Quesionting Justin Martyr's Knowledge of the Canonical Gospels

[neilgodfrey]

Ben Witherington has posted Justin Martyr’s Knowledge of Matthew and Luke where he writes:

There has been much recent chatter among some scholars that various Synoptic Gospels might be from the second century A.D., even the late second century and even reflect a knowledge of Marcion, who, it will be remembered only favored Luke’s Gospel and some of Paul’s letters. Against such ideas is the evidence that Luke’s Gospel is well known in the churches Justin Martyr participated in. Here is a helpful recent post by my friend Larry Hurtado, dealing with the relevant evidence. See what you think…

The reference is to a month old post by Larry Hurtado: Justin Martyr and the Gospels . . . .

At a conference earlier this week in Málaga, one of the main sessions was on Justin Martyr, and the lecturer was asked about Justin’s knowledge and use of NT writings. The lecturer responded by rather firmly urging that there is scant evidence that Justin knew the NT Gospels, emphasizing that Justin’s numerous references to the “memoirs [ἀπομνημονεύματα] of the apostles” might very well have designated other kinds of texts instead. I’ll make several observations that lead me to differ.

Both scholars are proud to declare that they blog in the public interest, bringing scholarly knowledge to the lay community, and both present only one view, their own.

Can anyone tell us who among "some scholars" are making "much recent chatter" declaring the side of the argument that Ben and Larry seem reluctant to leak to the masses?

[andrewcriddle]

A number of scholars have held that Justin never used the separate synoptic gospels, but instead used a harmony based upon either Matthew Mark and Luke or Matthew and Luke. (See for example various essays by the late William Lawrence Petersen.)

If this is true, (and IMHO it may well be), then we have no clear evidence that Justin had direct access to the separate synoptic gospels. However this would not imply that these gospels did not exist in Justin's time merely that Justin may not have ever come across copies.

Andrew Criddle

[Paul the Uncertain]

Neil

What you asked

Can anyone tell us who among "some scholars" are making "much recent chatter" declaring the side of the argument that Ben and Larry seem reluctant to leak to the masses?

What you quoted, in pertinent part

There has been much recent chatter among some scholars that various Synoptic Gospels might be from the second century A.D., even the late second century and even reflect a knowledge of Marcion

The claim appears to be solely Witherington's. I don't see any justification in your post for Hurtado being on the hook for it.

Witherington lives and works in the USA. The use of the word "chatter" is a trending feature of American English, possibly influenced by the jargon of intelligence analysts, picked up by journalists, and often encountered in news reports.

Chatter doesn't even connote, much less claim, the existence of an argument, only the speaker's inference that some common theme runs through a body of intercepted communications.

The matter of late dating is discussed from time to time on Patheos, the platform from which Witherington published. Here's something from within the past two years there that turned up in a few keystrokes:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexami ... nk-2-of-2/

The takeaway here is that there are a handful of indefinite clues for dating the gospels. You’re on solid ground if you say that they could have been written as early as the mid-first century or as late as around 150 when Justin Martyr quotes from the four gospels *link1* (though there’s even debate here *link2* about whether those quotes had to have come from the gospels). To reduce this range from a century to a decade, all you can manage is an educated guess.

link1 is https://ehrmanblog.org/dates-of-the-gospels/ (paywalled)

link2 is http://stellarhousepublishing.com/gospel-dates.html (Acharaya S, fairly described in American English as an "independent scholar," regardless of the merits of her work.)

Behold: exactly chatter, as many contemporary Americans use the term, and about the general subject matter claimed. There is nothing to "leak."The matter had already been discsussed under the same electronically searchable auspices as where the observation was made.

[hakeem]

The writings attributed to Justin are almost as large as the NT yet not once did he identify or acknowledge authors of Gospels called according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In contrast, Justin identified by name, over a hundred times, the supposed authors of the books of the prophets.

