The Priority of Luke

[Adam]

My impression is that it's a bit speculative - not that I think the synoptic problem is as easily solved as Two-Source, Griesbach and Farrer-Goulder theories have us think. I'm sure it's more complex than that. But the problem is coming up with a solution that is clearly more probable than them. There are a few statements here that I question - Do we really 'know' that Mark includes material from Q? Do we really 'know' that Q had a redaction/splicing history of its own? How can we know these things if we don't even have Q? Can we really tell what portions of Mark are Petrine? etc.

Thank you, Toejam,
This shows what scholarly critique should do. As for more probable than “them”, anything “possible” would be more probable.
Ever since Gospel of Thomas in 1946 we should have known that Q (if there is a Q) fed into Mark. Most recently Dennis R. MacDonald has documented it. As for Q having parts, all of it is too close to be merely oral, some parts are close enough (Q1) for Matthew and Luke to be translations of the same (Aramaic) source, and Q2 is parts so close they must share a Greek original. (These are not Kloppenborg’s merely ideological redactions.) Similarly where GMark and GLuke are similar we have the Twelve-Source from an Aramaic exemplar and where more exact we know both must derive from Greek (called for convenience Petrine Mark whether from Peter or not—his name appears often in any case). I have done the detail separation in my Gospel Eyewitnesses thread (posts 4 to 6) in Christian Forums
http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/
That Peter Kirby copied (in a slightly different earlier version) here under his name Oct. 10, 2013 in my “Ur-Marcan Priority…” thread.
(Sorry that I can only master tables in Work and not diagrams.)

[Sheshbazzar]

I just see unsubstantiated claims, one after the other.

Thing about unsubstantiated claims is that if we cannot prove beyond any doubt that they are in error or false, the fabricator tries to press an assumption that whatever wonky scenario is fabricated, it must be the explanation.
Its actually just another variation of the '.. .... .... and therefore God' School of empty logorrhea Apologetics.

Adam's unsubstantiated 'eyewitness theory' is more on the par with the 'could have been' creativity displayed in 'The DaVinci Code' than with any serious textual scholarship.
There are a lot of such possible scenarios and 'explanations' if one can get away with presenting imaginatively invented and unsubstantiated hose shit as being facts.
It might be intriguing and entertaining and make a good plot for yet another religion based movie script, but in the absence of unmistakable contemporary attestation and substantiation, is of no academic substance.

[outhouse]

I just see unsubstantiated claims, one after the other.

Thing about unsubstantiated claims is that if we cannot prove beyond any doubt that they are in error or false, the fabricator tries to press an assumption that whatever wonky scenario is fabricated, it must be the explanation.
Its actually just another variation of the ' .... .... and therefore God' School of empty logorrhea Apologetics

Adam's unsubstantiated 'eyewitness theory' is more on the par with the 'could have been' creativity displayed in 'The DaVinci Code' than with any serious scholarship.
There are a lot of such possible scenarios and 'explanations' if one can get away with presenting imaginatively invented and unsubstantiated hose shit as being the facts.
It might be intriguing and entertaining but in the absence of unmistakable contemporary attestation and substantiation, is of no academic substance.

I would look at weak evidence, but here he has none what so ever.

[Sheshbazzar]

As was the observation of many, upon many occasions back in FRDB days. Logorrhea Apologetics without substance.

[Adam]

I would look at weak evidence, but here he has none what so ever.

I started this new thread for comment on my conclusions after a year of development right here (mostly, also FTDB) of my Evolving Proto-Gospel Hypothesis, not to present all the process again. For a concise "proof" of something like I present, see "The Parable of the Tenants" Nov. 30, 2013 in my "Horizontal Hypothesis" thread. Much in that thread and also "Ur-Marcan Priority?..." is relevant evidence.
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... ?f=3&t=222

[Adam]

The reputed founder of the Two-Document Hypothesis apparently didn’t believe it himself. See the 2006 Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus “Holtzmann’s Life of Jesus According to the “A” Source” by John Kloppenborg (Vol 1, Part 1, p 75-108). My own Evolving Proto-Gospel is not much different. He never proposed that the entire GMark was available to any of the other gospel writers, but just the “A” Source underlying it. Nor did he prove his point, he just explained how it might work. Yet Albert Schweitzer in 1910 (p. 202) pontificated, “it can no longer be called a mere hypothesis”. Not until 1911 did Wernle collapse “A” into GMark. Kloppenborg attributes its popularity with fitting the mind-set of 19th Century liberals and the romantic psychological attributes found in that gospel. For a long time no one noticed that the Markan characteristics were more likely the creation of the evangelist, when Wrede in 1901 dismissed the so-called “messianic consciousness”. Kloppenborg finds the underpinnings of the Two-Document Hypothesis to be weak.
As for the Q Document as giving us Jesus, Harnack in 1907 advocated it, but Q seemed derivative to form critics, starting with Bultmann in 1913. Holtzmann called this Lambda for “Logia” and had the unusual idea that it started at Luke 7:18-35. This coordinates nicely with my own idea that the uniquely Lukan material L starts at about this point.

