the two).
Bauer's point is that Jesus' status seems to be already acknowledged by John the Baptist long before John's question to Jesus in Matthew 11 and Like 7. But Bauer sets his argument against 'theologians' and seems to be arguing that the stories in Matthew and Luke are unrealistic.
Duh.
Mark's story of Jesus Baptism left unintended theological consequences that the later evangelists tried to clean up in their different ways. If John baptized Jesus, indeed if Jesus received the holy spirit through his baptism by John, wouldn't that make John greater than Jesus? And second, if John preached a baptism of repentance for remission of sins, and Jesus came to be John to be baptized, wouldn't that suggest that Jesus had sins he needed to repent for and have remitted?
Matthew seeks to address the problem directly by having John say it was rather he that needed to be baptized by Jesus, but baptizes Jesus because Jesus told him to and said it would 'fulfill all righteousness'. Clumsy, but it addresses the issue that it had to address.
Luke, on the other hand, makes it clear that even before their births it was revealed that John's purpose in life was to prepare the way for Jesus. Then he narrates that was John arrested in Luke 3.19-20, before Jesus is baptized in Luke 3.21, so we don't know who baptized Jesus in Luke.
Matthew and Luke's additions and alterations to Mark regarding John the Baptist are quite understandable as the evangelists' own creations, which were efforts to fix the theological problems Mark had inadvertently left.
Best,
Ken