q source

[diggerdomer]

“Q” is simply a hypothesis latched on to by Protestant “scholars” because it is used to undermine Apsotolic Authorship. If this most basic of beliefs can be questioned, then you can question everything is the Gospels, opening the door for denial of Papal authority, existence of miracles, and even the resurrection itself.

No, Q – as a theory, which it is, simply that – is also adhered to by Catholic scholars as well. It’s not a Protestant invention. It’s a scholarly theory. That’s all. No matter Catholic, Protestant, or whatever.

 

[diggerdomer]

Q believers claim to know that the apostles Matthew and John didn’t write their own gospels.

No. This is a complete misunderstanding of the Q source hypothesis. The Q source hypothesis has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Gospel of John. And, it has nothing to do with whether the Apostle Matthew actually wrote the Gospel of Matthew or not.

You are completely misrepresenting the scholarly hypothesis of Q. Please learn more about it before you make such statements.

 

[diggerdomer]

Q believers claim to know that the apostles Matthew and John didn’t write their own gospels.

Don’t you think that if the apostles didn’t write Matthew and John that the early churches would not have accepted those written accounts?

Many gospels were written that claimed to be written by the apostles but the early churches could easily tell that they were forgeries. They didn’t become part of the bible.

Don’t you think that if there were a Q writer that the early church could have easily identified him?

The earliest of the churches believed the apostles themselves foremost.

It is no accident that even the apostle Paul spoke with Peter and the other disciples before beginning his ministry.

Don’t tell me that the early Catholic Church revered written accounts that had no known author!

Q is a lie.

Where are any of your claims backed up by teaching of the Catholic Church? Anything in the Catechism? Anything from Vatican II/? Thanks for any enlightenment.

 

[StTommyMore]

Where are any of your claims backed up by teaching of the Catholic Church? Anything in the Catechism? Anything from Vatican II/? Thanks for any enlightenment.

Yoy won’t find anything about source criticism in the Catechism.

 

[Epistemes]

“Q” is simply a hypothesis latched on to by Protestant “scholars” because it is used to undermine Apsotolic Authorship. If this most basic of beliefs can be questioned, then you can question everything is the Gospels, opening the door for denial of Papal authority, existence of miracles, and even the resurrection itself.

None of the anti-Q arguments have really matched the pro-Q arguments as they tend to involve editorial and redactional procedures on the part of the Evangelists somewhat akin to nuclear fission. If anything, in North America and the UK, a LOT of folks (including scholars) have really engaged in a kind of anti-Q backlash, in part, I think, because the conclusions of Q scholarship run counter to more traditional understandings of the origins of Christianity, as you say.

Q may not exist; but then again, neither does the Gospel of Mark - both are reconstructions; both are hypotheses. That is to say, in New Testament scholarship, an exegesis of any given passage is laboring under a whole series of assumptions and hypotheses (most of them well-founded, of course) and ultimately raises a whole series of epistemological concerns: a) that Mark is the earliest canonical Gospel, b) that our understanding of Koine Greek is accurate, c) that what we call “Mark” represents a single text, and (most of all) d) that the textual reconstruction of Mark in the exegete’s Greek Bible is not simply a synthetic backproduct but corresponds more or less to the first-century original.

Thus, such skepticism regarding Q has something of the character of creationism in the context of academic biology. Hypothesis is piled onto hypothesis, although few would claim that efforts to classify a particular species are irresponsible or frivolous.

For the sake of laypersons, such as yourself, who prefer traditional fundamentalist responses to the Synoptic Problem rather than weeding through the layers upon layers of scholarly discussion, such a position, while comfortable and placid, should be expected and is ultimately to be rooted in a particular *desired *religious experience, but, in regards to *actual *scholarly discussion of Q, the process of discussion will continue until better alternative hypotheses are formulated or until the hypotheses in use can be proven indubitably false.

