Ken Olson wrote: ↑Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:39 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Sun Jun 17, 2018 7:41 pm
What is clear is that one can remove both the distinctively Matthean material and the decidedly Marcan material from Matthew's version and be left with a complete parable in its own right: one that is basically a mild rewrite of Luke's parable. One cannot, however, remove the Lucan material and be left with any kind of cohesive parable. The Matthean and Marcan stuff depends upon the Lucan stuff for its meaning, while the reverse is not true; the
basic parable resembles what we find in Luke more than what we find in Mark.
This is tough to follow.
Sorry about that, but perhaps part of the problem is that you are responding only to the setup and not to the payoff, which I gave in the very next paragraph?
Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Sun Jun 17, 2018 7:41 pmStructurally, then, if you are correct that Matthew knew no more than Mark's parable of the tenants, Matthew (A) created a new, cohesive parable about a feast by changing servants collecting rent to servants inviting people to a banquet before (B) borrowing
again from the same exact part of Mark's parable, this time retaining unchanged the motif of the servants being killed for their trouble, and (C) borrowing the collateral motif of destruction from another part of Mark's parable, with the result that the cohesion of the parable created in step A was ruined. The other option seems far simpler on its face: Matthew (A) borrowed some elements from Mark and (B) interjected them into the parable from Luke, and the additions did not always play well with the Lucan parable.
I am trying to get at the heart of what the argument from fatigue really is: its whole logic is based on it being easier to see how one account led to the other than vice versa. But, if the above does not work for you, wait till the end of this post for another stab at it.
I think what you've discovered is that Matthew's Wedding Banquet is the middle term between Mark or Matthew's Wicked Tenants and Luke's Great Dinner.
Technically this may be correct, but it is weird thinking of these pericopes in this way because we are dealing with two separate parables: one about tenants and another about a feast. Matthew and Luke certainly treated these as separate parables, giving separate space to both of them, and so do modern synopses.
The following observations, then, are not analogous:
When one of the evangelists (we could probably apply this to other authors for that matter) writes his own pericope based on a pericope found in his source, doesn't he usually take over enough material to constitute a complete story? And if we then took the story in the source and removed all the material that the second evangelist had used from it, isn't it normal for the remainder not to make sense by itself? I think this is the usual state of affairs in the triple tradition. For example, if we took the Healing of the Boy with a Spirit Matt 17.14-21/Mark 9.14-29/Luke 9.37-43, and isolated all the material that Luke has that's paralleled in Mark, it would make a complete story. But if we removed all the Luke-paralelled material from Mark, Mark would not have a complete story. Mark would have some Matthew paralleled material and special Markan material that doesn't make sense by itself. This does not mean that Mark conflated Luke's story with material from Matthew and added some of his own material. Well, some Griesbachians think it does mean that, and they're right that it's a possibility, but the phenomenon described doesn't prove the theory.
The healing of the demoniac boy is a single story, not two. We are not in this case picking away additions from one story to find the other story complete and coherent, so I am not sure what you are getting at here.
So I guess what I'm asking is--what is is you think you've shown?
I am trying to show, apparently without success, that what Matthew displays in his parable of the wedding banquet vis-à-vis Luke's parable of the great feast is an example of fatigue. It is similar to what happens, say, between Luke and Mark elsewhere:
Mark 6.30-35: 30 The apostles gathered together with Jesus; and they reported to Him all that they had done and taught. 31 And He said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while." (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.) 32 They went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves. 33 The people saw them going, and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities, and got there ahead of them. 34 When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. 35 When it was already quite late, His disciples came to Him and said, "This place is desolate and it is already quite late."
Luke 9.10-12: 10 When the apostles returned, they gave an account to Him of all that they had done. Taking them with Him, He withdrew by Himself to a city called Bethsaida. 11 But the crowds were aware of this and followed Him; and welcoming them, He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing. 12 Now the day was ending, and the twelve came and said to Him, "Send the crowd away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside and find lodging and get something to eat; for here we are in a desolate place."
The parts which cohere or which
ought to cohere are marked in
green; but
red marks the bit in Luke which causes the inconsistency.
In this example, as Goodacre himself argues, it is easier to imagine Luke following Mark than to imagine Mark following Luke. Mark's account is internally consistent; in the terms I used in a previous post, Mark is of one mind. Luke, however, makes an alteration at one point but fails to follow through with it later on, reverting back to Mark's storyline; Luke is of two minds. Goodacre calls this "docile reproduction," but it is important to note that the reproduction does not by any means have to be verbatim; Luke definitely changes the wording, but what remains the same is the idea that the location is desolate, and not a city.
