A classification of scholars according to their view on the Earliest Gospel

[Giuseppe]

• The earliest gospel was Jewish-Christian: Prosper Alfaric, Dennis MacDonald, Earl Doherty.

• The earliest gospel was used and/or written by Marcion: Markus Vinzent, Matthias Klinghardt, Georges Ory, Paul Louis Couchoud;

• The earliest gospel was Mark: Paul Nadim Tarazi, William B. Smith, David Oliver Smith, R.G. Price.

[ABuddhist]

• The earliest gospel was Jewish-Christian: Prosper Alfaric, Dennis MacDonald, Earl Doherty.

Was not Doherty believing the GMark was the earliest gospel?

[dbz]

• The earliest gospel was used and/or written by Marcion: Markus Vinzent, Matthias Klinghardt, Georges Ory, Paul Louis Couchoud;

It is the first time I hear Richard Carrier on youtube. In a discussion with Jack Bull (JB), a follower of Vinzent's thesis about Marcion priority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMkVgYKc2tc

By using the subtitles, I have learned:

• 1) that JB postdates all after Marcion, apart Hebrews and the not-interpolated Paul;

[. . .]

[dbz]

• The earliest gospel was Jewish-Christian: Prosper Alfaric, Dennis MacDonald, Earl Doherty.

Was not Doherty believing the GMark was the earliest gospel?

Dennis MacDonald, Earl Doherty hold that a hypothetical gospel was earlier than GMark.

[GakuseiDon]

Doherty is a proponent of Q. He believes that the content in Q was developed from the activities and sayings of a Jewish "kingdom of God" preaching "Q community". The following is from my on-line review of Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man", though it is no longer on-line as I took down my website a few years ago. I do like his analysis on Q, and I think that such a Q community makes good sense in the development of proto-Gospels:
_________________

Doherty spends much time establishing the existence of Q. He sees the Q community as a Jewish “kingdom of God” preaching movement centred in Galilee, although it seems to have extended beyond that region. He writes:

The itinerant prophets of this new 'counter-culture' expression announced the coming of the kingdom of God and anticipated the arrival of a heavenly figure called the Son of Man who would judge the world. They urged repentance, taught a new ethic and advocated a new society; they claimed the performance of miracles, and they aroused the hostility of the religious establishment. (Page 3)

So Doherty sees a Q community of itinerant 'miracle-wielding' prophets teaching about the coming “kingdom of God” and urging repentence. On the Q community performing miracles, Doherty writes:

As for miracles, there is no question that the Q prophets, as preachers of the kingdom, would have claimed the performance of signs and wonders, for every sectarian movement of the time had to possess that facility. These, especially miraculous healings, were the indispensable pointers of the kingdom. (Page 384)

Doherty agrees with those scholars who see Q divided into a number of strata ('Q1', 'Q2' and a 'Q3') though he has his own views about what went into each layer and the timing of their development. Doherty sees the material in Q1, the earliest layer, as being derived from a Cynic or Cynic-like source which existed prior to the formation of the kingdom preaching movement. (Page 336) The sayings were not attributed to any individual, and there was no reference to any founding figure. (Doherty notes that scholars do see some sayings relating to Jesus, but Doherty argues against them being in the earliest layer.)

Q2 reflects an apocalyptically oriented mind and community, one which prophesies the coming of the Son of Man and a terrible judgement (Page 343). As Ehrman points out:

... Q is chock-full of apocalyptic sayings on the lips of Jesus, sayings in which he predicts the imminent end of the age in a catastrophic act of judgement sent by God. [4]

Again, although scholars do see sayings attributed to Jesus in Q2, Doherty argues against this conclusion (Page 354). It is only in Doherty's proposed Q3 layer that the name of Jesus starts to appear (page 386).

Thus it is in the later layers that sayings begin to be attributed to a Jesus, and it is this Jesus who eventually comes to be regarded as the founding figure of the community. However, in common with many scholars who have worked on Q, Doherty believes that there was no Passion narrative, crucifixion or resurrection in Q.

So, if there was no Jesus figure in the earliest layers of Q, how did such a figure emerge as the author of those sayings? Doherty notes key Q scholar Arnal's observation that in Q Jesus was represented as not qualitatively different from any other teacher in the Q community; rather, he was a “first among equals”, the “most important exemplar of activity that others can and do undertake” (Page 340). Doherty views Arnal's comment as significant. He writes:

This is an extremely momentous admission, because it opens a key door. If the Q community does not treat Jesus as an exalted figure (let alone as deified Son of God), if they allot to him no more than what the Q preachers themselves are and do, then there is no impediment to seeing him as merely symbolic of them. (Page 340)...

Even more significantly, there is no impediment to postulating, based on specific evidence in Q, that earlier versions of many sayings embodied a group reference, lost when the Jesus figure was introduced and elements like pronouns were changed to assign such sayings to him personally.

[Giuseppe]

• The earliest gospel was Jewish-Christian: Prosper Alfaric, Dennis MacDonald, Earl Doherty.

Was not Doherty believing the GMark was the earliest gospel?

In addition to GDon's explanation, I think that Earl Doherty would agree fully with what MacDonald introduced when the latter was more open to the mythicist views:

Doug: Yeah. Dennis said something very interesting to me, and I thought, like, “If this Jesus did not exist, then who came up with these moral teachings?” And I guess my question to you, Dennis, is why does it have to be one person? Why couldn’t it have been a group of people?

Dennis: It could be a group of people. But I’m sure that the Q document was written by a single individual who recrafted it. I sometimes have told my students that the real hero of the Q document may be the author and not Jesus, and Jesus may have been the opportunity for the author to show his own radical vision of Judaism. I don’t know if that’s helpful, but it could be that the real hero of the Q document is the author.

(my bold)
So rather than on Arnal and Kloppenborg, it would be more convenient, for Doherty's case, to base/update himself on MacDonald's view of Q as a literary text.

[Giuseppe]

I should add, among the scholars who hold a Jewish-Christian gospel at the origin, also the so-called "midrashical school", Nanine Charbonnel and Bernard Dubourg in primis, since the MacDonald's view of Q+ as midrash of Deuteronomy would fit perfectly their views.

[Sinouhe]

@Giuseppe
You don’t think Mark was a jewish christian ?

[Giuseppe]

@Giuseppe
You don’t think Mark was a jewish christian ?

I use the term 'Jewish-Christians' to mean: Christians who were not gentilizers.

The gentilizers wanted emancipation from Torah. The Jewish-Christians wanted to preserve the observance of the Torah.

After Marcion, the Jewish-Christians become Judaizers.

So Mark is a gentilizer insofar he is a Paulinist, and Paul, as you know, wanted the freedom from Torah for gentiles even if he, personally, continued to observe it.
Obviously Mark adored YHWH as supreme god: no doubt about this.


I have a relatively good knowledge of Markan prioritists and Marcionite prioritists, so I would like to know more about Dennis MacDonald's view that Mark is a polemical correction of Q.

[Sinouhe]

@Giuseppe
You don’t think Mark was a jewish christian ?

I use the term 'Jewish-Christians' to mean: Christians who were not gentilizers

Thanks for the info.
I thought you meant that Mark was a gentile. Which seems impossible to me given his knowledge and use of the scriptures.