Does the lost Gospel Q Exist? | Dr. James McGrath Vs Dr. Mark Goodacre

[mlinssen]

obviously the verse 38-39 are the quintessence of harmonization:

38 But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins, and both are preserved. 39 No man having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’ ”

Impossible their presence in Marcion.

You may remember this thread, in which I have shown how many things are attested to Marcion's gospel that one would actually assume with certainty do not appear in it. It may therefore be self-evident to you that verses 38-39 were absent, but not in the slightest to me. I say that very kindly.

According to the attestations, there are things in Marcion's Gospel that make sense against the background of his theology (or what we believe his theology was), such as the beginning with the descent to Capernaum. On the other hand, there are passages that seem completely contrary to his theology, such as the appeal to the Mosaic law and the prophets, the full empowerment of the 12 with the Spirit, etc.

I presume I understand a little bit why Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were written/redacted and with what intention. But Marcion's gospel has the problem that much of its attested content does not agree with what is known about its theology. This is why it makes sense to think of Marcion's gospel as an editing of Luke. Klinghardt knows this and tries to solve this problem in such a way that the text was not written by Marcion, but only used. But then it would be obvious that the text was written by a harmonizer who kept Paul on a short leash and one would wonder why Marcion didn't get that.

Presume all you want Kunigunde

Giuseppe is half right there, as the preservation phrase certainly was absent in *Ev. The other however most have been present and even contain the word 'immediately'

For the full argumentation to that

https://www.academia.edu/100743526

[Philologus]

the numerous surprising omissions in Luke (if he knew Matthew)

It seems intuitive to me that real things with fixed features are more likely to have surprising features than hypothetical things crafted to avoid surprise ...

The hypothetical Q gospel also has a surprising feature: it is a sayings gospel which, prior to the discovery of Thomas, was deemed unlike any known gospel in that regard. It was not crafted to avoid that surprise. It was simply the intersection of common content that is not from Mark.

It doesn't make sense to penalize Q (as a hypothesis) simply because someone somewhere decided to destroy the last surviving copy of it. It would be like disregarding the theory of evolution because of "missing links", or saying the missing links make the theory less likely to be true. If we have reasons to think those no-longer-existing things used to exist, the bias against "hypothetical things" using some "razor" doesn't make sense to me.

[Ken Olson]

The hypothetical Q gospel also has a surprising feature: it is a sayings gospel which, prior to the discovery of Thomas, was deemed unlike any known gospel in that regard. It was not crafted to avoid that surprise. It was simply the intersection of common content that is not from Mark.]

It doesn't make sense to penalize Q (as a hypothesis) simply because someone somewhere decided to destroy the last surviving copy of it. It would be like disregarding the theory of evolution because of "missing links", or saying the missing links make the theory less likely to be true. If we have reasons to think those no-longer-existing things used to exist, the bias against "hypothetical things" using some "razor" doesn't make sense to me.

I'm going to skip the prior discussion and just deal with what you say here. First, Q is not (just) a saying gospel: it begins with a narrative about John the Baptist, followed by the narrative of the Temptation of Jesus and also has the story of the Centurion's Boy which is a narrative about a miraculous healing. Second, could you cite and quote any scholar prior to the discovery or publication of The Gospel of Thomas who argued against the existence of Q on the grounds that it was a collection of sayings and collections of saying didn't exist?

No one is penalizing Q. When making an existential claim, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. It wouldn't make sense to excuse you from it. If you say Q existed, there is a burden of proof on you to prove that. The existence of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke is easy to prove. We have manuscripts of them. What are the good reasons you have to think this no-longer-existing thing once existed?

Best,

Ken

[Secret Alias]

What a fucking stupid question then. Clearly it's like a strawman argument. It's always like this with supporters of the New Testament canon. It's either (a) or (b). Choose between (a) = the shitty corrupt canon we inherited from the early Christians the Romans didn't persecute "as much" or (b) some theory developed by some scholar who no one cares about. Which is it? Surely the better option is (c) = "the existing canon is a collection of forgeries therefore there was SOME OTHER GOSPEL or gospels which were less corrupt which was/were used as source material for the corrupt piece of shit gospels and letters of Paul we inherited from asskissers of Imperial authority."

It's the same choice give to Marcionites and other "heretics" in the third and fourth centuries. Accept or be rendered irrelevant.

[Paul the Uncertain]

the numerous surprising omissions in Luke (if he knew Matthew)

It seems intuitive to me that real things with fixed features are more likely to have surprising features than hypothetical things crafted to avoid surprise ...

The hypothetical Q gospel also has a surprising feature: it is a sayings gospel which, prior to the discovery of Thomas, was deemed unlike any known gospel in that regard. It was not crafted to avoid that surprise. It was simply the intersection of common content that is not from Mark.

It doesn't make sense to penalize Q (as a hypothesis) simply because someone somewhere decided to destroy the last surviving copy of it. It would be like disregarding the theory of evolution because of "missing links", or saying the missing links make the theory less likely to be true. If we have reasons to think those no-longer-existing things used to exist, the bias against "hypothetical things" using some "razor" doesn't make sense to me.

