The Q source--a theory elevated to fact?

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SpiritMeadow said:
I wouldn’t expect them to have, given that textual criticism, and the entire panoply of hermeneutical devices were unknown to them. If there was Q it is called Q for a reason, It is an unknown source. If it had been known to the ECF, obviously it would not be called Q.
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I’m not sure what your first sentence means. So why would Q be unknown to the ECF and not us? Because frankly, we don’t know it exists either.
 
TMC said:
No. This is an understandable feeling, but it is not what is meant, I think, by the posters above. The Apostles understood the Gospel and transmitted it to the faithful. But as to the authors of the books known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, “author” is a difficult word in this context. The Gospel was principally oral in the early Church. I have read that some Church Fathers even thought writing it down was a bad idea, but I don’t know if that’s true. But clearly the authorsip of these works is not like authorship today. We don’t know for sure who first wrote down the Gospels (except maybe Luke), or the sources he used to do so. That each Gospel is different, and that they conflict with each other on some details is obvious. So it is not only legitimate, but valuable, to study these texts and try to better understand their sources and hopefully deepen our understanding. At least that is how I take it, those smarter than me on Biblical scholarship please correct my errors.
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Nicely put. Oddly Joel Marcus points out a problem he encounters in trying to discern what Mark had available to him as he began to write his Gospel. Marcus seems to find the scholarly work in this area scientific in every way, until there is consideration of the impact of any of Thomas. Then he claims there is infused an actual “personally” motivated argument because of Thomas’s uncononical nature. The is truly appalling in a scholarly discussion. Thus the entire discussion is tainted by the impact of arguments not made solely on factual grounds but on a desire to exclude what might be an embarassment.

I say that, because the tenor of this argument in part seems motivated by those who want this not to be so (the using of a Q). I can’t myself imgine why i care which one wins out if any one ever does. It simply gives us or doesnt a different way to examine the scriptures in an attempt to understand as thoroughly as possible what was said, by whom and for what purpose. I cannot fathom why everyone who loves the Bible wouldn’t want to do the same.

We seem always to have to contend with those who feel the documents are so weak that if we move away from some literalism they find necessary (the Church largely doesnt of course), the entire faith they have will collapse. I cannot understand this, but apparently its very real to them. A thorough examination of the Church’s statements should one would expect put their minds at rest.
 
MarcoPolo said:
I’m not sure what your first sentence means. So why would Q be unknown to the ECF and not us? Because frankly, we don’t know it exists either.
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wow, you are confused. Since the ECF had no access nor knowledge of the tools of biblical exegesis, they would not perceive a problem in the texts that would be answered if one posits a source available to both Matthew and Luke that is not extant today, nor apparently in the time of the ECF. They would have no basis to see the problems because they had not the tools to uncover “missing source material.”

It is quite helpful in coming to this discussion to have done some research on what the state of argument actually is today. It’s quite complicated in application. What is one to do with the minor agreements for instance.

An analogy might be made to physics. Because of the orbits and and activities of known subparticles, physicists posited the existance of several unknown subparticles. They essentially “had to be there” given the data and math. Eventually they were found.
Something of a similar analysis done here produces the expectation that there must have been a Q. Now its not as strongly expected as in physics. Still Q existing does answer a lot of questions that cannot be answered otherwise or as well by other arguments, most of which btw, don’t posit Matthew as the first Gospel in any case. Whether we will ever know for sure, or whether Q actually existed may never be known.
 
SpiritMeadow,

You repeatedly try to portray the people opposed to theories like Q as reactive fundementalists, opposed to knowledge, reason, science, and even the Roman Catholic Church itself.

The reality is that, to deny the historical testimony of the entirety of early church fathers and writers, and deliberately ignore all historical evidence that justifies their position - is to stand outside of reason, and the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church.

You also have a tendency of twisting very clear Church pronouncements into invitations to treat the entirety of scripture as false-until-proven-true; as I have pointed out in several other posts.

And your physics analogy is absurd. The effect of gravity on an object is observable, objective, and predictable. A planet, or black hole “must be there”, even when we can’t see it, because of its quite observable effects. They are observable to the layman and initiated alike.
There is no agreement that a “synoptic problem” even exists. Reasonable, educated people can look at the four Gospels and see only harmony, and order - not discord, plagiarism, and redaction. Only counting the opinions of like-minded biblical scholars as valid is intellectually dishonest. Discounting the opinions of Saints because they didn’t take Biblical Exegesis 402, with 3 lab credits, is sophomoric.
The case for the existance of Q is in no way like physicists predicting a particle or planetoid.
 