 

[StTommyMore]

None of the anti-Q arguments have really matched the pro-Q arguments as they tend to involve editorial and redactional procedures on the part of the Evangelists somewhat akin to nuclear fission. If anything, in North America and the UK, a LOT of folks (including scholars) have really engaged in a kind of anti-Q backlash, in part, I think, because the conclusions of Q scholarship run counter to more traditional understandings of the origins of Christianity, as you say.

Q may not exist; but then again, neither does the Gospel of Mark - both are reconstructions; both are hypotheses. That is to say, in New Testament scholarship, an exegesis of any given passage is laboring under a whole series of assumptions and hypotheses (most of them well-founded, of course) and ultimately raises a whole series of epistemological concerns: a) that Mark is the earliest canonical Gospel, b) that our understanding of Koine Greek is accurate, c) that what we call “Mark” represents a single text, and (most of all) d) that the textual reconstruction of Mark in the exegete’s Greek Bible is not simply a synthetic backproduct but corresponds more or less to the first-century original.

Thus, such skepticism regarding Q has something of the character of creationism in the context of academic biology. Hypothesis is piled onto hypothesis, although few would claim that efforts to classify a particular species are irresponsible or frivolous.

For the sake of laypersons, such as yourself, who prefer traditional fundamentalist responses to the Synoptic Problem rather than weeding through the layers upon layers of scholarly discussion, such a position, while comfortable and placid, should be expected and is ultimately to be rooted in a particular *desired *religious experience, but, in regards to *actual *scholarly discussion of Q, the process of discussion will continue until better alternative hypotheses are formulated or until the hypotheses in use can be proven indubitably false.

Listen, I am a student of at a well-regarded Catholic university. I know the credentials of my professors. What are yours? Would you not say it is prudential to take the word of someone you know with verifiable credentials over someone ranting on an internet forum under a pseudonym? And as it stands, evidence for Markan priority is far from conclusive. There is a good reason why it never gained much acceptance until the 1870"s

 

[Epistemes]

Listen, I am a student of at a well-regarded Catholic university. I know the credentials of my professors. What are yours? Would you not say it is prudential to take the word of someone you know with verifiable credentials over someone ranting on an internet forum under a pseudonym? And as it stands, evidence for Markan priority is far from conclusive. There is a good reason why it never gained much acceptance until the 1870"s

Simply because you’re priveleged doesn’t make you right. It’s well-apparent (to me) that your prestigious education hasn’t really educated you much at all given your preference for safe, default traditionalist teachings and otherwise lack of informed counter arguments.

EDIT: Also, my last post had extremely little to do with Markan priority, which demonstrates your inability to correctly grasp an argument - which is a failure as a would-be scholar.

 

[Erich]

The Catholic Church does not teach nor require Catholics to adhere to any one theroy about which Gospel was written first. That’s the point.

From churchinhistory.org/pages/intro-sum/deiverbumleaflet.htm:

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council issued Dei Verbum as a Doctrinal Constitution. In this the Church restated her teaching, as may be seen from reading an extract from Sections 7. The following is as translated by Walter Abbott, S.J. and published in: ‘The Documents of Vatican II’ of the same year: “This commission was faithfully fulfilled by the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by ordinances, handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did,or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The commission was fulfilled, too, by those Apostles and apostolic men who under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit committed the message of salvation to writing”.
…

Extracts from Sections 18 and 19 of Dei Verbum support the meaning given by Abbott and the Vatican website: “The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold, that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the Apostles preached, in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed onto us in writing: … the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”.

              “… **the four Gospels** just named, **whose historical character the Church** unhesitatingly **asserts,** faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal                 salvation...”
         So the companions of Jesus wrote two Gospels and others, using second-hand             information, wrote two. If all four depended on second-hand information, the Fathers of the Council would not have             made a distinction between the two sets of authors.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Christians have always recognised that borrowing had taken place between the Synoptic Gospels (those according to Matthew, Mark and Luke). It had also been recognised that Mark’s Gospel was in ‘poor’ Greek compared with the others and that Mark had not been an Apostle.

