Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Adam
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Adam »

Resuming from my Post #18 over on FRDB:
This QLM Hypothesis extends the Two-Source Hypothesis so far that it almost turns into the Griesbach Hypothesis (inside out, but making more sense). Instead of a pair of complete gospels being abridged, the underlying text they shared was abridged. If Mark had abridged Luke, why does Mark include so little so little in common with Luke? Nor does it seem likely that Mark included much from Matthew’s special source, though the large shared material between the two leaves this possible.

This particular Q++ Hypothesis dispenses with Proto-Luke and views the notable verbal parallels as tracing back to a Q+ text that included such verses as these that had to have to have been in Greek. Thus no gospel was ever available completely in Greek for another gospel other than that Matthew used Mark. Only by going back (as is feasible) to Proto-Luke can we have it that Mark completed in Greek was available to Luke, with only new portions of Mark added to Luke at this stage. However, this new particular hypothesis is a particularly challenging new one, so I would like to test out how well it can stand on its own. Let’s examine in its own right and apart from whether it does not does not tie to my hypothesis of seven written gospel eyewitness sources. For MJ purposes one can suppose that the originator of Q kept on adding more of his stuff to form both the Double-Tradition and the Triple-Tradition, with just later M and L sources.

Turning to the overall logic of various possible Synoptic solutions, applying Occam’s Razor to an accretion scenario would give us the acclaimed Two Document Hypothesis, that Mark was the base to which M was added for Matthew and L for Luke. However, an equally parsimonious scenario would take Matthew and subtract the M portion to give us Mark. This would still leave Luke unexplained, but nevertheless Matthew as the first gospel has been widely accepted throughout history and even currently with the Griesbach Hypothesis and even by some with the Augustinian Hypothesis. Thus this has to be considered as a possibility. It also has the advantage of acknowledging that the L material is so different that it must have been added;

A more thoroughgoing abridgement proposal would lead us to another proposal in which all of Matthew, Mark, and Luke had already existed together in a source. To create Matthew the L material was removed, for Mark both M and L were removed, and for Luke M got removed. The different (disproportionately Semitic) style of L could be explained as untranslated text in the original source that Matthew had not taken the trouble to use. This and the preceding abridgment theory take the source text to be larger than the Q+ Hypothesis that understood only Mark to be an abridgment. However, there is no evidence (at least no one so argues) that any original Q text included all of M and L. However, this remains open because Papias told about two forms of translations from Matthews’s original Aramaic Logia. Perhaps the two forms were Mathew and the other was the Gospel According to the Hebrews that included L as well. James R. Edwards has argued persuasively that this text included lots of material that seems to be L in Luke. We might suppose that the writer of Matthew refrained from translating this into the gospel now going under his name, but it was included in Luke, but perhaps still left untranslated until a later time. I don’t much like the logic of this position, but retain it as a possibility because of Papias’s remarks about the difficulties encountered in translating the Hebrew Gospel.

The nature of M and L are different enough from the other gospel portions (and the style of L is its own) so that it seems unlikely that there was ever a super-gospel Grundschrift from which all the others were derived. Nevertheless the a priori reasonability of such (equivalent to the standard expansion of Mark into Matthew and Luke) should leave some respect to whichever modification seems most feasible. And this is the Q+ Hypothesis, that there was a super-gospel that included all of Mark (or at least Ur-Marcus) plus all of Q. The reasonable alternatives to this include Mark in various pieces (Twelve-Source plus Ur-Marcus) and Q in two or more document. Unless Q existed in very many little pieces, this still leads to an abridgment theory for how Mark was composed.
In contrast the comparison with Gospel of Thomas leads almost necessarily (though denied by some of the finest scholars like Tuckett) to acknowledging that a basically Q text was available to Mark, but it was radically abridged. The orthodox Oxford Theory (whether Two-Document or Four-Document ) is the only one that refuses to allow that even Mark is an abridgment. The Q+/Papias Hypothesis (and my own similar position) allows Mark to be a substantial abridgment.

To recapitulate these complicated possibilities, consider first the largest possible Grundschrift, big enough to be used to form all three Synoptics. This is unlikely because it would require that L alone not have been in Greek for use in Luke and that M have been scrupulously excised by Luke in forming a Gentile-friendly gospel that deleted so much of the Israelite-focused M material. This alternative does incorporate the appealing Hebrew Gospel theory of James R. Edwards. Or even more so—Edwards identifies many pericopes that are not included in any of the canonical gospels. That is, there may have been a Grundschrift that was even bigger than what is included in any of the Synoptics.

Next to consider is the big Grundschrift that is being considered here, but without the M material, thus allowing for the L material James R. Edwards specified, but without the weight of M material that seems the most likely of all the canonical gospel material to be later in origin. This source alternative allows (or requires) much of the text to have been still in Aramaic. This would allow Luke to be generated from this source without the ridiculous editing required to adapt something like our canonical Matthew. A strong argument for this alternative is that such a large section of close verbal parallels in Double-Tradition scattered throughout Luke is presented sequentially in Matthew 23:23-24:51. I used to believe that this proved that Matthew copied directly from Luke, but I now agree with almost everyone else that this at most shows that both these Synoptics copied from the same Greek source. It is yet another reason that I so firmly reject the widely held view that Luke copied from Matthew. To abandon a hypothetical Q source simply forces embracing a much larger hypothetical source, probably a Proto-Matthew. Proto-Matthew likely included almost all the current text of all chapters except the first two, but quite differently ordered. The radical rearrangements apply to both what other hypotheses would attribute to Q and Mark. It requires something as large as all of both the Triple-Tradition and the Double-Tradition. Rather little of this was already in Greek, as only Q2 and a few Triple-Tradition pericopes show exact verbal parallels in all three gospels (Mt. 19:13-30, Mk. 10:13-31, Lk. 18:15-30; Mt. 21:23-27, Mk. 11:27-33, Lk. 20:1-8). Much of the Double-Tradition shows such divergence that at best a common Aramaic source can be presumed. (We might also ponder whether there were multiple transcriptions of sources before they wound up in our canonical gospels.) These cases of verbal disparities indicate that only two of three gospels picked up the original “Q” pericope, so we might suppose many cases where “M” material alone surfaced from what was really Q in origin. Thus this increases the probability that the maximum extent to which Q grew was beyond the Double-Tradition usually allotted to it, beyond the Triple-Tradition (to which I acknowledge about half, the Twelve-Source portion available for Proto-Luke), and also to include M (but not L). It would have been still mostly in Aramaic (itself explaining why M is so large, even if much of it was Q in origin and why so much was picked up only as Q1 in Matthew and Luke).

Reviewing now the biggest source but as this time without the L material, this means simply contents of the Gospel of Matthew as we have it, but not yet arranged as it is in our Matthew. This would get around the objections to the Griesbach Hypothesis and the Farrer Hypothesis that fail to explain strange editing choices towards Luke. Let’s try telling Marc Goodacre that he can make sense now of his Synoptic solution by acknowledging a super-large Q, a Q as big as Matthew! This still allows him to place Luke last, adding L, but with a Matthew-like text that is not so radically different in order as Matthew is from Luke. Here again we need much of the source text to have been still in Aramaic so that we can explain why some verbal agreements in the Synoptics are so close and others are not.

The Farrer Hypothesis acknowledges Marcan Priority, but all these above choices have started with Q before Mark, so we cannot allow that the FH or Two-Gospel Hypothesis can fit with any Q+ or larger Q. Or maybe it’s a matter of semantics—substitute “early Q” for Mark and “late Q” for Matthew.
Re-visioning starting from the other extreme would tie in better with what we currently think about Q. With the orthodox Oxford Q of just the Double-Tradition, there is nothing of Q (not to mention M or L) in Mark at all. The material that looks so like Q (like the Parable of the Sower) is thereby explained as going back to yet an earlier source (presumably Jesus’s words themselves) that underlie both the Synoptics and the Gospel of Thomas. That Mark saw a lot of Q (though using little) is acknowledged in Q+ and the Q+/Papias views. That everything that is in Mark (or maybe just in Ur-Marcus) came from Q (a Q+ or Q++)is the Q-Mark Hypothesis. With this lots of Q does not get into Mark, but nothing comes from any other source. There is of course no M or L in this either.

Going beyond just Q in “Q”, we might say, there were three ways a larger text could have been utilized not just in forming Mark, but in forming other Synoptic gospels as well. Was there ever a Q text that also included L, namely QL? Yes there was, says the Proto-Luke theory. There is good evidence for it from the Semitisms that characterize the L portions and that are largely absent from either Q or Marcan parts of Luke. The problem is that this Proto-Luke was not used in forming Matthew. All the L disappears (and why in just the Semitic portions?) and M is substituted. Matthew is too different from this supposed larger-than-Q source. Proto-Luke ran aground without influencing either Matthew or Mark. It is apparently unable to serve as what Papias was saying Matthew wrote that was variously brought over into Greek. (Proto-Luke in including L may have included some of what we now call M, but these portions did not make the cut into Luke.)

Conversely, was there ever a Q that also included M? This would give us a Luke that could reasonably have excluded so much Jewish-Christian M material and added the gentile-friendly Semitisms of L. We could assume that the order of Q in it would have been amenable to switches in order we find now in Matthew. This is the most feasible of the three conceivable bigger-than-Q concepts of Q.

The methodology of Dennis MacDonald towards his Q+/Papias Hypothesis is very pertinent to my considerations here. He does not prejudge that any particular Synoptic is closer to the original source. This is most applicable to the Matthew vs. Mark comparison, in which MacDonald finds Matthew to be more original in many cases. This does not restore the Augustinian Hypothesis, but does give some indications in that direction. No more than MacDonald do I allow that Matthew was actually used for abridgment into Mark. The geographical and other technical problems with Mark can be obviated if we look on Mark as having failed to adhere as closely as Matthew to the original Q+. (“Q” as usually defined is not at issue, as it does not include anything at all in Mark.)
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Peter Kirby »

As an aside, James McGrath has reviewed Dennis MacDonald's book here:

http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8565_9390.pdf

His discussion of Papias is excellent, and his synoptic solution is certainly interesting.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Adam
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Adam »

The most meaningful aspect to MacDonald’s thesis is that deriving his Q+/Papias Hypothesis for the initial Logoi leaves the subsequent Gospel of Mark and all further gospels springing up from only one independent source. Thus allowing a pre-70 date for Logoi is not helpful for Christian apologetics. However, his diagram does not deal with the Gospel of John, apparently taking it for granted (in spite of recent research) that he does not need to look for any authenticity there.

