Subject: Re: Words of Jesus

From: [email-masked] (U. Schmid)
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 18:37:44 +0100

On Sun, 14 Sep 1997, Jim Deardorff wrote (inter alia):

[quoting Schmid:]

>> 1. What sort of redaction do you mean referring to what part of the
>> tradition?
>
>I am inferring that Matthew is rife with redactions, as most redaction
>critics suspect, and I don't see how this fact, if it is a fact, could
>have been kept totally secret from those within the church where the
>writer of Matthew was located.  So, within that church, this would have
>been an embarrassment they would not wish to talk about or write about.
>Hence there would be a great paucity of writings on how the Gospel of
>Matthew came into being, as outside of this church or region even less
>would be known on how Matthew originated.

Are you arguing then that the writer of Matthew, having redacted (written)
Gospel material prior to him while incorparating it into his own work,
should have been hidden because his redactional work must have offended
others? But why then should people be offended by that? Luke openly
admitted that he used written sources prior to him. This apparently did not
prevent him from even becoming canonized. BTW -- Are you talkin about the
Greek Matthew or its supposed Aramaic/Hebrew Vorlage? If you are talking
about redactional criticism, you should have had the Greek Matthew in mind,
for this is what redaction critics usually work on persuing their
interrests.

>Next I presume that the tradition of Matthew coming first, Mark second, is
>truthful, as this was just a matter of chronology and nothing that
>Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine would have had any theological need to
>falsify.  Hence when Mark came out, presumably in Rome, those who compared
>it against Matthew (though Matthew may still have been written only in
>Hebraic/Aramaic at that time) would have been able to see that Mark was a
>redacted abbreviation of Matthew.

Why should a comparison of Hebrew/Aramaic Matthew with Greek Mark
immediately should have pointed to a _literary_ connection between both
texts? A perfectly feasable explanation would be that, although both are
basically referring to the same story, they had different sources they
chose to follow. E.g., Mark followed Peter's teaching, but due to teaching
purposes on Peter's side and slight defects of memory on Mark's side the
outcome was different when compared to Matthew, who was a follower of
Jesus. This is simply paraphrasing Papias and that's it. No more
explanation is needed.
I have the strong suspicion that your inferrence from modern times
redaction critical theories is hopelessly anachronistic when applied to 1/2
centuries reasoning which we find in the sources.

>This would not have spoken well for its
>authenticity, and again would not have inspired persons at the church in
>question (in Rome) who knew about the situation to write about its origin.
>Hence there is a great shortage of information about Mark's origin also.

Quite to the contrary with respect to the sources preserved to us. The
Presbyter tradition given by Papias going way back into the first century
is the longest and detailed information we have on any of the Gospels from
those early times.

>Might this not explain why Justin, who spent his last 25 years or so in
>Rome, rarely if ever quoted from Mark in his Apologies or Dialog (a
>possible allusion to Mk 12:30 may instead have been to Lk 10:27), though
>very frequently quoting from Matthew and sometimes from Luke?  Justin
>would not likely have known of the detailed situation in Antioch or
>wherever Matthew (and Luke) originated, and could more easily assume that
>these other gospels were authentic and suitable to quote from or allude
>to.

1. Please, go back to Justin and read carefully Dial. 106.2-3. Even a
critic as sharp as Helmut Koester holds this to be at least a possible
referrence to the Gospel of Mark (c.f., Ancient Christian Gospels, p.
273-274). Though there is an old discussion (at least as old as Karl
Semisch's monograph published in 1848!) whether Justin referred to Mark or
to the Gospel of Peter, I'm inclined to think that Claus-Juergen Thornton,
Justin und das Markusevangelium; in: ZNW 84 (1993) 93-110 put the case to
rest in favour of the former.

2. I'm even inclined to suggest you should go back and read all of Justin
with special focus on the Gospel material (of course you can also go back
and read Arthur J. Bellinzoni, The Sayings of Jesus in the Writings of
Justin Martyr, 1967 [NT.S 17] who did the job). In so doing you could make
the observation that Justin as indicated by the title of Bellinzoni's book
almost exclusively cites sayings material, which is most prominent among
Matthew and Luke when compared to Mark. Besides, since Justin never cites
one of the Gospels by their "kata" names, and since there is only very few
markan Sondergut, there is no need to assume that Justin deliberately
refrained from using Mark. In fact, the only possible _explicit_ referrence
Justin gives points to the Gospel of Mark.