[Adam]

Free access to 600 online pages of Synoptic Problem studies by B. Ward Powers, The Progressive Publication of Matthew (Dissertation title), of the Gospel of Matthew (book title), both 2010.
http://www.sats.edu.za/userfiles/Powers ... 2010_0.pdf
Well worth the read, though flawed by apologetic conviction of conventional authorship of the Synoptics.
I visualized it as akin to my own hypotheses here, as the title seemed so like my Evolving Proto-Gospel. Next I hoped it would at least come down for a Proto-Matthew, and with GLuke as actually the first gospel written as such. Yes to the latter, but he attributes only a small portion of GLuke to viewing some initial texts that eventually got published as the complete Gospel of Matthew by the apostle Matthew. Powers was particularly harsh on the Jerusalem School (priority of Luke) and any proto-gospel hypothesis, so I was ultimately dissatisfied with his conclusions.
He made a big thing about the Story of the Rich Young Man. Caused me some soul-searching rethinking until I realized it was just like he got around to, the sharp contrasts between GMattew and GLuke had to hark back to the same story as told by two different eyewitnesses. Perhaps the young man himself (later a Christian, maybe John Mark) and Peter (who was named here in all three gospels).

[Adam]

Sure, who wants to screen through 600 pages online? But the first 60 pages are excellent survey, then from about page 100 to 200 Powers has fantastic statistical comparisons. He comes up with 25% of GMark being unique among the Synoptics, which in itself is strong evidence for his thesis that our GMark was not available for use towards the much longer GMatthew and GLuke. He provides strong discredit upon conventional scholarship--Streeter (p. 162) found only 32 verses unique (out of 661), but Power's more careful investigation shows 155 verses are unique to GMark (p. 149). Even more recent computerized word studies radically understate the proportion of uniqueness in GMark, because the scholars are too committed to Markan Priority to dare to rethink the case.
For Powers, this uniqueness must have come from Peter helping Mark add to what he got from Markan Dependence from the other two Synoptics. For me the 25% uniqueness comes from each of the three being offtakes from the evolving proto-gospel, none of them having seen any of the other canonical gospels.
Time and again Powers shows that GMark as the middle term means as well Marcan Priority or Marcan Posteriority. Any argument for being first works as well as the case for being third.
Powers comes up with 60 AD both for GLuke in Rome and GMatthew in Jerusalem. By 65 AD both were available for GMark in Rome (p. 43-44).

[Adam]

The first 100 pages of Powers's dissertation betrays that much of it was written over three decades ago, and the later part seems likely to have trimmed considerably what he considered to have come from GLuke into GMatthew. Yet he does not seem open to have converted to the similar Jerusalem School Hypothesis. Both acknowledge some degree of priority of GLuke and both think of the underlying original text as some form of the Gospel of Matthew.
Robert Lindsey wrote about this theory of his, agreeing with what I wrote three posts ago:

Although I was not aware of it at the time, my hypothesis bears a remarkable resemblance to the earliest form of the theory of Markan Priority. Proponents of this early form of the theory of Markan Priority, among whom the name of H. J. Holtzmann must be mentioned as the most important, admitted that many phenomena of the Synoptic Problem suggest that prior to Mark there existed an Ur-Markus, or proto-narrative, very similar in extent and language to our Mark, which may have been used by Matthew and Luke in addition to, or possibly instead of, Mark’s Gospel. The tendency of recent scholarship has been to minimize the difference between the Gospel of Mark and the so-called Ur-Markus to such an extent as to deny this proto-narrative’s existence. Having started from this latter form of the theory, I had returned to a belief in an Ur-document!

http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/11652/
Lindsey's Ur-document had three stages, however, and GLuke influenced GMark and GMark influenced GMatthew. I disagree with Lindsey because he like everyone else falls into the trap of assuming all gospel sources were completely in one language or the other, and goes even farther to hold that our extant gospels never used any source in other than Greek even though he holds that the Ur-document was only in Hebrew (not Aramaic).
The Jerusalem School makes enough citations to Lockton in the 1920's to indicate their affiliations with even the full utilization version of Lucan Priority. (GLuke used by GMark, in turn used in GMatthew.) No one else in the 20th Century held such a far-out view. My version is that even though GLuke was written first, none of the gospels utilized another. I believe each saw only the Proto-Gospel (what Lindsey calls the Anthology, written by the apostle Matthew). So everyone else was a mere copyist from this one eyewitness?
edited to add:
Lindsey recognized, as did I reasoning from Steve Mason's study, a key argument for the priority of Luke:

"One of the most fascinating of Mark’s stereotypes is “the gospel.” This term appears 7 times in Mark, but it does not appear anywhere in Luke’s Gospel,"
http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/11652/

[andrewbos]

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