Another scholar with startling ideas similarly supports a much enlarged Q or Q+, but relates this to a text much noted in antiquity, the Gospel of the Hebrews. (Yet how many ‘scholars” will tell you that a decisive argument against Q is that it is not cited in any ancient texts, or that a minimalist Q is incompatible with the word Logia now being better understood as not just referring to sayings. How about admitting that minimalist-Q is a myth, as a Q+ or larger intermediary text must be admitted instead.) Pier Franco Beatrice in 2006 (Novum Testamentum, April, 147-195) came up with a proposed text so loose that it served as the source (inspiration) for three gospels. Not the Synoptics, mind you, but Matthew, Luke and John. I can’t accept his reasoning for rejecting Mark as one of what he reckons must have been three off-shoots from his source gospel. The very long review in 2010 of the article (Not a book, but Beatrice’s 50-page article!) by Matthew Mitchell could not go along, either (“Bodiless Demons and Written Gospels. Reflections on “The Gospel according to the Hebrews in the Apostolic Fathers”, Novum Testamentum, June 2010). He more reasonably attributes to Beatrice that Q is “that portion of the Aramaic Gospel of the Hebrews which was reused and altered in various ways in the Greek canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke”, basing this on Ign. Smyrna 3:2” (p. 238 in Mitchell quoting 169 in Beatrice). This would leave it quite open for said source gospel to be QLM, QL, or QM, or any of these plus also other materials that can be shown from antiquity not to have entered into the canonical gospels. However, amend Beatrice to acknowledge that some Greek text had been added before the rest was translated for Matthew and Luke.
So much of what Beatrice wrote was so incisive and gifted that he got carried away too far with himself. He started with a vigorous defense of Jerome that broadened into such a sweeping defense of the ECF that he seemed like a total apologist for Roman Catholicism. Such a complete acceptance of early Tradition led him to believe he knew exactly how the Synoptics and related apocrypha got to be written. Quite without evidence he declared that there was only one Gospel of the Hebrews, rejecting possibly separate gospels of the Ebionites and Nazoraeans. (Similarly, he ignores the likelihood that this and other gospels accumulated additional materials in the early centuries.) He starts by studying whether the “bodiless demons” in Ign.Smyr. 3:2 is not from Luke 24 but necessarily from a separate gospel which he further reasons must be the Gospel according to the Hebrews (147-155). He argues that Jerome really had translated this Gospel of the Hebrews, so knew that what Eusebius cited from Ignatuius was really from the earlier text that Eusebius had never read.
Summarized, Beatrice’s scholarly study takes what Jerome and Eusebius and Epiphanius wrote in the 4th Century of what Ignatius and Papias had written in the 2nd Century that came from apocryphal gospels presumably of the 1st Century. These included first person statements. Most radically there is a fragment from Epiphanius where Jesus speaks in the first person to the author Matthew that he recorded in his Gospel according to the Hebrews (158). Likewise Jerome is correct that Ignatius quoted the Gospel of the Hebrews.
Beatrice seemed to get the ball rolling in the current flurry of interest in Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Peter with his long 2006 article, even though he is not cited by either Henderson or MacDonald. Much of James R. Edwards’ 2009 book The Hebrew Gospel & the Development of the Synoptic Tradition was stimulated by Beatrice’s insights into very early texts revealing that gospel’s influence on the canonical gospels. Edwards own conservative (liberal Evangelical, I guess) preferences led him to find the Gospel of the Hebrews as a legitimate ECF source for the L material in Luke. Edwards was not so interested in it as a source for Matthew and John (as proposed by Beatrice) nor for Mark (disregarded by Beatrice who saw Gospel of Peter as its source).
Not having read Beatrice, Timothy P. Henderson in Gospel of Peter & Early Christian Apologetics: Rewriting the Story of Jesus' Death, Burial & Resurrection, 2011, instead focused on the Gospel of Peter as the primary background source. Henderson’s five-column analysis showed clearly that much of GP relates directly to the four gospels. However, the extant acknowledged GP is hardly more than a Passion narrative, yet even here with extensive added materials of an apologetic slant. (He also explores Crossan’s Cross Gospel theory of a core within GP that was a source for the canonical gospels.) Other than a GP Passion Narrative, however, Henderson tends to attribute gospel parallels to the standard canonical texts, with lots of material from Matthew and Mark. Could this be more Q-related? This then brings up the whole issue of whether there is any PN in Q? If there was, not much of it was used in Luke, but that’s not surprising if indeed lots of M may have been omitted in creating Luke. We’re talking about the Gospel according to the Hebrews here, a text rarely considered in regards to John (a proposal unique to Beatrice?). Luke may have preferred the PN obtained from John Mark’s Passion Diary, thus the other two Synoptics have more resemblance than it to GH. Yet by my current way in Gospel Eyewitnesses of explaining Q+, the narrative material was largely added by Peter (not Matthew), so we don’t have to expect a Q PN to be necessarily distinctly different from a PN deriving from his close associate John Mark.
Whereas MacDonald needs to date Papias early to get in before the gospel texts, Markus Vinzent in Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity and the Making of the New Testament (Ashgate, 2011) needs to date Papias late to be after Marcion to whom he attributes the start of the gospels and Resurrection belief. He has been denounced by many scholars, but he claims that his next book will substantiate his claims with “German footnotes”. With his very late dating Vinzent is of course at the opposite extreme from Beatrice who implicitly dates the gospel sources very early by hunting down every possible justification for eyewitness writers (namely Matthew for the Gospel according to the Hebrews and Peter for Gospel of Peter).
Vinzent utilizes Henderson’s 5-column analysis by adding on a sixth column for Marcion. But close attention to Henderson’s analysis (see my link to his dissertation in my Post #19) weakens the rationale Vinzent makes for deriving from Marcion the gospels and an underlying Gospel of Peter.
Nevertheless, Markus Vinzent ranks with the others I consider here to be blazing new trails in gospel source criticism. Whether GP fits closer to Marcion than to Luke needs to be considered in evaluating the transition from Q to some form of Luke and whether Luke developed in parallel or before or after the other gospels. Along with Vinzent, however, the five scholars I study here are possibly developing a new paradigm. With Henderson the underlying text may be only a portion of the Gospel of Peter (for Mark), but to that Beatrice would supplant it with Q and add the Gospel according to the Hebrews as leading to Matthew, Luke and John. Edwards sees the latter text as leading primarily to L within Luke. MacDonald continues to use the term “Q” expanded to Q+, but ultimately derives all the Synoptics from it, which reconciles with what Beatrice more reasonably should have done.
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Adam »

Has anyone noticed that Dennis MacDonald is working on Mark’s Redaction of the Lost Gospel. (p. 69 in
http://books.google.com/books?id=SbpVqp ... e&q&f=true Two Shipwrecked Gospels ), of which over 100 pages is previewed in this link at Google. As he uses “Lost Gospel” in his current book to refer to his Q+, is he arguing that Mark is wholly dependent on their mutual source, a Matthew in a different order than we have it know? MacDonald is accepting the current fashion of overruling Papias that there was no Hebrew original of Matthew. (I can agree that there are extensive exact parallels between Matthew and Luke, so there certainly was direct copying from one to the other or from a source in Greek (that I call Q2), but this hardly proves that the even more numerous non-exact parallels were from Greek, not Aramaic.) Though he allows that Matthew and Mark share a common source Q+, he recognizes Matthew as dependent on Mark.
MacDonald’s main point is to show Luke is later than the rest, even later than Papias. He does very well at showing that Luke’s Preface may imitate Papias’s preface, but everyone knows that the first four verses of Luke are in very high-flown Greek style. Thus it may be a late re-writing of someone else’s preface. It should not be a late initial preface by someone who merely copied the entirety of a gospel decades earlier by the real writer of Luke, because it claims so much as his own input. Or it could be that Papias saw such an earlier preface in Luke and used it as his model. In any case, whether after Papias or not it does not prove MacDonald’s case.
Macdonald also makes a good case that the two Infancy Narrative accounts are not independent. Here again Macdonald does not try to demonstrate that there could not be a common source. Many critics would allow that the infancy narratives are later, anyway. As for the rest of these two Synoptics, Macdonald relies heavily on Fleddermann, Mark and Q, 1995, to establish that Mark knew Q and that Matthew used both Mark and Q. (The M2DH is also taught by John Briown, J. lambreacht, W. Schenk, Schmidthals, Burton Mack, and Catchpole—note 12 on pg. 73.)
That MacDonald follows Pervo in dating Luke (and Acts) late is not easily refuted. If any other gospel writer knew Luke, why is it that the sections in Luke with Semitisms have remained unique to Luke and were not copied into other gospels? One could argue that these passages were in Aramaic even though the rest of Luke was in Greek, and thus the task of translating was not attempted. Whatever the case, we can know that no proof that practical use was made of Luke as we have it now. It is true that Q2 passages in nearly identical Greek appear in both Matthew and Luke, but we don’t know if one copied the other or if both copied from a source.
Given then, that no QLM nor OL ever existed that was used subsequently toward our current gospels, we need to explain on the Q++ hypothesis only possible abridgments from QM or Q (meaning here Q++, all the Double Tradition plus part of all of the Triple Tradition). Now everyone who admits that some of the Triple Tradition came from Matthew, Luke, or their sources, must acknowledge that Mark abridged Matthew, Luke, or their sources unless those sources were much, much smaller that the Double Tradition. Did there ever exist a text that included just a small amount of sayings and Twelve-Source without close verbal parallels and yet considerable other narrative with close parallels (that is in that portion in Greek)? Yet there also existed a much larger Q that contained both characteristics.
In this new alternative of proto-gospels or Grundschrift, I seek primarily to establish the facts and the feasibility regardless of the impact on my theory of written eyewitness records of Jesus. I can’t necessarily hold to a more direct growth from sources to our present gospels. What I lose in simple intuitive feel to it, I perhaps gain in preventing disproof if only in the mere fact that no one else is saying the same thing.
The idea of a larger gospel as the source of the extant gospels is more difficult to explain than my theory of accretions to smaller sources that built up to their present side. It does have the advantage, however, of enabling me to claim eyewitnesses without leaving such evident traces as my theory would make scholars expect. Why is no one proclaiming that eyewitnesses wrote the sources, if it’s as simple as I teach? If instead to gospels grew from sources into a Grundschrift or even more than one large proto-gospel, but these got abridged or at least rearranged (and likely translated in whole or part), but these in turn got truncated, then the eyewitness traces should not be so obvious. One could still contend for eyewitnesses, even though readers might not readily agree. If this more roundabout way can explain how we got to what we have, but it does not required an intuitive assent, then it does not matter so much if my more circuitous thesis is not immediately agreed to be true. It has the advantage of taking more account for external testimony.
But what is the best interpretation of the facts?. A largest text that got shortened that reduces us to as little as one independent source? Let’s give it the benefit of the doubt, but the following will show that the evidence points more to a text that grew. I have shown above that a largest possible Synoptic Grundschrift including all Q, L, and M is not feasible. Even starting with just Q, there is a large portion Q1 (originally from Matthew, giving rise to Papias’ opinion that all of it was?) that has loose verbal parallels that would support Papias’s teaching that a Hebrew (Aramaic, more likely) original existed for this. Not only does Q1 have loose parallels between Mark and Luke, but so does a Twelve-Source and Passion Narrative portion of this Triple Tradition. In contrast, Q2 with some almost-exact parallels (perhaps from Peter or a source of the Gospel of Peter) between Mark and Luke must have been attached in Greek to that original Aramaic text, and (same as with Q1) was largely omitted when an early Mark was created (with some rearrangements, if we want to eliminate the need for the Proto-Luke hypothesis) that contained the rest of the Triple Tradition. This was the Proto-Mark that was available towards Luke.
At this point an Aramaic Matthew (Gospel according to the Hebrews) existed that contained a maximal Q (Q+ or Q++). This text could not yet include M, because there are so few Aramaisms in any passages that Matthew shares with Luke (uh, “M” that we would thus mistake as Q). Some specific text arose that added in Aramaic L with the not-rearranged Matthew (still the Gospel according to the Hebrews), a mixed text in which Q2 and some Triple Tradition was in Greek, but Q1 soon got an independent translation into Greek. When this version of the Gospel according to the Hebrews became available towards Luke, the L portions eventually also had to be translated, leaving many Aramaisms even in our extant text. If this L was early, it could have been from my particular preference for eyewitness, Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem. If Luke completed his work in the early 60’s as conservatives believe, if may still have included L in Aramaic. Such a mixed text would not have been very popular for use, and it may have been little used. Eventually L (and the first half of Acts, if still untranslated) got translated into Greek, but perhaps at such a late date that Marcion got involved in early stages. Thus chronological problems and possible borrowings from Josephus could justify current late dating of Luke-Acts at the same time that a prima facie case exists for dating both books to the early ‘60’s. The prefaces, different in style to the rest of Luke-Acts, could have been reworked in imitation of Papias, yet allow almost all the rest of Luke-Acts to be much earlier. (The weakness in granting a long interval between completing Luke-Acts and a final redaction-publication is why does it still show so little knowledge of Matthew, nor Matthew of Luke, notably in the Resurrection.)
As stated above, an early version of Mark was used towards Luke, which indicates that the work done by the author of Luke was early, regardless of when the work became known when fully translated into Greek.
Back to the copy of Greek Matthew in progress, that contained both Q1 and Q2 but not L, perhaps the same one used towards the early Mark or the early Mark itself--M was added to it and it was radically rearranged. Theoretically M plus all of Q and all the Triple Tradition could have been a unified text from which Mark was abridged—that in turn followed by Luke abridging Mark and with Luke apparently never being aware of the M material, in spite of the fact that Luke did choose to make use of the Aramaic L. It’s just more straightforward to view M and L added later rather than having dropped out. Simply view the Mark to the stage Luke saw it and add M, probably in two stages adding the narrative shared by only Matthew and Mark, creating our Mark, and these latter additions merged with the M we now see only in Matthew.
Recapping, an Aramaic Matthew (Gospel according to the Hebrews) is the Synoptic base, but it grew from Q and related texts (all of the Double Tradition and all of the Triple Tradition, these having emerged in an Aramaic stage and a Greek stage). (If we want to speak of a Grundschrift, this won’t quite serve because none of the three Synoptics come simply from it.) From this an early Mark was abridged, and this stage of Mark (Ur-Marcus or Proto-Mark) was available to Luke along with the (partially) “Hebrew” text from which it came to which L in Aramaic had been added. Meanwhile to the earlier Greek Proto-Matthew M was added and to both Matthew and Mark several chapters were added that are not in Luke. This combines the Augustinian Hypothesis and the Modified Two-Document Hypothesis.
The above retains lots of agreement with my earlier Gospel Eyewitnesses as promulgated in Theology Web and Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board (but currently unavailable) and still available on Christian Forums. Now that I acknowledge that texts did not exist just all in Aramaic or all in Greek (a misapprehension that scholars in general retain), I don’t need Proto-Luke, for example, but I think the basic principles still apply.
http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/