3. I'm really struck by the fact that you are speculating so much on the
absence of evidence, while at the same time so easily dismissing existing
evidence.

>So after Luke came out, according to the same tradition, it should have
>been known to those closest to that writer not only how heavily he
>borrowed from Mark, but that he borrowed from Matthew and placed many of
>those verses in improper context (causing scholars many centuries later to
>postulate existence of Q).  So the very persons who could have written
>about the origins of the Gospel of Luke from first-hand information
>similarly did not wish to do so as it would have been embarrassing to the
>early church.

No that strikes me. Again, Luke, freely and plainly admitting having used
other _written_ sources (Lk 1.1-4!!!) maybe even with a grain of critic
towards the job they did, ended up in the NT. On the basis of your
reasoning I totally fail to understand why noone tried to remove his
prologue.

>I can think of another possibility or two as to why Justin did not quote
>from Mark, and these also involve Marcan redactions.
>
>> 2. Why should there have been a "plethora of writings describing who wrote
>> the Gospels..."?
>
>The era when the Gospels first came out should have been the most glorious
>period in the history of the early church -- to finally have the written
>teachings of the Lord made available to the church when before there had
>been only oral tradition and the epistles of Paul, who was no first-hand
>witness.  (Or, if he had been a witness to Jesus, that fact must have been
>what turned him into the key persecutor of Jesus' followers.)  So, by all
>reasonable expectations, various early church fathers should have written
>about how and where, why and by whom, the Gospels were written, within a
>few decades of the Gospels' appearances.  Instead, there is only silence
>on these matters -- silence that I see explained as per above.

"The era when the Gospels first came out" was the era of the passing of the
eye-witnesses. Why should any glory be ascribed to that sad situation.
Again your reasoning strikes me as notoriously anachronistic.

[snip]

>> 3. The "reason why the the Logia, about which Papias wrote five treatises,
>> did not survive" apparently is that they never existed apart from Papias
>> work. Papias collected them out of written and oral sources adding his
>> comments to them. ...
>
>That's an assumption that needn't be made.  The Logia could have been an
>extensive *written* document known to Papias, or sayings he recalled from
>such a document or from those who had read the document.  If so, the
>written source did not survive even though, with this interpretation, it
>formed the basis for Matthew.  The exception to this I'm aware of is the
>late-emerging candidate to have been these written Logia that I have been
>studying (Talmud of Jmmanuel).

No doubt, the Logia *could* have been a written document. But this
assumption is both improbable and unnecessary, for
a) Noone ever referred to the Logia.
b) Logia as a book title seems unusual.
c) Logia has a good, consistent, and unique meaning in the work of Papias.
I'm very thetic here, but prepared to add the evidence. However, since you
usually do not present evidence, I feel free to just sum up.

>> 1. It is a well known fact that Justin displays knowledge of at least the
>> Synoptic Gospels usually calling them Apomnemoneumata, once glossing this
>> term with Euangelia (1 Apol 66.3).
>
>There is no dispute that Justin knew of the Gospels, and so probably also
>that they were attributed to apostles or more distant disciples.  But in
>this example you cited, was it Justin or a later copyist who made the
>Euangelia gloss?

Do you REALLY think a later copyist introduced hA KALEITAI EYAGGELIA in 1.
Apol. 66.3. Helmut Koester might like the idea. However, not even he
mentioned this possibility in his Ancient Christian Gospels.

[snip]

>However, whatever way you look at it, in his references to the Gospels he
>used language that would not require him to state which "kata" gospel he
>was referring to in which allusion.  If the four Gospels had been written
>around 70-90 C.E., it is incomprehensible that they would not have been
>mentioned by name within a time period of three generations later, unless
>there was a very good reason for it.  Even if they were not written until
>around 120, a good reason is still needed why they were not mentioned by
>name for another 3 decades or so.

