I wrote:
But when Klinghardt gets around to describing his own theory that the author of Luke used Marcion, he also allows for secondary influence from Matthew (see the chart on page 21).
And Tenorikuma responded:
I think any synoptic solution that accounts for everything (or nearly everything) is going to have to deal with the possibility that influence can go both ways once both documents are circulating. Our manuscript tradition, though it is later than this period, does reflect a lot of Matthean assimilation into Luke. There is no reason this could not have begun in the second century. I have no disagreement with the examples of secondary influence from Matthew and John suggested by BeDuhn in The First New Testament.
My criticism was of Klinghardt, not BeDuhn. He begins his paper by dismissing the Two-Document and Farrer Hypotheses based on premises he later rejects or puts in question. It is of course possible for Klinghardt’s theory to be correct despite bad arguments being advanced for it. But one of the first things we expect from anyone making an argument, though, is that he himself actually holds the premises of his argument to be true. The fact is that Marcion can’t replace Q completely and doesn’t explain the Minor Agreements fully, so Klinghardt’s fall back position is that canonical Luke did use Matthew. Fine; his hypothesis may be correct. But he deduced the necessity for his hypothesis based on premises that he later rejects. How about he first starts with premises that he accepts and then tells us why his hypothesis is better?
Additionally, Klinghardt and Matthean priority camp (well, they’re aren’t enough of them to be a camp yet, but Garrow anyway) have pressed the problem of Luke’s lack of L material and not using Matthew’s M material as a problem for Farrer, but haven’t really noticed yet that Matthew’s lack of L material and failure to use Luke’s additions to Mark are a mirror image problem for them. (Robert MacEwen’s recent book on Matthean Posteriority is an exception. To his credit, he does acknowledge the issue). Now the so-called Mark-Q overlap passages are an exception for both hypotheses, but not in quite the same way. On Farrer, they are places where Luke has chosen to follow Matthew instead of Mark in the triple tradition, but on Matthean posteriority they are places where Matthew has conflated Mark and Luke. What the Matthean posteriority theory needs is a good explanation for why, if Matthew can conflate Mark and Luke in the triple tradition, he’s done so only in these few places. For the vast majority of triple tradition, Matthew would be ignoring Luke’s additions. The traditional 2DH may have an advantage here—the rest of the triple tradition isn’t ignored, it wasn’t in Matthew’s non-Markan source (Q) at all.
Tenorikuma: If I divide the passage into sections, it's something like this:
Sorry, I won’t be able to respond to your theory of how Matthew would be moving back and forth between Mark and Luke in detail. I think it obscures the point that I was making about Matthew’s near-perfect conflation that may be more apparent in the color coded Greek synopsis here:
http://www.salomoni.it/davide/theology/ ... story.html
In conflating Mark and Luke, Matthew would be omitting a lot of Luke’s words (yellow) and a lot of Mark’s words (red), but he gets almost all the words they have in common (brown) missing very few (orange).
I’m not convinced that your explanation of Matthew moving back and forth between his sources explains this. It is possible of course to describe the procedure an author must have used to come up with the result he did, but it doesn’t seem to me you’ve explained why he would have made the particular moves he did. Matthew seems to know that where Luke and Mark are verbatim the same, he has to copy them precisely, but where they differ (as in the strong man) he can pick one version and then recast it (but retaining the few common words).
Summary:
The general lack of Lk-Mk agreement against Mt doesn't seem conclusive one way or another because of how the material is structured. The ordering of the material suggests to me that Luke is more original than Matthew. However, Luke has more unique material than Matthew. Does that suggest Lukan posteriority, or did Matthew just prefer Mark's version of those sections?
I’m also confused about what you think about Luke/Proto-Luke/Marcion, because you seem to be talking about Matthew using canonical Luke (a la Garrow and MacEwen) here, but elsewhere you’ve suggested that Matthew’s following proto-Luke, which may or may not be the same as Marcion. This is relevant because several parts of Luke 11.14-26 cannot be established from Marcion. For instance, the last part of Luke 11.19 “because of this they will judge you” can’t be attested in Marcion (BeDuhn thinks it may be a harmonization to Matthew 12.27). Similarly, all of 11.23, where Luke is in verbatim agreement with Matthew 12.30, is unattested in Marcion. If you want to follow Marcion/BeDuhn then your argument about Matthew’s unique material that Luke would have omitted is put in question. You would need to answer the questions you raise yourself. Why has the canonical form of Luke been harmonized to include some phrases and verses from the parallel passage in Matthew, but not others? Why include “because of this they will judge you’” from Matthew but not “son of David?” [I don’t actually have a conclusive answer on the omission of “son of David” myself. I would guess that Luke is actually following the Matt 9.32-34 version and is actually omitting “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel”—but I don’t know why. Luke sometimes mentions Israel, but omits both of Mark’s uses of the word. So I admit I haven’t figured out quite what he’s doing, other than that he frequently abbreviates his sources by omitting what he doesn’t consider necessary for the story].
Tenorikuma: I am generally convinced by Carr's view (set forth in Reading the Fractures of Genesis) that P was a rewrite of non-P (traditionally J or JE), and that another editor combined P with non-P, often mixing two sources within the same episode. (The flood story is the paradigmatic example.) This results in a mix of sources that is difficult or impossible to disentangle in places, much like the Synoptic problem. In fact, Carr uses the Diatessaron as an example of the challenges involved, showing how Tatian would sometimes combine multiple Gospel sources even within the same sentence.
Interestingly, your paraphrase of Carr is a more accurate description of what Tatian is doing in the Diatesseron than what Carr actually said was (inasmuch as we can reconstruct Tatian from late Latin/Armenian/Arabic manuscripts). Carr said: “Tatian often switches between gospels for single words or phrases” (Fractures 36) and cites the examples in G. F. Moore’s work.
Here’s the beginning of the example Moore gives on the page Carr cites:
[Mark 4.35a] And he said to them that day at evening [Luke 8.22b] Let us go over to the other side of the Lake [Mark 4.36a] And he sent away the multitude [Luke 8.22a] And Jesus embarked in the boat, he and his disciples [Mark 4.36b] and there were with them other boats [Matt 8.24a] And there arose in the sea a great commotion and wind. [p. 206, format adapted; G.F. Moore , “Tatian’s Diatesseron and the Analysis of the Pentateuch,” JBL 9.2 (1890) 201-215]
So you're right, Tatian does in fact switch between gospels, sometimes within the same sentence, but not at the level of single words. He follows one gospel, then another, and marks his transitions with single-letter sigla to indicate which he is following. He is indeed moving between sources, but not really rewriting them at all or composing himself in the way the canonical evangelists did. He’s actually copying one, then copying another, then switching which one he’s copying again.
By the way, there's a good article on the Beelzebul pericope from the Farrer perspective by Eric Eve, "The Devil Is In the Details," in the Poirier & Peterson Marcan Priority without Q volume. Eve goes beyond what I argued, especially in showing how the Matthean additions to Mark in the pericope are explicable as Matthean redaction.
Best,
Ken
