Ben's theory about gospels & proto-Luke

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,
I want to know how your theory fits into the big picture. Here is a start:

to Ben,
According to you, when would the canonical version be written? Before or after the Marcionite version?

My suspicion is that our current, canonical version of Luke, with its obvious attachment to the Acts and so forth, postdates the gospel that Marcion would have published in his lifetime (assuming that Marcion existed, and yada yada). But that is only part of the story, for I suspect that both Luke and the Marcionite gospel developed over time, often adding and sometimes subtracting individual passages and verses and phrases.

On your website, Bernard, you sketch out a sort of back-and-forth textual relationship between Luke and John. I personally am inclined to think that this sort of back-and-forth textual exchange of creative harmonizations and occasional deviations characterizes all of the early Christian gospel texts. The differences between my approach and yours would be (A) that there are more layers than you propose, (B) that I doubt you or I or anybody can reconstruct the various layers as completely as you have suggested for Luke and John, and (C) that the same back-and-forth process probably also affected the noncanonical gospels, including the gospel of the Hebrews and, yes, that of Marcion.

Can your suspicion (about Marcion & "Luke" working from a proto-Luke") be documented just as I did for gJohn borrowing from gLuke?
http://historical-jesus.info/jnintro.html

Or as others did for gLuke & gMatthew borrowing from gMark?
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/mark-prior.html

BTW, on my website, I showed that gJohn was written during a large span of years, and during that time, "John" got to know about "gLuke". I want to emphasis it is not "sort of back-and-forth" but rather in one direction.
http://historical-jesus.info/jnintro.html

If gLuke was written so late, then the author would have known about gMatthew & gJohn, unless you postdate these two gospels considerably.
About dating of gospels:
gMark: http://historical-jesus.info/41.html
g Matthew: http://historical-jesus.info/57.html
gLuke & gJohn: http://historical-jesus.info/62.html

Or do you think "Luke" knew about gMatthew? and gJohn?
Do you think proto-Luke was written before or after gMatthew?
Do you think your assumed proto-Luke was written before or after gMark?

Can you provide a sequence of writing for these gospels: gMark, (assumed) pro-Luke, gMatthew, gLuke, gJohn, and gMarcion

If gLuke was written so late, so Acts also.
http://historical-jesus.info/63.html

That's enough for a beginning. I still maintain suspicion is not evidence. And theories need to be evidenced.

Cordially, Bernard

[MrMacSon]

to Ben,
According to you, when would the canonical version be written? Before or after the Marcionite version?

• • 

My suspicion is that our current, canonical version of Luke, with its obvious attachment to the Acts and so forth, postdates the gospel that Marcion would have published in his lifetime (assuming that Marcion existed, and yada yada). But that is only part of the story, for I suspect that both Luke and the Marcionite gospel developed over time, often adding and sometimes subtracting individual passages and verses and phrases.

On your website, Bernard, you sketch out a sort of back-and-forth textual relationship between Luke and John. I personally am inclined to think that this sort of back-and-forth textual exchange of creative harmonizations and occasional deviations characterizes all of the early Christian gospel texts. The differences between my approach and yours would be (A) that there are more layers than you propose, (B) that I doubt you or I or anybody can reconstruct the various layers as completely as you have suggested for Luke and John, and (C) that the same back-and-forth process probably also affected the noncanonical gospels, including the gospel of the Hebrews and, yes, that of Marcion.
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 467#p62467

Ben's response also included

My approach is closer to that of David C. Parker, who writes on pages 121-122 of The Living Text of the Gospels, [Cambridge University Press. 1997]