200 years ago some Deists (who claimed to believe in God, but not in Christ) said that borrowers would have improved the Greek, not have made it worse. So Mark must therefore have written prior to the others. This became known as ‘The Markan Priority theory’. They then said that if Matthew, an eyewitness Apostle, wrote the Gospel named after him he would not have borrow second-hand material from Mark. As the Church had never claimed that Mark was an eyewitness of Christ’s life, this meant that Matthew’s Gospel was written by an anonymous, non-eyewitness in the late first century.

         According to this theory the ancient historians, all of whom recorded that             Matthew wrote first, must have made an error and were therefore unreliable. As the Church’s teaching relied on             these early historians, she was also in error. It also meant that what these historians recorded regarding Luke             and John must also be unreliable. By further apparent logical steps the whole traditional teaching of the Church             was undermined.

At the Second Vatican Council attempts had been made to promulgate ambiguous statements, which would have permitted Catholics to deny the historicity of the Gospels. On 18th October 1965, Pope Paul had refused to sign a wording that would have left doubt about the historicity of the Gospels. So the phrase: “whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms”, [Or: “Whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts”], was added.

But scripture scholars in the English-speaking world, in leading positions, continued to promote the theory that the Gospels were not historical.

 

[Erich]

I will of course grant that Dei Verbum does not state in so many words, “Matthew’s gospel was written first” … but reason (not faith) tells me that Christianity would not have spread as quickly as it did, had the first gospels to be written and published not been a first-hand account (Matthew) or authorized by a first-hand witness (Mark was a companion of Peter).

Before the four gospels were bound together, they were listed and used in a variety of orders. A popular sequence was Matthew-Luke-Mark and John. We have records that theologians quoted the Scriptures in this sequence, and liturgical readings often followed this pattern. St. Jerome in his book, ‘Illustrious Men’, adhered to the same order. St Clement of Alexandria, successor to the bishopric of Mark, specifically stated that Matthew and Luke wrote first, so emphasising that Luke wrote before Mark.

St. Augustine explained that while the ‘received’ order was Matthew-Mark-Luke-John, the order of dignity was, Matthew-John-Mark-Luke. In his fourth book, he says that Mark developed the thoughts of Matthew and Luke, so confirming that Luke wrote before Mark.

 

[Erich]

From churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/authors-gospels-3.htm

There are verses in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke which are identical. The Markans claim the authors copied from Marks Gospel. They further assert that Matthew and Luke had no knowledge of each other. So where did they obtain their many identical verses that were not present in Marks Gospel? Markans say they copied from a lost document, which they call Q from the German word Quelle (Source).

There is not the slightest historical evidence, or even a hint, that Q or its author ever existed. If Q had existed, it would have been the most precious scroll of Christianity during the first 50-70 years of the new religion. According to the Markans we owe the preservation of The Our Father and The Beatitudes to Q. Mark did not bother to record them. If Q had been the key document containing the sayings of Christ, it would have been treasured, copied and passed from hand to hand and read at Services.

Markan priorists want us to believe that the community that produced Q later lost it, although it was so important that Matthew and Luke, unknown to each other, made much use of it. Then the communities of Matthew and Luke also lost it. It is hard to believe that only two copies were made of Q and these just happened to be in the possession of the isolated communities in which Matthew and Luke lived and these communities lost them. If more copies were made for many communities, Markans have to explain how all these copies of this key Christian document were lost. Also, how did ‘Q’ disappear without leaving even a vague reference or echo in any piece of Christian or heretical literature?

Those who hold the Markan theory demand the most stringent proof for the historicity of the Gospels, for which we have much historical evidence. Yet they accept conjectures and theories about Q, based on further conjectures and theories for which there is no evidence at all. In reality Q was created in the 19th century, out of nothing, to fill a hole in the Markan priority theory.

Markans describe the period between the time of Christ and the writing of the Gospels as A long dark tunnel. Groups of dedicated Markans have spent years, at the expense of Universities, looking for Q and its author in this darkness. According to the historians and those who accept the Jerome or Clementine traditions, the period was short. The long is not a fact, but a further creation by Markans to bolster their theory. It is true that the Markans are working in a long dark tunnel. This is because they refuse to turn on the lights provided by the historians.

