BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8789
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by MrMacSon »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:01 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 12:46 pmJason Beduhn and Matthias Klinghardt both presently propose that 'Marcion's Gospel' preceded both Marcion and Luke and was, in fact, the earliest Gospel written.
....
BeDuhn also thinks that the Two-Source hypothesis may be correct, once Luke is replaced in the equation with the Marcionite Gospel and the reconstruction of Q proceeds along these new lines.
These two statements are in tension; both cannot be true. Either the Two-Source theory is true (with Marcion replacing Luke as suggested) or Marcion is the earliest gospel written; not both. (The Two-Source theory hypothesizes that Mark came first and that both Matthew and Luke copied from him and from Q; in the reworked version you describe, Mark would still come first, with Matthew and Marcion copying from him and from Q.)

Quoted below is the relevant part of BeDuhn's argument from his 2017 paper (which, in turn, is based on a presentation delivered in the ‘Quaestiones disputatae’ session at the 71st General Meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, held at McGill University, Montreal, on 3 August 2016) -

(the pertinent part of the paper based on Klinghardt's presentation, at the same above-mentioned 71st General Meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, is in the next post)


We have all been guided by Occam’s Razor and the desire to find a clean, neat, simple, uni-directional model of gospel relationships that explains all the evidence. We need to accept that such an ideal is unattainable. There are two principal reasons for this. First, we have no autographs of these texts, so we are always dealing with manuscripts that reflect various degrees of modification and exposure to other gospel texts. Our difficulty in identifying which elements belong to which layer of composition and later development is a major obstacle to establishing the original textual dependencies of gospels as originally composed by their original authors. Second, these texts underwent an ongoing fluidity of text that defies familiar understanding of what constitutes authorship and composition, on the one hand, and what constitutes emendation and corruption, on the other, due to the sub-literary character of gospels as cultic texts. They have been mishandled in scholarship when read as works of high literature, comparable to the treatises of Cicero or poems of Virgil, the product of an authorial act with an original text that can be clearly distinguished from later textual ‘corruption’ or distinct redactions at the hands of specific editor-authors. By contrast, the intertextual exposure and modification we see in gospel texts flows seamlessly from the kind of textual dependencies involved in their original formation as cultic instruments, for which authorship or a singular event of composition is largely irrelevant.21

21 cf. Lieu, Marcion, 208-9: ‘Thus, both at the macro- and at the micro-level any solution to the origins of Marcion’s “Gospel” – or indeed of all Gospel relationships – that presupposes relatively fixed and stable written texts, edited through a careful process of comparison, excision, or addition, and reorganization, seems doomed to become mired in a tangle of lines of direct or indirect dependency, which are increasingly difficult to envisage in practice.’


A concrete example of how Marcion’s Gospel illuminates our understanding of these processes of gospel formation can be found in the so-called ‘Minor Agreements’ between Matthew and Luke against Mark in the clean, neat, simple, uni-directional Two-Source Hypothesis of Synoptic relationships. This phenomenon has caused a great deal of hand-wringing, and has led a significant number of scholars, including Matthias Klinghardt, to conclude that the Two-Source Hypothesis is wrong.22 The seriousness of the problem depends upon whether the ‘Minor agreements’ are an element of composition that existed in the original autograph of Luke (for some reason, it is always Luke, not Matthew), or were introduced subsequently as a textual corruption. The evidence of Marcion’s Gospel aligns with the latter idea, that they were introduced in the process of transmission of the gospel text, since Marcion’s Gospel contains between a half and two thirds fewer ‘Minor Agreements’ with Matthew than the current critical text of Luke does (a critical text that, due to axioms of text criticism, gives an absolute minimum of ‘Minor Agreements’ in Luke). In other words, the phenomenon of ‘Minor Agreements’ is reduced in Marcion’s Gospel to such a small factor that one must doubt that it was a feature of the original text at all, and conclude that Luke has more of them due to the greater exposure to the text of Matthew in the process of its transmission – either from a longer period of exposure or from transmission in closer association with Matthew, or both.

22 Klinghardt, Das älteste Evangelium, I.183ff.


In the case of Marcion’s Gospel, of course, exposure to the text of Matthew must have occurred before the gospel text reached Marcion and was sequestered within the Marcionite community, at which time exposure to Matthew in its transmission would have ceased. Nonetheless, two centuries of critical scholarship had to contend with the ‘Minor Agreements’ as if they were compositional elements that needed to be solved in the construction of our models of gospel interrelationships. Only now with the evidence of Marcion’s Gospel can this whole problem be set aside.