I am proposing that the evidence does not permit us to attempt a documentary solution. I am not thereby denying the existence of documents. I do not attempt to deny the substantial reality of Mark. His style alone is a sufficient criterion for us to know him in bulk from Matthew or Luke. But a documentary solution requires more than the degree of detail needed to know Mark from Matthew. It requires published editions, in which every last word, syllable and letter is known. It is this discernible, published precision which is lacking. The reason for the lack is not - as it might seem I was about to conclude — that we do not have the evidence to recover precisely what the evangelists wrote. It is that the comparison of published editions assumes, in its two-dimensional diagrams, that there is a single point of contact between two texts, for example, the single contact when Matthew copied Mark, and there was an end of the matter. I am proposing a three-dimensional diagram, in which the third dimension represents a series of contacts between texts each of which may have changed since the previous contact. For example, Matthew copies bits out of Mark in reproducing a tradition; then a later copy of Mark is enriched by some of Matthew's alterations; and next a copy of Matthew (already different from the one we began with) is influenced by something from the also changed Mark. Add in Luke, and oral tradition, and any other sources that might have been available, at any points in the development that you please, and you have a process a good deal less recoverable than any documentary hypothesis. It is not at all the orderly business we had hoped, and looks instead like molecules bouncing around and off each other in bewildering fashion.

It may be that I will be considered to be offering what has been called a complex solution, in distinction to the simple solutions such as those of Streeter and Farrer. Such a solution is presented by Boismard, who discerns over a dozen documents, some existing in earlier and later forms. But there is a major difference. I am not attempting to identify and to name sources or to recover layers. I am suggesting that the evidence is not of a kind to permit one to demonstrate the existence of the many documents posited by such theories. Thus, while Boismard's solution, like Streeter's argument for Proto-Luke, along with other theories, may be close to mine in recognising more than one point of contact between the Gospels, we differ more than we agree.

The same must be said after comparing my suggestion with the Deutero-Markus theory. I agree that the copy of Mark used by Matthew will not have been identical to the copies available to us. I would add that Matthew's copy will have been different also from Mark's autograph (unless he used the autograph, which must be regarded as improbable), and that Luke's copy will have been different again. But Deutero-Mark is a document, an edition. In contrast to that, I am proposing that we should be thinking of a process, and that the solid blocks of the documentary hypotheses prove to be at best soft and crumbling rock, at worst slowly shifting sand. Let us suppose, for example, that somebody who has read newly written Matthew copies Mark from a manuscript already different from the version known to Matthew, and introduces (intentionally or inadvertently) a few Matthaeanisms, and that Luke worked with such a copy. Who is to say that such a thing is impossible? That such confusing things occurred at a later date may be demonstrated from the manuscripts. A manuscript may harmonise a passage in Luke to Matthew; when we look at the Matthaean parallel in that manuscript, we find that it has a quite different form of the text from that taken into the Lukan version. This phenomenon may be found many times in Codex Bezae, one of the most frequently harmonising manuscripts. At its most extreme, we might say that every copying of a Gospel is, in the sense required by source criticism, a separate document, for it will to a greater or lesser extent be different from any other copy.

Please note from the above that this approach does not, at its best, exploit this postulated confusion in the interests of defending certain highly specific reconstructions ("well, anything could have happened, so this did"). On the other hand, acknowledging the confusion also does not prevent one from suggesting certain identifiable waystations along the path of development (as Parker himself does above with the "substantial reality of Mark"), based on specific criteria, and I tend to view the Marcionite text as one of those waystations.

http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 467#p62467

[Ben C. Smith]

BTW, on my website, I showed that gJohn was written during a large span of years, and during that time, "John" got to know about "gLuke". I want to emphasis it is not "sort of back-and-forth" but rather in one direction.

That is fair, and you are correct. Rather, your view of John is that it has at least 4 layers (original, Luke, Acts, Beloved Disciple's death). It is, in other words, an accretional text. I simply view almost all early Christian gospels as probably accretional. If that is the case, then the back-and-forth quality if the harmonizations and other accretions becomes a lot more probable. If that is not the case, then it is a lot less likely.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

That is fair, and you are correct. Rather, your view of John is that it has at least 4 layers (original, Luke, Acts, Beloved Disciple's death). It is, in other words, an accretional text. I simply view almost all early Christian gospels as probably accretional. If that is the case, then the back-and-forth quality if the harmonizations and other accretions becomes a lot more probable. If that is not the case, then it is a lot less likely.