The Markans call the anonymous authors they have invented, by the names of actual people (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). This makes them sound familiar, real and comforting but, if the Markans are correct, more appropriate names would be Saints Tom, Dick, Harry and Janette, while not forgetting the venerable Q. I have no wish to be facetious, but it is necessary to be blunt in order to bring home an important point. The use of familiar names to describe unknown alleged authors, emotionally clouds a clear understanding of what Markan priorists wish us to believe. I am not surprised when non-Christians are unconvinced by the Markan way of explaining the truth of Christianity.

Irenaeus, Eusebius, Tertullian and others had travelled throughout the Roman Empire, and were well educated, so why did they have no knowledge of the alleged anonymous authors or Q? Why were all the ancient historians and theologians completely ignorant of the great saints who had, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, produced the greatest writings of mankind? Also, why did they all come to believe that they were written by the same four other authors?

When the Deists first put forward the assertion that we could not know of the life of Jesus from the Gospels, they were asserting that the Gospels had been written 2-300 years after the life of Christ. Few today try to uphold this assertion, so place Matthew and Luke at about 85 AD and John about 95-100. But these were periods when many eyewitnesses and the children of eyewitnesses were alive and active in the Church. Although many of the old Deist arguments have now been discredited they still influence modern Markan thinking.

 

[Alan55]

What?! You’re missing the whole point.

Let’s go teach every student our whims as FACT because, by golly, if we think it then it’s true. Right? THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT YOU JUST SAID. You exactly just said that if someone thinks it, it is necessarily true. You think they used Q. Ergo, they did use Q, so we should teach everyone that they used Q.

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU JUST SAID.

Sure, let’s teach that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is true also. There’s every ounce as much evidence of the Monster as there is Q. Ditto unicorns and fairies. Wait, there is more evidence of the existence of unicorns and fairies than there is of Q. More. By your own measuring rod – “I think it; therefore it’s true and should be taught to students” – we should teach students that fairies are real!

You’re shouting, name calling, and putting arguments in my mouth which I haven’t made, which tells me that we’re way past the point where reason will have any impact. You are willing to reject contemporary biblical scholarship in favor of the Fathers. Fair enough. Since I accept contemporary biblical scholarship and thereby imply that the Fathers may have gotten this one wrong, you conclude that I am wrong, and more, a corrupter of youth, deluded, and generally a bad person. That’s unkind and untrue, but, so be it. Out of charity, I’m sticking a fork in this one – it’s done. God bless.

 

[StTommyMore]

Simply because you’re priveleged doesn’t make you right. It’s well-apparent (to me) that your prestigious education hasn’t really educated you much at all given your preference for safe, default traditionalist teachings and otherwise lack of informed counter arguments.

EDIT: Also, my last post had extremely little to do with Markan priority, which demonstrates your inability to correctly grasp an argument - which is a failure as a would-be scholar.

What are your credentials?

 

[Epistemes]

What are your credentials?

The same as yours, my friend. Don’t be a hypocrite: you join a discussion forum where ideas are interchanged, yet it seems your inherent sense of nepotism would rather assert all things dogmatically. At least I have the intellectual integrity to state that both Q and Markan Priority, even though held by the majority of contemporary scholars, are nonetheless still hypothetical. Let’s not get into credentials because if I want to talk to your professors then they’re only an e-mail away. I have had just as many conversations with scholars in the field of NT studies as you’ve brown-nosed with Hahn. You joined the discussion forum, not your professors. If you choose to dismiss my argument simply based on the fact that I do not hold a doctorate then your own degree is not only a waste of money but of your professor’s time since it’s apparent the only thing you’ve learned to do at a Catholic university is play pope.