It is the unique conditions of control afforded by the three Synoptics and by the fortuitous partial survival of a fourth Synoptic, Marcion’s Gospel, that allow us to distinguish the stages at which certain developments of gospel texts occurred; but in countless other details of the gospel texts, where we do not have such controls, it is impossible for us to make similar distinctions. It is for this reason that we cannot insist on perfectly clean, neat, simple uni-directional models of gospel relationships with all elements accounted for and no flies in the ointment. We cannot insist on this because our manuscripts come too late in the transmission process to escape intertextual exposures and other changes that have altered the texts from their originally composed form.

Despite these challenging conditions of the materials we have to work with, neater, simpler, less-multi-directional models of gospel relationships are still to be preferred, as requiring less special pleading in their defence. Marcion’s Gospel, as the Fourth Synoptic, adds a control that allows us to assess such models of gospel relationship. Matthias Klinghardt argues that canonical Luke derives from Marcion’s Gospel by a process of additions to the text.23 His arguments are, on the whole, cogent and persuasive. But that does not necessarily mean that Luke is a post-Marcion, anti-Marcionite redaction. If Marcion’s Gospel predates Marcion, so too might the redactional relationship between it and Luke. The signs of an anti-Marcionite purpose that Klinghardt and others point to are far too subtle. There is a fundamental continuity in ideology and ethos between Marcion’s Gospel and Luke.24 If we were to think in terms of authorship and distinct redactions, it could even be suggested that Luke is a second edition of Marcion’s Gospel by the same author. Be that as it may, there are few grounds for proposing ideologically distinct communities as the venue of use for these two gospels. Since there is no clear ideological tendency that distinguishes one from the other, I would suggest a pragmatic or cultural purpose behind the differences between the two texts, that is, culturally rather than ideologically distinct communities. Not every variation in early Christian life and literature was ideology-driven. Marcion’s Gospel, which is relatively less engaged with the Jewish tradition, was suitable for use in Gentile-dominated communities, while Luke, relatively more engaged with it, could have been intended for use in communities with a stronger Jewish background.

23 Klinghardt, Das älteste Evangelium, I.117-79. His view revives a position I have discussed under the label of the Schwegler Hypothesis; see BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 84–6.

24 BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 70-7.



The agreement between Klinghardt and myself that Marcion’s Gospel is the earlier version, pre-Marcion in its composition, and not a tendentious derivative of Luke, leads to the implication that it is a closer witness to the textual dependencies of the Synoptic Gospels, and that is what I mean in calling it the Fourth Synoptic. As such, it should be included, and even given priority over Luke, in explorations of the Synoptic relationship. When we do that, my initial assessment differs from the conclusions of Klinghardt, who finds reason in the comparison of Marcion’s Gospel with Luke to reject the Two Source Hypothesis and the role of the hypothetical text ‘Q’.

In my judgement, however, the evidence of Marcion’s Gospel strengthens the case for the general accuracy of Two Source Hypothesis of the Synoptic relationships, once we allow for the greater fluidity of text I described previously. I have already mentioned the disposal of the problem of the ‘Minor Agreements’, removing a major stumbling block to the hypothesis. A second problem with the hypothesis has been the reconstruction of ‘Q’.

This strange hypothetical text, as currently reconstructed, starts out as a narrative, with Jesus baptised by John and enduring the Temptation, but then turns into a sayings source resembling Thomas. But if Marcion’s Gospel is substituted for Luke in the reconstruction of ‘Q’, the problem disappears. No baptism, no Temptation. ‘Q’ emerges as a pure sayings source. With the evidence of Marcion’s Gospel dispelling two of the major arguments against the Two Source Hypothesis, the latter is affirmed as fundamentally sound. The problems for the hypothesis created by the text of Luke on which it has been based stem from the fact that Luke is a relatively late redaction of the gospel that has been deeply impacted by intertextual exposures to the other gospels – John as well as the other Synoptics. Marcion’s Gospel, therefore, solves problems in the Synoptic relationships that have been insoluble on the evidence of the canonical gospels alone. ...

BeDuhn, J, April 2017 issue of New Testament Studies, Vol 63, Issue 2; pp. 324-7 (of pp. 324-9 in toto)
.

Last edited by MrMacSon on Sat Nov 17, 2018 11:22 am, edited 4 times in total.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8789
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by MrMacSon »

.
Klinghardt, M., April 2017 issue of New Testament Studies, Vol 63, Issue 2; pp. 320-22 (of pp. 318-23 in toto) --
  • [slightly modified, in layout only] n.b. the url at the bottom!

