Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

One would think Dennis Nineham’s dictates from the 1950’s would not still preclude considering whether there might be eyewitnesses to Jesus after all, but maybe Richard Bauckham’s 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses was too mild-mannered and unfocused to take effect. (It was soundly critiqued, and Nineham defended) by David Catchpole in 2008 in Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.) In any case it did not open doors to my more radical position that seven eyewitnesses actually themselves wrote about Jesus. Let me turn instead to an opposite case, one in which there is no agreement and perhaps the conviction among many that the matter cannot be solved. I’m talking about the Synoptic Problem, certainly a matter related to the OP of whether we can determine whether the Scriptures are true. Specifically, is Luke a gospel derived from one or both of the other two?

The Synoptic Problem may require a new solution much like I have been developing for the past year. However, the explanation can start with the prevailing view, the Two-Source Hypothesis. In it the Gospel of Mark plus Q are thought of as the original texts. The former is best amended to the Triple Tradition (excluding parts of Mark like most of chapters 6 to 8 that are not in Luke) and the Double Tradition (whatever is not in Mark that is in both the other Synoptics). Conservative scholarship would attribute these to origination from the apostles Peter and Matthew. However, it is now known that GMark includes much that is best understood as coming from Q (for those who believe in a Q). The upshot is that the two sources can be attributed to the same men, but the more verbally exact comparable pericopes can traced to Peter probably at 44 AD (see Acts 12:12) adding Q2 and Petrine portions of GMark on to the earlier Aramaic portions (Q1 and Twelve-Source) that had already been compiled by Matthew (who did not write any of the later portions of GMatthew). In total these come back to the Triple Tradition and the Double Tradition, but with a different composition and origin. Our extant GMark was not known to or used towards GLuke.

Whether as two different documents or as one combined mixed Aramaic and Greek text, this Proto-Gospel was used as the basis for a translation into Greek that led to GLuke in a Proto-Luke form. This happened before the creation of texts leading to the other two Synoptics that included the extra material shared by GMatthew and GMark. The major addition was the L material unique to GLuke, but some small portions were inserted back into the Proto-Gospel (or simply copied more exactly in the first place) where we see the longest stretches of exactness between GMatthew and GLuke: see especially Luke 3:7-9, 16-17; and 7:22-23, all about John the Baptist. (Apparently whatever method used was burdensome and subsequent exactness is less close.) To this point the term “the gospel” had never been used, which tells us that GLuke is the best candidate for the earliest gospel.

Meanwhile the dual-language Proto-Gospel text(s) had the Aramaic portion independently translated into Greek and the M material was added to from Proto-Matthew. The Pauline term “the gospel” now starts to appear.
There is too much difference between GMatthew and GMark for Proto-Matthew to have gone for use by one and then copied by the other. Yet there is so much similarity that they must share this intermediate phase (Proto-Matthew) that each subsequently used. This Proto-Matthew was abridged towards GMark and rearranged towards GMatthew.

Along the way the various source texts were still available for use or for copying into other variant gospels. Apparently an (in-progress?) Proto-Matthew got back to where L could be added. We can know this occurred because we have many citations from lost gospels that seem most often like this L material. A case in point is the Gospel of Marcion that seemed so much like Luke that opponents called it a mutilated Luke. It turns out that this is not correct. Marcion included much that is in the other three gospels, on the one hand, and his critics charged him with omitting verses that were never in Luke at all, but in the other three gospels. It is thus impossible (as radicals say) that Marcion wrote a pre-cursor text to GLuke. Yet the text he used was early, preceding the addition of the Infancy Narrative. Marcion’s gospel was parallel to GLuke, neither before it nor after it. Likewise it was parallel to the other gospels mentioned in the 2nd Century, the Memoirs of the Apostles and the Gospel of the Hebrews. We cannot know whether citations are to our gospels or to collections preceding or subsequent to them, but there is so much evidence of non-extant early texts that we can dismiss the other contenders for solutions to the Synoptic Problem, both the Griesbach Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goulder (Goodacre) Hypothesis. Occam’s Razor just does not apply to such complicated histories of early development and citations. Neither one allows for the evidence (no “the gospel”) that Luke was first.
(Reflections on two other scholars have contributed to my greater aggressiveness here: Steve Mason and Stephan Huller.)

Sounds interesting. I tried following this mentally but kept getting confused. I tried drawing a concept map diagram with the same result. Any chance you could put this in diagram form to help us get a hold of it?

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.

