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Did Matthew & Luke use a lost gospel Q? (The Synoptic Problem)
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- Опубликовано: 19 авг 2024
- Ian N Mills (Duke University) reviews the most popular solutions to the synoptic problem. The second video in a series on the Synoptic Problem.
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I don't know what good I did to deserve this free class in the synoptic problem, but I'm just gonna say ---- start your patreon already :)
Thanks. We're working on it! ...but we're also kinda busy. We have fun things planned for the patreon launch.
About to sit Final Honour School exams in theology at Oxford Uni, and this was so clear and helpful. Thank You!
Perfect. Loving these lecture style videos 👍
My ex-Mormon ears perked up when at 17:00 Ian says "We do not have the gospels being given to us by an angel on golden plates."
Not meant as a jab at my dear LDS friends and esteemed LDS colleagues. I just think it illustrates the difficulties of working with texts where there is one to two hundred years between the autograph and the first complete copy.
@@newtestamentreview9931 I didn't think it was a jab, so hopefully LDS folks won't take it that way.
Ian! Thanks for another video. They really fill in some glaring gaps in my knowledge of NT studies.
Thanks for taking the time out to do this, that was great. Covid is great for letting me stay at home more. I've caught up on all your videos now.
I have always believed in Q, but I think I'm coming around to the Farrer Hypothesis. Ian's presentation made a lot of sense.
Nice breakdown! I see this becoming the majority view within the next few decades for sure.
"Q" is THE SOURCE WITHIN...THE ETERNAL ONE...💙😇💙
Not sure if I said this on the previous synoptic video but I love the colour coding of the texts
I'd love to know your thoughts on the conflicting birth narratives. I'm of the opinion that Matthew (or whatever sources that writer was using) came up with the "Virgin Birth" idea due to their reading of Isaiah 7 as Messianic prophecy (which... I don't think it is). Luke preserves the 'Virgin Mary' concept, but de-links it from prophecy. Similarly, Matthew has the whole baby-killing thing with Herod the Great for prophetic reasons. Luke makes no mention of prophecy, but tries to shoehorn Herod the Great and Bethlehem in anyway by having Mary learn about her FUTURE pregnancy during Herod, and by having Joseph need to travel for the census.
Is this Luke including traditions (Virgin, Bethlehem, Herod) that are too popular to ignore, while removing contradictions and prophetic implications he doesn't agree with?
im replying a year late but i think there is a very simple answer to the virgin birth answer. the writers were obviously greek so they would have been familiar with the miraculous birth narratives of greek mythology like that of hercules who was also the son of god in greek mythology and had a divine father and a human mother. after reading mark, matthew thought that since jesus was supposed to be the son of god it would be fitting to have god as his father
Loving these. Thanks Ian!
It is very possible that a document first assumed by a german 150 years ago, has no surviving copies, no mention in any source contemporary with the gospels.
Your note about the texts not surviving not being a great argument is really interesting - when I've heard people talk about how you know the Gospel is really true, they tend to say, "Don't you think God could preserve the Word he wanted to keep?" --so they're using that same idea on the separate side of the argument.
There's an interesting list in one of Harnack's books about all the 1st-3rd century Christian books that are attested vs. the one's that survive. And even for someone who spends a lot of time thinking about books that didn't survive it's surprising how few books are preserved.
Victors (in both literal and literary wars) write history, and disfavour survival of alternate accounts.
Thanks Ian. These are golden. 👌
Thank you so much for the lecture. These videos are awesome. Keep going!
The reason for Luke's fondness for "ten" is probably the Josephite symphathy that is evident throughout his gospel. Conversely to Matthew, whose Sondergut is riddled with allusions to the biblical history of Judah (e.g., Mt 27:5 cf. 2 Sam 17:23), Luke's is chock full of echoes of biblical northern Israelite history, which includes the story of Joseph, history of Samuel the prophet, departure of the ten tribes, Elijah-Elisha cycle, oracles of Hosea and Amos, etc. There are too many examples to cite here, but compare the Magnificat with the Song of Hannah or the Parable of the Good Samaritan with its sources in 1 Kgs 13, 2 Chron 28, & Hos 6. I can provide a wealth of examples in tabular form if you are interested.