.
... Luke edited the Marcionite Gospel. Since there is no need to postulate any intermediary stage, this relation must be seen as Luke’s direct literary dependence on the Marcionite Gospel. We should not be surprised that this solution contradicts the patristic writers, who unanimously claim the priority of Luke.

This simply confirms one of the basic rules of historical criticism: do not believe your sources’ claims only because they tell you so!9

9 Tertullian, however, does report the reverse charge by the Marcionites, namely that ‘the gospel’ had been altered and interpolated by their catholic opponents (Marc. 4.4.1). I see no reason to challenge the historicity of this counterclaim.


The most obvious consequence of the priority of the Marcionite Gospel over Luke relates to the Synoptic Problem: when taking this ‘pre-Lukan’ gospel into account, the model of the inter-gospel relations changes profoundly. Most remarkably, this model disposes of the need for ‘Q’: the Two-Source Theory becomes entirely redundant, and the other models in discussion – such as the Farrer–Goulder–Goodacre hypothesis or the Neo-Griesbach Theory – are irrelevant.

The outcome of my own source-critical analysis10 is presented in Fig. 1 -

Klinghardt 2017 Fig. 1.PNG
Klinghardt 2017 Fig. 1.PNG (120.92 KiB) Viewed 11120 times

10 Klinghardt, Das älteste Evangelium, 2015, I.181-347


The model is one of editorial direction and expansion: a new text is added during each single stage of the editorial expansion; each individual text is utilising all existing pre-texts as sources. The tradition begins with the Marcionite Gospel and ends with Luke. These literary dependencies among the gospels change many issues relevant to their interpretation. Since I cannot explain any of these issues here, I shall simply point out a few wide-ranging consequences.

The first important aspect is the remarkable uniformity of the tradition: the Marcionite Gospel appears to be the root from which the whole gospel tradition emerges and with which all later stages remain closely connected. Obviously, every subsequent stage had knowledge, and made use of, all available previous stages of this development. This uniformity leads to numerous consequences, including the inquiry about the historical Jesus. Whereas the Two-Source Theory assumes two independent origins, namely Mark and ‘Q’, which allegedly validate each other and thereby claim a certain reliability, this model involves no such thing as an independent source. The search for the ‘historical Jesus’, therefore, becomes a completely different, if not an impossible, task.

Secondly, John is included in this model. From the beginning, the source-critical separation of John from the Synoptics was artificial and arbitrary, because it was based on aspects of style and content rather than on keen literary observations. If we look at the literary evidence, there is little doubt that John is central to this integral network of gospels. The most obvious example is the passion narrative where Luke and John, time and again, agree with each other in opposition to Mark and Matthew. This is one of the features that never received adequate attention because of the dominance of the Two-Source Theory with which it is completely incompatible.

Finally, this model is based exclusively on literary observations: the literary dependency is fully sufficient for explaining all aspects of the evidence. This has a number of implications. On the one hand, there is no need for employing oral traditions in order to explain the literary evidence. According to the principle of Ockham’s razor, the oral tradition is eliminated as a significant formative factor of the gospel tradition. On the other hand, the closely meshed and highly literary relations between the single stages within this model prove that gospel writing was a sophisticated task that required concentrated desk-work of textual redaction: our gospel writers were highly skilled editors.

With regard to this closely knit literary tradition, we also have to acknowledge that our customary time frame of the gospels’ emergence is outdated. The model presented here does not necessitate, or even indicate, longer periods between the single stages of the gospel tradition. I believe it entirely plausible that the overall emergence of the gospels could have been completed within a very short period of time. In view of all this, I would like to point out that, although it is not impossible that a gospel existed before the middle of the second century, there is simply not even the slightest shred of evidence for any written gospel prior to that time.

The priority of the Marcionite Gospel also modifies our understanding of the early transmission of the New Testament text. One of the riddles posed by the Marcionite Gospel is the fact that many of the differences vis-à-vis Luke have analogies in the variants of canonical Luke. To be precise: of the well over 500 differences noted for the Marcionite Gospel, no less than three quarters show up as variants within the manuscript tradition of Luke.14

14 cf. Klinghardt, Das älteste Evangelium, I.72-113 (and II.1209-79, with the list of all variant readings as reported for the Marcionite Gospel). An online version of this list is under construction (https://marcionbible.tu-dresden.de/marc ... ts_en.html [or https://marcionbible.tu-dresden.de/marcionvariants.html ]) and will be updated.


