A Year of Source Theory Blogging - Part Three

I wrote several posts last September trying to ascertain what teachers were teaching regarding the Q hypothesis seeing that the symbol 'Q' is used to mean various different things. I received some feedback from Stephen Carlson and Mark Goodacre on the issue, both who prefer to maintain that the Q hypothesis supposes a written source to account for the common Mt-Lk material (and both of whom believe that Luke actually copied the material from Matthew rather than Q).

I have now added a poll on Q to the sidebar which will run for the remainder of the year, but I may choose to run it indefinitely since the progress of results are always available anyway.

My Choice of Source Theory on Wason’s Poll

Brandon Wason is running a Synoptic Problem Poll on Novum Testamentum, I cast my vote yesterday on my choice of source theory. I went for ‘agnostic’ which I believe most people should probably admit to unless they’ve done some of their own research. (Does lot’s of thinking count?!) My musings and lecture notes here indicate some very minimal research of my own but I often wonder how better knowledge of manuscripts and text criticism would affect our source theories?

I was not able to choose ‘Two-Source Hypothesis’ because there was not the more vague option ‘Mark plus ‘Q’-(unspecified)-traditions’ which I think is inappropriate to place in the 'Other Hypothesis' category given that many have held such a theory under the umbrella of the 'Two Source Hypothesis' (I'm still willing to receive comments on my Q survey post from last September).

Whenever I’ve gotten excited by the fact that Lk may have depended on Mt, the data has let me down. Indeed if it were not for the high verbal correspondence in the John Baptiser material, followers of the Farrer theory would have a very difficult case to present.

The Farrer theory again let me down recently when I looked for themes in Mt rejected by Lk, beginning with Sandmel’s observation that Lk rewrote Mt’s law theme (my lecture notes on this were broken up into several posts so its easier to click on either of the tags/labels ‘Lecture Notes’ or ‘Lk’s use of Mt’ below).

So the real Q hypothesis is yet to stand up

My Q teaching survey will always be here for whoever wishes to add responses. But for now I guess I will have to keep on assuming that for many people what Q might represent as a hypothesis is not necessarily identical to what the Q hypothesis really is. That is, I will for now answer my own question by saying that I guess because Q was originally a hypothetical document, it must remain that way--no matter how free one feels to make Q serve as a convenient symbol for the Mt-Lk double-tradition (in whatever form/s Lk & Mt found it) one must still teach that the original Q hypothesis posits a document and thus remains the hypothesis. There will always be weakened versions of the hypothesis around (for practical reasons) but for whatever reason they are not considered the 'real' hypothesis.

It still strikes me as strange that many teachers would teach a weakened form of the Q hypothesis without making it clear to students the differences between the original hypothesis (of say, Streeter since he made it famous) and the weakened 'classroom' hypothesis. So Mark Goodacre's approach would stand out as distinctive in this regard in not failing to highlight to students the difference between two opposing source theories for the material, but only, it seems, because he chooses not to deal with oral source theories as relevant for solving the synoptic problem (instead he deals with these in form criticism i.e. prior to introducing students to source criticism). I am interested in how successful this splitting off of oral source theory from synoptic source theory in general might be. I guess what I consider to be the synoptic problem differs in that I think the synoptic problem is complicated by the fact that we have as yet no clear guidelines for ascertaining how much of the Gospels are composed from oral traditions and how much is dependent on written materials, and how much on material which could be both or somewhere in between (say, either oral material becoming more written or written material circulating as more oral). I can't say that these issues are distinct from the synoptic problem proper. But I can appreciate that teachers like Mark are teaching them separately to students (as a different approach on/within source theory in general). I guess it depends on what ones definition of the synoptic problem is--mine is broad: From what materials (and how) were the Gospels composed?

Clarifying the Q survey

I must clarify that what the question is I wish to ask teachers introducing the Q hypothesis: What are you telling students the Q hypothesis is? because I suspect that not many teachers are persuaded in a single written Q source even if they hold to a two-source (Mk-Q) hypothesis. And I wonder are teachers are still telling students that the Q hypothesis is a hypothetical document even though they themselves may assume a modified 2SH with written and oral fragments comprising "Q". I recall my lecturers being quite confident of Markan priority but rather hesitant in what exactly Q was. I want to know if that was (ab)normal to teach "Q" is a "label" or umbrella term covering shared sources rather than a single document? Hence my quotes taken from Guthrie and from Barrett (and my allusion to Petrie's 1959 Novum Testamentum article). For example, how much of the double-tradition is considered oral traditions? Do oral traditions feature at all in what students are being taught about the double-tradition?

I have a suspicion that the survival of the notion of a Q document hypothesis is not unrelated to:

(1) What teachers teach about what is the consensus Q hypothesis,
(2) What teachers actually believe about the double-tradition,
(3) How teachers teach the Q hypothesis,
(4) What graduate students eventually take with them.

Are most students being taught that the standard Q hypothesis posits a single document?

Surveying the teaching of Q: What do you make of it?

It is unfortunate that the widely used symbol Q is employed in different senses by different writers. - C. K. Barrett

The symbol Q may still be used as a convenient description of the common material, while each investigator must be left to make clear whether he is thinking of written or oral material or a mixture of both. - Donald Guthrie

None of the arguments against the existence of Q as a single source is fully convincing. . . It is thus best to assume that Q was a single source, available in Greek and probably in written form. - Christopher M. Tuckett

What is being taught in the classroom nowadays concerning the Q hypothesis? I would like to survey here what lecturers have been teaching lately (say within the last few years) concerning Q (the hypothetical sayings collection attested in the Mt-Lk double-tradition).

From my own observation of what students are taught I can see that not much source theory actually sticks. The letter Q seems to be something that does stick, however. Presuming everything taught did stick--what exactly was it that stuck? I am presuming that what different institutions teach could be placed on a "Q-spectrum" or "Q-continuum" ranging from "pro-Q" (Q is basically reconstructable) through to "sceptical-Q" (the Mt-Lk double tradition does not derive from a single written source or "sayings collection" prior to its inclusion in Matthew).

So for those teaching/introducing the synoptic problem to students, my three questions are:

(1) Where are you on the Q-spectrum? (What do you teach students concerning the Q hypothesis?)
(2) What is your teaching style regarding the Q hypothesis? (How strictly do you teach what you teach? I.e. are students encouraged to challenge what they are taught and come to their own conclusions? How do you introduce arguments for and against?)
(3) What do you think sticks with students regarding the Q hypothesis? (How much of what is taught do most students take with them?)

Please leave responses directly here as the comments can then be easily read by all those interested.