Luke, in other words, seems to have had Mark's storyline in mind after all.
Compare Matthew and Luke in the parable of the feast:
Luke 14.16-24: 16 But He said to him, “A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; 17 and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.’ 19 Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ 20 Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’ 21 And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.’”
Matthew 22.1-10: 1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. 3 And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. 4 Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”’ 5 But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, 6 and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. 7 But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. 8 Then he says to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ 10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.”
Again, the parts which cohere or which
ought to cohere are marked in
green; but
red marks the bit in Matthew which causes the inconsistency.
In this example, I for one find it easier to imagine Matthew following Luke than to imagine Luke following Matthew. Luke's account is internally consistent; in the terms I used in a previous post, Luke is of one mind. Matthew, however, makes an addition or alteration at one point but fails to follow through with it later on, reverting back to Luke's storyline; Matthew is of two minds. He diverts the parable away from party invitations and into a whole motif involving a king waging war against a rebellious city before coming back to the plot involving the feast, which is somehow still ready.
Matthew, in other words, seems to have had Luke's storyline in mind after all.
Several
secondary observations, some of which I have discussed already in this thread but will put here for convenience, seem to support this assessment:
- It is easy to imagine Matthew turning a single slave into plural slaves, since that is exactly what he does to Mark's parable of the tenants. Why, though, would Luke have turned plural slaves into a single slave? He has plural slaves in other contexts (Luke 12.37; 15.22; 19.13, 15), so why not retain them here, if he is copying from Matthew?
- It is easy to imagine Matthew turning a single errand into plural waves of errands, since that is how the parable of tenants is set up, and we have seen that he has borrowed elements therefrom in order to use them in the parable of the feast. Why, though, would Luke have turned plural waves of errands into a single errand? He retains the plural errands in his own version of the parable of the tenants, so why not here, if he is copying from Matthew?
- It is easy to imagine Matthew turning a feast into a wedding feast, since he uses bridal imagery in other contexts (Matthew 9.15; 25.1-13). Why, though, would Luke have turned a wedding feast into an ordinary feast? Luke 5.34-35 shows that he has no problem with portraying Jesus as a bridegroom, while in Luke 12.36 he has actually specified the reason for the master's absence in Mark 13.34 as a wedding, so why not keep the wedding here, if he is copying from Matthew?
- It is easy to imagine Matthew turning a man into a king, since the man represents God and Matthew elsewhere has much to say about God being a king. Why, though, would Luke have turned a king into an ordinary man? He too has much to say about God being a king, and in his parable of the minas (Luke 19.11-27) he has actually (apparently) turned Matthew's ordinary master (Matthew 25.14-30) into a man receiving a kingdom, so why not retain the king in this parable, if he is copying from Matthew?
To my eye, this is a pretty clear case of Matthew making incongruous additions to Luke's parable of the feast in the same way that Luke has made an incongruous alteration to Mark's story of the feeding of the 5000. I suspect, as you do, that Matthew has brought in that addition from Mark's parable of the tenants, but that is irrelevant to the phenomenon of editorial fatigue.
One can argue that Matthew created his own botched version of the parable of the feast before Luke cleaned it up for him; in such a case Matthew must have had a clean version of the parable
in mind (since it is still there in his text, so easily recovered simply by striking out verses 6-7 and then verses 11-14) while simultaneously deciding to add in those little extras which spoil the consistency. And, likewise, one can argue that Luke created his own botched version of the feeding of the 5000 before Mark cleaned it up for him; in such a case Luke must have known that the place was desolate (since that is exactly what he says in verse 12) while simultaneously deciding to set the action in a city, thus spoiling the consistency. The trick to the argument from fatigue is not that one absolutely
cannot imagine things working the other way around; the trick is that it is
harder to imagine them the other way around.
The argument from fatigue thus implies a direction of dependence, which is something that I have yet to see from the Farrer theory on this issue. To suggest that Matthew created the parable himself out of his reading of Mark's parable of the tenants is fine and dandy, but why is that option
better than that Matthew copied the parable from Luke and mixed in some details from Mark's parable of the tenants? Where is the implied directionality? To me it appears that it is "better" only because it saves the Farrer theory, and that is not good enough a reason for me. So is there another reason? If so, what is it?