andrewbos wrote:
says the disciples should 'hate' their direct family if they want to be a disciple
.
If you read this as the apocalyptic teachings of people who really thought the end was coming soon, it becomes clear.
I am not saying It is not an Aramaic transliteration, but it reads clear when taken into context.
I'm not at all sure yet that it was not written down in Aramaic first
Does not show it as a whole. I think many Aramaic Galilean sayings could have been used, but were in use in the Diaspora so long they had long lost and transliterations in oral traditions.
Adam wrote: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).
Another Synoptic hypothesis that is similar is the Logia Translation Hypothesis. It improves upon the Jerusalem School Hypothesis by not having any of our gospels having seen any other. The propounder, Brian E. Wilson, does agree that there was first an Aramaic Logia translated fully into Greek Logia in fragments (notes) that were later put together by each of the three Synoptics. Before his death in 2002 he wrote:
The occurrence of story dualities unique to each synoptic gospel is not a parallelism phenomenon, and it is difficult to see how the Two Document Hypothesis can explain such a synoptic phenomenon. Other such non-parallelism phenomena ("format phenomena") are observed. Another non-parallelism synoptic phenomenon is that each synoptic gospel contains instances of transliterated Aramaic words not in common Greek usage (and therefore not "loan" words), and not found in parallel material in any other synoptic gospel. This is also very hard to explain under the Two Document Hypothesis. The Logia Translation Hypothesis easily accounts for this phenomenon, however, as the result of some Aramaic words from the Aramaic Logia having been retained, possibly for dramatic effect, in the Greek Logia, and each synoptist independently making his own selection of these as he used the Greek Logia. Furthermore, the parallelism phenomena explained by the Two Document Hypothesis are at least as easily accounted for by the Logia Translation Hypothesis. For instance, the minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark in the triple tradition are, according to the Logia Translation Hypothesis, the result of all three synoptists having copied the same material from the Greek Logia, with Mark being fairly faithful to the wording of this material, Matthew less faithful as he edited the wording, and Luke even less faithful than Matthew to the wording concerned. Occasionally, as he edited the wording of the material he selected, Mark departed from the wording of the Greek Logia where Matthew and Luke independently retained that wording, so producing the minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark in the triple tradition. The Logia Translation Hypothesis thus accounts for the minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark in the triple tradition just as well, if not more easily than, the Two Document Hypothesis.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/brenda.wilson99/
(See lots of other good arguments there as well.)
My own Evolving Proto-Gospel Hypothesis, however, has the benefit of allowing some of the differences among the Synoptics to be from independently translating from the Aramaic, which neither the Jerusalem School nor the Logia Translation allow. Both are hindered by assuming the Urtext was complete by the time the first Gospel was transcribed from it. I allow for M and L not being in it when the first Synoptic was written.
I accept the many alternatives to the Synoptic Problem that readily trash the prime contenders, whether Two-Document, Griesbach, Augustinian, or Goulder. Yet I tend to find these alternatives as still too off-target to claim them as supporting my own Evolving Proto-Gospel Hypothesis. So my point here is too show the degrees to which the alternatives are inferior to mine.
The alternatives I can mostly accept are these:
On the Lucan Priority side, Lockton goes too exclusively utilizational, that Luke was used by Mark and them both by Matthew. It does not surprise me that no one else takes this position except Bushing in 1764. All the theories are unacceptable that try to make the Double Tradition come only from the first or third gospel or the reverse.
The same order is accepted by the Jerusalem School Hypothesis, but without Matthew ever seeing GLuke. More reasonably the Double Tradition is attributed to GLuke and GMatthew both consulting a common source, the Anthology. (GLuke also rests upon R1, a Restoration.) Like Lessing the original Urtext is seen as Aramaic, but all had been translated into Greek before use in the Synoptics. This does not help explain why so much of each Synoptic has weak correspondence of word use with corresponding passages in the other—more like each is a translation from Aramaic or such. Most likely some of the source(s) was in Aramaic, some in Greek.
At its origins the Jerusalem School had Robert Lindsey in 1963 having GLuke using Q and the Passion Narrative as sources. This would leave most of GMark unaccounted for, but this error should have been modified rather than lumping everything into one larger source text, the Anthology. Either that or acknowledge that the Anthology used in GLuke (or in GMark) was partially in Greek and partially in Aramaic.
The same argument would apply against the Logia Translation Hypothesis of Brian E. Wilson. He came up with his idea in 1998 and perhaps did not have enough time before his death in 2002 to perfect it. He held that no Synoptic had another to work from, but that each did have the Greek translation of an original Aramaic Logia. Our Synoptics should look more alike if each came from the same one source. That or they should be more consistently different without such a wide range between long exact word use and barely discernable parallelism.