For example, Justin mentions by name the books of supposed Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hezekiah, Hosea, Jonah, Micah, Zechariah and Malachi.



It is very important to notice that Justin refers to "Memoirs of the Apostles" but it should be noted that no person called Mark or Luke are listed in the Gospels as Apostles.

So from the start, Justin did not know of Gospels written by people who were not Apostles, that is, he did not know of Gospels named or designated according to Mark or according to Luke.

Now examine "Dialogue with Trypho" LXVIII

"But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia found Him..."

There is no story in the NT Gospels that Jesus was born in a cave.

Justin Martyr did not know of Gospels called according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

[DCHindley]

Ben Witherington has posted Justin Martyr’s Knowledge of Matthew and Luke ...

The reference is to a month old post by Larry Hurtado: Justin Martyr and the Gospels ...

Both scholars are proud to declare that they blog in the public interest, bringing scholarly knowledge to the lay community, and both present only one view, their own.

Can anyone tell us who among "some scholars" are making "much recent chatter" declaring the side of the argument that Ben and Larry seem reluctant to leak to the masses?

BW specifically mentions the gospel of Luke and Marcion, so I believe of the scholars he is thinking of would be someone like Jason BeDuhn. BeDuhn, IIRC, proposed that there was a proto-Luke floating around Marcion's circles, and that this proto-Luke may have served as a source for the editor of canonical Luke *as well as* Marcion or whoever edited the versions of Marcion's "gospel" cited by church fathers in their fiery refutations of the heretic (I will leave the letters of Paul out of this particular discussion).

BW's concern is to counter this concept and demonstrate that there is evidence that canonical Luke existed in Justin's time, and Justin was a (near?) contemporary of Marcion, meaning that canonical Luke was available to Marcion. Thusly, the church fathers would be absolutely correct to believe that Marcion "corrupted" the canonical gospel of Luke. Also, it is meet & right to assume that the canonical gospel of Luke would have preceded their times (early-middle 2nd century?) by several decades in order for it to have garnered a reputation such that Marcion would choose it as his primary source. Conveniently <phwew!>, that would put its final composition somewhere in the late 1st century, which is where most middle and conservative US Evangelicals like BW have no difficulty dating it.

LH is also of the same religious sphere as Ben, although perhaps more towards the middle, yet definitely Evangelical in orientation (he is, as most know, active on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog, which is actually informative much of the time when I stroll by). LW's blog article was dealing with the issue of whether Justin actually had direct knowledge of canonical Luke, or whether the "memoirs of the apostles known as gospels" that he was familiar with was not in fact a gospel "harmony" of some kind. That opinion goes back to the late 19th century, I think! I think the issue at hand is/was that many of the passages Justin cites, that would appear to reflect canonical Luke, are conflated with readings found in canonical Matthew (and maybe Mark).

The suggestions that had been offered as to the sources for this "harmony" have ranged from (speaking off the top of my head) the harmony was based on the three Synoptics (and possibly also John, as was the Diatesseron) or was something based on apostolic "memoirs" ("proto gospels" or other things that have not survived to our day). Also conveniently <whew!> LH is convinced that he and those of his ilk are correct to see these citations as actually conflations of the canonical gospels of Luke & Matthew, thus irrefutably proving they existed exactly as we know them in their canonical form. EXACTLY!

I think that (Mr.) Hope Hogg discusses the possible sources for Tatian's Diatesseron in his translation and commentary on the Arabic Diatesseron (not necessarily the same as Tatian's), which can be found in the supplemental volume (10 in print, 9th in electronic) of the Ante Nicene Fathers series (1896), although IIRC he thinks that Tatian edited his Diatesseron using 4 gospel-sources, but may himself have based some of this on a pre-existing gospel harmony, maybe based on the synoptic gospels, which could be the same as that used by Justin.