Edited to add Nov 22, 2014:
The following post labeled "Peter Kirby" is actually my ideas (Dale "Adam"s), but I can't edit "his" post. I have made some minor editing as to Synoptic eyewitnesses in Posts #4, 5 and 6 over at
http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/
to incorporate my rejection of the two-source theory and substitution of my revival of the proto-gospel Synoptic solution. This does not affect my main thesis of seven written eyewitness accounts of Jesus.
Last edited by Adam on Sat Nov 22, 2014 4:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Peter Kirby »

If we've learned anything, it's always make a backup. Here's another copy in case anyone wants to find it later:

THESE ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT MY IDEAS.

The standard Christian apologia for the gospels states that they were written by eyewitnesses or (in the cases of Mark and Luke) were written to give someone else’s eyewitness testimony. This works well for Mark, which is usually understood as Peter’s personal testimony, but the others are typically regarded as composite works. For the Gospel of John, the more it is presented as a unitary work by Christians, the less critics regard it as an eyewitness record. When examined more carefully, however, most of the gospel material can be established as from eyewitnesses.
The starting point for a new look might be Richard Bauckham in his 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and his 2007 The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple. He rejects the Form Criticism of early 20th Century and endeavors to show that all the gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. He’s not saying that any gospel is itself the work of an eyewitness, but that eyewitnesses stand behind each gospel. The most obvious example is Peter as the basis for Mark. The Gospel of John is more complicated. By dropping John as the author and eyewitness behind that gospel, he goes on to show that there are several eyewitnesses consulted by the man who did write John. The same would be more obviously true of the Gospel of Luke. He says he consulted eyewitnesses or eyewitness testimony. As for John, Bauckham explains the gradual emergence of the Beloved Disciple as the author’s way of introducing himself, a non-apostle, who only from John 13 presents himself as the eyewitness who needs no other validation. The Beloved Disciple is the author of John, but we don’t necessarily know who he is.
Bauckham seemed to stop in no-man’s-land. For Evangelicals, and even more for conservative Roman Catholics, establishing any eyewitness(es) behind John is not good enough if it is not John the Apostle. That he did not name the eyewitness(es) for sure is not satisfying to Christians not even so conservative. Trying to establish eyewitnesses and even suggesting their names is anathema to scholars of a more liberal bent. If my opinion matters, it’s not enough to go against the grain of scholarship and suggest eyewitnesses, but without closing the deal and presenting evidence for specific eyewitnesses and which parts each wrote. But to do that Bauckham would have had to cross his Evangelical base by acknowledging sources within the gospels, and he was not prepared to do that.
For most of two centuries now, scholarship has shown more and more willingness to break up the gospels into constituent parts. For some scholars this was a way to salvage evidentiary and historical grounds for knowing Jesus. This was particularly true of the concept of Marcan Priority or in establishing a large Ur-Marcus source within it. Likewise many scholars in “demarcating” a Q Source (redundant, yes?) in Matthew and Luke suggested that the Logia said to be from Matthew should be understood to be Q. The Two-Source Theory provides for this. However, less and less attention is being paid to eyewitnesses standing behind even these. There is also the Four-Source Theory, but no one seems to have suggested one basic eyewitness to be behind L for Luke or M for Matthew. However, there is a good case (which I will show) for identifying a Simon as the L Source, a man who was a disciple of John the Baptist and one of Jesus’s Seventy-Two.
As for the Gospel of John, critics have readily singled out the Signs, the Passion Narrative, and (by some) the Discourses as due to sources. I will show that each of these has an eyewitness author and the main Editor was himself an eyewitness. My case is that the upshot of two centuries of Higher Criticism properly is to identify seven eyewitnesses to the four gospels.
Tracing sources of the gospels would seem to start with the earliest written documents, but the logic starts better with the foundation upon which the other sources and additions were built. This source is the Passion Narrative, the largest part of the material common to both John and the Synoptics. The source for the information in it is most likely John Mark, who was the most likely “disciple known to the high priest”. (See John 18:15-16, 20:2-9, in which in John 20:2 the English word “love” is phileo in the Greek, not “agape” as in John 13. In John 18-19 we get events and direct quotes that Peter would not have witnessed.)
John 18 launches right out with Jesus going to the Garden. Whereas Teeple believed the information here came from the Synoptics and was later enlarged upon, he more correctly called it a source. No one regards these chapters as from the Signs Source. This foundation source from John Mark is the following:
[My Post #1 OP should be amended to include in the shared source (from John Mark) also verses preceding the Passion Narrative in John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.]
John 18:1b, 1d,ii. 3,vi. 10b,v. 12,iv. 13b,i. 15-19,xiii. 22,ii 25b,ii. 27-31,vii. 33-35,vii. (36-40);x. 19:1-19,xl. 21-23,viii. 28-30,vii. 38b,iii. 40-42;vi. 20:1,iv. 3-5,viii. 8,ii. 11b-14a,iv. 19b,ii. 22-23,v. 26-27,viii. 30,ii. John Mark gives the story of this one week in his life, best called the Passion Diary.
Some of the later passages in John 20 are as likely to have been added as P-Strand, but as discussed later this may have come from the same author.
A great many scholars have believed that a Passion Narrative was the first element of the gospels to be written. It seems similarly often believed that John Mark was very young at this time and lived near Jerusalem, so his personal testimony would not tend to include narrative preceding John 18. He is the first of seven identifiable eyewitnesses in the gospels.

Continuing with the second eyewitness to write about Jesus:
I used to think that earlier parts of John were equally carried to the Synoptics from what I believed Peter had told. Now that I think of John Mark as the writer of the Passion Narrative, I have had to find some other explanation for the earlier Synoptic-type passages. The clearest of these is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It’s regarded by many source-critics as from the Signs Source.
Yet little else is thought to come from Signs into the Synoptics, and I used to think that nothing at all did. What seems to have happened was that John Mark’s Passion Narrative later had Signs added in front of it. That’s why the Signs Source ends at John 12, because the story beyond that point had already been written. At this time the entirety of John Mark’s text plus some Signs were used as the base to which Peter added his recollections to form Petrine Ur-Marcus. (Perhaps the Signs were incomplete at this time.) In the process whatever was in Aramaic was translated into Greek. But this was used henceforth only in the Synoptic gospels, not in John. Meanwhile (or perhaps beforehand) the Passion Narrative text in Aramaic (or a copy of it) was used for translation into Greek. Next in front of the Passion Narrative in Greek the complete Signs Source was translated into Greek by the person who (later or) had earlier translated Petrine Ur-Marcus. The latter at this point was a Signs gospel, consisting of the Signs plus the Passion Narrative, neither of which had any input from Peter. Both these portions had similar style (but not exact) either because the Signs translator made some stylistic changes in the Passion Narrative or because the two translators had similar Greek style.
The Signs Source according to W. Nicol is John 1:35-51;xx. 2:1-11;xx. 4:1-9,x. 16-19,v. 27-30,x. 40,ii. 43-54;x. 5:1-9;x. 6:16-25;xv. 9:1-2,iv. 6-7;vii. 11:1-6,vii. 11-17,vii. 33-44;xv. 12:1-8,xii. 12-15.v. I would agree with Howard M. Teeple in The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John in ascribing some individual verses within the above to the later Editor and in adding to the Signs Source John 6:1-15,xx. Teeple recognizes as his source “S” basically what I attribute above to the Signs Source in John 1 to 12 and the Passion Narrative in John 18 and 19. What I show above in the Passion Narrative in John 20 Teeple never labeled as “S”, but he did denote it as a special source “p-1” or even “p-2”. However, he shows as “S” a number of sections not accounted for above, most of which I will show later to be P-Strand.
Not necessarily disclosing the author, but largely related to this section of John is the name “Andrew” at John 1:40, 41, 44; 6:8; 12:22(2). The name “Philip” occurs even more frequently in about the same places and in John 14:8, 9, but I long ago settled on Andrew as a more probable author, particularly when I found out that the Muratorian Canon (usually dated to 170 AD) states that Andrew started out the process of writing John. As a further note I would add that the first occurrence of each name at John 12:22 is shown by Teeple as from the source, so should not be used to claim that the name “Andrew” is not associated exclusively with the Signs Source, even though it falls outside the sections more conclusively identified as Signs Source. Andrew is the second identifiable eyewitness.

