Mark’s Kung-Q vs. The Bolt From The Johannine Blue

Last updated on: September 24, 2009 at 10:32 am by James F. McGrath

Mark’s Kung-Q vs. The Bolt From The Johannine Blue 2009-09-24T10:32:00-04:00 James F. McGrath

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Mark Goodacre kindly took the time to both comment on an earlier post of mine that relates to one of his areas of expertise, and to post a more detailed response on his blog. As most who read this will already know, Mark has published extensively on the Synoptic problem and the reasons why he is persuaded that Q is an unnecessary hypothesis to account for what we have in the New Testament. It is not an area that I’ve published on, and thus not one that I’ve spent nearly as much time investigating in minute detail. In other words, I fully expect Mark’s “kung-q” to be more powerful than my own.

Having said that, this is a subject that I’ve had an interest in since my undergraduate years, and so I hope that I can at least be an intelligent conversation partner and not bore Mark.

Mark mentioned a number of types of evidence that are relevant to determining literary dependence. One that particularly struck me is the reproduction in Luke of what seem to be distinctively Matthean phrases, imagery or emphases. While a really good editor may be expected to transform material so that it takes on his or her own distinctive style and emphases, precisely for that reason, instances that seem to represent failures to do so strongly suggest that the author/editor is there drawing on tradition and failing to always transform it consistently. (Hmm, as I think about this, I’m starting to whether all the evidence relevant to the Synoptic problem in fact fits under the category of “evidence of fatigue“).

Anyway, so far, I found myself in agreement. But then I thought about the “bolt from the Johannine blue“, a passage in Matt 11:17 and Luke 10:22 (or from Q, depending on one’s conclusions about such matters), which strikingly echoes Johannine language and emphases. This might easily seem to provide evidence that Matthew and Luke had read John. But most scholars instead conclude that this saying may represent the origin rather than the influence of the Johannine tradition, the acorn from which the later author of the Fourth Gospel develops his distinctive language, style and emphases. Of course, that may be the wrong conclusion, but it seems that this example provides a reason for being cautious about assuming that our logic in our arguments about dependence is sound. There is no obvious reason why language that is characteristic of one author, but also found in another source in an isolated saying, must necessarily be viewed as demonstrating dependence of the latter on the former. It may well be that both authors found the saying in a source, but one of them was so affected by or impressed with it, that it was quoted repeatedly and its themes became part of his or her overall style and theology.

Mark’s point about “Fatigue in the Synoptics” is a much stronger one, and since it is precisely the sort of evidence that persuades me that Matthew used Mark, I’m going to take a long hard look at whether Mark (Goodacre, that is, not that other Mark) is right about this point. My initial impression, however, is that the example given is just as easily explained in terms of Luke’s fatigue when using Q as Luke’s fatigue when using Matthew. Obviously the Q hypothesis is utterly unnecessary to explain this particular evidence, but on the other hand, I don’t think that it can be considered evidence against Q, strictly speaking. If one has found other reasons to conclude that there is a common source, no longer extant, used by Matthew and Luke, this evidence is not incompatible with that.

For now I’ll simply paraphrase Agrippa: “Thinkest thou that thou canst so quickly persuade me to become a Q skeptic?”

Finally, I want to mention that as I was writing this, Mike Bird shared a quote from Martin Hengel on this subject.

Thanks, Mark and everyone else who has chimed in or will chime in. May the conversation continue, and become so richly intertwined that no one looking back on it in the future will ever be able to figure out whose contribution to it depended on whose else’s! 🙂

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