Klinghardt, M., April 2017 issue of New Testament Studies, Vol 63, Issue 2; pp. 320-22 (of pp. 318-23 in toto)

.

Last edited by MrMacSon on Wed Jan 30, 2019 2:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by Ben C. Smith »

MrMacSon wrote: Sat Nov 17, 2018 1:50 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:01 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 12:46 pmJason Beduhn and Matthias Klinghardt both presently propose that 'Marcion's Gospel' preceded both Marcion and Luke and was, in fact, the earliest Gospel written.
....
BeDuhn also thinks that the Two-Source hypothesis may be correct, once Luke is replaced in the equation with the Marcionite Gospel and the reconstruction of Q proceeds along these new lines.
These two statements are in tension; both cannot be true. Either the Two-Source theory is true (with Marcion replacing Luke as suggested) or Marcion is the earliest gospel written; not both. (The Two-Source theory hypothesizes that Mark came first and that both Matthew and Luke copied from him and from Q; in the reworked version you describe, Mark would still come first, with Matthew and Marcion copying from him and from Q.)

Quoted below is the relevant part of BeDuhn's argument from his 2017 paper (which, in turn, is based on a presentation delivered in the ‘Quaestiones disputatae’ session at the 71st General Meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, held at McGill University, Montreal, on 3 August 2016) ....
Thanks for that. There is so much that I agree with in that snippet.

First, let me note that, as I implied in my original statement above, BeDuhn does not, in fact, hold two contrary opinions at once. His approach is cogent and logical. While Klinghardt definitely pegs Marcion's as the first gospel, BeDuhn merely places it (or something like it) before canonical Luke. BeDuhn does not seem to suggest that Marcion's gospel also preceded both Matthew and Mark; he merely (and accurately, so far as it goes) says that Marcion's gospel ought to be considered as another synoptic. I am much more in agreement on this particular point with BeDuhn than with Klinghardt. I am by no means sure that Marcion's gospel precedes Mark, for example, and those two texts may evince the same kind of intertextuality that BeDuhn summarizes in his first paragraph.

Second, it is illuminating, I think, to compare that first paragraph from BeDuhn with a few paragraphs from David Parker which I have quoted on this forum now more than once:
MrMacSon wrote: Sat Nov 17, 2018 1:50 am(the pertinent part of the paper based on Klinghardt's presentation, at the same above-mentioned 71st General Meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, is in the next post)

We have all been guided by Occam’s Razor and the desire to find a clean, neat, simple, uni-directional model of gospel relationships that explains all the evidence. We need to accept that such an ideal is unattainable. There are two principal reasons for this. First, we have no autographs of these texts, so we are always dealing with manuscripts that reflect various degrees of modification and exposure to other gospel texts. Our difficulty in identifying which elements belong to which layer of composition and later development is a major obstacle to establishing the original textual dependencies of gospels as originally composed by their original authors. Second, these texts underwent an ongoing fluidity of text that defies familiar understanding of what constitutes authorship and composition, on the one hand, and what constitutes emendation and corruption, on the other, due to the sub-literary character of gospels as cultic texts. They have been mishandled in scholarship when read as works of high literature, comparable to the treatises of Cicero or poems of Virgil, the product of an authorial act with an original text that can be clearly distinguished from later textual ‘corruption’ or distinct redactions at the hands of specific editor-authors. By contrast, the intertextual exposure and modification we see in gospel texts flows seamlessly from the kind of textual dependencies involved in their original formation as cultic instruments, for which authorship or a singular event of composition is largely irrelevant.21


David C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, pages 121-122:

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.

ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3401
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by DCHindley »

What MrMacSon said:
Jason Beduhn and Matthias Klinghardt both presently propose that 'Marcion's Gospel' preceded both Marcion and Luke and was, in fact, the earliest Gospel written.
However, here is what BeDuhn says in the article you quoted:
The agreement between Klinghardt and myself that Marcion’s Gospel is the earlier version, pre-Marcion in its composition, and not a tendentious derivative of Luke, leads to the implication that it is a closer witness to the textual dependencies of the Synoptic Gospels...
I am not sure you captured the gist of what he says. IMHO, BeDuhn says Marcion made use of a gospel text more or less resembling Luke that preceded him, which contained fewer "minor agreements" with Matthew than the form of Luke that was preserved by non-Marcionite Christians. To BeDuhn, the minor agreements between the received versions of Luke and Matthew are evidence of cross contamination during the copying process. Because there are fewer minor agreements to be seen in the text of Marcion's "gospel" (proto-Luke), then this proto-Luke Marcion utilized represented a purer text of Luke.