You cannot generalize if you don't have evidence of layering during a long time for the other gospels. What works with one does not necessarily work for others.
Certainly there were some additions (interpolation) after (or right before) a gospel was made public, plus the variants, but that does not add up to layering.
For gMark, the empty tomb and anything after 16:8.
For gMatthew, most likely the two Jesus bodily reappearances after the alleged resurrection.
For gLuke, I am still not sold about the two first chapters originally missing, even if I acknowledged these chapters might have been written before the rest of gLuke was planned, and then combined with the gospel before it was made public.
The Pauline epistles show quite a few interpolations.
But for all of that, I took the task to develop a series of arguments for each of the suspected interpolations.
Layering and interpolations need to be evidenced.

I do not think you have much evidence for any of your assumed layering, except for the ones about gJohn, thanks to my work.

Anyway, I am still waiting for your answers on my questions from my previous post.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

I do not think you have much evidence for any of your assumed layering, except for the ones about gJohn, thanks to my work.

Anyway, I am still waiting for your answers on my questions from my previous post.

David Parker's work is my inspiration for a lot of what I am saying about layering, and the layering is not just "assumed", though I admit it is not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, either. Evidence exists, but it is subtle and in many ways circumstantial and "best fit", and in many cases borne of dissatisfaction with the existing, more simple models which are available.

And I am still trying to decide whether I will be answering your questions here and now. I responded to your initial inquiry in good faith, very clearly labeling my proposed view a "suspicion", and you are quite right that suspicion is not evidence. So, on the one hand, it might be quite profitable to debate the merits and see how evidence there really is; the potential evidence that I have in mind is not yet tested very fully. On the other hand, our last mutual foray into Marcionite territory was accompanied by a bit of frustration (possibly mutual), a perception on my part that new arguments were falling on deaf ears, not on their own merits, but because they were not supporting your previously established model. Even if my perceptions be correct, it may yet be worth getting a few ideas down in pixels, but again, I have not decided whether that is what I want to do right now.

Ben.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Ben's response also included

My approach is closer to that of David C. Parker, who writes on pages 121-122 of The Living Text of the Gospels, [Cambridge University Press. 1997]

I don't know if this has been mentioned but the book is online.

[outhouse]

in other words, an accretional text. I simply view almost all early Christian gospels as probably accretional

I like ""compilation" better then "accretional" and both should be used to make a more accurate description.

If you were talking about Johannine text, I might agree on "accretional" being more accurate then a compilation.

But for the 3 other gospels we see compilation with slight accretion at best with the most notable being the ending of Mark.

[outhouse]

I have not decided whether that is what I want to do right now.

Ben.

I have stayed out of the marcionite problem for similar reasons, despite having suspicion Lukan text as preceding Marcion.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

Even if my perceptions be correct, it may yet be worth getting a few ideas down in pixels, but again, I have not decided whether that is what I want to do right now.

I understand. Regardless on where you put your proto-Luke and (apparently after gMarcion) gLuke & Acts, you'll be facing problems c/w evidenced counter-arguments from my side.

I found your "layering" not only in gJohn, but also in Revelation, the Ascension of Isaiah and the Didache. So I am not against "layering", but that's no reason to generalize.
Revelation: http://historical-jesus.info/rjohn.html
AoI: http://historical-jesus.info/100.html
Didache (only suggested here): http://historical-jesus.info/gospels.html#didache

A bit like Carrier: All the Pagan gods did not have a human origin (at least, we do not know of any!), so Jesus had to be never an earthly human, just like the other gods of the time.
Every rules have exceptions, and as far as layering of early Christian text is concerned, that may be the exception rather than the rule.

Cordially, Bernard