Lecture Outline for BN203/303

I'm likely giving a lecture next Wednesday in the "Luke" course on the difference in interpreting Lk on the Farrer theory (i.e. if Lk used Mt instead of Q). The lecture may only be for one hour. Here is the outline so far:

The Farrer theory produces two main differences for our interpretation of Lk:

(1) It makes Lk considerably more creative as an author (scholars have tended to assume that Lk preserved more of the original order and wording of Q than Mt did).

(2a) It means that Lk has treated Mt differently than he treated Mk (Lk kept Mk’s chronology and sayings largely in tact), in other words. . .

(2b) It makes Lk critical of Mt (i.e. not only does Lk not stick to the order and wording of Mt but also Lk deliberately rejects themes important to Mt’s portrait of Jesus).

The Farrer theory implies that we should not underestimate Lk’s creativity and ability to transform and omit material found in Mt (and so we should not assume that Lk is simply a compiler of ‘Q’ traditions, replicating the order and wording he already found). I.e. the bulk of overlapping material Lk shares with Mt is taken by Lk directly from (and transformed from) Mt’s Gospel. How then has the resulting material changed in the process? The first theme we will look at (supposedly rejected by Lk on the Farrer hypothesis) is Jesus (Not) a Lawgiver.

Jesus (Not) a Lawgiver. In Mt Jesus is the Lawgiver for the New Community of believers (Mt’s emphasis has Jesus providing Instruction for his Church virtually providing a Church Instruction Manual, cf. the Didache). On the Farrer theory this presentation of Jesus would be deliberately critiqued by Lk. The following three points were made by Samuel Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1974). I have slightly expanded them since Sandmel barely gave them a sentence each:-

1. Many of the same commandments given in Mt’s Sermon on Mount are relayed in Lk but not in the form of new commandments (i.e. Jesus not a lawgiver as in Mt where Jesus is giving out ‘new and improved rules on living’ i.e. Mt 5:21-43 “You are familiar with the teaching on . . . now I give you an even stricter one to abide by. . . .”) since in Mt Jesus is portrayed extending the same laws even further. Lk tones down the contrast by avoiding the notion that Jesus gave out ‘new’ commandments. There is only one noticeable contrast (in Lk 6:27 [a remnant of Mt?] “but to you who are listening I say. . . ”) which is not contrasted with older familiar teachings (as in Mt) but is simply given as an elucidation of the previously mentioned blessings and miseries (i.e. to keep on loving their overlords and slanderers from verses 6:22-23 as model behaviour).

2. The Lord’s Prayer in Mt has Jesus give as instruction. In Lk instead it is the disciples who asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. 3. Mt 22:34-40// Mk 12:28-34// Lk 10:25-28. Unlike the other accounts, when Lk comes to relaying the greatest commandment it is not Jesus who gives the commandment.

However. . . what about Lk 18:18-24 where Jesus does relay the commandments!

For a more recent attempt to explain Lk’s modification of Mt’s Sermon on the Mount, see Mark Matson, “Luke’s Rewriting of the Sermon on the Mount,” in Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin (eds.) Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, 2004), 43-70. [or online @ http://www.milligan.edu/administrative/mmatson/rewrite.pdf]

It is difficult to argue why or how one author has rejected themes present in another author. How would we know if Lk was opposed to certain aspects of Mt’s presentation of Jesus? These notes are not finalised, and I'm wondering whether to concentrate further on this theme, or introduce another theme.

Oral Culture, Hypertext Culture

Loren Rosson has an interesting post here comparing oral culture and hypertext culture.

Lk's use of Mt

Semester is just beginning here in Melbourne, and I have been asked to give a lecture on what difference it makes to interpreting Lk if Lk has used Mt (as well as Mk).

So I am about to put together some more lecture notes which will then be included here.

Source Theory Logo

I've recently added an icon (logo) to the blog, as well as adding a link to Mahlon H. Smith's website, A Synoptic Gospels Primer. Click on "synoptic problem."