Mr., Stephan Hüller has expounded - at length! - on later thought about proto-gospels and gospel harmonies. Unfortunately the volume of his thought is so great that finding the goodies in there (scholar's names, etc.) is a lot like finding needles in a haystack. Ben Smith, however, may have some easier to digest suggestions. I have posted on this board what the term "memoirs" might have referred to in Greco-Roman times.

For both BW & LH, the bias is heavily toward the view held in US Evangelical circles that all the synoptic gospels (and probably also John) came into their canonical form sometime in the 1st century.

I am receptive to BeDuhn's POV that there was a proto-Luke that served as basis for both Marcion's "Gospel" (or at least his Antitheses commentary on the Judaic ideas that had crept in and corrupted the "apostolic" Christian message) and canonical Luke. However, my own POV is that Marcion probably did have access to the canonical gospel of Luke and the canonical letters of Paul, but only wrote a commentay (his Antitheses) lamenting that the pure "apostolic" gospel and letters, which he believed were encapsulated in Paul and Luke, had been corrupted by Judaic ideas and which should be restored. I am not convinced he actually published his own editions of Luke and the letters of Paul to churches (and maybe Philemon) as alleged by Tertullian and Irenaeus, etc., although Marcion's disciples may have produced some.

DCH

[neilgodfrey]

A number of scholars have held that Justin never used the separate synoptic gospels, but instead used a harmony based upon either Matthew Mark and Luke or Matthew and Luke. (See for example various essays by the late William Lawrence Petersen.)

If this is true, (and IMHO it may well be), then we have no clear evidence that Justin had direct access to the separate synoptic gospels. However this would not imply that these gospels did not exist in Justin's time merely that Justin may not have ever come across copies.

Andrew Criddle

You are right to warn against drawing firm conclusions from what we don't find in the writings of Justin. What surprised me was BW's mention that there had been "much recent chatter" on the more controversial question of Justin's sources, presumably by scholars in recent months, and what frustrated me was his failure to indicate the who and where behind this "recent chatter".

[neilgodfrey]

The matter of late dating is discussed from time to time on Patheos, the platform from which Witherington published. Here's something from within the past two years there that turned up in a few keystrokes:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexami ... nk-2-of-2/

The takeaway here is that there are a handful of indefinite clues for dating the gospels. You’re on solid ground if you say that they could have been written as early as the mid-first century or as late as around 150 when Justin Martyr quotes from the four gospels *link1* (though there’s even debate here *link2* about whether those quotes had to have come from the gospels). To reduce this range from a century to a decade, all you can manage is an educated guess.

link1 is https://ehrmanblog.org/dates-of-the-gospels/ (paywalled)

link2 is http://stellarhousepublishing.com/gospel-dates.html (Acharaya S, fairly described in American English as an "independent scholar," regardless of the merits of her work.)

My impression of BW's statement was that he had in mind something more recent, as in recent months from now, and more related to the same broad academic provenance of the conference lecturer whom LH questioned.

[neilgodfrey]

It is very important to notice that Justin refers to "Memoirs of the Apostles" but it should be noted that no person called Mark or Luke are listed in the Gospels as Apostles.

I recall at least one (by now somewhat dated) scholarly journal article addressing the possibility that the Memoirs passages in JM's writings were in fact interpolations, not original to JM at all. Wish I could relocate that article.

For both BW & LH, the bias is heavily toward the view held in US Evangelical circles that all the synoptic gospels (and probably also John) came into their canonical form sometime in the 1st century.

I don't object to bias itself, but I do object to an author's apparent refusal to acknowledge bias and at the same time to bypass the fundamental protocols of scholarly professionalism, one of which is, at minimum, to fairly present at least in outline the argument(s) one opposes, and to enable readers to follow up the merits of both sides of the question for themselves.

(I once attempted to address this shortcoming with LH himself, with all due deference as an unwashed outsider, but he turned on me as if I was a tool of Satan out to tear down the bastions of Christianity itself and even crucify the Son of God afresh! I would love to ask LH myself the question I have asked here but the above experience does not encourage me to bother.)