And here is yet a third eyewitness who wrote about Jesus in the Gospel of John.
The above sources in the Gospel of John I rate as eyewitness testimony in that they were set in writing by the eyewitnesses John Mark and Andrew and are still found in the canonical John text in relatively pure form. This is particularly true of the Signs Source, as almost all scholars supporting this theory regard the initial literary style as preserved so well that a core of it is distinct. We can regard the selection stated above (two paragraphs up) as from the eyewitness Andrew. Beyond that core various scholars lump in other sections because of similar, but not so clearly distinct style. But by far the larger part of this additional material is Passion Narrative, and as delineated above (2nd paragraph in Post #157) can be regarded as the work of the eyewitness John Mark. There is additional material of similar style that some scholars add to their Signs Gospel, and these may be mixed passages stemming from Andrew or John Mark, but which are not so clearly eyewitness material. Some of this I will relegate to the P-Strand, largely editorial additions. Meanwhile the largest eyewitness source needs to be examined.
So before dealing with the P-Strand, another major source needs to be brought into consideration. Teeple follows Bultmann in seeing the main theological texts in John to be from a source. Many scholars see a Gnostic or semi-Gnostic strain in John, so Teeple labels this source “G”. But just as Bultmann’s delineation has been called into question, Teeple’s source separation here was criticized from the first. Robert Kysar did not see that G and Teeple’s later “E” Editor as distinct. I take a middle position, that the E material does contain much that is from an Editor, but much of it is best merged with G. I see the dividing line as between whatever can be regarded as Discourse, basically G plus the other teachings, and narrative that is contained wholly within E.
With that “clarified”, I next see some of the G text above found in S stories, particularly in John 4, 5, and 9. There are sayings in John 4 that are in S style. I interpret these facts as meaning that the Signs writer who brought in the Passion Narrative also had available to him the Discourses, did his own translation at the start, and thereafter made use of the translation from Aramaic to Greek that was later used for the rest of John. It’s also possible that the Signs in John 5 and John 9 were added in a later edition.
Focusing now on the Discourses, where did they come from? The Discourses contain the Johannine Theology that has typically been considered as written down by John (or someone later) in his old age. As shown above, this is not necessarily the case. If we look for clues within the text itself, we find (apart from the Prologue) that high theology begins in John 3, the night visit to Nicodemus. Did Nicodemus record this? Consider that we next hear of Nicodemus in John 7:50-52, in which Nicodemus argues that the Law does not condemn a man without first hearing from him. If he took it upon himself to do what he said, the words recorded in the next three chapters from Jesus seem well suited to be a record of what Jesus said that might be worthy of condemnation. Later chapters reveal more and more favor towards what Jesus had to say, concluding with John 17. In John 19:39 Nicodemus brought spices for Jesus’s burial. He had obviously become a Christian. The marked change in attitude toward Jesus shows that Nicodemus wrote all this (or at least notes) while Jesus was still alive.
Teeple displays the Nicodemus name consistently as what he labels “E” for Editor, which argues for the lumping together of his G and E strands, as I hold that G stems exclusively from Nicodemus. It does tend to argue that the Discourses were added in to John when the Editor was active, which I acknowledge as a possibility even though it goes against my belief that the Discourses were added in during the just-previous edition. On the other hand, recognizing at least some stylistic difference between G and E goes as well with my view that E added in G to the mix, but that in the process of doing so his own style got into it enough that Teeple could reasonably find that some parts of the Discourses should be categorized as E.
Even with the mentions of Nicodemus occurring in E sections, it’s still reasonable to assume that the prior edition added his writings in, but without naming him. E got more specific, and is characteristic of him, he encased it within some narration. That the Discourses only relatively later get around to mentioning actions of Nicodemus does show that the Discourses were not the building block around which John was built, even though my logic dictates that it was the first text (or notes) written.
The raw text from Nicodemus, my modification of Teeple’s G, runs as follows:
3 (in the main); 4:20-24; most of 5:17-47; 6:26-51, 58-65; most of 7:5-52; 8:12-57; most of 9 & 10, but not 9:1-2, 6-7, 13-17, 24-28; 11:1, 9-10, 16; 12:23-59; 13:16-17, 21-22; Ch. 14-17.
(As I expected, counting eyewitness evidences does not work for long discourse passages.)
As the above is almost all sayings, sermons, or debates, eyewitness status is less applicable. Indeed, Nicodemus was charged with bringing a case against Jesus, so the general tone of this source should not be regarded as representative of Jesus. Nevertheless, Nicodemus probably did restrict himself to noting down things that Jesus really said—he just omitted all the qualifications and nuances. Nicodemus is the third identifiable eyewitness.

Here's the fourth eyewitness. (You're allowed to comment on any of these as we go along, in case you're wondering. Or wait for all seven to be presented.)
Continuing my focus on eyewitness testimony I will consider later the editions of John that brought the sources together and turn to where we left off in tracing the two narrative sources in John that got worked in to the Synoptics. I have already explained in that long second paragraph in Post #2 ("Yet little else...") how the Passion Narrative in John got expanded into the Ur-Marcus found still in many of the passages where Mark overlaps Luke. Aware that the early state of John had placed Signs Source in front of the Passion Narrative and incorporated Nicodemus’s Discourses, all set primarily in Jerusalem, next John Mark sought to write a gospel set primarily in Galilee and adding events in the middle of Jesus’s ministry instead of just the earliest and latest. To do this he got biographical information from Peter and used Matthew’s Q. The date of 44 AD for this seems early, and sets the 1st edition of John as even earlier. In that process the eyewitness testimony of Peter came in. Up to this point we already have four eyewitnesses, John Mark, Andrew, Nicodemus, and Peter. The verses attributable to Peter(including verses in Mark 14 and 15 already written by John Mark) are these [ur-Marcus]:
1:16-28,x. 2:18-3:5,xv. 5:1-43,lx. 8:27-9:13,xlv. 9:30-31,v. 9:38-42,v. 10:13-34,x. 10:46-52, v. 11:27-33,vi. 12:18-23,iii. 12:35-13:17,xv. 13:28-31,v. ,14: 28-42,xx. 14:48-52,v. 62-72;xv. 15:3-27,xxx., 33-40,xii. and continuing in Luke 24:1-3,iv.,11-12,v; and Acts 1:6-4:31, 5:17-42, 9:32-11:18, 12:1-17. (The Roman numerals represent the number of times I found details in that passage that could indicate eyewitness testimony.)
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
In Addition I suggest that the rest of the verses in Acts 1:6-12:25 and perhaps up to 15:35 be considered additional testimony by John Mark. As the primary Petrine sections conclude at Acts 12:17, it is most likely that all this eyewitness testimony of Peter (as well as the earlier eyewitness testimony of John Mark in John 18-20 as initially stated) was written down in 44 A. D.
Note that these are the verses specified in my article, “Underlying Sources of the Gospels”, less the verses therein from John Mark or Andrew as seen initially above. However, I have added in Mark 14:62-72 as from Peter (or John Mark) even though in my article I followed my stylistic rules and listed it as from Q. (I’ll make an exception now by pleading that the word-use in Mark and Luke is dissimilar only because John Mark and Peter were both involved here, but as eyewitnesses from slightly different vantage points.)
Note [by studying the verses above] that what I call Petrine Ur-Marcus excludes not only that Marcan material not found in Luke, but also anything that I say derives from Q [shown in Post #5 also called here the"Twelve Source"]. It is distinguished from the latter by its style in which frequent consecutive words are exact in both Mark and Luke. This came about because Luke copied Petrine Ur-Marcus in Greek into the already existing Proto-Luke. (Peter is the fourth identifiable eyewitness.)
Edited to add: For additional support read the first six short paragraph in the first of my four articles at that same website as above.
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common

Now the fifth eyewitness, Matthew. Note how much the separation of Q here in Mark depends upon the preceeding paragraphs in Post #4.
Thus the next eyewitness source I recognize would as likely be as early or earlier. That it is early is also evidenced by it being found in Matthew as well as in Luke. Yes, I am talking about Q. In Mark [and when in Mark is usually called "Twelve Source"] these verses are:
1:9-15,x. 1:29-2:17,lii. 3:13-4:41,lv. 6:2-16,xii. 9:14-29,xxv. 9:33-37,iii. 10:41-45,v. 11:1-11,xv. 11:15-19,vi. 12:1-17,vi. 24-34,vii. 13:18-23,iii. 33-37,ii. {14:10-25,x. 14:43-45, 62-72, 15:29-32, 15:42-16:8.}[/font]
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
[Reconsidering as of Dec. 2011, I have found confirmation for my observation long ago that rules for uncovering composition of the Synoptics change when reaching the Passion Narrative. There was no Passion Narrative in the Twelve-Source. So Petrine Ur-Marcus was the Aramaic source independently translated here. Verbal exactitudes thus arise only where new matter is inserted into Mark. Where Luke noticed this and wanted to use it, close word-use is found. Nothing in Mark 14, 15, or 16 above can remain assigned to the Twelve source.]
[Further, some Q passages in Mark do show some verbal exactitude to Luke, so 12:1-10 should be regarded as Q2, originally in Greek. They appeared first in Mark before being copied along with Ur-Marcus into Luke.]
In addition to which I should have added Matthew 28:16-20 that probably corresponds to the lost ending of Mark. Beyond this, of course, add in [most of] the Double-Tradition verses commonly ascribed to Q. Why would we say these are from an eyewitness? Well, they begin only shortly before we read about the call of Levi at Mark 2:14, so we have internal evidence that all of this may stem from Matthew. External evidence states that the Apostle Matthew wrote the Logia of Jesus, identified by many scholars as Q. This does create an additional problem in extending the Double Tradition to include much Triple Tradition material found in Mark, but we know that much apparently Q material in Thomas is also in Mark. All the Q-Twelve Source material in Mark can be determined by the lack of exact word correspondence between Mark and Luke, as well as by the frequent use of the word “Twelve” to denote the Apostles. (This lack of verbal exactitude means that the Aramaic Q or copies thereof were used at least four different times on the way to the Greek versions in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas, with the copy used for Thomas apparently being the most different from the others.)
There may be reason to differentiate Q from Twelve-Source, in spite of what I have said here. The Q sayings could have been written down at the time Jesus said them, but it is rare that historical narrative is written while it is taking place. Nothing in Mark (or Matthew or Luke) looks like diary entries. Thus we can suppose that the narrative was added later, particularly if we suppose that Q itself (or at least notes for it) was written during Jesus’s lifetime. But the narrative includes the call of Matthew, so it is eyewitness material as well, our fifth eyewitness in the gospels. {Ellipses indicate items that should be deleted.}
Consider also this argument from my first article at the same source for the expansion of Q into Marcan narratives: ( http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common ):One commonly hears that there are no Q passages in the Gospel of Mark. This is incorrect. The discovery of the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas at Nag Hammadi in 1946 revealed sayings in it that are in Mark, and not just from Matthew and Luke. Although this could mean that the text of Thomas was based on the completed Synoptic Gospels, close study shows that it is more likely that the parts of Thomas that overlap the canonical Gospels are based on a source text they share in common, namely Q or some variant thereof. Unless the writer of Thomas also had access to Ur-Marcus, this shows that Thomas picked up some of the same parables from Q that Mark included. It thus seems that Ur-Marcus was almost completely narrative text with even fewer sayings than we commonly attribute to Mark.
The Q Source could have been written very early. It was written in Aramaic, judging by the sections that Mark and Luke have in common that lack verbal exactitude. The word “Twelve” (meaning the 12 Apostles) appears so often in this that it is commonly called the Twelve-Source. The name Matthew (or Levi) occurs where this text begins (as at Luke 5:27), and early external tradition names the writer as this Matthew, so this material could have been from an eye-witness or could even have been first put in writing during the lifetime of Jesus. Continuing, but from the third article: ( http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying )
Once the barrier is broken that Q material exists in Mark, the radical change is that even narrative in Mark may be from Q [as listed just above]. The portions of Mark not already listed [farther] above [in Post #4] could be largely from Q. The narrative material in question is called by scholars the Twelve-Source. We cannot tell whether Q and Twelve-Source are distinct.
That Q and Twelve-Source are not distinct is suggested by external criticism. Tradition says that Matthew wrote this gospel [of matthew]. The Higher Critics have suggested that this may have been Q, limited to sayings that occur only in Matthew and Luke. Conservatives have continued to hold that Matthew wrote the gospel with his name. I say split the difference. Acknowledge that Matthew wrote most of the Q discourses, but also allow for the Twelve-Source narrative, which would seem most likely to have come from him. His name (=Levi) occurs first at Mark 2:14, and very little occurs before that.