UPDATE: Apparently the picture icon is not yet working properly. Hopefully I can solve the problem soon, should be easier than solving the Gospel relationships!

UPDATE: Icon in web address seems to appear more regularly when "www" is present.

Mk 9:1 a failed prediction?

I notice a recent post of James Crossley (Dating the Synoptic Gospels) in which he suggests dates for the canonical gospels. He has a book arguing for a extremely early date for Mk (late 30s) "largely based on issues of law observance." In his recent post he uses eschatological predictions as a indication of date for the other canonical gospels.

I am not going to enter the debate about dating but will only comment here on the relevance of Mk 9:1 as a failed predication:

And he was saying to them, "Amen I tell you that there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the empire of God having come with power."

In his post James Crossley uses eschatological predictions as a chronological indicator and so Mk 9:1 is treated as a predication of an imminent kingdom:

There are predictions of an imminent kingdom within the lifetime of some of Jesus’ audience (Mark 9:1) and a prediction that the second coming of Jesus will occur within a generation (Mark 13:30).

It is usually assumed that Mk 9:1 presents a failed predication but this is to misunderstand its context in Mk 9:1 in which Jesus has just tried to challenge the disciples' understanding of what God's empire or "kingdom" (basileia) was about (Mk 8:32-33) and Jesus is pictured as challenging the notion of what is true power: followers of Jesus will save their lives by having them destroyed; the Human One will be ashamed of those who are ashamed of Jesus' non-violent kingdom-mission; to attempt to save oneself from physical death is in some sense seen as anti-kingdom and anti-true-power (8:38). In this context we should be willing to take the following mention of "power" (dunamis) in Mk 9:1 in a redefined way.

If we see that the notion of "power" in Mk is not to be equated with natural conceptions of power, then we might take the predication as having come true for all those who did see Jesus' power of resurrection at work. Would not seeing the increased number of believers (who believed in the resurrection and power of Jesus) be seeing the kingdom come with power? Arguably the whole of Mk is to challenge and redefine notions of power so I don't see why we should take 9:1 as a failed predication.

Eight Steps to Solving the Synoptic Problem?

Mark Goodacre has had the sudden urge to simplify the synoptic problem in eight steps over at his weblog.

Bauckham attempting too grand a theory

I’ve managed to read a few more pages of Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and at times I get the sense Bauckham is attempting to address too many issues, without managing them sufficiently. For instance Bauckham follows Dunn in asserting that oral transmission should not be understood using a literary model:

We should think of each performance of an oral tradition as differing from others, but not in such a way that each builds on the other. With oral tradition there is no linear development, layer on layer. [p248]

Dunn does a good job of showing, through study of a range of examples from the Gospels, that parallel texts in the Gospels are best understood as varying performances of tradition... [p257]

As we have seen, against the form-critical conception of oral tradition operating like successive editions of a literary text, Dunn insists that each performance of a tradition is a performance of the tradition as such, not a further development of the last such performance. There are no layers of tradition. . . [p259]

But it seems difficult to maintain the supposition that there are no layers when it comes to oral transmission. How could the preceding performance cease to exist or cease to have any effect on the current performance? It seems a bit circulatory (and overconfident) to use the written Gospels as evidence for this (as Dunn does) against a written model.

It would be difficult to know when differences in the various Gospel accounts are non-editorial and free from any layers. Are the aphorisms and parables that Bauckham and Dunn have in mind to be taken as written versions of various oral performances independent from all other performances (oral and written) in all three synoptic Gospels? Some traditions (particularly in Mk) may have been written to be performed orally, but can we assume the same thing for Lk? Why see Lk or Mt as dependent on Mk for any of their traditions, if they each already knew them independently from Mk? This would seem also to do away with using a literary model for aphorisms and parables found in Mk and re-used in Mt and Lk. Is Bauckham aware of the ramifications of following Dunn?