The most recent Synoptic theory with some plausibility is the Progressive Publication of Matthew theory. In spite of the name, GLuke comes out first, utilizing an early draft of GMatthew while Luke was in Caesarea. Yet B. Ward Powers in 2010 winds up hesitating to attribute much of either the Double Tradition or the Triple Tradition to this use. The utilization probably got limited to the more exact correspondences. Powers seems to leave unexplained the equally large portions of GMatthew and GLuke where the word-use is less exact. For Powers the Triple Tradition arises where GMark uses pericopes that are in both the other Synoptics and often conflates them. Evidently wherever there is considerable but inexact correspondence between GMatthew and GLuke this category (probably stemming from translation differences) is not adduced to prove Lucan dependence upon GMatthew, but is allowed to count as Triple Tradition that GMark got from either GMatthew or GLuke. That’s called having your cake and eating it too. Powers allows GLuke to be both dependent and independent with respect to GMatthew.
None of these theories has a Proto-Gospel utilized while in a state of partial translation (or originally) in Greek. Thus my Evolving Proto-Gospel accounts for more than they do.
That leaves the remaining contenders as the more convoluted source theories of multiple intermediate documents. Boismard and Burkitt account for the complexities of the gospels, but are generally regarded as just too complex (though not to be considered refuted just by falling afoul of Occam’s Razor). In contrast, the four primary contenders reduce the underlying documents to zero or the one of the strict Two-Document Hypothesis. Something in-between is more likely, and mine fits the best. There was first an Aramaic text including Q1 and the Twelve-Source that was available as source (or even merged with) a Greek Q2/Petrine Mark that was entered almost in full (along with L) into GLuke. This Proto-Gospel (with some insertions or notes) was recycled back for use in adding M material for Proto-Matthew. The Q portions were largely omitted towards GMark. The original after adding in L formed the Gospel of the Hebrews, but the dual-language Diatessaron-like original and even Greek copies of it disappeared after a few centuries.
While it is true that I have not done away with the Modified Two-Document Hypothesis, to work it requires approaching towards my Evolving Proto-Gospel Hypothesis. I don’t need to disprove it, just slant it my way to dismiss the Marcan Priority in favor of the priority of at most an Ur-Marcus (utilized first towards GLuke).
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Canon?
Presumably the ogre strangling eyewitness evidence in the gospels is Canon Dennis Nineham. While he does present strong negatives against any extant gospel as written by any eyewitness, his 1958 article carefully disowns any applicability to earlier stages of the process. Back then he had to speak respectably about form criticism, so his point was to establish its applicability for the final writings whether there were earlier eyewitnesses or not. He disavows disavowing eyewitnesses in the early stages, see his “Eyewitness Testimony and the Gospel Tradition, I”, in Journal of Theological Studies, IX, 1, 13-25, see especially the closing pages. Another caveat is that Nineham assumes Marcan Priority (p. 17, 19, and Q as well), and that only traditions (subject to form criticism) were added by Matthew or Luke. Further, even the most negative form critic, Rudolf Bultmann, accepted enough “eyewitnesses to form the basis of his book, Jesus. Origin of the tradition in eyewitness testimony is assumed in this paper” for Nineham himself. (P. 25 Note 7). But not for the time when Mark was was finishing his gospel.
Even Taylor accepted that Mark is full of fragments. But Nineham disavowed eyewitness proofs so often cited at Mark 1:41, 43; 2.1-writing.
Nineham quotes favorably Vincent Taylor’s aphorism about all the eyewitnesses being translated to Heaven along with Jesus. Of course things started with them, but the subsequent decades allowed time for tradition to be studied by form criticism11ff; 8:14-21, 27ff, and 14:66-72 (p. 21). As for Mark 4:35 to 5:43, the given time period is too short. (Part II, Vol IX, 2, 243-252, at 244-5)
Nineham cites sophisticated historiography that eyewitness testimony is not better than the historian’s trained judgment. Here again Nineham is not denying eyewitnesses in the sources of the gospels, just that later theological reflection is more relevant to Christians today. (Part III, 1960, Vol XI, 2 253-64 at p. 258-262)
None of what Nineham says is relevant to my claim that seven eyewitnesses wrote source accounts about Jesus.
Proto-Mark
I have too sharply limited myself to technical style in determining boundaries in the gospels between Greek and Aramaic sources. Ironically this comes from my added technical rule arising from contrasting forms of the verb “to say”. Robert Lindsey’s 1963 artic le in Novum Testamentum showed how GMark used the imperfect (elegon/elegen) 48 times as against Luke’s 21 and Matthew’s 11. More widely I noticed that “legein” is standard in GMark as against “eipen” in GLuke. “eipen” appears in GMark where the Redactor intervenes. “legein” is in GLuke where it is duplicated from the underlying text in Greek. The latter required me to move some texts from Q1 Aramaic to Proto-Mark. Fortunately these are passages I had been more inclined intuitively to associate with Peter, so we wind up with more logical “demarcations”. This helps establish where GMark is an abbreviation of Q1/Twelve-Source and clarifies the flow.