[Some Q verses should be set aside as not from this first eyewitness. They show close verbal exactitude between Matthew and Luke. A separate later Q2 in Greek makes better sense to explain about a dozen sequences. These include Lk. 3:7-9, 16-17,; 6:24-26, 36-42, 7:18-23, 9:57-10:3; 10:12-15, 17-24; 11:1-4; 12:2-7; 12:26-31, 39-46; 13:34-35; 17:1-2. These passages are disproportionately about John the Baptist and apocalypticism.]
[(March 2012): Consequently, Q1 can be identified as the less verbally exact verses Luke 4:1-12, 6:20-23, 27-35, 39-40, 43-49, 10: 4-11, 16; 11:33-35, 39-44, 46-52; 12:8-12, 22-24, 33-34, 49-59; 13:18-21, 24-30; 14:16-24, 26-27, 34-35; 15:4-10; 16:16-18; 17:3-6, 23-25, 28-37; and 22:28-30.]
[These verses show the perspective of one man who had the same interests in the "Cynic" Jesus as the Jesus Seminar people. The direct speeches of Jesus start after Matthew (Levi) is called at Luke 5:27-28. Papias reported that he was told that the Logia was a gospel written by Matthew. (That it was a complete gospel is argued by James R. Edwards in The Hebrew Gospel & the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (2009), citing J. Kurzinger and C. E. Hill.) If these verses of Q1 were supplemented by Q2 above and also the Twelve-Source, this would have been truly a complete gospel. This may have been known in antiquity as the Gospel of the Hebrews. Or that designation may be more appropriate for Proto-Luke after L was also added to it. Alternately, Edwards prefers to think the Gospel of the Hebrews was just L, and the known quotations from this Hebrews do come disproportionately from L.]
[These verses continue only as far as where the story is picked up in the Passion Narrative. This indicates that the Passion Narrative already existed from the earliest times, and no Q and very little L material was needed to supplement it. Each eyewitness added his own prspective with minimal extraneous additions.]
There may be reason to differentiate Q from Twelve-Source, in spite of what I have said here. The Q sayings could have been written down at the time Jesus said them, but it is rare that historical narrative is written while it is taking place. Nothing in Mark (or Matthew or Luke) looks like diary entries. Thus we can suppose that the narrative was added later, particularly if we suppose that Q itself (or at least notes for it) was written during Jesus’s lifetime. But the narrative includes the call of Matthew, so it is eyewitness material as well, our fifth eyewitness in the gospels.

Here is my sixth eyewitness to Jesus who left a written record, the Proto-Luke derived by B. H. Streeter in 1924. That Simon wrote it seems to be my original idea, so I'll make this post longer.
Proto-Luke
This Q-Twelve-Source text remained in Aramaic. Next came a further stage of additions in Aramaic. The traces of who did this can be discerned by looking for personal clues. We need active characters in Luke who appear nowhere else in the Synoptics. The key name is Simon. The personal experience introduced at this stage starts with a Simon and ends with a Simon. I call this stage of the document “Proto-Luke”, a modification of B. H. Streeter’s theory. Luke 7:36-50 tells of Jesus going to a dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee. Luke 24:13-35 is about the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus with two disciples. One is Cleopas. As to the other, “The Lord has indeed risen and has appeared to Simon.” Traditionally everyone assumes this refers to Simon Peter. However, scripture does not mention any prior appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter. No, the plain meaning is that Jesus had appeared to Cleopas and a different Simon. Just as the Q-Twelve-Source ended at this point, so did Proto-Luke. [Origen also recognized this connection between Cleopas and Simon as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The minority reading "legontes" at 24:34 implies this as well.]

This Simon may be a well-recognized figure in the early Christian Church. The so-called brothers (probably cousins) of Jesus were James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon. James was the first leader of the Church. When he was killed (c. 62 A.D.), Simon his brother became Bishop of Jerusalem.
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
The eyewitness role of Simon Barsabbas would presumably be limited to passages in Luke between Luke 7:36 and 24:51. He might have been the source of the Infancy Narrative in Luke 1 and 2, but as eyewitness only if he were a step-brother older than Jesus who accompanied his father Joseph to Bethlehem. Nor would he have been the source of any passages already attributable to earlier eyewitnesses John Mark, Peter, and Matthew. He could quite reasonably have been one of the Seventy-Two. (Indeed, that is additional reason to suppose that some non-apostle was the source of the information we find only in Luke 10:1, 17.) He may also be the Simeon called Niger in Acts 13:1.

That I present my original idea that this Simon wrote Proto-Luke means that I should show what in Luke may be his eyewitness testimony. He was most likely younger than Jesus, so his eyewitness testimony could not in that case precede Luke 3:7-10, 16-17 about John the Baptist. Next we can establish that this eyewitness wrote verses that we now find only in Luke. The.whole passage in Luke 7:36-50 is so full of detail that it seems like eyewitness testimony. Every verse shows several instances of what looks like eyewitness detail. One stands out, however: verse 39: “When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who this woman is and what sort of person it is who is touching him and what a bad name she has.’ “ This could have been told to someone else, but this does give first priority to this Simon as the author, telling us his own thoughts.

In the immediately following verses we encounter the first instance (in any of the gospels) in which we see other people as regular adherents of Jesus: “certain women….Magdalene… Joanna…Susanna, and many others” (Luke 8:2-3). The next purely Lucan passages skip over to Luke 9:51, where Jesus starts the final journey to Jerusalem. So “he sent messengers ahead of him. These set out, and they went into a Samaritan village to make preparations for him, but the people would not receive him because he was making for Jerusalem.” At this point James and John get rebuked, but anyone present would know who they were, so this is not good evidence that either of them was the author (and certainly not James who died too young).
In contrast we find Luke 9:57-60 listing sayings with such verbal exactitude that we can see it got copied over (from a stage of Q that was already in Greek) into Matthew 8:18-22. Luke 10: 13-15 got copied.to Mt. 11:21-24. Similarly Luke 10:21-24 parallels Matthew 11:25-27 and 13:16-17, and Luke 11:9-13 is very much like Mt. 7:7-11. The Sign of Jonah is at both Luke 11:29-32 and Mt. 12:38-42. There is a pattern here: wherever Proto-Luke introduced vibrant, piquant material, it went into Matthew in chronological context. Only the anti-Pharisaic broadsides from Jesus got shunted to their own special section in Matthew 23:23-24:51.

The stray verses about the Seventy-two (Luke 10:1, 17-20) got inserted among old Q material in which there are no verbal identities. We can also assign to Proto-Luke a great part of what follows in the Perean Ministry. Most notably they may include the stories of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Stories that seem most like an eyewitness are found at Luke 10:38-42 (Martha and Mary), 11:1 (preceding the Lord’s Prayer that got copied to Mt. 6:9-13); 11:27-28; 11:37-38, 45, 53-54; 12:13-15; 12:41; 13:1; 13:10-17; 13:22; 13:31; 14:1, 7, 12, 15; 15:1; 17:1-21; 19:1-27 (including the story of Zacchaeus, with intense eyewitness touches); 22:31-38; 23:8-12, 27-32, 39-43, 47-49; and 24:13-53. More broadly, we should attribute to this source also 11:2-13, 29-32, 47-51; 12:35-48; 13:1-17; 13:22-14:14; 14:28-33; 15:8-10; 16:1-12, 19-31; 17:7-21; 18:1-13; and 19:38b-44.
How fitting that a close relative of Jesus, who wrote the main gospel existing in 62 AD, would be selected as the leader of the Church in Jerusalem!

Referring back to the source just previously listed, the Q-Twelve-Source in Mark drew from a different Aramaic copy, so the Greek translations in Mark never show verbal exactitude with Luke. That contrasts with the Petrine Ur-Marcus sections of Mark that were copied into Luke with such frequent exact word usage.

That traces all the eyewitnesses I can identify in the Synoptics. Each of them contains several other chapters that I cannot show come from eyewitnesses. I’ll turn back to John to identify another eyewitness, though his role there is primarily as an editor. But first there is another editor, who may be the aforementioned first eyewitness, John Mark.

And now my seventh eyewitness, unnamed but most likely John the Apostle, not a new proposal but much more limited in scope (but first a further note about Proto-Luke: )
One further note about Luke. Even where he knew more from what he had heard, he as much as possible restricted himself to eyewitness testimony. If as I say Luke got the Walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) from Simon and it continued through to the end at Luke 24:53, Luke did not add other events between the Resurrection and the Ascension. By “handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses” (Luke 1:2) he means what they had written. Rather than expanding upon that, Luke 24:44-53 looks like a compressed version of what was in his source. His source was equally scrupulous, not listing any appearances of the resurrected Jesus that he had not personally witnessed (Luke 24:13-43, 50-53). The numerous eyewitness details in the Gospel of Luke were already there before Luke translated and edited Proto-Luke.

Scholars who find a larger source in John than just the (usually) seven signs sometimes include the editor who is identified by his frequent use of the term “Pharisee”. A good name for these editorial additions in “P-Strand”, most often identified as John 1:19-31; 3:1a; 4:1a; 7:25-27, 31-32, 43-49; 8:13a; 9:1, 13-16, 24-28, 40a, 11:46-50, 55-57; 12:12, 17-22, 42-43. To this I would go beyond Urban von Wahlde’s advice (to not go beyond John 18:15) and suggest also John 20:1, 3-5, 8, 11b-14a, 22-23, 26-27, based on Teeple’s difficulty in assigning these verses simply to the usual source he recognized (S). These latter, however, I have already treated as John Mark’s Passion Narrative, so I’m not sure where they should go. This difficulty could be due simply to the same author having written both the Passion Narrative and the P-Strand. But the author of the P-Strand cannot easily be identified. His antipathy to the Pharisees could be explained, however, if he was a Sadducee, as John Mark may have been. If John Mark wrote it, he was not likely an eyewitness for all of it.

The P-Strand seems to be a fairly small element with John, but useful in sectioning off what was earlier in the process from the main editing work that followed it. By this time the eyewitness testimonies were in from John Mark in the Passion Narrative (and possibly the P-Strand as well), Andrew in the Signs Source, and Nicodemus in the Discourses. As told by the Muratorian Canon (c. 170 AD) the various earlier testimonies (Andrew identified by Name) were gathered together and put out in the name of John the Apostle. His primary additions as eyewitness are found primarily in John 13, 20, and 21. His other additions can be identified in detail because his style was anarthrous, never to use the article before a person’s name. These smaller segments could be as an eyewitness as well, as any apostle could have been there at those occasions:

John 1:17, 22-23, 40-41, 43a, 44b, 46, 48, 50; (2:23b-25; 4:10, 13-14, 44; 6:2-3, 8b, 15, 24ab, 42, 60, 65, 68a; 10:40- 41; 11:1, 8b-10, 16, 22, 33c -34, 51-53; 12:1b, 4b. 14b-16, 21a, 13:1b-9, 12-17, 21-22, 24, 30-36 ,38; 17:3; 18:1a, 2, 4-8, 10ac, 13a, 14, 25a, 26b, 30; 19:26-27; 20:2, 6a, 10-11a, 14b-15, 18, 24-25; 21:2a, 3-6, 7b, 11, 15b-17a, 17c, 25.
Which of the smaller segments show eyewitness traces? The traditional view is that John the Apostle was present from the first, but I believe that in John 1 we see Andrew (for sure) and Philip as the two disciples of John the Baptist. These small sections look like eyewitness testimony, but Teeple’s evidence that the information comes from the Editor may instead mean that the Editor inserted the anarthrous names. In any case, if John was the Editor, he could have obtained sufficient information from Andrew or Philip to give us the details we find there.

Turning in the above list to John 2:23B-25, this commentary would not likely be from an eyewitness. In John 4 the Woman at the Well narrative shows vibrant details from the Editor in the earlier two sections, not just the insertion of names. We can easily believe that the Apostle John could have been present there. As for John 6, the Synoptics tell us that the apostles were present at the Feeding of the Five Thousand, so we can see John providing the numerous details in most of the eight sections. I show the Editor as next involved in John 11, and presumably all the apostles were there at the raising of Lazarus, as this occurred just shortly before Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time. There is detail here, and there is also the clearest evidence that the Editor wrote after the P-Edition, because E’s 11:51-53 follows immediately upon the P-Strand John 11:46-50.