 

[StTommyMore]

The same as yours, my friend. Don’t be a hypocrite: you join a discussion forum where ideas are interchanged, yet it seems your inherent sense of nepotism would rather assert all things dogmatically. At least I have the intellectual integrity to state that both Q and Markan Priority, even though held by the majority of contemporary scholars, are nonetheless still hypothetical. Let’s not get into credentials because if I want to talk to your professors then they’re only an e-mail away. I have had just as many conversations with scholars in the field of NT studies as you’ve brown-nosed with Hahn. You joined the discussion forum, not your professors. If you choose to dismiss my argument simply based on the fact that I do not hold a doctorate then your own degree is not only a waste of money but of your professor’s time since it’s apparent the only thing you’ve learned to do at a Catholic university is play pope.

I refuse to accept a hypotheses absolutely devoid of external evidence. Where is the testamony of the Fathers referring to another source? Where are the fragments of this mysterious “Q”? It is intellectually dishonest to put forth a hypothesis with nothing to support it.

 

[Epistemes]

I refuse to accept a hypotheses absolutely devoid of external evidence. Where is the testamony of the Fathers referring to another source? Where are the fragments of this mysterious “Q”? It is intellectually dishonest to put forth a hypothesis with nothing to support it.

In absence of any papyrus, logic is the best operator. Your preference for Matthean Priority, though, is what is illogical. The ramifications of asserting Matthean Priority are immense, but if you’re not even familiar with Mark S Goodacre’s or W.R. Farmer’s arguments in support of it, then I doubt that you’ve given it much serious thought yourself except for “the Fathers say.” Why are you even attending university if you accept the Fathers wholesale on everything? You’re not a critical thinker, are you Tommy Boy? I would be glad to lay out those ramifications for you and the general readership here, but I almost feel it’d be a waste of time since I don’t have the credentials you’re looking for and you haven’t offered a worthy response all day.

Furthermore, it is hardly intellectually dishonest to put forth a hypothesis with nothing to support it. In fact, there very principle of the scientific method clearly demonstrates that nature of hypotheses is to question and assert the unknown. For example, in 1916 the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild suggested the theoretical possibility of a stellar body that emitted no light because its mass and gravitational forces were so great that it would take particles traveling faster than the speed of light to escape its gravitational field. Now, I’ve only read Hawking’s Brief History of Time and am no physicist, but from reading that book I learned that no particle travels faster than the speed of light, which means that nothing could escape from such a star, not even light. Schwarzschild’s calculations, his logic, and his hypothesis remained in the state of limbo and unregarded uncertainty until 1970 when astronomer observed that a supergiant had a peculiar wobbling orbit caused by an unseen companion star smaller than the Earth but with a mass greater than the Sun. Although this mysterious star could not be seen because it emitted no light, it was nonetheless confirmation of Schwarzchild’s hypothesis. It was the first observed black hole.

The calculations are there, Tommy Bahama, but are you willing to put your telescope into space and read the stars for yourself, or are you going remain entrenched behind the redoubt of The Fathers and Tradition forever? I think we both know the answer, and I feel sorry for you.

 

[StTommyMore]

In absence of any papyrus, logic is the best operator. Your preference for Matthean Priority, though, is what is illogical. The ramifications of asserting Matthean Priority are immense, but if you’re not even familiar with Mark S Goodacre’s or W.R. Farmer’s arguments in support of it, then I doubt that you’ve given it much serious thought yourself except for “the Fathers say.” Why are you even attending university if you accept the Fathers wholesale on everything? You’re not a critical thinker, are you Tommy Boy? I would be glad to lay out those ramifications for you and the general readership here, but I almost feel it’d be a waste of time since I don’t have the credentials you’re looking for and you haven’t offered a worthy response all day.