This is anachronistic to the extreme. As I already mentioned, even in later
times Church Fathers only rarely refer to the names of the Gospel writers.
This is a modern prejudice to assume they should have done so. It was the
"Lord", the "Gospel", "Scripture" that said/says. Moreover, one always has
to consider the genre of writing they performed, the intended audience,
etc., etc. Besides, only parts of Justin's writings had been preserved. We
know, e.g., that he wrote a Syntagma against all heresies, and a work
against Marcion. I'm convinced that in those works and especially in the
notes taken from his teaching in Rome he gave detailed answer to all of our
modern questions related to the origin of the Gospels. Unfortunately, this
is all lost and gone.

Ulrich Schmid,
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies

---

From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 16:00:51 -0700 (PDT)

> others? But why then should people be offended by that?

To be more specific, I'm saying that the writer of Matthew had a written
source in front of him that he was redacting very heavily in producing his
gospel.  This interpretation comes from Papias's quote on the Logia after
study of the Talmud of Jmmanuel.  Matthew's redactions are so extensive as
to imply that his source was quite heretical in many places. So the writer
of Matthew would not wish to make this source (which I argue was either
the Logia scrolls themselves or the source of Papias's knowledge about
them) generally available to others.  He would wish to keep the number of
other early Christian scribes, priests, church officials... who knew about
his source to a bare minimum, as he wouldn't wish many to know he had
extracted from a heretical text that contained a good deal of Gnostic-like
material for his gospel.  He wouldn't keep himself hidden, but would have
kept his source hidden from most eyes.

And why wouldn't he wish to let everyone know, you might ask?  (By now I
know you are not afraid to ask questions!)  If others were to see this
source and its many indications of genuineness and extensive details of
Jesus' ministry previously known only in scattered bits of oral tradition,
it could persuade them that the new Messianic form of Judaism was based
upon false assumptions, stemming mostly from Paul.  Obviously, this was
unacceptable and unthinkable, and the fewer who knew about it the better. 

But the writer of Matthew would have had to let some few who insisted know
about his source, and among these few were the writers of Luke and John,
from what one can infer from the Talmud of Jmmanuel.  The former
evangelist seems to have taken the matter in stride to the extent of
agreeing that it was fair game to try to make an "orthodox" writing or
gospel out of this source. So also the latter, except it may have promoted
a Gnostic leaning to his gospel.  These two I regard as being among the
"each [who] interpreted them [the Logia] as best he could," re Papias. 
But it seems that the writer of Matthew kept control over his source and
only briefly allowed the writer of Luke to read it and make notes, and
even more briefly, the writer of John to read it.  He would not have
wished to circulate such a heretical document. 

Thus, few would have known of the story behind the origins of the Gospel
of Matthew, and none of them would wish to make it public.

If you should ask: just what is the evidence that Matthew is so replete
with redactions? perhaps that's been discussed enough here already,
earlier.  But there's a lot that could be said about that.

If you should ask: what is the evidence from Matthew that it was
constructed from a source of a Gnostic character, there's scant evidence. 
The whole idea was to omit all of that and, through insertions and
substitutions, to write a gospel that reflected the views of the early
church and of the writer of Matthew.  However, there were 8 or 10 clues
left behind in Matthew suggestive that in its source Jesus (or rather
Immanuel, as the Talmud of Jmmanuel indicates) taught rebirth and karma,
among other things.  This Talmud also indicates that Jesus survived the
crucifixion, which of course can explain his post-resurrection
appearances, traditions of having traveled in Anatolia and to India, etc.

But as others on this list have pointed out, whether such a turn of events
would be "unacceptable" or "unthinkable" to today's textual critic, or
might contradict his basic beliefs or faith, is irrelevant to their
scholastic analyses.  I hope this is so, and also that seeking the
historical truth would take precedence over fear of ridicule.

If you should ask: what's this Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ) all about? you
could always search the Web to find sources.  Or e-mail me separately if
you think it's too off subject.  But I find it's the Rosetta stone for all
of NT studies, including tc.  The available German translations are only 1
or 2 generations removed from the original Aramic scrolls, and can be
studied for Aramaisms, etc. 

This has gotten too lengthy; sorry.  Will respond to more of your concerns
in a following message.

