Demonstrating Q (Quelle) was a document and "Luke" did not know gMatthew.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ken Olson,

Because we don't generally hypothesize lost documents to explain things equally well as existing documents we already have. The lost document has to provide a significantly different and better explanation for us to need to hypothesize it in the first place.
At no point will I be able to show that Matthew has a property that your hypothetical document does not (well, other than Matthew actually existing). You can always take over a property Matthew has and attribute it to your lost document as well.

However, there are significantly different elements in gLuke not found in gMatthew, such as:
gLuke 11:41a: "But give alms inwardly, and behold, all things are clean to you."
which is not what "Matthew" wrote:
gMatthew 23:26 "... First cleanse the inside of the cup, that the outside also may be clean"
And
gLuke 14:26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother ... brothers and sisters ..., he cannot be my disciple."
which is not what "Matthew" wrote:
gMatthew 10:37 "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me."

I mean you can show other people that a different document is called for).

But this is why I did on my initial posts on that matter (Section A to D). Actually, I exposed "smoking guns" for the existence of Q and for "Luke" not knowing about gMatthew.

This is the point I made in my last post, which I don't think has sunk in with you yet. So please, do think about it and about all the Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke and how many of those (and the pericopes in which they are set) you want to add to Q.

I did not decide what is Q by what I want, but according to:

Q is part of the common material found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke without, or with, some "root" textual relationship in the gospel of Mark.
...
When Q is intermediary between gMark and gluke & gMatthew, "minor agreements" can be explained by the Q author getting a passage from gMark, then injecting in it new wording not in gMark, which got copied by "Luke" & "Matthew" (with one or both, most of the time, still adding up more dissimilar items, including from gMark "root" passage).

Can you answer my question I asked earlier:
I know of several strong cases for Matthew’s greater primitivity and zero for Luke’s.

What are these strong cases?

I read from Mark Goodacre online book Chapter 6 THE CASE AGAINST Q"
Some observations:
1) Goodacre is showing the scholars defender of Q made bad or non-sequitur arguments. I agree with him for almost most of them, but that does not make the Farrer Theory true.

2) Goodacre uses a deluge of words in order to come to the conclusion he wants, even if the little evidence he interprets is far from being a smoking gun. He also makes assumptions.

3) In the Summary on page 133 "The 'M' material all looks like 'Luke-displeasing' material just what we would expect on the Farrer Theory"
But that's not what I found:

And why "Luke" did not implement Matthean material most agreeable, such as:
- gMatthew 20:1-16, never too late to join (or rejoin) the Christian brotherhood (see gLuke 15:11-32)
- gMatthew 25:35-45, charity to the destitute and poor, in order to enter the Kingdom (see gLuke 6:34-35,10:30-37,11:5-8,14:13-14,16:9,19-28,19:8-9)
- gMatthew 27:19, a Roman woman declaring Jesus as a "righteous/just" ('dikaios') man (see gLuke 23:47, a centurion saying the same). This could not have been missed by "Luke", considering the pro-feminist and pro-Roman stance of the gospel & 'Acts'

4) On page 141 "For if one assumes the Farrer theory, Q is constituted by those parts of Matthew's non-Markan material that appealed to Luke."
But that's not what I found:

"Luke" reproduced a Q saying dead against the author's Gentile outlook (gLuke 2:29-32, 7:4-10; Acts 10:1-48,11:1-18, etc.):
gLuke 16:17 "It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law." (parallel in gMatthew 5:18)
...
If "Luke" had gMatthew instead of Q, why would he/she insert what hurts and ignore what pleases?

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

4) On page 141 "For if one assumes the Farrer theory, Q is constituted by those parts of Matthew's non-Markan material that appealed to Luke."
But that's not what I found:

"Luke" reproduced a Q saying dead against the author's Gentile outlook (gLuke 2:29-32, 7:4-10; Acts 10:1-48,11:1-18, etc.):
gLuke 16:17 "It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law." (parallel in gMatthew 5:18)
...
If "Luke" had gMatthew instead of Q, why would he/she insert what hurts and ignore what pleases?