SpiritMeadow said:
It is quite helpful in coming to this discussion to have done some research on what the state of argument actually is today.
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Ah of course. Go back in this thread, and maybe email Karl and tell him the same thing.
 
bpbasilphx said:
If there is a Q document the Synoptic writers use, does that make them any less inspired?

Even St. Luke, in the opening of his Gospel, referred to various documents and stories about Jesus circulating at the time.

In any case, Q (if it exists) was not considered canonical. Otherwise, it would be included as one of the Gospels, right?
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No of course it does not. I believe you are correct about Luke. It could not be considered cononical because its existence cannot be physically proven. We have no copy of Q…
Joel_Tunnah said:
Your arrogance, and lack of reverence for your betters, is truly boundless.
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I have NO idea what this was about. I meant exactly what I said. there was absolutely no arrogance or lack of reverence whatsoever. I’m reading all the apostolic fathers now. YOu are way out of line.
buffalo said:
One can be in the minority and still be right. In the last 60 years biblical scholarship has been dubious.

Well I don;t agree at all. There has been wonderful work done and wonderful work being done. At various times we are reminded as we should be all, that we are dealing with sacred texts and they deserve our upmost attention and care with. But in the end, the Vatican seems to recognize that these are professional pursuits. The Church always interprets in a way that conveys the true messge intended, as best it can discern. Much scholarly work becomes speculative in nature, and as such the Church rightly ignores that which is not based on sound proof.
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Joel_Tunnah said:
SpiritMeadow,

You repeatedly try to portray the people opposed to theories like Q as reactive fundementalists, opposed to knowledge, reason, science, and even the Roman Catholic Church itself.

**you make my point. See this started out as a pure scholarly issue. There is no side here. Other than the original developers of the 4 or so different hypotheses for the “synoptic problem” nobody else has a side. One or the other is either useful in explaining the problem or not. I don’t have a side here, except to make sure that it is clear what the state of things today is. But after a few short posts, it became an attack against Q…It is what it is, the majority position. It may or may not be true. I know I have not the schooling to give any definitive answer. I don’t know enough to have but a gross opinion, and I’m perfectlywilling to find out im wrong some day. But it will not be here I venture unless osme very smart people are hiding. The Church has no stated position on this as far as I know. **

The reality is that, to deny the historical testimony of the entirety of early church fathers and writers, and deliberately ignore all historical evidence that justifies their position - is to stand outside of reason, and the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church.

**Why you assume ECF had the tools to do any serious biblical criticism is beyond me. History was nothing but folktales at that time still. I had as yet to develop the tools of its trade. The same is present here. I’ts only in the last century or so that we have developed all the tools we now have, the multidisciplinary sciences offer much new help in dating and chemical analysis for location. Why would you expect them to be able to do what we have just learned to do in the last 100 years or so?

What historical evidence are you referring to? That denies a Q? or are you referring to something else.**

You also have a tendency of twisting very clear Church pronouncements into invitations to treat the entirety of scripture as false-until-proven-true; as I have pointed out in several other posts.
**No I have never said such a thing. That is so obviously silly as to defy explanation. Prove where I have said the entire bible is false unless proven true. You can point all you like, as you do. but you cannot prove such trash.
**
And your physics analogy is absurd. The effect of gravity on an object is observable, objective, and predictable. A planet, or black hole “must be there”, even when we can’t see it, because of its quite observable effects. They are observable to the layman and initiated alike.

**No its not absurd but you can refuse to respond to it by claiming it so. You got the point, but sidestep. Apparently you have no understanding of particle physics. **
There is no agreement that a “synoptic problem” even exists. Reasonable, educated people can look at the four Gospels and see only harmony, and order - not discord, plagiarism, and redaction. Only counting the opinions of like-minded biblical scholars as valid is intellectually dishonest. Discounting the opinions of Saints because they didn’t take Biblical Exegesis 402, with 3 lab credits, is sophomoric.
The case for the existance of Q is in no way like physicists predicting a particle or planetoid.
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t**the physics had nothing to do with any planetoid…so I guess you really didn’t get it. What you are not getting is that this was a request for information. I gave the scholarly response. Is it easier if we make your’s the apologists response? They are not the same thing. You continue to attribute to the ECF things they could not have possible known about, and then say they must be liars now if what scholars say is true. My advice would be…if these matters so trouble your faith, then I would not visit such issues and get myself so upset. **
MarcoPolo said:
Ah of course. Go back in this thread, and maybe email Karl and tell him the same thing.
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Sorry I missed the connection of what you mean by this.
 