Jim Deardorff

---

From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 16:26:06 -0700 (PDT)

> Luke openly admitted that he used written sources prior to him. 

That writer openly admitted he was aware of written sources before him. 
But how can one interpret the Prologue to mean he admitted to using them
in constructing his gospel, as in "plagiarizing" them?  He claimed to have
investigated matters from their source, which is consistent with his
having had first-hand knowledge of the source for Matthew.  However, Lk
1:3-4 indicates to me that this writer was not satisfied with the way the
two gospels preceding him had presented their information, and so felt a
need to present a more reliable gospel -- his own.  (IMO, he felt that the
writer of Mark had left out way too much from Matthew, and that the latter
writer had improperly put an anti-gentile spin on it all.  So he had
strong motivation to correct both of these deficiencies in the gospel he
attributed to Luke.) 

> This apparently did not prevent him from even becoming canonized.

I'm dubious of the reliability of that possibility.  Where does that come
from, if I may ask?  If it came from a church father who assumed that the
writer of Luke was the physician known to Paul, then anyone who
perceives that the Gospels weren't written by their "kata"s should be
doubly dubious of it.

> BTW -- Are you talkin about the

I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the tradition that Matthew was
(first) written in the Hebrew tongue, as well as being the first Gospel
out.  The two go together.  So I'm talking about the latter (the Vorlage),
as being where the heavy redactions were first introduced which then
spread into the other gospels.  I've postulated that it was the later
translator of Semitic Matthew into Greek who duplicated many long strings
of text from Mark and Luke during his translation.  (Later I learned that
a J.-M Voste and before him, Theodor Zahn, had postulated the same, at
least with respect to Matthew-Mark; but we propose different reasons for
this editorial behavior on the part of the translator of Matthew.) 

But of course even those who trust the tradition of a Semitic Vorlage have
only the Greek Matthew to work from.
 
> Jesus. This is simply paraphrasing Papias and that's it. No more

The trouble with that reasoning is that the order of pericopes, and even
of verses within pericopes, within Mark follows that of Matthew *much* too
closely from Mt 12 on to be any accident, allowing for Mark's many
abbreviations.  (To see this, one lists Mt first and places Mk's parallels
alongside, rather than listing Mk first and placing Mt's parallels
alongside.  Only about 8 out of some 450 parallel Marcan verses in that
region are out of order.)  If John Mark was writing down Peter's
reminiscences, much more of Mark would have been out of order from Mt 12
on, and of course the two texts (Mk & Mt) wouldn't be nearly as close
either. (Of course, Mark-Q priorists would argue it the other way around,
and see no need for Peter to be in the picture at all.) One great value of
the Talmud of Jmmanuel is it allows one to deduce just what role
Mark/Peter's document (or "memoirs") in Rome played in the later making of
Mark, while allowing an explanation as to why Mark suddenly follows
Matthew's order from Mt 12 on.  This is despite the fact that most
exegetes view the agreement in order as commencing at Mt 14 instead of Mt
12, due to their ordering Matthew after Mark.

The argument concerning order may not have been known to many, and not
immediately, it is true, though I contend it was known to Papias. However,
those few who did know all about the origins of Mark then did know that
its writer used Matthew very heavily (if you follow along the Augustinian
hypothesis) and did not have much going for him as to original sources. 
And they of course knew that (John) Mark hadn't written it.  All this
would have been more than sufficient, in my opinion, to cause them to keep
as quiet as possible about the true origins of Mark.  So posterity would
hear very little about the origins of this gospel also.  But perhaps
Justin learned something of this, and so didn't quote from the sections of
Mark that derived strictly from Matthew.

> I have the strong suspicion that your inference from modern times

The 1/2-century reasoning or writings that survived, and which you
apparently have in mind, was carried out by those who professed the
Christian faith.  This means that by the time of Irenaeus, for sure, they
automatically assumed that the Gospel writers were the same persons as the
"kata's".  Any other belief was not tolerated within the church.  So we
find some distortions in the surviving statements from Papias via
Eusebius, and from Clement of Alexandria, and others (?), which collapse
the time when Mark was written back into the time when Peter and Mark were
in Rome.  What you view as anachronistic opinions on my part I view as
distorted reporting on the part of certain dedicated church fathers --
dedicated to upholding the faith. 

