Having studied the Gospels in editions ranging from Funk & Miller to Harper/Collins to the New Revised, etc., all I've gleaned has been strictly from translations and from modern analysis from the likes of Crossan, Funk, Kloppenborg, Borg, Mack, etc. For years, I would have essentially agreed that the first tier materials, chronology, are the earliest Paulines, Q (as redacted primarily in Luke), and Thomas.
Then I came across -- just in the past year or so -- a seemingly detailed analysis of the original Koine Greek texts, purporting to find where certain stylistic affinities in basic idioms and characteristic turns of speech lie in the originals and making conclusions accordingly. All well and good, except (so far?) I only seem to find this kind of analysis on line and not in the bricks-and-mortar off-line world (which I frankly trust a bit more than the on-line world [whether irrationally or not]). The conclusions reached in these new studies are boiled down in these three on-line pages --
-- A statistical approach to the synoptic gospel problem
interpretation
Q_forgery --
-- and the nub is that distinct affinities in linguistic style in the original Koine Greek have (apparently?) been found between the parallel "Q" passages present in both Matthew and Luke and much of the bulk of Matthew elsewhere -- not the bulk of Luke, and not Thomas, and not an individual "set of linguistic fingerprints" of its own either! This has really "rocked my world", so to speak. Since I'm more inclined to place some value in detailed philological and statistical analysis than in analysis primarily based on philosophical preferences only (which can be maddeningly subjective), I was delighted to come across this (what to me is/was) more nuts-and-bolts approach dealing with the original texts, which I'm still not equipped to read in their original myself. But while delighted to see that detailed stylistic analysis of the originals has emerged in the most recent decades, the fact that I see such studies rarely referenced elsewhere has made me leery of leaping to too many conclusions. That is, certain (surprising) conclusions do leap to mind, but since they upend certain conclusions reached in the Jesus Seminar, etc., and contradict certain conclusions that I admit I've long accepted myself, I'd feel better if some less partial eye, and one thoroughly versed in Koine Greek, were to vet this new research and the three cited (above) web pages first.
Consider: if the parallel Q passages have their strongest stylistic/linguistic affinity with Matthew after all, then that could mean -- for starters -- that the long-held assumption that Luke comes closest to preserving the Q original (due primarily to Luke's more fragmented -- and so less edited(?) -- presentation of these parallel passages) could be in question. In addition, if Q's strongest affinity is with Matthew rather than having an individual linguistic "set of fingerprints" of its own, then that -- maybe -- could point to Q emanating primarily from a stratum closer to Matthew than to the earlier Thomas/Pauline stratum, thus inadvertently casting Mark as closer to First Tier material than before, possibly superseding Q chronologically.
All that would go against what I readily concede has long been my subjective impression: that a "committee" is far less likely to have cobbled together the "Love your enemies" nexus of sayings in Q than one lone counter-cultural individual who (it would seem) has less of an incentive for group cohesion than would a whole committee. For altruism this startling, it remains unlikely, though not impossible, that a mere transcribing disciple -- however dedicated to the spirit of Jesus' sayings -- would bother to offer caveats admonishing a general love of one's opponents when his primary concern would be to promote an acceptance of Christians and Christianity above all.
Again, it remains barely possible that someone else sincerely extrapolated Jesus' message through proselytizing with admonishments so profoundly selfless and specific as these, admonishments not strictly reflecting the letter of Jesus' own formulations at all, merely their spirit. Nevertheless, that still seems unlikely. I recognize the cogency of what others have argued, that a later more pluralistic outlook could conceivably emerge in later generations after all. But cogent as that sounds, it still seems (marginally) less likely to me.
Of course, weighed against that is this new statistical analysis I've cited in this post, which could really end up placing Mark as earlier than any Q material once and for all. Before jumping to such a conclusion, my initial reluctance to do so leads me to say that I'd very much appreciate anyone else's more qualified efforts here in gauging the Web pages I've already cited above and in indicating for the rest of us just how valid this new statistical analysis really is. Ideally, I'd like to hear from someone thoroughly conversant with the original Koine Greek texts first of all. Can we dismiss this new statistical analysis cited above as a crank exercise? Has there already been precisely this kind of survey already done elsewhere that has led to an entirely different conclusion, that the Q material does indeed have an altogether individual "set of linguistic fingerprints" after all, separate from either Matthew's or Luke's? Does anyone know? Or could this really be a significant breakthrough, based on possibly stronger grounds than the (more subjective, IMO) impressionistic philosophical grounds that have led me and others to (wrongly?) accept Q material both as First Tier hitherto and also as unrelated chronologically to either Matthew or Luke?