From Karl Keating (granted this was in 94, but I have since heard him repeat it on much more recent episodes of CAL)

The greatest drag on the theory all along had been the gratuitousness of Q: Aside from Papias’s line about the logia, there was nothing at all to suggest that a document (or collection of documents) such as Q existed. No one mentioned it, and its disappearance from history seems remarkable. If the synoptics were all dependent on it, how could it have been allowed to disappear? If an epistle as inconsequential as Philemon had been preserved carefully for eighteen centuries, why had not Q, an immeasurably more important document?

Full article.
 
buffalo said:
What you are implying is that the writers of the Gospels didn’t understand them themselves, the first generations didn’t get it right, that we have had a 2,000 year gap in understanding, and only recently have figured it all out. 😦
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What ?!?! 🙂​

What I have said to give you* that* impression ? For the record
    1. I certainly don’t believe any thing of the kind
    1. No such idea is presupposed by a critical POV - it’s almost the opposite of what is presupposed by it.
      Maybe something depends on what is meant by “the first generations didn’t get it right” ?
Back to you 🙂
 
MarcoPolo said:
Why not?
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Because that fallacy in reasoning also proves the non-existence of Australia. One could even build up a case from Tradition that is heretical to believe in the existence of Australia, thus:​

No orthodox Catholic can believe in a land mentioned by no
  • verse in Scripture
  • Apostle
  • Apostolic Father
  • Father
  • Doctor
  • “Approved author”
  • theologian
  • Council
  • Ecumenical Council
  • Pope
  • bishop
  • geographer
  • heretic
  • apostate
  • schismatic
  • pagan
    for at least 1640 years - if not longer. But there are plenty of objections to it, drawn from
  • Tradition
  • Dogma
  • Theology
  • as well as from the testimony of those learned in geography, & from others. The first sign of Modernism in the Church was the acceptance of this heretical & blasphemous assertion as true.
Australianism is a damnable blasphemy, which is:
  • insulting to the Fathers
  • implies defects in the Church’s missionary zeal
  • implies falsehood in the Bible
  • derogatory to the Holy See
    There is no such thing as Australia.
That’s why 🙂
 
Joel_Tunnah said:
What a pity St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ignatius, St. Clement, St. Chrysostom, St. Irenaeus, St. Polycarp, Origen, and Eusebius didn’t have access to modern scholarship and critical methods.
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I’ve often thought this - if not in* quite* the same sense as you, I suspect 😃​

If they had had this access, they would have avoided many mistakes, while making different ones, as the moderns do.

What they did have, was whatever means they had in their own times & places. Which is equally true of all scholarship, in any discipline, at any time & in place - including them.

For some reason, it seems to be taken for granted by some that either
    1. the Fathers are the last word in the Catholic understanding of the Bible
      or
    1. Biblical scholarship today has no value for the Church today
  • Neither is true
  • neither is the attitude of the teaching Church
    Position 1 is favourable to the sort of despair of the Church shown by (self-styled) traditionalists. It’s very like the same despair of Dispensational Premillenialists; which is sad beyond words. And very injurious to all concerned
The Church’s capacity to increase in understanding of the Bible did not end with the death of St. John Damascene in 750:
  • Every utterance of the Fathers is not sacrosanct
  • nor were they inspired
  • not even those who were Doctors -as eight of them are
  • Nor are all of them entirely orthodox, even the sainted ones - whether by our standards or those of their times
  • nor did they always agree wwith one another
  • nor did they always agree with themselves
  • nor did they all have a good or accurate knowledge of the Biblical tongues
  • nor are they always accurate in their understanding of things tangential to Scripture - such as geography or history
    None of this takes away from their value, nor is it any threat to their position as sources of Christian wisdom, of many & varied kinds: but theology is not helped if one set of Christian thinkers is given the tyrannical power - one they would not have dreamed of thinking it proper for them to have - of stopping all progress in the sacred sciences. No Father, Doctor, bishop, theologian, or other human teacher or teachers, however saintly, wise or worthy of veneration, has that power: because no-one human is able to know, understand, appreciate the entire Faith. This is why all theological “achievements”, no matter whose, are always limited & open to improvement & correction. On earth, things will always be this way - it is an inescapable result of being created, limited & sinful.
 