My question is, supposing Luke sourced Matthew, then where did Matthew source his material? If it was a sayings Gospel, what would we call the situation where Luke had Matthew, Mark and this Matthew source to refer to? That would explain the instances in which Luke seems more primitive than Matthew but there is no parallel in Mark.
If Matthew didn’t have Q, from where did he get all the “sayings of Jesus”? Is it supposed that he made them up on his own or drew on oral tradition according to this theory?
Matthew used Mark to compose his gospel. He could have used Luke similarly, to collect many sayings by Jesus for his gospel. That is the Matthean Posteriority Hypothesis, MPH. Arguments in its favor are the many times Matthew pulled verses from his various sources and put them into his five great speeches by Jesus, starting with the Sermon on the Mount.
I don't necessarily accept the existence of Q, my question is, if Luke had Matthew's gospel available to copy, why did he choose to diverge so greatly in his nativity narrative?
Authors alter their source materials all the time. The PE James uses both Matthew and Luke but makes material changes anyways.
That said, there's evidence in the nativity that Luke knows Matthew.
Mt 1:21 τέξεται δὲ υἱὸν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν,
Lk 1:31 καὶ τέξῃ υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν.
There's also a lot of macroscopic commonalities (e.g. miraculous conception, angelic announcement).
So why did Luke change Matthew? Same reasons he changes Mark so drastically elsewhere. Luke is advancing his own understanding of Jesus.
There's also the possibility that the nativity was not original to Luke's gospel, but was tacked on in a subsequent redaction. Even Bart Ehrman (who espouses Q and is the poster child for so-called "mainstream" NT scholarship) argues that the Lukan nativity was not original --it began at chapter 3.
The hypothetical Lukan redactor who added the nativity certainly would have known Matthew’s gospel as well. But instead of copying Matthew (as ur-Luke tended to do), he interacted with Matthew by jousting with it. Matthew depicts a kingly birth in a home. Luke has a lowly, humble birth in a manger. Rich wise men visit Jesus in Matthew. Lowly shepherds visit Jesus in Luke. Luke seems to also be aware of Matthew’s genealogy, so he follows the same format --but with a different genealogy. I could go on. But whether or not the Lukan nativity was original to the text, it is apparent that the author knew of Matthew’s nativity and is jousting a bit.
Thank you Ian. For context, do you know of any summary like this one of the pro-Q position?
And is Q one of a class of [hidden - or - lost common] sources, or is it a singular position?
That is to say, are there multiple theories like Q, but Q is the best-known exemplar?
Whether or not his theory is ultimately correct, Wenham does valuable work identifying and challenging many of the assumptions that underlie the current New Testament scholarship and positing a credible counter argument. While the book has much strength the examination of historical testimony pertaining to Gospel authorship is particularly worthwhile and illuminating. It has often struck me that contemporary scholarship has been a bit too quick to dismiss ancient testimony in favour of modern literary techniques (as valuable as they are). A balanced view that weights internal and external evidence does indeed seem warranted. Redating Matthew by John Wenham (Author)
Great content.
These are fascinating videos, thank you for sharing them. Would it be fair to say then that it is entirely possible that there was a lost sayings gospel, which we can call Q, similar to Thomas but less unorthodox, that was used by Matthew, but not by Luke?
Possibly the original "Matthew" work referred to by Papias? And then the name Matthew has got attached to a work combining that with Mark's Gospel.
What I wonder, as a non-specialist, is if in fact we are in a environment where there are lots of different sources and many versions of each gospel. And what we have left surviving are tiny number of examples. Is that a plausible scenario? In that situation it could be that "Luke" was derived from "Matthew", but not the precise version of "Matthew" that survives to this day. This question is then should we refer to this other version of "Matthew" as Q, if it is an earlier version, or as "Matthew". Also maybe Matthew and Luke weren't using the same version of Mark as we are familiar with, meaning Markan priority is kind of correct, but not 100% correct. In short maybe we have a much more complex landscape at the time of multiple sources and versions of sources. Maybe each time a gospel was copied a new version was produced.