> is the longest and detailed information we have on any of the Gospels from

Unfortunately, it's anything but detailed on Matthew.  The statement from
Papias via Eusebius about Matthew is so terse and ambiguous that NT
scholars have found up to 72 different ways to interpret it (taking all
possible combinations). I blame this on Eusebius, not Papias.  But it's
indeed all we have on Matthew. 

I don't agree with your 1st-century assessment, however.  The Presbyter
John could have learned relevant information about the origin of Matthew
around 125 C.E., could have told Papias about it around 130 C.E., and
Papias could have reported this around 150 C.E. (all rough estimates, of
course).  I don't equate the Presbyter John with the apostle John, though
the latter apparently did live a long life and may have once been
personally known to the Presbyter.  It seems improbable to me that Papias,
at age 20, say, would have known the apostle John then at age 90 or so. 
But if so, that still need not imply that the apostle John wrote the
gospel by that name; it takes another assumption to reach that conclusion,
since it was the Presbyter, not the apostle John, who told Papias about
the origins of Matthew and Mark. 

This may get too lengthy also; will finish with a third response.

Jim Deardorff

---

From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 17:00:17 -0700 (PDT)

> 273-274).

I don't have this book of Koester's, and I use the ANF, which has the
chapter headings but no more. So I need to ask if you are referring to
Justin's reference to Boanerges (for some reason the ANF did not stick in
a footnote referencing this as alluding to Mark).  If so, thanks for
persisting on this.  I suppose the ANF, Koester and Bellinzoni tend to
attribute this to oral tradition.  If so, from my own vantage point I
could view this as oral tradition that stemmed from the document
(mislabeled Peter's Memoirs; but I'd call it Ur-Marcus) that Mark & Peter
had in Rome, and which did play a small role in the formation of Mark.  Or
it could as easily be a Justin allusion to a section of Mark that he knew
to be authentic.  (From the Talmud of Jmmanuel one can estimate which
parts of Mark authentically derived from Ur-Marcus, and which from
Matthew; the Boanerges bit was in Ur-Marcus).  Or were you referring to
something else that pointed to Mark?  

> Though there is an old discussion (at least as old as Karl

I must confess not seeing the connection between anything in Justin's
Dialog and the Gospel of Peter.  I regard the latter as being based upon
the Gospels, especially upon Matthew.

> 2. ... 
> I'm even inclined to suggest you should go back and read all of Justin
> refrained from using Mark.

Yes, I can now agree, thanks, that the minimal numbers of Marcan
Sondergut, and Mark's strong parallels to Matthew, leave some of Justin's
allusions in doubt, as to Matthew or Mark.  I wonder if the ANF listed
Matthew in the questionable cases, and not Mark, simply because so many
other allusions are to Matthew in material that Mark omits.  In the
article by Bellinzoni, _The Gospel of Matthew in the Second Century_, in
_The Second Century_ journal, 1992/93 (vol. 9, No. 4), p. 240, I see he
says that Justin's quotations are from Matthew and Luke, and *possibly*
Mark.  So there seems to be some reluctance to attribute any of Justin's
allusions to Mark that I now don't understand.

> In fact, the only possible _explicit_ referrence

I'd like to know just what you have in mind here.  Let's assume for the
sake of argument that Justin did allude to Mark a few times, relative to
many, many times for Matthew. That still doesn't in any way explain to me
why he did not wish to refer to these gospels by their "kata's".  Any
explanation like "That's just the way it is, and so I should get used to
it," is no explanation as far as I'm concerned.  If Justin had been
quoting from a harmonization of the Gospels, then I could understand why
he'd be content just to say the quotes came from the apostles (or supposed
Gospel writers), but even then if he didn't say whose harmonization it
was, one would have reason to question why. 
 