Those who acknowledge Q in GMark usually recognize the start as condensing a lot of material. Regularly I had acknowledged this for Mark 1:1-15 and had recently expanded this to Mark 1:1-21 to include the first call to four apostles. But if this is true the next logical point to resume is with the call of the fifth apostle, Matthew (Levi) at Mark 2:13-17. The intervening section from Mark 1:21-39 all focuses on Peter and Mark 2:1-12 is about the healing of the paralytic, capped by verses 2:9-11 that are almost identical so I should never have had this section as Q1 before anyway. Notice how Mark 1:21 closes with the five of them leaving the lake and entering Capernaum, then Mark 2:13 resumes this narrative, “And he went out again beside the lake…” and spots Levi in 2:14. It’s as if Mark 1:1-15 massively summarizes Q1 and then GMark departs stops summarizing Q1 text and thereafter cites in full Q1 narrative with the call of the first five apostles resuming at 2:13. Thus we skip over to Mark 3:13 where Jesus climbs the mountain and sends the (now) twelve apostles out to preach. Here he quotes Q1 in full, since we see the other two Synoptics have pericopes of roughly the same length as GMark. Afterwards we have from Q1 Mark 2:13-17 and Mark 3:13 – 4:41
Comparing thus far to GLuke 3:1 through 4:30 and 5:1-11, M ark radically abbreviates. Thereafter pericopes are much like each other, though not always in the same order. Apparently where non-Q material starts to be introduced, summarization stops. The non-Q material in Mark starts at Mark 1:22-2:12, paralleled in Luke 4:31-5:26,
But with Luke 5:1-11 from UrMark replaced by Q1 version Mark 1:16-21. The anomalous order of the pericopes here may stem from both the Q1 and the Urmark versions being available to both Mark and Luke. Luke 5:12-17 bounces back to a Q1 pericope, but as told in the summary version at Mark 2:13-17, and continuing with Urmark Mark 2:18 through 3:12 in Luke 5:18-6:11, 17-19. Note the switch in order of Luke 5:12-16 with 17-19 as compared with Mark.
Thereafter Luke continues presenting his sources in full, meaning Q1 and Q2 starting at Luke 6:21. Eventually Luke reaches at 8:4-15 the Parable of the Sower that is paralleled at Mark 4:1-20. The Beelzebub Controversy in Mark3:22-30 looks like narrative action picked up early that comes at Luke11:15-25. At this point not just narrative but even some sayings sections are picked up in full in GMark. Looking through Q the Parable of the Sower from Luke 8:4-15 comes in longer form in Mark 4:1-20, plus other parables running through 4:32. Meanwhile he found Q narrative at Mark 3:31-35 and 4:35-41. Then he returned to UrMark for all of Mark.
Understood this way, the Q1 text would have been called “The Gospel” to this point, and the Urmark just individual vignettes often featuring Peter. Miracles abound from Mark 1:21 through 2:12. Fasting and the Sabbath and more miracles come in Mark 2:18 through 3:12, but they don’t really advance the story (Jesus’s preachings and administration.). They are more like incidental fill-in. It takes getting back to Mark 6:2-16 for larger issues to return, encountering enemies, sending Understood out apostles, and discussing the larger picture of His mission.
The “Great Omission” intervenes, but “eipen” at Mark 6:22 and 7:29 shows this up as really an insertion by the Redactor. This reasoning would also say that the Feeding of the 5,000 is redactional, because it occurs at 6:37 therein, but this pericope occurs in Luke 9:10-17, so this is more likely one of those few times “eipen”is employed in Mark, probably because in the Urmark text it had its emphatic use as meaning “implored, begged”.
Right after the Feeding of the 5,000 in Luke comes Peter’s profession of faith, plus also from Urmark more about Peter at 8:33 (twice) and (with James and John) the Transfiguration through Mark 9:13. These are surely important enough, but couldn’t be in Q as the Apostle Matthew was not (necessarily) involved. Even with Peter’s more personal slant, things of utmost importance nevertheless occur.
Switching back to Q1 at Mark 9:14 we see at 9:29-31 what may be a doublet of the first prophecy of the Passion at 8:31-33, Q1 the same as Urmark.
By this time we are in Jerusalem, with rather a game changer. Where only Q1 wanted to include long sermons of Jesus, the in-your-face debates at this point seem equally recorded by both Urmark and Q.
Also to consider is whether an additional eyewitness from Jerusalem was there, perhaps even the author. Particularly of note is the young rich man, with a Mt.19:13-30 so different from Lk. 15 :15-30 that neither can be versions of a supposedly earlier Mk.10:17-31. Consider also that Mk.11:3 reads “eipeh…eipote” where the verb in Lkl.19:31 means “inquire”, this following upon several almost identical verses. The writer of Mark is aware that “eipen” is used (colloquially?) in Greek in cases more specialized than just “say”. In any case, for Passion Week it’s probably pointless to be too precise whether something is Urmark, Q1, or a Jerusalem author like Mark himself.