Baker Academic

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Q Survives Near-Fatal Attack from Goodacre, Remains in Critical Condition – Le Donne

Is the dominance of the four-source hypothesis in declining health? This week’s poll suggests that the assumption of a hypothetical sayings source (German for “source” is Quelle, hence “Q”) shared by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke is indeed declining. At least the assumption has declined in popular opinion among those who follow weblogs titled The Jesus Blog. It might be interesting to poll folks in the British New Testament Society or the Society of Biblical Literature and compare notes. My guess is that those in favor of Q might be more populous at professional meetings (just a guess). Even so, I don’t think we can use the term “dominance” or even “consensus” any longer relative to the four-source theory.

And that, gentle reader, is news. I will leave it to you to decide whether it is good or bad.

In 1998 I was an undergraduate studying the Synoptic Gospels in a class cleverly titled “The Synoptic Gospels.” I was introduced to two competing solutions to the Synoptic Problem. According to my professor (an extremely learned fellow and one who was observant of scholarly trends) there were only two solutions that held any sway in the guild:
Option One: Mark's Gospel was composed first. Matthew and Luke gathered the bulk of their material from Mark and another source (Q). This solution had been around since the 1800s and was now (as of 1998) held by 80 to 90 percent of Gospels scholars. This view existed before H.J. Holtzmann (1832–1910), but it was Holtzmann who gave full voice to the theory.
Option Two: Matthew was written first (cf. Patristic tradition). Luke was written second, adapting Matthew. Then Mark was a composed using both Matthew and Luke as sources. Previously known as the Griesbach hypothesis, this theory was given new life in the voice of (recently passed) William Farmer.
There was no mention to the Farrer-Goulder in my 1998 classroom. There was no third option offered. It wasn’t until a couple years later (I think it was 2000, in Nashville) that I first learned of the Farrer-Goulder approach to the Synoptic Problem. Mark Goodacre and Mark Matson were presenting at the annual SBL meeting. Sadly, I missed Matson’s paper as I entered late. But Goodacre’s presentation was brilliant. He was compelling, funny, and looked to be about 15-years-old. He skated out of that lecture hall on a Tony Hawk, singing “Can't Nobody Hold Me Down” by Puff Daddy, and sucking down a strawberry milkshake. Or something like that; my memory is a bit foggy on the finer details. I spent the next few months charting the Gospels, trying to decide for myself what to do with this no-Q business (oh, the things we will do to avoid working our our MA theses!).

Ultimately I concluded that the most glaring fact of the Synoptic Problem must be the kept front and center: where Matthew and Luke have Mark to follow they look very much the same. Where they don’t have Mark to follow, they diverge dramatically in content and chronology. So for me the most elegant solution is one whereby Matthew and Luke are relatively independent in the early stages of composition. But the purpose of this post is not to lobby for Q.

I really have nothing invested in the Q hypothesis and remain open to being convinced otherwise. The purpose of this post is to point out that Mark Goodacre has changed the field in a very short period of time. In less than two decades, the four-source solution has gone from the consensus theory to a contested theory. I cannot imagine teaching a class on the Synoptics without offering the Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre theory among the available options.

If you corner Mark on this point, he always credits Farrer, Goulder, and his contemporary colleagues. Mark will never tell you that he is anything more than a fellow conspirator. But don’t be fooled. It is because of his influence (not first, but certainly foremost) that we can no longer use the terms “dominance” or “consensus” relative to Q.

So what does this mean for us Q*berts? Well for me, I just don’t often refer to Q unless I absolutely must. Why create wrinkles for up to half of my readers? If I must refer to Q (I think I’ve done so twice in print), I include the obligatory footnote to remind me and my readers that the game has changed.

-anthony

15 comments:

  1. I find it astonishing that this is even being discussed. A finals question in my Biblical Studies degree in 1971 was 'can we dispense with Q?' and the answer then was clearly yes. Farrer, then Sanders and now Goodacre. Nobody seems to be listening to them. Is it simply academic laziness?

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    1. Stephen, I think that we can say that a large number of people are indeed listening now.
      -anthony

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  2. Anthony, this is a question coming from a novice who finds this who topic fascinating. Would oral tradition/social memory be considered a form of Q? Or is Q strictly considered literary/written?