Intense eyewitness traces are found in John 13 in all the above cited verses. Teeple found none of his usual S (Source) verses in this chapter at all, making the “Editor” seem like a raw source himself here. In contrast, all the eleven insertions in John 17-19 look like additions. Nevertheless, the thirteen Resurrection, Editor sections in John 20 and 21 look like mostly eyewitness testimony. Teeple attributes only one verse to S.
The upshot is that even the eyewitness seeming less identifiable as an eyewitness nevertheless comes through as such. I have presented seven writers of eyewitness testimony for the gospels, to which numerous women (mostly) could be added as likely eyewitnesses that the major seven may have used, or who could have been the basis for the other material in the four gospels.

Now to apply the seven eyewitnesses (and some others) to the Resurrection of Jesus. Also some general observations.
The additional eyewitnesses include several of the witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus. However, among the seven are several as well. I detail the verses attributable to each of them in my article, “Resurrection Sources”:
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Resurrection
This article is restricted to probable sources, not authors, so let me enlarge upon that to say, as I have shown earlier here already, that Matthew was the author of the Twelve-Source, John Mark was the author of Petrine Ur-Marcus, and Simon the Son of Clopas was the author of Luke 24 after the 12th verse. Not in the article, but as shown one page above, I list the verses in John 20 and John 21 due to the Apostle John, also an eyewitness. Putting these together almost all of Matthew 28, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24, and John 20 &21 were written by eyewitnesses to the Resurrection.
Even beyond the identifiable eyewitnesses, is there gospel material we can substantiate? Yes. To start with Mark, a two-chapter interlude that is not found in Luke seems to be a round trip back to its start: Mark 6:45-8:27. But at this point in Mark the Twelve Apostles had already been chosen and were presumably well trained to go out in pairs by themselves. We know from Luke 10:1, 17 that seventy two others were later sent, and it was presumably with a pair of these that Jesus went to Tyre and Sidon. If the source of this information was an eyewitness, he would be the eighth. The person supplying this information may also have provided the Matthean chapters that are similar in nature. The author of Q, presumably Matthew, had his own take on Jesus. Likewise the author of Proto-Luke.
Backtracking about the pairs Jesus sent out--in much of Jesus’s ministry he had no more than twelve, so just six pairs. We would not expect to stay on his knees in a synagogue while his disciples were out and about, so we would expect Jesus to be out with one pair or another. The first pair He taught was Andrew and Philip (John 1), the pair with Him in Jerusalem. Yet even they seemed unaware of His most radical teachings that are found in John 7 to 10. The Synoptic gospels tell us that Jesus was reticent about proclaiming His messiahship, so it figures that He kept away from his apostles when revealing this. Out in the countryside Jesus did not include “I” statements about Himself, and evaded demands that He clarify His role. In Jerusalem there were so many learned persons that Jesus gave frank answers to questions from them.
We should not expect the gospels to be uniform in their presentation of Jesus. A core of eyewitnesses were apostles, but Matthew in his Q was quite different in his interest in ethical sayings as against the narratives around miracles preferred by Peter and Andrew. The Apostle John focused on sacraments and theology. John Mark told just what he knew personally. Simon, apparently one of the seventy-two, told only about the later part of Jesus’s ministry.. Only Nicodemus with the Discourses was radically different from everyone else.
The case needs to be made that each eyewitness record adds to the probability that the gospels have at least one eyewitness. Let’s assume a minimal probability component that a particular eyewitness is 10% certain to be such. That leaves a 90% probability that he does not serve to prove to be an eyewitness. But each additional eyewitness proposed drops that negative result by a factor of .9, leaving 81% after considering two. After considering four, the negative probability drops to 65%, then down to 52% after six are multiplied together. The negative drops to just over 40% after the seven. True, all these probabilities are not independent, but the probability of each is probably a lot larger than 10%. All in all the probability that there was not at least one eyewitness probably drops to 10-20%.

I've done much further writing about Gospel Eyewitnesses, but below I'm posting what seems most suitable for Christian Forums:
Hypothesis: For each section of the gospels proposed as from an eyewitness, near the beginning or end the name or an identifying feature will appear. (This seems closely related to the principle of inclusio enunciated by Richard Bauckham in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006).) To give it a name of its own for my purposes here, call it the Alpha and Omega principle.
Result: Seven true positives, and two false positives (Mary and Philip)
There would be no magic in the number seven as those who left written eyewitness records about Jesus, would there? Even assuming that seven is the perfect number of completeness, there would be no evidence for it, would there? Maybe there is.
Relating to the seven eyewitness sections proposed, for each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two “book-end” the text in question. :
The best recognized source is the Passion Narrative. After long attributing this to Peter, I now see John Mark as the author. His name Mark is attached to the start of that gospel, and he is often considered to be the young man who fled away naked in Mark 14:51-52. The beginning and ending identifications are weaker here, so the evidence needs doubling? Fine, this is paralleled in the Gospel of John in which he may be “the disciple known to the High Priest” (John 18:15-16). As he may also be the author of the P-Strand I derived, he may have accompanied the Pharisees who went to see John the Baptist (John 1:24). If so, the basic list he inserted into John runs from first to last: John 1: 20-21, 24-28, 35-37, 42-44; 7:40-49; 9:13-17; 11:46-50, 55, 57; 12:18-22; 20:11b-14, 16-17.

The Signs Gospel is usually seen as a source, and I name Andrew as it author, named at John 1:40. His name occurs often thereafter in narrative sections of the first twelve chapters up to the end at John 12:21 (2 times). Scholars also think that the original ending of Signs has been shifted to John 20:30-31 to conclude a later edition of that gospel. This covers from the baptism of Jesus to the Resurrection, truly an Alpha and Omega.
For each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two “book-end” the text in question. For Nicodemus, for whom I have given the argument that he wrote the Johannine Discourses while Jesus was still alive, his name appears in John 3:1 at the very start of these. At the end, Nicodemus brings spices to anoint Jesus’s body, John 19:39. The text he actually wrote was sayings only, so his name only appears in text that brackets his writings.
As for Peter, the source for Ur-Marcus, his name turns up from the first when his brother Andrew finds him (John 1:40). Acts 15:7-12 records his speech. He is the most-named apostle, helping to identify material attributable to him in both the Synoptics and Acts. Limiting the purview to the gospels, however, Peter still turns up at the end at the Sea of Tiberius, John 21:23.
During Jesus’s life-time the Apostle Matthew may have written Q and later the associated Twelve-Source that underlies gMark as well. If so his name turns up almost at the start of his eyewitness portion of gMark, his call by Jesus at Mark 2:14. His name only occurs again in the naming of the Twelve, but this gospel concludes abruptly at 16:8 in a section most likely from the Twelve Source that can be shown to continue into much of the ending of gMatthew, or at least Matthew 28:16 with the word “eleven” denoting Matthew among them. The Twelve-Source may underlie part of the Acts of the Apostles, and the name “Matthew” is included there along with the other ten remaining apostles (Acts 1:13).
Last to write, but still active on my interpretation (and thereby) becoming Bishop of Jerusalem in 62 CE, is the eyewitness I discovered, Simon. He is one of the two disciples seeing the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 2413-35) according to Origen and my reading of Luke 24:34. The name Simon also comes at the start of the Lucan material as Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). If he is not to be identified with this Simon, he still may be (as a family member) the source for the Infancy Narrative starting up Luke 1 and 2. I see him as the author of Proto-Luke.

Writing later than most of the others, but still an eyewitness, was the Apostle John as the main Editor of the Gospel of John. His name is in the title. For “John” in the text itself, John the Baptist comes up early, but always as simply “John”. This could indicate an author not needing to give further identification about a John who was not himself. In any case, the editorial insertions I recognize (following Howard M. Teeple) begin in John 1 and continue through John 21. If we assume he was also the Beloved Disciple, then he is written about in the very ending; John 21:20-23.

But could this process be carried on and on? Might there be other names we could associate with an occurrence at the beginning and end of relevant sections? There are not actually very many other names to consider. James is one. The last instance is Mark 10:35, with still six more chapters of Mark to go. The first occurrence does fit, in Mark 1:19. I’m setting it aside as not close enough a parallel
Finally, I encounter two that don’t fit. There is inclusio, but they are not eyewitnesses. The name “Mary” does appear at first and last. She’s in the start of both gMatthew and gLuke. She is present at the Cross (John 19:25) and in Acts1:14. She is named at Luke 1:27, and concluding this section we read at Luke 2:52, “His mother stored up all these things in her heart.” Shouldn’t we have an eyewitness text from her also? I guess Luke 1 and 2 would fit? Eight eyewitnesses? And yes, it fits. Practically everything could have been known to Mary except Luke 1:1-4. Personally, I had never given much thought to Mary as having written an eyewitness record; just that Luke had gotten good information from her. This story goes back three decades before the rest of the gospel narratives, leaving more time for legendary accruals, however. The scholarly literature on these two chapters is heavily weighted to the Roman Catholic side, as elegantly reviewed by Raymond Brown in Birth of the Messiah (1999). He has lots of doubts about historicity of Luke 1 and 2. As for any eyewitness claims, he dismisses this on page 575, “that the Lucan infancy narration came from Mary has been deemed untenable from the start (1B)”
http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Messiah-Com ... 0300140088
(The above link to Amazon gives the largest preview I have ever seen. Of course the book is 750 pages. Highly recommended.)
Another name that gives a false positive is Philip. His name appears basically wherever the name Andrew appears. Did both of them write eyewitness accounts spanning the same sections of narrative? The best that can be made of this is a reinforcement of the Muratorian Canon that a team of apostles wrote gJohn, and that Andrew is a better choice as the writer because the name “Philip” appears over a chapter beyond the relevant section (in the Farewell discourse, John 14:8, 9).
Close, we might say, with seven true positives, two false positives (Mary and Philip. For ordinary purposes that might serve, but here I’m seeking confirmation from God that He ordained these seven eyewitnesses and no others. Since I’m using names in the first place as my primary identifiers of eyewitnesses, it’s not saying much that the same name appears more than once, and that the primary occurrence is at the start of the section.
So my hypothesis is not confirmed in exactly the way I wanted it. My seven eyewitnesses are confirmed, but something equally meaningful may apply to the other two. The name “Philip” in paralleling “Andrew” may indicate he also had a part in writing gJohn, maybe in tying the Signs Source together with the rest of gJohn by his name getting into the Farewell Discourse at John 14:8, 9. As for Mary (aside from the old standard that women don’t count), there could be good reason(s) to emphasize her under the Alpha and Omega principle.