The problem I had last year with the statement above in yellow was pretty narrow. If Luke knew Matthew, and he omitted some attractive material in Matthew from his own gospel, then that surprises some oberservers. There is no possibility for Luke to omit material from Q, however, and so Luke's relationship with Q cannot surprise in the same way that his relationship with Matthew potentially can.

I didn't make any strong claims about that, but I did wonder about possible methodological issues beyond the obvious that the available evidence was largely exhausted in the formulation of the Q family of hypotheses. Then again, maybe what I noticed is simply an aspect of that problem, not a different or additional difficulty.

Regardless, I was exploring the question, not claiming to solve it.

[Philologus]

First, Q is not (just) a saying gospel...

Obviously. But it is mostly a sayings gospel.

Second, could you cite and quote any scholar prior to the discovery or publication of The Gospel of Thomas who argued against the existence of Q on the grounds that it was a collection of sayings and collections of saying didn't exist?

Prior, no. You're right. I was referring to an argument I read stating that a Q gospel would have been deemed unlike normal gospels in terms of format before Thomas was discovered.

No one is penalizing Q. When making an existential claim, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.

The problem is that the burden of proof needs to be reasonable. I sense from some of the arguments against Q that the only thing that would meet the bar would be an actual manuscript of Q. The opponents of the hypothesis will favor any other explanation for the content unless physical proof is produced, literally arguing that dismissing the Q hypothesis should be our a priori stance in order to reduce assumptions. To me, that sounds like penalizing the Q hypothesis, and any such sources that didn't survive (but we know must have existed).

[StephenGoranson]

I don't know much about Q.
But, given the many proposed synoptic problem solutions, and, even more so, given that Q is hypothetical,
how can one be sure precisely what it did, or did not, contain?

[Philologus]

the numerous surprising omissions in Luke (if he knew Matthew)

The problem I had last year with the statement above in yellow was pretty narrow. If Luke knew Matthew, and he omitted some attractive material in Matthew from his own gospel, then that surprises some oberservers. There is no possibility for Luke to omit material from Q, however, and so Luke's relationship with Q cannot surprise in the same way that his relationship with Matthew potentially can.

Sure. If we assume that Q existed, then any Q material that Luke skipped would not be identified as such. We will forever think it's just part of Matthew.

But the surprise argument is usually used to demonstrate that Luke did not know Matthew. So if there is such content that Luke would have been unlikely to skip, it becomes more likely that he didn't know Matthew, thus making the material he did not skip likely to be from another source.

[Secret Alias]

I don't know much about Q.
But, given the many proposed synoptic problem solutions, and, even more so, given that Q is hypothetical,
how can one be sure precisely what it did, or did not, contain?

Look at that. Another thing we agree on. Soon there will be peace in the middle east. What's worse is the false almost "strawman argument" which emerges regarding an either/or between "Q" and the synoptic gospels. My take on early Christianity is that we are like Columbus when we embark on making sense of things. Trying to go to India but then this whole continent emerges (or at least potentially emerges) as we are sailing to our destination. Just my take. We don't necessarily agree on that.

[Ken Olson]

could you cite and quote any scholar prior to the discovery or publication of The Gospel of Thomas who argued against the existence of Q on the grounds that it was a collection of sayings and collections of saying didn't exist?

Prior, no. You're right. I was referring to an argument I read stating that a Q gospel would have been deemed unlike normal gospels in terms of format before Thomas was discovered.

This is what I am curious about. Did you read this in a work written by a proponent of Q who claimed this is something Q skeptics did or would have done, or did you ever read such an argument from a (scholarly) Q skeptic first hand? I suspect it was the former.

No one is penalizing Q. When making an existential claim, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.

The problem is that the burden of proof needs to be reasonable. I sense from some of the arguments against Q that the only thing that would meet the bar would be an actual manuscript of Q. The opponents of the hypothesis will favor any other explanation for the content unless physical proof is produced, literally arguing that dismissing the Q hypothesis should be our a priori stance in order to reduce assumptions. To me, that sounds like penalizing the Q hypothesis, and any such sources that didn't survive (but we know must have existed).

This is something you sense, like a subjective impression? You seem to imply that Goodacre and other advocates of Farrer (i.e., Luke's use of Matt in addition to Mark) are dismissing arguments for Q in favor of implausible alternatives. Could you give your best case, or maybe your two or three best cases, to show that Luke's use of Matthew is implausible, and therefore we must deduce the existence of Q (i.e., where is the unreasonable burden of proof you allege)?

Luke's second source is a Matthew-like document containing extensive verbal agreements with Matthew. On what basis would you conclude it was not Matthew? We do not deduce the existence of hypothetical sources to explain things equally well, or approximately as well, as documents we actually have. Hypothetical documents can always explain things at least as well as sources we actually have (i.e., you can always reconstruct the hypothetical document to look like the extant document). They must offer significantly better explanation, as in cases where the actual document cannot plausibly serve as explanation.

Best,

Ken