How does this argument work? Why would Luke reproduce a saying he does not like either from Matthew or from Q? Why is it okay for him to copy such a displeasing saying from Q but not from Matthew?

[Ken Olson]

to Ken Olson,

Bernard: Can you answer my question I asked earlier:

Ken: I know of several strong cases for Matthew’s greater primitivity and zero for Luke’s.

Bernard: What are these strong cases?

Cordially, Bernard

They are the same strong cases that I identified in my earlier message to you:

I consider the Parable of the Pounds/Talents a strong case for the priority of the Matthean form, with both the initial ten servants in Luke and his "give it to the one who has ten" showing that he has the Matthean version of the parable in mind as he's writing. My other strong cases (not involving fatigue) would be the Beelzebul pericope (which I've discussed on this forum before) and the Parable of the Mustard Seed in Luke 13.18-19 and the Mulberry Tree in Luke 17.6.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7622&start=30#p118261

I realize that you may well not regard the cases I claim are strong cases as strong, while I do not regard the cases you claim as "smoking guns" to be "smoking guns", which is why I wrote:

You and I have both had our say now on the issues of strong arguments for Matthean and Lukan priority. I don’t expect to convince you personally, and others can read what we wrote and decide which (if any) is more persuasive. I’m not currently intending to comment on your Demonstrating Q thread. I’ve said what I had to say and I don’t think your restatement of your position requires additional comment from me. If third parties call for me to clarify what I’ve said or think you’ve made particularly good points I need to address, I will consider doing so ( or, naturally, if new topics come up, I might).

I realize you have a lot of confidence in the strength of your positions. I have more confidence in my judgment than I do in yours, though perhaps I don’t have quite as much confidence in my judgment as you do in yours. You seem to be having a great deal of difficulty engaging with people that do not share your presuppositions, and have asked me to comment based on presuppositions you hold that I do not. You may be confident of the truth of your positions, but if you want to convince other people of the truth of your position, you have to start with presuppositions they share and work from there. Simply declaring that you are right over and over is not likely to be effective.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7843#p121842

Best,

Ken

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

How does this argument work? Why would Luke reproduce a saying he does not like either from Matthew or from Q? Why is it okay for him to copy such a displeasing saying from Q but not from Matthew?

I think that Q had a lot of credibility in Luke's community (more than for gMark) and "Luke" felt she had to include all the Q sayings/narratives into her gospel, even the ones which are displeasing.
Against the defenders of "Luke" knowing about gMatthew: "Luke" could pick up whatever she chose in gMatthew and avoid displeasing sayings.
Did Luke's community knew about gMatthew and that gospel had a lot of credibility here? But "Luke" did not include Matthean sayings even if they would be pleasing.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

to Ben,

How does this argument work? Why would Luke reproduce a saying he does not like either from Matthew or from Q? Why is it okay for him to copy such a displeasing saying from Q but not from Matthew?

I think that Q had a lot of credibility in Luke's community (more than for gMark) and "Luke" felt she had to include all the Q sayings/narratives into her gospel, even the ones which are displeasing.

Okay, so in order to understand why Luke would have included something like Luke 16.17 = Matthew 5.18, you assume that the entire hypothetical Q text held such credibility in the Lucan community that he could not ignore any of it, which implies that the entirety of Q is represented in Luke, right? Instead of bringing in an entire document, why not make the much less grand assumption that this particular saying of Jesus was famous enough and held enough credibility in the Lucan community that he could not ignore it? Why assume for an entire document what might apply only to one or two sayings?

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

Instead of bringing in an entire document, why not make the much less grand assumption that this particular saying of Jesus was famous enough and held enough credibility in the Lucan community that he could not ignore it? Why assume for an entire document what might apply only to one or two sayings?