Any thoughts on this would be gratefully received. Please?
Thanks,
Operacast
Then I came across -- just in the past year or so -- a seemingly detailed analysis of the original Koine Greek texts, purporting to find where certain stylistic affinities in basic idioms and characteristic turns of speech lie in the originals and making conclusions accordingly. All well and good, except (so far?) I only seem to find this kind of analysis on line and not in the bricks-and-mortar off-line world (which I frankly trust a bit more than the on-line world [whether irrationally or not]). The conclusions reached in these new studies are boiled down in these three on-line pages --
-- A statistical approach to the synoptic gospel problem
interpretation
Q_forgery --
-- and the nub is that distinct affinities in linguistic style in the original Koine Greek have (apparently?) been found between the parallel "Q" passages present in both Matthew and Luke and much of the bulk of Matthew elsewhere -- not the bulk of Luke, and not Thomas, and not an individual "set of linguistic fingerprints" of its own either! This has really "rocked my world", so to speak. Since I'm more inclined to place some value in detailed philological and statistical analysis than in analysis primarily based on philosophical preferences only (which can be maddeningly subjective), I was delighted to come across this (what to me is/was) more nuts-and-bolts approach dealing with the original texts, which I'm still not equipped to read in their original myself. But while delighted to see that detailed stylistic analysis of the originals has emerged in the most recent decades, the fact that I see such studies rarely referenced elsewhere has made me leery of leaping to too many conclusions. That is, certain (surprising) conclusions do leap to mind, but since they upend certain conclusions reached in the Jesus Seminar, etc., and contradict certain conclusions that I admit I've long accepted myself, I'd feel better if some less partial eye, and one thoroughly versed in Koine Greek, were to vet this new research and the three cited (above) web pages first.
Consider: if the parallel Q passages have their strongest stylistic/linguistic affinity with Matthew after all, then that could mean -- for starters -- that the long-held assumption that Luke comes closest to preserving the Q original (due primarily to Luke's more fragmented -- and so less edited(?) -- presentation of these parallel passages) could be in question. In addition, if Q's strongest affinity is with Matthew rather than having an individual linguistic "set of fingerprints" of its own, then that -- maybe -- could point to Q emanating primarily from a stratum closer to Matthew than to the earlier Thomas/Pauline stratum, thus inadvertently casting Mark as closer to First Tier material than before, possibly superseding Q chronologically.
All that would go against what I readily concede has long been my subjective impression: that a "committee" is far less likely to have cobbled together the "Love your enemies" nexus of sayings in Q than one lone counter-cultural individual who (it would seem) has less of an incentive for group cohesion than would a whole committee. For altruism this startling, it remains unlikely, though not impossible, that a mere transcribing disciple -- however dedicated to the spirit of Jesus' sayings -- would bother to offer caveats admonishing a general love of one's opponents when his primary concern would be to promote an acceptance of Christians and Christianity above all.
Again, it remains barely possible that someone else sincerely extrapolated Jesus' message through proselytizing with admonishments so profoundly selfless and specific as these, admonishments not strictly reflecting the letter of Jesus' own formulations at all, merely their spirit. Nevertheless, that still seems unlikely. I recognize the cogency of what others have argued, that a later more pluralistic outlook could conceivably emerge in later generations after all. But cogent as that sounds, it still seems (marginally) less likely to me.
Of course, weighed against that is this new statistical analysis I've cited in this post, which could really end up placing Mark as earlier than any Q material once and for all. Before jumping to such a conclusion, my initial reluctance to do so leads me to say that I'd very much appreciate anyone else's more qualified efforts here in gauging the Web pages I've already cited above and in indicating for the rest of us just how valid this new statistical analysis really is. Ideally, I'd like to hear from someone thoroughly conversant with the original Koine Greek texts first of all. Can we dismiss this new statistical analysis cited above as a crank exercise? Has there already been precisely this kind of survey already done elsewhere that has led to an entirely different conclusion, that the Q material does indeed have an altogether individual "set of linguistic fingerprints" after all, separate from either Matthew's or Luke's? Does anyone know? Or could this really be a significant breakthrough, based on possibly stronger grounds than the (more subjective, IMO) impressionistic philosophical grounds that have led me and others to (wrongly?) accept Q material both as First Tier hitherto and also as unrelated chronologically to either Matthew or Luke?
Any thoughts on this would be gratefully received. Please?
Thanks,
Operacast
So when I refer from here on out to the author Mark and/or the author Matthew, I'm really referring to the specific authors whose own first texts first got attached to the names Mark and Matthew, not to Mark and Matthew by name.