I would advise against using the same name, here Matthew, for two different concepts. It's bad enough that the gospels are often confused with the people from the Apostolic Age who supposedly wrote them, which is doubtful.
. . . The idea of Matthew and Luke (the gospel writers, not the humans meeting Jesus and Paul) using different versions of Mark was discussed in the 19th century, but statistical analysis by Hawkins (?), a British scholar around 1900 showed that to be unlikely. But it remains a small possibility: before 150CE, the gospels were not canonical, and everyone could write his own or rewrite another gospel, and that might have been seen as pious exercise.
Isn't the issue here that we don't have the originals and that later scribes who had access to all 3 will have made small change to "improve" them. And as we cannot know what was Luke, what was Mark and what was the scribes, all we are doing is speculating.
Interesting chart, but I’m sure I’m not the first to note that the “Words of Jesus” & “Narrative Material” percentages are quite similar. I’m not sure exactly what’s meant by ‘miscellaneous sayings’, but that’s the location of the big disparity. The overall percentage is skewed bc the triple tradition has a much higher allocation of narrative material (lowest % in both), while double tradition has a much higher allocation of Words of Jesus (highest % in triple tradition).
An obvious question it causes me to ask is why the miscellaneous sayings material is so incredibly high in the double tradition. But just at a glance, I don’t see it as inherently evidence against Q.
Probably not. In Matthew 12 and 16 the descriptions of the sign of Jonah are very different from that found in Luke 11.
You've acknowledged that the Mt-L agreements could have possibly come from a Q source. However, if Luke knew Mt, I find it somewhat implausible that he would have chosen to include as little of it as he did in his gospel, especially with reference to the uniquely Matthean "M source" passages.
What's implausible about an author omitting parts of a source? Everyone agrees Luke had Mark, and Luke omits Mark 6-8. Everyone agrees that the proto-evangelion of James had Matthew and Luke, and PEJ omits large sections of the infancy narratives from those gospels. There's nothing implausible about an author deciding to omit part of one of their sources.
@@newtestamentreview9931 That's true, but if Luke was trying to write a more definitive and comprehensive gospel "after investigating everything" (Luke: 1:3), I find it hard to believe that he would use so little of the Matthew text.
The idea that Luke would have omitted the ("M source") parables that only appear in Matthew seems particularly hard to explain, if his intention was to write a new, improved (more complete) gospel with material from more sources.
For the algorithm
I do find the whole Mark-Q overlap hypothesis deeply frustrating. "Overlap" is such a nebulous word (almost as bad as "gather" in relation to discourse material) - it evades defining whether it is a literary relationship and in which direction the relationship is. And even if that were clarified, quite what do Matthew's compositional procedures look like on this hypothesis? If anything looks and feels like microconflation, this is it.
2SH folks mean something pretty specific by it. They believe that the form of the story in Matthew and Luke is drawn from Q, not Mark. This position can remain agnostic on the relationship between Mark and Q and several 2SH folks have gone back and forth on that. I don't think any of that is necessarily objectionable.
The problem is that a key justification for Luke's ignorance of Matthew is that Luke does not reflect Matthew's changes to Mark. The problem is that the pattern of data you'd expect to see if that was false (i.e. Luke indeed knew Matthew) is major agreements/Mark-Q overlap. To label that a "Mark-Q overlap" is just to conceal the fact that the precise pattern of data the absence of which is appealed to as justification for positing Q is, in fact, present.
@@newtestamentreview9931 They certainly believe that about Luke, but do they really believe it about Matthew? You get, for instance, Downing blithely writing about "material similar to that which Matthew has conflated with Mark", in passing attributing to Matthew even more complicated compositional procedures than he is trying to rule out for Luke. If we are to take the Two-Document Theory seriously (and that includes remembering that Q is a literary document with an order to it), then we need to understand in detail what Matthew is doing on that theory (someone should write a Goulder-esque work called Matthew: An Old Paradigm).
And I think you are being too fair in allowing agnosticism on what the relationship between Mark and Q is (although it's a fairly accurate descriptivist characterization of the debate). One might as well avow agnosticism of all Synoptic relationships. None of the options is particularly satisfactory (and agnosticism between unsatisfactory options does not improve the options):
1) Mark knew Q - so why does Mark not include all that congenial material, e.g. the Lord's Prayer, etc? This option makes a mockery of Markan priority.