At the same time it seems Bauckham also wants to warn us not to distinguish too sharply between written and oral transmission, doubting the opinion that "before the Gospels the Jesus tradition was purely oral and made no use of writing" [p251-2] and when it comes to memorization, oral traditions are suddenly to be understood on an analogy to the written model:

Although Dominic Crossan has argued that a sharp distinction should be made between these two [memorizing material from books or oral material], such a distinction is inappropriate in a society that, though predominantly oral, did make use of written texts. [p280]

Group Discussion of Bauckham

Since I haven't managed any spare reading time this week, I will simply mention the following group discussion lead by Joseph Codsi. I reproduce his post from the crosstalk group:

This is an invitation to discuss Richard Bauckham’s last book, Jesus and the Eyewitness - The gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K., 2006.

Please go to the following group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/historical-disciples

Sign in, go to ‘files’ and open the folder ‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses’. I will upload documents to this folder as they become available. To post your comments, use the group’s E-mail: historical-disciples@yahoogroups.com

I propose to go through the book one chapter at a time. There are 18
chapters.Chapter 1 - From the Historical Jesus to the Jesus of Testimony.- The Historical Quest and Christian Faith- Introducing the Key Category: Eyewitness Testimony- Samuel Byrskog and the eyewitnessesQuestion: “Is Bauckham’s ‘Jesus of Testimony’ any different from the ‘Jesus of the faith’?Joseph CodsiBeirut, Lebanon

I should perhaps also mention the review of Bauckham over on Chris Tilling's blog appearing in sixteen parts.

Form Criticism

I’m now up to page 260 in Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and I am wondering about what students might make of form criticism according to Bauckham.

I am not an expert when it comes to form criticism and that is probably why I pity the student who wishes to understand whatever it is that the form critics bequeathed and the value of it. For example I might take Bauckham’s summary of what form criticism is and what we have subsequently gained from it, in the following quotes:

It is a curious fact that nearly all the contentions of the early form critics have by now been convincingly refuted, but the general picture of the process of oral transmission that form critics pioneered still governs the way most New Testament scholars think [p242].

[Schmidt pioneered the argument that:] The units (pericopes) preexisted the Gospel as distinct traditions transmitted orally until Mark first put them into writing and supplied the "string" on which they are now threaded like pearls. . . This insight opened the way, for the first time, to serious study of the oral phase of transmission of the gospel traditions. This is what the form critics undertook to pursue.
That the individual units of the Synoptic Gospels are close to the oral forms in which they previously existed and that in oral transmission they were not necessarily linked together as they are in the Gospels remain, in my opinion, the most significant insights of form criticism and have not been refuted [p242-3].

But I would have to disagree with several elements here. First Bauckham seems to be targeting a perception of form criticism as a theory of oral transmission:

There is no reason to believe that the oral transmission of Jesus traditions in the early church was at all as Bultmann envisaged it.

However, Baukham is possibly misrepresenting "the whole form-critical enterprise." Broadly speaking Bauckham is not diametrically opposed to Bultmann since the notion of there being ‘individual oral units’ contained in Mk but predating the Markan Evangelist is simply an assumption or presupposition that both he and Bultmann share (i.e. that there was a period of ‘oral transmission’ for much of the Gospel ‘traditions’ and as one which requires no testing!). It is no surprise then that form criticism discovers units of tradition (since this is what it presupposed)! Of the nine criticisms that Bauckham provides against form criticism he conveniently does not mention the one made by Joanna Dewey:

Form criticism has customarily assumed that the small episodic units to be discerned in the Synoptic Gospels were the individual units of oral tradition, and that Mark composed the Gospel from these bits and pieces of oral tradition and perhaps a short written source or two. All that we know or can infer about how tradition operates suggests that this assumption of form criticism is wrong, deriving more from the critics’ own immersion in print culture than from how tradition operates. Studies from the fields of folklore, oral tradition, and oral history all suggest that traditions are likely to coalesce into a continuous narrative or narrative framework quite quickly.
Tradition generally is remembered by gathering stories around a hero (fictional or real), not by remembering disparate individual episodes. [Joanna Dewey "The Survival of Mark's Gospel: A Good Story?" JBL 123/3 (2004): 495-507]

The reason I say "conveniently" is because Bauckham makes favourable use of this article of Dewey’s a few pages earlier!