To me, the trouble with Q is that is a literary construct, but not an actual document. At least, there’s not much external evidence that it was ever an actual document, and nobody has ever found such a document. [If it existed, it would surely have been something worth preserving.]

Q certainly exists, but it has, as far as I can see, only a literary existence: It is material that is found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark. It seems to have been created to satisfy the criteria of particular bible scholars as to how the New Testament was written.
 
JimG said:
To me, the trouble with Q is that is a literary construct, but not an actual document. At least, there’s not much external evidence that it was ever an actual document, and nobody has ever found such a document. [If it existed, it would surely have been something worth preserving.]

Q certainly exists, but it has, as far as I can see, only a literary existence: It is material that is found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark. It seems to have been created to satisfy the criteria of particular bible scholars as to how the New Testament was written.
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Saying we have no evidence of any such a “sayings gospel” used to carry some weight but then the Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945 and it is a clear example of a “sayings gospel”. Not Q certainly, but a good example that indicates that there were such documents.
 
patg said:
Saying we have no evidence of any such a “sayings gospel” used to carry some weight but then the Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945 and it is a clear example of a “sayings gospel”. Not Q certainly, but a good example that indicates that there were such documents.
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That’s just it. We DO have evidence of the Gospel of Thomas–we have a manuscript. But to date, Q is simply hypothetical.
 
MarcoPolo said:
From Karl Keating (granted this was in 94, but I have since heard him repeat it on much more recent episodes of CAL)

The greatest drag on the theory all along had been the gratuitousness of Q: Aside from Papias’s line about the logia, there was nothing at all to suggest that a document (or collection of documents) such as Q existed. No one mentioned it, and its disappearance from history seems remarkable. If the synoptics were all dependent on it, how could it have been allowed to disappear? If an epistle as inconsequential as Philemon had been preserved carefully for eighteen centuries, why had not Q, an immeasurably more important document?Full article.
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We might think such a document worth preserving, or “immeasurably important”: it does not that earlier generations must value what we value. It certainly doesn’t follow that what is important to us, must have important - let alone as important - to the churches which preserved the traditions behind the gospels; or to the composers of the gospels.​

NT scholarship & theology try to discern what the NT writers & Churches thought & believed & valued - not what we think, believe, value.

FWIW, it’s quite likely (to put it no more strongly) that Q, if it existed as a document, has perished. The Didache was reconstructed in 1882 - in the year before it was found; & the reconstruction was, so I’ve read, not far from the reality. It is not unusual, & it is entirely legitimate, to reconstruct documents: whether hypothetical like Q, or certain to have existed, even if they have left no material trace themselves. The gospels, their contents & their forms, & their other details, & material outside them, are quite sufficient as a foundation for this sort of enquiry.

Thanks for the link 🙂
 
SpiritMeadow said:
Since the ECF had no access nor knowledge of the tools of biblical exegesis, they would not perceive a problem in the texts that would be answered if one posits a source available to both Matthew and Luke that is not extant today, nor apparently in the time of the ECF. They would have no basis to see the problems because they had not the tools to uncover “missing source material.”
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The Early Church Fathers were indeed Biblical exegetes. They kinda had to be. It really sounds like you’re implying that they were rather dumb back then. Sure, it’s just in the past century that we’ve gained the ability to destroy the earth, but literary analysis has been around for ages. Perhaps the ECF and early Christians didn’t remark about the similarities of the Gospels because they knew the truth?
patg said:
Saying we have no evidence of any such a “sayings gospel” used to carry some weight but then the Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945 and it is a clear example of a “sayings gospel”. Not Q certainly, but a good example that indicates that there were such documents.
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The “Gospel” of Thomas post-dates the Scriptures by at least a century. Quite simply, it’s useless.
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:
There is no such thing as Australia.
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Actually Australia has lots of references throughout the centuries of its existence, as well as the empirical evidence of going there. You cannot do this with Q Source. But I appreciate the attempt to make an analogy. 😃

The Q Source is asserted to be a resource for the Word of God. I do not consider no-one-considered-it-important-like-we-do-today to be a satisfactory explanation. Belief by plausibility is Da Vinci Code logic. And I agree with Karl: the lack of mention of such a source throughout the centuries is a large obstacle for Q proponents.

🤷
 
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