Furthermore, it is hardly intellectually dishonest to put forth a hypothesis with nothing to support it. In fact, there very principle of the scientific method clearly demonstrates that nature of hypotheses is to question and assert the unknown. For example, in 1916 the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild suggested the theoretical possibility of a stellar body that emitted no light because its mass and gravitational forces were so great that it would take particles traveling faster than the speed of light to escape its gravitational field. Now, I’ve only read Hawking’s Brief History of Time and am no physicist, but from reading that book I learned that no particle travels faster than the speed of light, which means that nothing could escape from such a star, not even light. Schwarzschild’s calculations, his logic, and his hypothesis remained in the state of limbo and unregarded uncertainty until 1970 when astronomer observed that a supergiant had a peculiar wobbling orbit caused by an unseen companion star smaller than the Earth but with a mass greater than the Sun. Although this mysterious star could not be seen because it emitted no light, it was nonetheless confirmation of Schwarzchild’s hypothesis. It was the first observed black hole.

The calculations are there, Tommy Bahama, but are you willing to put your telescope into space and read the stars for yourself, or are you going remain entrenched behind the redoubt of The Fathers and Tradition forever? I think we both know the answer, and I feel sorry for you.

How is Matthean priority illogical?

 

[Epistemes]

How is Matthean priority illogical?

If Mark is copying from Matthew, then why does Mark skip over the infancy narrative, the Sermon on the Mount, many parables found in Matthew but not Mark, and the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus? This latter point is particularly awkward since Mark’s Jesus repetitively predicts his resurrection and even tells his disciples that he will meet them in Galilee. Mark seems to miss this point.

 

[StTommyMore]

If Mark is copying from Matthew, then why does Mark skip over the infancy narrative, the Sermon on the Mount, many parables found in Matthew but not Mark, and the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus? This latter point is particularly awkward since Mark’s Jesus repetitively predicts his resurrection and even tells his disciples that he will meet them in Galilee. Mark seems to miss this point.

Different audience. Matthew was writing to the Jews, and therefore the emphasis would be on teaching and relationship to the Old Covenant. Mark was writing to gentiles in Rome, therefore putting greater emphasis what Jesus did, more than what He said.

 

[Epistemes]

Different audience. Matthew was writing to the Jews, and therefore the emphasis would be on teaching and relationship to the Old Covenant. Mark was writing to gentiles in Rome, therefore putting greater emphasis what Jesus did, more than what He said.

That doesn’t make any sense. Mark is hardly uninterested in Jesus’ relationship to the Jewish Covenant: the whole Gospel is an explanation of the first verse which proclaims Jesus as both Messiah and son of God. Later he’s even acknowledged as son of David. Furthermore, critical exegesis shows Mark’s Jesus quite concerned with teaching by both word and deed. And the critical difference between the two is because of a different audience? Seriously? Is that what you’ve “learned” at Steubenville? By first-century standards, the moralizing Sermon on the Mount would have been deemed essential for a Gentile audience, so lowly did Jews think of them and their morals. The infancy narrative of Matthew actually makes Gentiles the first outsiders to recognize the true identity of Jesus while Jews dismiss him (and try to murder him). This would have been more than edifying for Gentile hearers. And, again, Mark completely skips over any post-resurrection appearances, which would have been a stumbling block for many Gentiles.

 

[StTommyMore]

That doesn’t make any sense. Mark is hardly uninterested in Jesus’ relationship to the Jewish Covenant: the whole Gospel is an explanation of the first verse which proclaims Jesus as both Messiah and son of God. Later he’s even acknowledged as son of David. Furthermore, critical exegesis shows Mark’s Jesus quite concerned with teaching by both word and deed. And the critical difference between the two is because of a different audience? Seriously? Is that what you’ve “learned” at Steubenville? By first-century standards, the moralizing Sermon on the Mount would have been deemed essential for a Gentile audience, so lowly did Jews think of them and their morals. The infancy narrative of Matthew actually makes Gentiles the first outsiders to recognize the true identity of Jesus while Jews dismiss him (and try to murder him). This would have been more than edifying for Gentile hearers. And, again, Mark completely skips over any post-resurrection appearances, which would have been a stumbling block for many Gentiles.

Makes more sense than some mysterious source. Especially since the Fathers, some of which had contact with the Apostles, confirm that Matthew was written first.