When it comes to this stuff, I'm OK with straight-forward hypothetical sources (Q, a Proto-Luke beginning in Chapter 3 etc.), but I always start squirming once we start talking about hypothetical sources of hypothetical sources (Q1 and Q2, Proto-Protos etc.). It all starts to get a bit wishy-washy. Seems to me that each time we add a hypothetical source/redaction layer that isn't practically certain, we only add uncertainty to the overall hypothesis. And there is very little that I consider practically certain regarding this stuff.

Adam wrote: the Aramaic portion

Nonsense


Fantasy and imagination. You really need to provide credible sources because your so far out on a dead cracked limb.

Adam wrote: there might be eyewitnesses to Jesus after all,

No. And no one with any credibility follows this.


Its obvious the unknown authors would have amounted to an Aramaic Galileans enemy due to the sharp contrasting socioeconomic divide of Hellenist perverting Judaism while placing an unbearable burden of Aramaic village peasants.

You did not just have a socioeconomic divide that was contrasting. You also had theological contrast between Aramaic Galileans and Hellenistic Galileans. Both of which you ignore.

To Outhouse:
You're too dogmatic to argue with, but why do you focus on Galilee alone, to the exclusion of the Jerusalem focus of GJohn and the closing chapters of Luke? As for Galilee, my system allows for both Aramaic and Greek there as Q1 and Q2 respectively. What more would you want?

Adam wrote:To Outhouse:
You're too dogmatic to argue with

You mean I don't put up with horse pucky. You would be correct.

You don't have credible sources, your out on a cracked limb here and know it.

but why do you focus on Galilee alone, to the exclusion of the Jerusalem focus of GJohn and the closing chapters of Luke?

Because they were written by people far removed from any actual event.

Removed not just by time, but by geographic location as well.

my system allows for both Aramaic and Greek there as Q1 and Q2 respectively. What more would you want?

Reality.

There are very few Aramaic transliterations. There is nothing that ties illiterate fishermen peasants from Galilee to any NT book.



Your the one reaching here, and thus you need credible sources that are clear because of how outlandish your claims are.

My outlandish claim? That the Synoptic Problem has not been solved? I tried a year ago to prove that it could not be solved, but I came up with my Proto-Gospel. So if I am also wrong, make at least some contribution toward refuting my solution. As usual you provide no support for your opinions, but here I'm just asking for your opinion (insults don't count) on my case. Your usual claim for Consensus support is irrelevant here where the Consensus itself has refuted all current solutions to the Synoptic Problem. Like most people, you can't think outside the box.

Adam wrote:That the Synoptic Problem has not been solved?

.

No.

Just your unsubstantiated guesses.

make at least some contribution toward refuting my solution.

I have.

No NT author knew anyone connected with the original movement. No one was an eyewitness.



ALL authors were Hellenist far removed from any actual event. Isho developed no mythology in Galilee, and his movement ended with his death.

Jesus mythology developed in the diaspora after his death.

Adam wrote:I tried a year ago to prove that it could not be solved, but I came up with my Proto-Gospel.

Just your unsubstantiated guesses.

Not guesses, but the slanderous assertions he 'came up with'.
Adam wants everyone to buy into his contrived and fabricated 'Nicodemus was really a double crossing Sanhedrin snitch' character assassination tale.
According to the underlying premise of Adam's so called 'Proto-Gospel', Nicodemus was a Sanhedrin spy that went sneaking around secretly recording Jesus' and his disciples every private word and act, and thus was the anonymous "eyewitness" that provided major portions of the Gospel's text.

There has never been cause nor reason for anyone to ever question the good character or the personal integrity of the NT character Nicodemus, ....until last year when Adam first invented his crock of slanderous horse shit alleging that 'Nicodemus was a Sanhedrin mook spy' to serve his imagined first person "eyewitness" theory.

Whether or not we can 'Think outside of the box' , most of us have no need nor desire to resort to making up slanderous horse shit 'outside of the box'.

Sheshbazzar wrote:

Adam wrote:I tried a year ago to prove that it could not be solved, but I came up with my Proto-Gospel.

Just your unsubstantiated guesses.

Not guesses, but the slanderous assertions he 'came up with'..

Without being to negative, you might be right.

I just see unsubstantiated claims, one after the other.

Example

Whether as two different documents or as one combined mixed Aramaic and Greek text,

All I would ask is for him to show us the Aramaic transliterations, but there are none. So what evidence is there of any Aramaic text outside imagination?