Regardless of whether Marcion "gnawed" up this proto-Luke to exclude the parts he objected to, or whether later copyists and redactors made changes and additions to proto-Luke in response to Marcion's charge of Judean contamination, this proto-Luke that scholars think they have teased out of the heresiologists' charges against Marcion's criticism, it is just an earlier, pre-Marcionic, form of a gospel text that resembles Luke (proto-Luke). The other synoptic Gospels (Mark & Matthew) may well have co-existed in the proto-Lucan universe.

My objection is that I cannot put a lot of weight on a hypothetical proto-Lucan text reconstructed from the polemical charges of Marcions foes against his attempts to remove Judean contamination from it. "Q" may be hypothetical but it is happily based on commonalities between Mark, Matthew & Luke. Nonetheless, it's all a mess ...

DCH
Secret Alias
Posts: 18321
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by Secret Alias »

Count me as suspicious of any claim of 'gospels without a known provenance.' The issue for me at least is that you have the following claim made by Tertullian in Against Marcion:

1. Marcion had access to all four canonical gospels but he chose Luke to 'abuse.'
2. Luke, as Tyson notes, is the most 'theological' of the four gospels. It develops a 'proof by prophesy' logic especially at its conclusion.
3. Marcion is alleged to have been 'anti-Jewish' on some level (whether against the god of the Jews in some passive or active way we pass without comment)
4. Marcion 'left' Isaiah references in the Pauline epistles (assuming Tertullian cites from the Marcionite scriptures rather than as I suspect he cites from his own canon).
5. Marcion left 'proof by prophesy' arguments in the Pauline scriptures (the use of Deuteronomy 21:23 as discussed in another thread)

To this end, it seems that at least some part of our assumptions about Marcion is not correct. Either Marcion was not 'anti-Jewish' at all but rather harbored a more nuanced understanding or approach to the scriptures or something else that can't be detected from our existing Patristic reports. But clearly it seems possible to me at least that:

a) Paul wrote the gospel of the Marcionites
b) Paul developed arguments from Jewish scriptures in his letters (and even the Marcionite recension of those letters)
c) Paul developed 'proof by prophesy' arguments in his letters (so it would follow they would appear also in his gospel used by the Marcionites) https://books.google.com/books?id=luPYA ... on&f=false

On the surface at least there is no reason to doubt that the Marcionites could have employed a 'proof by prophesy' gospel like canonical Luke.

Some arguments on the other side of the ledger should also be considered:

i) the orthodox avoid the most EXPLICIT Jewish scriptural references to the messiah (i.e. Daniel 9:26)
ii) the orthodox DO NOT develop 'proof by prophesy' arguments from these explicit references

Perhaps the Marcionites are the reason for this. In other words, the Marcionites took the obvious and strongest 'proof by prophesy' argument (by analogy the prettiest girl at the dance). The orthodox were left scrambling with a series of less than impressive scriptural references and weak 'proof by prophesy' arguments which the Marcionites denied (i.e. analogous to dancing with the fat girls at the dance). The Marcionites were happy with what they had (the prettiest girl in the room). The orthodox bitter that after their drunkenness wore off they knew they an unattractive bevy of 'dates.' ' They attacked the Marcionites denying that their bevy of broads wasn't better than the Marcionite supermodel.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote: Sat Nov 17, 2018 9:18 amLuke, as Tyson notes, is the most 'theological' of the four gospels. It develops a 'proof by prophesy' logic especially at its conclusion.
More theological than John? What exactly is being measured here?
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Secret Alias
Posts: 18321
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by Secret Alias »

I don't even count John. I mean of the three synoptic gospels.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
Posts: 18321
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by Secret Alias »

To follow my attractiveness analogy - attractive couples are always the least demonstrative. They knew, everyone knows, no need to argue on behalf of the truth. They are the truth, the way, the light. So the orthodox attack on the Marcionites.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote: Sat Nov 17, 2018 9:24 am I don't even count John. I mean of the three synoptic gospels.
Johannophobe. :D
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Secret Alias
Posts: 18321
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: BeDuhn's & Klinghardt's solutions to the Synoptic Problem

Post by Secret Alias »

I don't know what John is. A gospel? Is the Gospel of Truth a gospel? It reads to me like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencran ... n_Are_Dead is to Hamlet.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Post Reply