But from where this saying could have been thought to originate? If not from Q or gMatthew, what's left in the oral tradition, which also, for that saying, would have been known by "Matthew" but not by "Mark".
But why stop here, and explain that all what is normally considered Q, came from the oral tradition: if one "Q" saying came from the oral tradition, why not the others? And all of that not known by "Mark".

Maybe I got carried away about that oral tradition. So I would like to hear your viewpoint about the thought origin (by early Christians) of that "famous" saying.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

to Ben,

Instead of bringing in an entire document, why not make the much less grand assumption that this particular saying of Jesus was famous enough and held enough credibility in the Lucan community that he could not ignore it? Why assume for an entire document what might apply only to one or two sayings?

But from where this saying could have been thought to originate? If not from Q or gMatthew, what's left in the oral tradition, which also, for that saying, would have been known by "Matthew" but not by "Mark".

The origin would not matter. All that would matter is that the saying held credibility in the Lucan community. It could be from Q, or from Matthew, or from anywhere.

[Secret Alias]

There has never been a Lukan community. Even Irenaeus makes Marcion's attachment a shotgun wedding

[Bernard Muller]

To Ben,

The origin would not matter. All that would matter is that the saying held credibility in the Lucan community. It could be from Q, or from Matthew, or from anywhere.

So you admit it could come from Q. And I showed in my OP that the Q source document existed and "Luke" did not know about gMatthew.

Cordially, Bernard

[rgprice]

Something has to be clarified here. Q is only "Q" if Q is nothing more than a sayings document, that existed before Mark. If you are talking about something that was derived from Mark, then that cannot be Q.

Mark + additional dialog = new Gospel. It looks to me, Bernard, that what you are proposing is a lost Gospel, not a lot sayings document. You're handling the minor agreements by saying that they come from a common Gospel that both Matthew and Luke built from.

That's the crux of the weakness of the Q hypothesis. The Q hypothesis sis that Matthew and Luke were built from two independence sources (Mark and Q) and that Matthew and Luke worked entirely independently, both independently integrating the Q material with Mark all on their own, with no pre-existing overlapping material. Thus, all similarities between Matthew and Luke that don't exist in Mark have to be explained as coincidence or as having come from a Q document that had no narrative aspects to it and was produced prior to Mark.

That's the issue. That clearly can't be true. And since that can't be true, in many cases because of the minor agreements, then the whole Q hypothesis is invalidated.

What you've laid out are a lot of the noteworthy observations of the data, things that certainly need to be taken into consideration. But they aren't all of the points, mostly just the points that argue in favor of Q, but there are a lot of points that also contradict Q that you didn't bring up.

This goes to what I was saying in the other thread. The central problem is not acknowledging that Luke was written in multiple stages and contains multiple layers, each of which was written a different way. The reason that so many of these cases fall apart or run into barriers is because they try to come up with an explanation for how an entire document was produced by a single individual at one time. But the reality is that Luke was written by at lest three people at different points in time, using different sources and editing approaches. That's why so many things seem to be true, but then run into road blocks that defy the model.

This is all the more complicated by the fact that many people claimed that Matthew was originally written in Aramaic and it seems likely that there was some Aramaic Gospel somewhere at some point, whether or not it was exactly Matthew.

While the main model I advocate now is Mark > Marcion > proto-Luke > Matthew > Luke. It is possible that it was more like Mark > proto-Luke > Marcion, with Matthew and Luke being built from the pre-Marcionite proto-Luke. It is possible that such a proto-Luke could have been written in Aramaic. Perhaps that's why it was lost. What was called "Aramaic Matthew" may actually have been proto-Luke.

Such an Aramaic proto-Luke would be a Gospel derived from the Gospel of Mark.
Matthew would be a harmonization of Mark with Aramaic proto-Luke.
Luke would be a harmonization of Matthew with Aramaic proto-Luke.
Marcion would be a redaction of Aramaic proto-Luke.

But if we are talking about Q we have to be talking about nothing more than a list of sayings, like the Gospel of Thomas, and that list of sayings must have been created with no knowledge of the Gospel of Mark. If Q has knowledge of Mark then it isn't Q.