MrMacSon wrote: ↑Sat Nov 17, 2018 1:50 amQuoted 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)
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