2) Q knew Mark - on the level of individual pericopes, this makes most sense; but then Q knows Mark everywhere and it becomes very difficult to distinguish Q from Matthew. And if Q and Matthew are the same entity, then that is the Farrer theory.
3) Q and Mark both knew another hypothetical document - well, I suppose a Five-Document Theory is at least possible, but we're really multiplying entities now. But we do get very clever people seriously writing about "layers" (another of those words that feels like it's not exactly helping clarity) of Q; so this generally seems to be the least bad option if one is to maintain a workable Two-Document theory.
4) It's a non-literary relationship - I just don't see how this is tenable given the data, but presumably someone must think this.
@@nendwr Yeah, we're on the same team here. I'm willing to grant agnosticism on the relationship of Mark and Q because the mere existence of Major Agreements undermines a (maybe "the") key justification for positing Q. If we had other compelling justifications to believe in Q, then I don't think our inability to determine the relationship between Mark and Q would really undermine the theory. For that reason, I think it's a distraction that plays into the hands of 2SH advocates.
Sweet
Blessed are the poor in spirit just makes zero sense. People in a chronically bad mood are Jesus' favorite? But so what? It seems just as likely that Luke changed it so it actually makes sense as it does that Matthew changed it to diminish Jesus reverence of the poor.
And how do we know that any particular passage is original to either text given that they changed over time? This seems like a waste of time.
I don't think the statistical argument at 28:00 is so strong against Q, at least if you agree with the narrative material/saying division.
Lets assume Luke copies from Mark in triple tradition and from Matthew in double tradition. From the table in the video we learn that the average similarity for the words of Jesus in triple tradition is 0.658. Matthew and Luke both change Mark while copying with some probability, and let's assume these probabilities are both equal to p and the independent changes are never the same. That means (1-p)^2=0.658, so p=0.189. What would we expect in double tradition? Under Q hypothesis, they both copy from Q, so structure is the same and we would expect 0.658. If Luke copies from Matthew directly, the expected agreement level is (1-p)=0.811. In reality we get 0.715, which is closer to Q prediction.
The numbers for the narrative material produce approximately the same result
I'm doing my best to follow here, but can you give me the relevant results one more time?
It seems to me that the key question is whether the agreement of Mt and Lk in double tradition looks more like the agreement of Mt/Lk with Mk (direct copying in triple tradition) or the agreement of Mt with Lk when they're both copying Mark (indirect copying in triple tradition). On the Farrer theory it should be the former not the latter.
As a parting note, the so-called Mk-Q overlaps or major agreements probably need to be excluded from the calculation because on either model (Farrer or 2SH) something different is happening there. I don't think any of the studies reflect that and I suspect it's going to mess with the results.
@@newtestamentreview9931 Thank you for the reply!
I have to say that I don't have any expertise in biblical studies, I just saw the table and tried to crunch the numbers
I tried to put the difference between direct and indirect copying (when both copy from the same source) in hard numbers. I went with the simplest possible assumption: the authors change some percent of the text, this percent does not depend on the author or the source, but it depends on the type of text (narrative or words of Jesus) because the table says so. Denote this percent of change as p, that means in the direct copy case the agreement between two texts is 1-p. For indirect copying, the first author leaves 1-p of original text unchanged, and the second author leaves 1-p of that unchanged, so the resulting level of agreement is (1-p)^2. For example if p=0.4: the first author changes 40% and copies 60% in original form, and the second author does the same, so we get 60% of 60% = 36% of agreement, 40% of 60% = 24% of text with changes by the second author and not not by first, 24% in reverse, and 16% where both authors make different changes.