> absence of evidence, while at the same time so easily dismissing existing

However, I look at it as questioning why that evidence is lacking under
circumstances when it should have been most plentiful (the most exciting,
interesting events in the early church that should have been written
about), and then showing how the dearth of evidence ties in with the
embarrassments within the fragments we have from Papias and Clement of
Alexandria re the origins of the Gospels.  Doing this instead of just
saying we're used to there being scarcely any description of when, where,
why and by whom the Gospels were written, and so why wonder about it. 
At the same time, I am not one who would dismiss the Talmud of Jmmanuel
evidence, since it helps greatly to explain the ambiguities in both the
external and internal evidence.

Which should have been more important: Gospels purportedly written
from an eye-witness point of view telling of Jesus' teachings
and ministry, or epistles by a non-witness (Paul)?  And which came later
and should have been much easier to preserve after the churches were
better established: descriptions of the circumstances under which the
Gospels arose, or Paul's epistles?  Yet we know more about the
circumstances of the writing of the epistles than of the Gospels.  There
is a gross imbalance there that I feel needs explaining.  It could be
connected to the orthodox position that Paul's writings quickly gained
versus the strong tendency to destroy unorthodox & Gnostic writings.

> reasoning I totally fail to understand why noone tried to remove his

Perhaps someone tried that, we don't know.  But from the viewpoint of the
early church, it seems to me that it would have agreed, for the most part,
with the writer of Luke that his gospel was needed.  Matthew wasn't
universal, with its writer desiring to restrict discipleship to the
children of Israel.  Mark wasn't universal, being slanted toward gentiles
and omitting so many of Matthew's Judaisms.  Luke *was* universal in those
respects and so fulfilled a need.  Its writer evidently felt a need
(should I add "for whatever reason"?) to explain summarily why a third
gospel was needed, and so wrote his prologue.  If his had been the first
gospel, then I presume he would not have written a prologue.  It seems
that the writer of Luke had enough "clout" or influence to have his
prologue be accepted (by his priest?) along with the rest of his gospel. 
Other reasons for perceiving this writer had clout are the freedom with
which he added a lot of Sondergut and incorporated parts of Matthew within
some of it, and his readiness to conflate Matthew & Mark (within the
Augustinian hypothesis, anyhow).

>From the prologue, it would seem that its writer was posing as the writer
of the rest of Luke, and thus presumably as Luke the physician.  Well,
then, one who believes that Luke and the other gospels were written much
too late to have been written by their "kata"s needs to explain how he
could get away with doing this at the time.  Part of my explanation is
that he had to keep his identity as author known to as few as possible. In
this he was successful, and so posterity also knows very little about the
origins of Luke.  

> ....

If the Logia had been as heretical as I've laid out, no one within the
church would wish to refer to it, ever (except for the references to it in
Eusebius). Yet, it was too valuable in detailing Jesus' ministry to be
passed up by the writer of Matthew. 

> b) Logia as a book title seems unusual.

"Ta Logia" is just how Papias referred to it.  I think its title was the
Talmud of Jmmanuel.  However, I've read that one of the many lost gospels
whose titles only survived was entitled "Gospel of Judas [Iscariot]." 
This you would see is another possible way it had been referred to,
if you were to look into it the TJ.

> c) Logia has a good, consistent, and unique meaning in the work of Papias.

We know very, very little of what Papias's treatises on the Logia
consisted of. Just a few semi-gnostic items relayed by Eusebius.  

> >... in
 
> mentioned this possibility in his Ancient Christian Gospels.

I have no idea, and don't know anything about how Justin's works were
transmitted through time.  Is it known for sure to be a gloss, as
indicated in some preserved manuscript?  I take it you think it was
Justin's own gloss.  It certainly seems possible to me that a copyist may
have done it, at the later time when there were more commonly called
euaggelia, in which case I suppose one would need to hypothesize the same 
for the other two mentions of "gospel."  But I was just trying to learn
your opinion on that item.

> ... Besides, only parts of Justin's writings had been preserved. We

If I were to agree I might be accused of having a conspiratorial outlook
as to why those works did not survive.  So I shall only remark that it
is you who are now reading a lot into "absence of evidence."  :-)

Jim Deardorff

---

From: Nichael Lynn Cramer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 20:08:45 -0400

Jim Deardorff wrote:
>If you should ask: what's this Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ) all about?

Oh good lord, not again....