The weakest part of my thesis remains naming Simon as the author of Luke or Proto-Luke, so I am supplementing it below. Kyle R. Hughes argues that the L writer in Luke also was the source for the Pericope of the Adulteress in John 7:53-8:11: (The Lukan Special Material and the Tradition History of the Pericope Adulterae, Novum Testamentum July 2013, 232-251.)http://taarcheia.files.wordpress.com/20 ... rae.pdfNot quite Fundamentalist, to be sure, but this is firm support for historicity of this and other gospel events. On the other hand, scholars are giving qualified support to a radical methodology by Dennis R. MacDonald in Two Shipwrecked Gospels that reverses the usual order of the gospels by placing Luke later than some bits of apocryphal gospels and commentaries. Thus my thesis here of seven written gospel eyewitness may be a good refutation of attempts to use non-extant and/or fragmentary late texts to undermine extant gospel texts.
Christianity in Jerusalem had become dominated by the family of Jesus, and I hold that one of them, Simon, combined Q with his own L contribution to form Proto-Luke. That this Simon was the companion of Cleopas on the Road to Emmaus was known to Origen in Contra Cesium ii. 62, 68 and is found in a marginal note in Codex Sinaiticus, or at least as some son of Cleopas according to a fragment of Julius Africanus in Philip of Side. That forms an inclusio with this Simon at Luke 24:34 that began in Luke 7:36-50. So I’m the only one speculating that this Simon also wrote the L material between those markers while he was incorporating Q into Proto-Luke? Well, it’s not just speculation based on internal evidence, unless such speculation occurred a millennium ago.
Contra Celsum II, 62: “ And in the Gospel of Luke also, while Simon and Cleopas were conversing with each other respecting all that had happened to them, Jesus drew near, and went with them.”
Contra Celsum II, 68: ‘For it is related in St. Luke's Gospel, that Jesus after His resurrection took bread, and blessed it, and breaking it, distributed it to Simon and Cleopas; and when they had received the bread, "their eyes were opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight," ‘
I have presented strong arguments for some of my eyewitness writers (such as for the Discourses and the Passion Narrative), but one of the weakest of my seven is that Simon wrote Proto-Luke. It turns out there is much scholarly support (at least indirect) for this. Jay Harrington has such a large preview from his thousand pages studying the Lukan Passion Narrative The Lukan Passion Narrative: The Markan Material in Luke 22,54-23,25 : a ... - Jay M. Harrington - Google Books
that the initial survey is almost all included. From B. S. Easton on page 47, “L was composed by a strict Jewish-Christian and written for the benefit of other Jewish-Christians and in order to convert Jews to Jewish Christianity.” (Linguistic Evidence for the Lucan Source L, JBL 29 (1910), p. 139-40) Even more to my position was “G. L. Hahn, that the author of Luke was Silas in the Emmaus story” (p. 64). (That must mean “Simon”, not “Silas”.) Though I’m open now to the entirety of Luke being by Simon (not 1:1-4), that he wrote Proto-Luke is enough. Even M.-J. Lagrange agreed that Luke reflected a heavy Semitic style and that it is “impossible to distinguish between Luke and the supposed LQ source” (64-69).
These quotes from a hundred years ago would not mean much except that voices are rising again for Luke himself as Jewish , not a gentile. The platitudes of conventional scholarship take for granted that the man Luke was a gentile and that the style of his gospel is very good Greek, but these assumptions will not withstand scrutiny. If the final redactor was Greek (as for Luke 1:1-4), that does not necessarily hold for any of the main writers of Luke or the first 15 chapters of Acts.
As Dirk Jongkind at Eyewitnesses, Luke, Mark, Bauckham | Evangelical Textual Criticism evangelicaltextualcriticism wrote:
I have spent some days with Richard Bauckham's recent Jesus and Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006). There is an interesting problem on page 43:
"Origen (C. Cels. 2.262) gave the name Simon to the anonymous companion of Cleopas in Luke 24—the first of many attempts to identify this disciple. [FN(18): If Origen intended, as he probably did, an otherwise known Simon, this would not really be an example of the tendency [of naming the previously unnamed, DJ] we are discussing. He may have identified Cleopas correctly with Jesus' uncle Clopas and Cleopas's companion with Clopas's son Simeon/Simon, known from Hegesippus as the second bishop of Jerusalem.
There is a little bit more to say about this issue as there is some textual variation involved. In Luke 24:34 Bezae reads λεγοντες instead of λεγοντας, turning the two men who had just returned from Emmaus into the ones saying 'the Lord ... has appeared to Simon.' The idea here is that it is not the Eleven saying to the Two that Jesus appeared to Simon, but the Two to the Eleven, indirectly identifying the companion of Cleopas.
So Simon as with Cleopas on the way to Emmaus is a modern scholarly position now of note. This can be extended in several directions. A commentator on 24:10 stated:

It seems as if the testimony of one of the disciples who went to Emmaus had been the ground of the whole former part—perhaps of the whole—of this chapter. We find consequently this account exactly agreeing with his report afterwards, Luke 24:23-24.
Luke 24:1 - Greek Testament Critical Exegetical Commentary - Commentaries - StudyLight.org

(Alford, Greek …Exegetical Commentary) He saw the first verses in Luke 24 as coming from the same person writing about 24:13-34, indeed the whole chapter. Raising Simon to source of Luke 24 might just as well promote him for Proto-Luke as well, perhaps the entire Luke.
But even suggesting Simon as one of the two on the way to Emmaus raises the objection from some that verse 34 cannot refer to an otherwise unknown Simon, so it must be Simon Peter, one of the apostles in Jerusalem who told this to the two, in spite of the awkwardness of the Greek that with the comfortable Bezan reading would have the Simon to be one of the two arriving with their news. However, the objection utterly fails. If the Simon was the writer, he was certainly known to himself, and his text probably read “to me” or (with Loisy) “to us”. By the time the text would read “Simon”, this Simon would be the heir-apparent or presiding Bishop of Jerusalem, perhaps more known to the readers there than Peter. This man was either the brother of Jesus or cousin through his father Cleopas.
This of course raises the problem of why the very prominent Bishop Simeon is not remembered as the author of what he wrote—but by a century after his time the Jerusalem had fallen from prominence and was even in disfavor as unorthodox about the dating for Easter.
Another implication that Simon was the author comes from the church father Theophylact who stated that the man Luke was the second man going to Emmaus. He accepted that much of Luke 24 seemed first-hand so the common belief in Luke as the author led him to view him as personally involved in Luke 24:13-34. Many modern commentators accepted Luke’s involvement here, apparently impressed with how much this looked like eyewitness testimony. Protestants routinely accepted that Luke was the author, so the implication seemed clear to them that he was the other man on the way to Emmaus. This was standard in the 18th and 19th centuries from commentators such as Adam Clarke and Gill.
They believed this without any biblical or early church father support. How much more now should their logic about an eyewitness writer apply to my thesis that Simon was the prime author of Luke 24, that it is largely from his Proto-Luke. That Luke was with Cleophas has long been regarded as untenable for lack of any evidence that Luke was involved that early. Yet that opinion provides support for Simon as the prime writer here, for that fits his time and place.
As for why this gospel is attributed to Luke, not to Simon, as stated above the Jerusalem church was regarded with suspicion as heretical by the time Irenaeus specifically named Luke as author about 185 CE.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Adam
Posts: 641
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 3:28 pm

Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Adam »

Thanks, Peter,
For copying over here my posts at Christian Forums that presented my thesis plus some additional justification for holding that seven written eyewitness records are sources underlying the four gospels. That’s out on a limb farther than Richard Bauckham, but it’s not so far out. Continental European scholars provide some support for me, but they don’t tend to be reviewed over here. I had to go to Religious Studies Review to get a super-short review in English of a book that finds a very similar Passion Narrative source in John that is independent of the Synoptics. Fortunately there is a longer review in French: ) Bulletin johannique
http://www.cairn.info/revue-recherches- ... ge-605.htm
reviewing Der Vorjohanneische Passionsbericht: Eine Historisch-Kritische Und Theologische Untersuchung Zu Joh 2,13-22; 11,47... by Frank Schleritt (Jan 1, 2007)
Frank Schleritt did read Howard M. Teeple, but like me he refused to accept the Signs Gospel as part of the same source.
Drop down a full page in Peter Kirby’s quote of me with the verses attributed to the first eyewitness, John Mark: John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. [These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.] John 18:1b, 1d, 10b, 12, 13b, 15-19, 22, 25b, 27-31, 33-35, (36-40): 19:1-19, 21-23, 28-30, 38b, 40-42; 20:1, 3-5, 8, 11b-14a, 19b, 22-23, 26-27,. 30. [I have deleted the Roman numerals here, they just represent my count of apparent eyewitness details in the passage cited.]
[From the same reviewer (Auteur Michèle Morgen du même auteur Faculté de Théologie Catholique, Université de Strasbourg) came her review of French scholar M. A. Daise’s latest (Daise Michael A., Feasts in John. Jewish Festivals and Jesus ‘Hour’ in the Fourth Gospel, WUNT 2 Reihe 229, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2007, 222 p.):
Daise has a two Passovers calendar theory to explain the historicity of the feasts in the Gospel of John. At John 2:13 it’s the conventional “le 14 Nisan”, but it’s the Passover of grain at John 6:4. John 6 precedes John 5, but 5:1 is an unknown feast anyway. John 7:12 is tabernacles “le 15-22 Tishri” John 10:22-23 is “le 25 Kislew” dedicace, and John 11:55 brings us back to 14 Nisan. Obviously this does not require the 3 or 4 year ministry.]
As for Schleritt’s text itself, the very skimpy preview (in German) http://www.amazon.com/vorjohanneische-P ... 3110196980
includes the conclusion at pg. 586 that the underlying Passion Narrative begins at John 2:13ff, 11:47ff, 12:1ff, 13:1ff, and 18:1ff. This supplements the sub-title that focuses on John 2:13-22, 11:47-14:31, and 18:1-20:29. This looseness corresponds well enough with my listing above. This support from Schleritt should be added to the first page of my thesis in which I present John Mark as the first eyewitness. Of course Schleritt does not claim that he has proved any such thing, just that he has demonstrated that John is important in containing within itself evidence for the meaning of the death of Christ, that there was more than a phantom (587).
Adam
Posts: 641
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 3:28 pm

Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Adam »

This exploratory thread that seemed to be heading towards the “Inner Circle” view is now belittling the first part of the title, the Ur- Marcan Priority. My initial development of seven written eyewitness records in “Gospel Eyewitnesses” already was bracketing Q2 within the Double-Tradition (deleting the items in the Fifth of my eyewitnesses copied in Oct. 10 by Peter Kirby). However, my later Post #230 suggested that apocalyptic elements in Mark from a “Qumraner” possibly came from the same non-apostle. Now my modified Augustinian view (that I am going to call the “Horizontal Hypothesis) leaves possible for the Q2-Qumraner stratum to be from one text that got abridged in Mark to exclude Q2. But now this can be recast to view it as the source of everything copied into Mark from Greek (with the corresponding verbal exactitude with Luke). The Two-Source Hypothesis would be radically recast from Q vs. Mark to Q1 vs. Q2, both with strata that underlie all the Synoptic gospels. Dispensing with Proto-Luke, it would now make more feasible the development of Mark with a base stratum from Aramaic (Q1/Twelve-Source, presumably from the apostle Matthew) and the slightly later Greek Q2 with its parallel retained in Mark (Ur-Marcus) , both presumably from Peter (Luke 12:41).

Thirty-three years ago I thought I solved the source-criticism of the Gospel of John, but Jeffrey Gibson exposed my paper as “rubbish” after reading almost half a page of it (and refusing to respond to my challenge as to what he had found wrong). By 2011 I was proclaiming that there are seven eyewitness records written about Jesus. No one seriously attempted to refute me other than deferring to Consensus scholarship (even though over on FRDB no one accepts academic scholarship). So I still don’t know if my hypothesis is wrong to challenge 200 years of the presuppositions of German scholarship. Nor did I even receive help in modifying my views. Since the “mountain would not come to Mohammed”, I chose to apply Minimalism to my research, cutting down to three eyewitnesses that even Atheists could not reject a priori. By that time I was into less than a hundred posts from the end of over 600 posts to “Gospel Eyewitnesses” at FRDB, and almost no one responded at this point, even though I had expected that Historical Jesus partisans would appreciate my refutation of Mythicism. As that part of my thesis has only been presented on FRDB and is not inaccessible to the public, I propose to reprint this minimalist part of my thesis later here on EarlyWritings blog.

So I’m saying that as a result of this thread that I have found new discrepancies in the usual solutions to Synoptic Problem, in view of what I posted in this thread Oct. 10th. This can remain independent of either my minimalist Three Eyewitnesses theory or the original Seven Written Eyewitness Records to Jesus. Yet though these were devised employing the Two-Source Hypothesis along with Proto-Luke, very little tweaking is necessary to reconcile with my Synoptic Problem claim. I have explained above that the half of Mark that I assign to the Fifth Eyewitness (the Apostle Matthew fits the external testimony) still remains Q1 plus the “Twelve-Source” Triple-Tradition material (though the latter may come from another Aramaic source). I still need to subtract from it the Q2 passages, but I can reassign them to the Fourth Eyewitness, joining this with the rest of the Triple-Tradition material that I have here-to-fore called Petrine Ur-Marcus. The significant change is that Q2 is now recognized as also from an eyewitness, presumably Peter. The disadvantage for Christians is that the end-of-the-world viewpoint is no longer easily dismissed as misunderstanding from a former Qumran partisan.