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

Larry Hurtado posted on 1st September:

At a conference earlier this week in Málaga, one of the main sessions was on Justin Martyr . . . .

When I first read this I attempted to find web notice of such a conference, but without success. I was reminded of another conference LH once spoke on his blog of attending -- it was in Perth, Western Australia. It turned out that the "conference" was held in a fairly fundamentalist type of church building and was a very small, very cosy affair. So I wonder if the Málaga conference he speaks of was similar. But against that is the claim that there appeared to be a "lecturer" with somewhat liberal views.

Still curious.

[MrMacSon]

Ben Witherington has posted Justin Martyr’s Knowledge of Matthew and Luke where he writes:

There has been much recent chatter among some scholars that various Synoptic Gospels might be from the second century A.D., even the late second century and even reflect a knowledge of Marcion ...

The reference is to a month old post by Larry Hurtado ...

Can anyone tell us who among "some scholars" are making "much recent chatter" declaring the side of the argument that Ben and Larry seem reluctant to leak to the masses?

I would think they're referring to Markus Vinzent, Matthias Kinghardt, Jason BeDuhn (and possibly, to a lesser extent, Joseph B Tyson), and their recent publications, in books in recent years, or in journal articles this year, about the proposition that some or all of the synoptic gospels arose out of Marcionism or are post Marcion by another route.

Jason D. BeDuhn (2013) 'The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon' Polebridge Press; Paperback

Vincent M (2014) 'Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels' (Studia patristica supplement 2) Leuven: Peeters.

Matthias Klinghardt (2015) Das älteste Evangelium und die Entstehung der kanonischen Evangelien (German) Francke a Verlag, publisher

• roughly translated 'The oldest Gospel, & the Emergence of the canonical Gospels'

See http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 180#p38180


Three articles, all titled "Marcion's Gospel and the New Testament: Catalyst or Consequence?", were recently published in the April 2017 issue of New Testament Studies [Vol 63, Issue 2] - by Matthias Klinghardt, Jason BeDuhn, and Judith Lieu.

They are discussed here http://sanctushieronymus.blogspot.com.a ... ament.html

and I have reproduced aspects of that blog recently, here http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 981#p74981, and elsewhere



I think Ben W and Hurtado, & others, are happy to ignore & deflect via a tangent on a tangent on a tangent (displacement behaviour) -

There has been much recent chatter among some scholars that various Synoptic Gospels might be from the second century A.D., even the late second century and even reflect a knowledge of Marcion, who, it will be remembered only favored Luke’s Gospel and some of Paul’s letters. Against such ideas is the evidence that Luke’s Gospel is well known in the churches Justin Martyr participated in. Here is a helpful recent post by my friend Larry Hurtado, dealing with the relevant evidence. See what you think…

At a conference earlier this week in Málaga, one of the main sessions was on Justin Martyr, and the lecturer was asked about Justin’s knowledge and use of NT writings. The lecturer responded by rather firmly urging that there is scant evidence that Justin knew the NT Gospels, emphasizing that Justin’s numerous references to the “memoirs [ἀπομνημονεύματα] of the apostles” might very well have designated other kinds of texts instead. I’ll make several observations that lead me to differ.

Both scholars are proud to declare that they blog in the public interest, bringing scholarly knowledge to the lay community, and both present only one view, their own.

[Bernard Muller]

I meant to do some systematic research (but did not), but it seems that everywhere Justin wrote "memoirs of his apostles" in Trypho (13 times), it is for material which appear at least in gMatthew.
But for Lk 22:44 (most likely an interpolation), Justin added "and those who followed them".
Therefore, it looks that Justin knew about the specifics of gLuke introduction:
Trypho CIII "For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them, [as for the author of gLuke (according to Lk 1:1-2)] [it is recorded] that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying, [only in Lk 22:44]"

Cordially, Bernard