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 20:05:45 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 16 Sep 1997, Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]> wrote,
in part:

>investigated matters from their source,

I must ask a serious question: Have you ever studied ancient literature,
particularly historical literature? That would reveal that the ancients
had no such concept as "plagairism." (In the manuscript age, you
couldn't make a living as an author, the idea of "copyright" didn't
exist.) It was quite normal for an author to simply compile extracts
from earlier sources. In some cases (e.g. Livy's use of Polybius),
we can actually see the source and what the later author did with
it. For that matter, we can see it in the Bible, in the use made
of Samuel/Kings by the author of Chronicles. Compare also
Josephus's use of the Old Testament, or 1 Maccabees, or apparently
Nicholas of Damascus.

So Luke, like any other historian/biographer of the era, would have
felt perfectly free to use whatever he wanted from any source, and
would not have felt any qualms. What is more, he likely would
*not* have told us; it was a rare ancient author who cited sources.
So I would maintain that nothing can be said on the basis of
Luke's prologue.

I have another question: No matter how one interprets the quotations
in the Gospels, has the question anything to do with textual
criticism? This is *not* a literary criticism list. I'd hope we
can get back to the point one of these days.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                        Robert B. Waltz
                     [email-masked]

Want more loudmouthed opinions about textual criticism?
Try my web page: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn
(A site inspired by the Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism)

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From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 21:01:54 -0700 (PDT)

> Oh good lord, not again....

Your sarcasm is not conveying any useful information, and is not needed on
this list.

Jim Deardorff

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From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:26:20 -0700 (PDT)

> Josephus's use of the Old Testament, or 1 Maccabees, or apparently

Robert,

I think you're missing the main point.  Within the hypothesis that the
Gospels came out in early 2nd century, the writer of Luke wrote his
prologue under the pretense that its writer, and that of the rest of the
gospel, had been Luke the physician.  I sense that this would have been
offensive to many, for one reason because this was not righteous behavior
-- it violates the standard of being more righteous than the scribes (Mt
5:20).  It's also the behavior of a hypocrite; remember the woes against
those who were called hypocrites?  It's also bearing false witness,
considered evil in Mt 15:19 as well as in the OT.  Within the Augustinian
framework, Matthew was known ahead of Luke, and so to those few who knew
how the Gospel of Luke originated, these Matthean standards would have
been known to have been violated.  The less said about it by those in the
know, the better, would have been the most likely behavior, I maintain.

To others, it may not have been offensive, which would help explain how
the Gospels did finally get accepted as sacred literature within
Christianity.

The minor point was that the prologue statement, of the writer being aware
of other narratives or gospels having been written before his, does not
necessarily mean that he utilized one or more of these preceding writings. 
It takes an assumption or other data to reach that conclusion.  I'll grant
you that he did, but that comes out of comparison of Luke against Mark
(and Matthew). 

As you might guess, my knowledge of ancient literature is meager, coming
mostly in the past 12 years after switching fields of interest.  But of
course I had learned that utilizing the works of others was commonplace in
those days; that's why "plagiarizing" was in quotes. 

> would not have felt any qualms.

If the writer of Luke had any qualms, it didn't stop him.  But he may well
have sensed that others who learned of his authorship under the name of
Luke would have qualms about his being hypocritical, bearing false
witness, etc. 

> What is more, he likely would *not* have told us; ...

That sounds like a conditional probability (or, after the fact).

> can get back to the point one of these days.

It impacts tc in at least a couple of ways.  (1) If the gospels came out
around 120 C.E., not 70 C.E., and hence could not have been written by
their "kata"s, think how many fewer unknown mss you need to contend with
in striving to reach back to their earliest forms. 

(2) These topics involving source & redaction criticism lie at the heart
of trying to determine the relative priority of the Gospels, which in turn
may be able to explain why duplicate strings of up to 30 or so consecutive
words are found in some parallel passages between Mt-Mk and Mt-Lk.  If
that's explainable through redaction criticism, then it needn't be
explained as due to later harmonistic corruption.

Jim Deardorff

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From: Nichael Lynn Cramer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 08:49:48 -0400

Jim Deardorff wrote:
>Nichael Lynn Cramer wrote:
>> Jim Deardorff wrote:

Very well, then, let me frankly convey some "useful information".