The table gives percentages of Mt/Lk agreement for the words of Jesus for triple tradition A_t=0.658 and for double tradition A_d=0.715
Triple tradition is indirect copying
A_t=(1-p)^2
That is true both under 2SH and Farrer, right? Maybe I understand Farrer incorrectly. Anyway, the solution is p=0.189
Double tradition is direct copying under Farrer, and indirect under 2SH. In both cases we can use p estimated previously and calculate the expected value of A_d. Farrer gives (1-p)=0.811, and 2SH gives (1-p)^2=0.658, the same as for the triple tradition. Finally, we compare these values with the real A_d, find out which is closer (2SH is closer) and solve the synoptic problem once and for all
Of course that is silly because the assumptions simplify the situation to the extreme, but that is the limit for the data on the slide. Additionally, I now understand that I assumed that the length of the text never changes and that is obviously incorrect. I hope it doesn't influence the results too much.
Does that make any sense?
"Qualle" is the german word for jellyfish. I think he meant Quelle.
You're making all kinds of assertions about the author of Luke based on the text when it was actually written by several authors over hundreds of years. How do we know that Luke originally also said blessed are the poor in spirit but the first person who copied it got it wrong or changed it on purpose to support their theology? You don't, you can't, so how can you say anything about the original authors source?
I think you love arguing against Q.
Thanks for your passionate video, however, it does seem like you are simply favoring your own professor's viewpoint since he wrote that paper Too Good to be Q. If you simply want to rehash your professor's lectures, that's fine, but I would encourage you to read a little further outside of the comfort zone of texts you've been given. That isn't to say that the Q theory is right, but just as a point of independent research, it's best not to simply believe what our professors tell us just because they're our professors :)
@Kevin Zimmerman
What is your best argument for Q that has not been adequately addressed?
The burden of proof for existence of a source (or anything else) lies with those arguing for its existence.
The null hypothesis with any claim of existence is that it does not exist.
Occam's razor similarly favours no Q.
@@canwelook a theory isn’t argued by any single argument but by the collection of best arguments. The collection of arguments for the existence of Q, including the near verbatim/verbatim parallels in Matthew and Luke, the largely pre-Christological/theological nature of these parallel verses, the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas which is in fact a collection of sayings (which shows that such a sayings document has precedence for existing), the disparities between Greek and Hebrew Matthew in which some of the Q sayings reflect Luke’s and not Greek Matthew’s Q sayings… I would also encourage you to read real scholars’ arguments and not just mine. The near universal opinions of these scholars is that Q did exist. I can find more arguments for you, but it’s simply just accepted and this alternative theory is really never discussed.
@@KevinZimmerman360 I'm not asking for every conceivable argument, just the ones MOST convincing to you. I'm interested in substance and evidentiary support, and certainly not popularity. Given that the overwhelming majority of biblical scholars are required by employment to say that the bible is the literal and inerrant word of the biblical god, these views can be immediately dismissed as inherently biased to the view that they perceive best suits apologetic arguments.
It is reported that there were over 40 gospels, with wildly different stories contained within them, whilst only 4 were canonised. So what? The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas is evidence that the Gospel of Thomas existed. Nothing more. Just because it was a book of sayings is in no way evidence that a speculated Q existed. If Luke (or Matthew) copied/plagiarised Matthew (or Luke), then of course the claimed sayings of Jesus would normally be top priority to include. Agreed?
The 'pre-christiological/theological nature of the parallel verses' points only to their shared (and at times very different) apologetic agendas. Your argument for differences between Hebrew/Greek translations, if accepted, might at best be an argument for Matthean posteriority, but a very poor one for Q.
I am waiting for your best argument supported by your best evidence. If you aren't equipped to answer from your own knowledge base, then just say so.
@@canwelook A lot of your reply is just flat out wrong, so before you come at me with your daggers, maybe go back and do some research yourself. I presented the standard points that support Q. Those are the best and the ones that most biblical scholars point to (biblical scholars who absolutely do not have any interest in perpetuating an inerrant Bible. That argument of yours doesn’t even make sense). Anyways, cheers man. Go read any basic article or book about Q and you’ll get your best arguments.
and Jesus didn't exist because it was written in Greek
Not sure if you're being ironic or just trolling.
The Apophthegmata Patrum record the teachings and deeds of the desert fathers. These ascetics spoke Coptic (for the most part), not Greek. The A.P. was composed in Greek. There's no historian in the world who thinks the desert fathers didn't exist.