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    1. I'll let other chime in to correct me when I err. No doubt I will at some point. Q (as originally imagined by folks who were preoccupied with sources) was thought to be a written document. When I was schooled in the 90s on this topic, my professor suggested the possibility that Q was entirely oral.

      As we have learned a great deal more about oral cultures, biblical scholars have been able to nuance the many and varied dynamics at work in orality (telling), aurality (hearing), performance, memorizing, multiple compositions, etc. But the notion that many gospels existed orally is a very old notion in NT circles. All this is to say that many, many people find it plausible that certain "traditions" about Jesus circulated prior to their written form. Could some of these traditions (bearing some resemblance to the Gospel of Thomas' form) have been memorized by both Matthew, Luke, among others? I think so.

      -anthony

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    2. *recognition of ironic grammatical problem in that first sentence*

      -anthony

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    3. An oral Q doesn't solve what Q sets out to solve, because the parallels are just too close in wording. It isn't simply a case that double tradition passages relate the same stories in different words; some of these passages approach being word-for-word identical, closer even than Matthew and Luke's redaction of Mark in the triple tradition. Indeed, one of Goodacre's more subtle arguments is that the wording is too similar for there to have been any sort of intermediary between Matthew and Luke.

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  3. I remember Gordon Fee expressing dissatisfaction with the theory that Q existed as a written source (sometime between 1998 and 2000), but it wasn't in a Gospels class so he didn't elaborate much. He seemed, like you, not to care too much one way or the other. Perhaps I'm projecting my knowledge of him as a text critic on the matter, but I believe that the lack of manuscripts of Q material independent of Luke and Matthew was what gave him the most pause. As someone with no dog in this fight, I'll rely on you to say whether manuscript evidence is even considered in the discussion.

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  4. Fwiw, I think all of this shows how the Synoptic Problem is still unsolved. For me, Luke’s use of Q or Luke’s use of Matthew has never answered all the questions, and I doubt ever will for me. If we only had Matthew and Luke and tried to conjecture a reason for their similarities with no knowledge of Mark, it’s unlikely we would ever reconstruct Mark as it stands today... even though Mark as a source for Matthew and Luke is one of the few (relatively) uncontested conclusions of synoptic studies today. I suspect it’s just as unlikely to conjecture successfully what sources were used for single and double tradition material in Matthew and Luke. We also must factor oral tradition, textual development, and transmissional fluidity into the mix since the text grew and was not static. I don’t think it will be possible to completely “unscramble the eggs,” nevertheless, it’s still a worthwhile endeavor as long as we don’t prematurely claim the problem to be solved.

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  5. I'll try asking again and maybe this time my question will get published. What exactly is "the Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre theory"?

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    1. My dear hobbit, sorry to hear that some of your comments haven't gotten through. We've had multiple problems with this blogger format of late - some of them have been user errors, some have been technology glitches. As to your question, see here: http://unsettledchristianity.com/2014/01/farrer-goulder-goodacre-theory-is-a-better-methodology/

      -anthony

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  6. So for those familiar with F-G-G theory ... this theory must mean that Luke is a later production than Matthew. How much later? If Mark is dated around 70 CE, and Matthew around 90 CE, does this push Luke to 110 CE? With Acts at some later point, say 120 CE?

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    1. I'm not sure if Goodacre has ever given a clear date for Luke-Acts, though several scholars, and Richard Pervo is particularly worthy of mention here, do date both books to the 2nd century.

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  7. my support for Q arises because I find it odd, otherwise, that nothing was written down about Jesus until 40 or more years after Jesus' death/resurrection.

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    1. Anton,

      Farrerians don't necessarily believe that nothing was written down for forth years. They only believe it wasn't written in a document used independently by Matthew and Luke.

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  8. Actually the synoptic problem is an easy one to solve. Just take it out of the hands of the theologians and hand the data over to a mathematical evolutionary biologist, let him throw some cladistics at the problem and you should have a solution to the synoptic problem by the end of the week.
    "Q" makes no sense at all, and I suspect that Q theory has survived not because it is a logical solution, but because it fits into someones dogmatic idea of "inspired texts", rather than man made propaganda screeds.
    Try this hypothesis
    Mark and John are derived from the same source.
    Luke is a rewritten Mark with some added material, perhapos made up to pad out the text.
    Matthew is a redacted Luke, to correct Luke's major historical bloopers, bring the OT references into line with the Hebrew text, and answer some of the Jewish and Pagan objections by providing a story about tomb sentries, etc.

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