This is not an issue of saracasm.  This is a heartfelt cry of frustration
that this gibberish of yours and its concomittant blather about alien
abductions and the interventions of the saucer people, which has polluted
at least a half dozen other lists that I know of, should rear its
embarrassing head on yet one more list that at least attempts to maintain a
facade of scholarly discussion.

It may well be that my frustration --if not my saracasm-- is not needed on
this list.  But neither is this nonsense.

Moreover, as you will no doubt point out, this approach is not very
"polite" or "scholarly".  But the history of this matter has shown,
repeatedly, that politeness simply does not work in this issue: in each of
the mailing-lists mentioned above your "views" were given a prolonged
polite and intelligent hearing (much as Ulrich Schmid has been attempting
to do here).  But when, after this long tedious period it became all too
clear that reasoned discussion wouldn't --indeed couldn't-- work, they were
finally hooted into oblivion that they deserve.

And the quicker we, too, get through this process here, the better.

In short, enough.

And, having had my say, I will take the only bit of useful advice that I
have ever received with regards Dr Deardorff which is to simply ignore him
in hopes that he will move onto some other list.  I implore my fellow
readers to do the same.  (And that said, I'm now going to go have my
morning caffeine and see if _that_ makes me feel any better...)

N

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 08:28:20 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 16 Sep 1997, Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]> wrote:

>gospel, had been Luke the physician.

All right, I'll concede that I missed part of the point. I was just
reacting to the word plagairism.

I would argue that, if you assume the author of Luke to have worked
in the second century, he was not impersonating _Luke_ in particular,
merely some unknown companion of Paul. But that's a nitpick.

(And to others on this list: Be it noted that I believe Luke to have
been written in the first century. But I will allow Jim Deardorff his
opinions -- much as I'd like to see them on a list where they are
relevant. :-)

[ ... ]

>in striving to reach back to their earliest forms. 

There is truth in this -- but only if we can *prove* the dates of the
books. I somehow doubt, after two thousand years of trying, that we're
likely to settle the matter now.

Also, I can't speak for anyone else, but when I conduct TC, I don't
care about who the actual author of a book is. This is not to say
that I don't study the author's style -- but I don't care if the
author is "Mark of Alexandria" or someone we've never heard of.

>explained as due to later harmonistic corruption.

I fear I would deny the relevance of that to TC. In that case, you
are working from the results of TC -- effect, not cause.

                        Robert B. Waltz
                     [email-masked]

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From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 14:32:31 -0700 (PDT)

> facade of scholarly discussion.

I know there's no point in trying to enlighten you at all, Nichael, but
there could be a few on this list who know or suspect the reality that
underlies the UFO phenomenon.  The TJ sheds light on a bit of it that
occurred nearly two millennia ago, and should be studied also by those
who hold any interest in Merkabbah mysticism. 

But I won't be mentioning the Talmud Jmmanuel on this list in the future.

Jim Deardorff

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 18:05:50 -0500 (CDT)

On Wed, 17 Sep 1997, Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]> informed us:

>underlies the UFO phenomenon.

I think most of us do: The reality is, a lot of people are blowing a
few minor happenings into a big deal. :-)

The question is, why take this out on *us*?

But this is symptomatic of something I find very disturbing. Twice
this week Jimmy Adair -- who is at once more open-minded and more
patient than most people on this list -- has had to step in and
try to end a thread.

The worst of it is, even *that* doesn't always end the thread.

We need a better way, but I for one don't want to see us have to
shift to a moderated list. I would trust Jimmy to moderate us
(as I would not trust some others), but better that we can speak
freely.

So we need a way to control the noise and give control back
to Jimmy, without turning to censorship. That means voluntary
restraint. I, at least, am willing to make a pledge.

If a thread gets so out of control that Jimmy Adair needs to
tell us to cool it, I promise that I will not post to this
thread for the period of at least one week. Nor will I retain
messages on the thread for later reading or response. Even
if I'm the guilty party.

I'd suggest we all try it. Some threads need a time out.

                        Robert B. Waltz
                     [email-masked]