The Synoptic Problem is now further confused by recognizing that Mark never developed independently of Q. Triple Tradition and Double Tradition grew together. Q1 may have come before Twelve-Source, but they merged in Aramaic separately from Q2 that merged in Greek with the rest of the Triple Tradition. This maximal Q (but without M or M2) was available for a time as a document half in Aramaic and half in Greek (in this form, independently translated for use by Luke and Matthew). Still recapping what I posted Oct. 10, the maximal Q+ text available and used for the early Mark was used towards Matthew, requiring translation of Q1/Twelve-Source from Aramaic to Greek. To explain the overlap between Matthew and Mark the easiest way, consider not just M added to the emergent Matthew, but M+M2 (M plus the M-like material in the two gospels of Matthew and Mark) added to the Greek Q2 and the Aramaic Q1 of Matthew. This added section was then abridged similarly to what had already been abridged into the earlier version of Mark, and added to it.
So my new proposed contender for the Synoptic Problem I call the Horizontal Hypothesis. In contrast, the original vertical assumption was that each gospel arose alone or was dependent on one or more of the others. Thus we had the Augustinian Hypothesis that Matthew arose first and was abridged into Mark, with Luke dependent upon them both. The Griesbach Hypothesis had Matthew first, rearranged into Luke, with Mark arising from condensing (and conflating) the two. The rather recent Farrer Hypothesis accepts the current Markan Priority, with Matthew second and Luke rearranging Matthew. For the last 200 years the preference has been to find underlying sources. Initially, however, Lessing proposed a Grundschrift underlying all the Synoptics, formalized in 1794 by Eichhorn. This was said to be too simple to work, however, and within half a century a source under Mark was identified, which it was assumed was copied into Matthew and Luke. It took about a century after Eichhorn for the Double Tradition underlying Matthew and Luke to be called Q (from German Quelle), and the Two-Source Hypothesis has largely prevailed ever since.

Recognition that Q is composite has tended towards two strata in Q. Q1 tends to be ideologically based upon Cynic or ethical grounds, but I have found that the lack of verbal exactness indicates it was written in Aramaic and independently translated for Matthew and Luke. However, between Mark and Luke such disparities also exist, so this part of the Triple Tradition should likewise be acknowledged as from the same horizontal strata, Q1+12 (Q1 plus the Twelve-Source). The corresponding Triple Tradition with close verbal parallels (because originally recorded in Greek) I call Q2+P (Q2 plus the Petrine sections). These are two horizontal layers, but the first layer underlying not just the Synoptics, but also the Gospel of John, is the Passion Narrative. Picture a four-columned structure. At the base is the Passion Narrative, underlying all four gospels. Above it, shared by the three Synoptics, recognize a layer of Q1+12. Both these originated in Aramaic. The next Synoptic layer is Q2+P. Naturally the absolute height of the Markan column would be much smaller for both of the Q layers, but instead consider the heights as percentages, so the height of the column can be maintained as equal for each of the gospels, with only the total finished height of the bigger gospels being higher.

The next horizontal layer is for only Matthew and Mark; the M2 in Mark and the M+M2 in Matthew. In this case a smaller height for Mark is appropriate as we have come to the top of the column there anyway. To complete the Synoptic structure add a large layer in Luke alone as L. Its height should be more than M2, but less than M+M2. The primary asymmetry, however, is that L originated in Aramaic whereas M and M2 arose in Greek (or were translated so well and so early as to make no difference).
That’s simplified, because the key to the solution is to eliminate the preconceptions that any and all source texts for the gospels were written throughout in the same language. When did the Aramaic in the Passion Narrative and in Q1 get translated into Greek? Not before documents existed that contained both Aramaic and Greek. Even the detail in my Oct. 10 posting did not cover all the details in abridging Matthew into Mark and when Aramaic elements in Mark were translated into Greek before use in Luke.
Adam
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Adam »

Prudence dictates that a new hypothesis requires attention to prior research. My academic library clarifies what we all know already; there is no agreement on the Synoptic Problem. The Two-Document Hypothesis (2DH, with a strong move to the Modified version, M2DH) still prevails, but has lots of opposition. A good book is John Kloppenborg’s Excavating Q from 2000—it’s very good on the old history. Elsewhere Eichhorn in 1794 is dismissed as oversimplifying with a Grundschrift. Kloppenborg presents excellent diagrams of various hypotheses, and on page 277 he displays Eichhorn’s as almost complex. It starts, of course, with the Grundschrift, in Aramaic for him. A reading off it leads to “A” and thence splits to Matthew and an early version of Mark, “C”. The other “B” reading was probably taken off a little earlier without the material in Mark that’s missing in Luke that this “B” leads to. Eichhorn did not feel this could account for the similarities between Matthew and Luke unless he entered “D” into his hypothesis, a direct use “D” of the Grundschrift by Luke.
I like this Eichhorn model, but I tried some tweaking to get around flaws that caused Eichhorn to be disregarded. First, my version Grundschrift would specify that it included the Passion Narrative in Aramaic, thus freeing later layers from repeating the same ground. Also in Aramaic was Q1 and the perhaps as early Twelve Source, with the former written as early as Jesus’s ministry. It is this material that splits into significantly different texts between the A and B traditions, largely because of independent translations, but also due to identification of apostle’s names and to different witnesses to the Resurrection. The rest of the Grundschrift displays verbal exactitudes among the gospels that must come from a common Greek Source. This is the rest of Q, I call Q2, plus the material in Mark more identifiable with the name “Peter”, what I have tended to call for my purposes “Ur-Marcus”. (My research surprised me by finding that in the mid-19th Century Ur-Marcus was a term used for the complete Mark plus some verses. Weiss in 1856 and Holtzmann in 1863 agreed at least to both including Luke 3:7-9, 16-17; 4:1-13; 6:20-49; and 7:1-10.)

The A and B texts required different copies of the same Greek translation of the Q2/Petrine material that gave rise to marked differences between Matthew and Mark on the one hand(from A) and Luke (from B) on the other. So I tried to simplify Eichhorn’s model without the need to refer Mark back not just to B (Eichhorn preferred derivation, in my scenario Mark would trace to A) but to A and Luke back not just to B. Eichhorn had his model show Luke knowing no ties later than to B, never having seen Mark (thus going against all current major hypotheses). After several attempts I realized that Luke had to have closer ties to the other Synoptics. This tie could not be what Eichhorn suggested, a link through a D reading of the Grundschrift (with at least part in Greek for this to work). Luke would have to have seen the A text or some derivation of it that flowed into both Matthew and Mark (and the Eichhorn model does show Mark deriving not just from B but from A through an intermediate document C). That will work, but kind of vitiates the need for the Grundschrift in the first place. Why bother with an oddball theory if it requires explaining away passages of too great exactitude among all the three gospels?

The breaking point of difficulty is “the condition of following Jesus”, so nearly exact between Mt. 16:24-25, Mark 8:34-35, and Luke 9:23-24. One could argue that this is a credo of the very earliest disciples that required memorization and no tampering with the verses. Thus is could survive from the Greek portion of the Grundschrift, on through A and B (and for Eichhorn, D) and intermediate versions on into our present three gospels. Fine. But Occam’s Razor would favor the current prevailing hypotheses that see closer immediate ties among the three Synoptics.

Perhaps the current trend of scholarship will lead to a new theory about the Synoptic Problem, a conclusion that it cannot be solved. We see scholars overturning the consensus (as in Kloppenborg) that external testimony can be ignored, with new work on underlying sources such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of Peter, and the Logoi (or even Papias’s later Exposition per MacDonald). As I have been showing above, a Grundschrift theory of Synoptic origins is equally feasible. Current scholars have been showing that Q is conceivable in M and L (a point admitted by Kloppenborg) and also in Mark (where Kloppenborg thought MacDonald went too far). Even in minimal Q there is narrative, and everyone admits now that Schleiermacher was wrong to translate Logoi as limited to sayings only; we are free to expand Q to almost all of Mark. A Q/Mark composite is probable, but not so certain that we can dismiss all the current theories (except the Modified Two-Document Hypothesis).

The above Grundschrift or Horizontal Hypothesis for the Synoptic Problem can best be held with a special understanding of the Q2 material that is so unreasonably close between Matthew and Luke. By my related Inner Circle speculations, consider that the original writer of Q2 may have had the opportunity to transcribe his own Greek from the Grundschrift into the first A or the B translation of the rest of it into Greek. That would help account for how at least that textual line continued with so little change that a derivative Matthew or Luke could be so very close to its cousin text in the other textual line. On the other hand, the extreme closeness of so many verses between Matthew and Luke is no doubt why early on (and still) so many have argued for one gospel (usually Luke, as in both the Augustinian and Griesbach hypotheses, and in Farrer-Goulder as well) having copied another (usually Matthew ). Something in-between is more likely. On the analogy of the Two-Document hypothesis, we would have one source as Q2 (in place of Q in general, as Q1 underlies much of Mark) and instead of Mark a compendium of Q1 and the Triple Tradition. Our Luke arose from combining from combining these (Q2 and the compendium) plus L, our Matthew arose from combining the same plus M instead of L, and Mark arose from abbreviating this latter by eliminating much of Q1 and almost all of Q2 except for Mark 8:34-35.

So I have added above some new feasible solutions to the Synoptic Problem, but let me add a few more possibilities that almost guarantee that no solution can ever be proven with our current knowledge. I noticed that the extremely close Q2 parallels tend to occur in bunches, with not-so-exact verbiage in-between. This indicates a possibility that translations occurred in stages. A translator was assigned a segment to translate from Aramaic to Greek, but meantime a lower-level copyist was assigned to just continue the Aramaic text up to where the new Greek would begin. This process would continue throughout the gospel under revision, with those newly Greek passages copied into all subsequent new copies of that gospel. The next time further translation was done, the translator working off of one copy was different than the translator finishing off the translation process for another copy. This would explain why some Q passages are so close (thus causing me to identify them as Q2) and most are not.
However, this intermittent-translation process would suggest that no difference should be found in content between my Q1 and Q2 sections. I find a contrast between Cynic methodology and apocalypticism, however, so this intermittent theory not only cannot be proved, but arguments against it are strong. Thus I am not surprised that I have never found it suggested, yet it remains a possibility. What if the man in charge high-lighted for the first translation round the apocalyptic passages he favored? What if he high-lighted difficult passages, and these tended to have a common characteristic? That Q1 and Q2 seem different could have occurred almost by chance in the latter case.
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Peter Kirby »

Hi Adam,

Nobody else seems to be really interacting with your work, so let me propose a way into the discussion here.

I don't believe in Q. I suppose you do.

How would you convince a skeptic of Q?

thanks,
Peter Kirby
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Adam
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Re: Ur-Marcan Priority? Or Inner Circle?

Post by Adam »

Thanks for the suggestion, but this thread explores the doubts about the Two-Document Hypothesis, considering whether I have been wrong to accept it to the extent I do. I have recapitulated scholars who see quite different sources that the strict Triple-Tradition in Mark and the Double-Tradition in Matthew and Mark. My Gospel Eyewitnesses thread thread (Peter's Oct. 10 copy above) itself undermined the strict division between the Triple (Mark) and the Double (Q). In exploring my doubts as in this thread, I have nevertheless tended towards my original starting point that even Q2 is not to be included among the seven written eyewitness accounts. I stand with the Modified Two-Document Hypothesis, that accepts a larger Q than in the 2DH and that overlaps with Mark, but I think we can almost prove that the Synoptic Problem cannot be solved. What Q do you want me to explain or defend? My version contrast sharply with Kloppenborg's dogma.
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