Secondly, and perhaps more relevant for students, is the point that the study of a theory of oral transmission is not necessarily the ‘primary goal’ which form critics undertook to pursue. According to my Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels form criticism had several goals, the first being to identify the various forms or subgenres:

The original form-critical agenda included three main tasks: classifying the original pericopes (self-contained units of teaching or narrative) according to form, assigning each form to a Sitz im Leben ("life situation") in the early church and reconstructing the history of tradition (see Tradition Criticism).

Thus the first goal would be the categorization of the forms (which I believe would be an important legacy of form criticism even if the results have been modified over time). Are students to take Bauckham as inferring that all three goals of form criticism were illegitimate or that form criticism should be equated only with the early form critics.

Finally, the presupposition that knowing something about the form of a tradition could provide clues as to the community who preserved it or shaped it (and the history of such a community), may have been over enthusiastically embraced by early form critics but I fail to see how it would help to presume that the two have no relation whatsoever (which I doubt Bauckham actually wishes to imply) or that the enterprise itself is completely flawed. More helpful for students is the dictionary article on Tradition Criticism in the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels:

Two other disciplines overlap with tradition criticism [the second is redaction
criticism]. The first is form criticism, which in theory focuses on the form in which various types of traditions circulated, but in practice has included the study of how such forms have changed over time and at which period of oral transmission a given form may have arisen. When it moves from categorization to historical analysis, form criticism means the same as tradition criticism. It is because of this overlap that one cannot say when the methodology was first used in modern NT studies, for many of the form critics were in fact doing tradition
criticism.

So perhaps Bauckham should have taken up his problem with tradition criticism rather than form criticism?

Henry Owen not first to argue direct copying?

Stephen Carlson on his weblog hypotyposeis recently had a post on the early proponents of the utilization hypothesis (i.e. early scholars who saw direct copying of one Gospel to another). When talking about scholars espousing ‘direct dependence’ we should probably distinguish between two types of dependence:
(a) those who see that the later Gospel compositions were written with knowledge of predecessors (Augustine’s position) and
(b) those who recognize that an author fully ‘depends’ on the earlier work for the material (without which they would probably lack the information).
The first category would remain agnostic whether the author is ‘relying’ on an earlier work or whether they simply show some knowledge/familiarity of the earlier work when writing their own version.

I had previously taken Henry Owen (1764) as the first person to espouse the second category of dependence because I had thought any persons prior to Owen would simply have been considered heretics and feared for their lives and consequently never got around to articulating or demonstrating a theory of dependence.

Stephen Carlson translates a passage from 1716 of LeClerc mentioning direct dependence in which it seems that the second category might have already been espoused by others. I asked Stephen who these might be and what type of dependence they saw. Stephen’s helpful reply is found in his post Early Proponents of the Utilization Hypothesis.

The "they" that Le Clerc referred to in 1716 should be the early modern "Augustinians," such as Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and John Mill (1645-1707), who, along with J. J. Wettstein (1693-1764) and others, were more explicit than Augustine in fact about the utilization of prior gospels.

Stephen then provides a quote each from Grotius, Mill and Wettstein indicating they each held to a model of direct dependence. Thank you Stephen for these (especially the translation of a passage from Grotius whom I have been meaning to find out more about).

I will have to revise my understanding of the beginnings of the utilization hypothesis and update my lecture notes for BN101.

Papias' opinion of the Greek Gospels

I haven’t read many books over the last two years so I’m enjoying any chance I get to continue reading through Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (I’m up to page 229). I’m questioning Bauckham’s opinion of Papias’ view of the Greek Gospels:

Thus Papias is concerned throughout with two aspects of each Gospel: its origin from eyewitness testimony and the question of "order." In both cases he wants to explain why a Gospel with eyewitness origins lacks proper "order." [page 224]

Papias himself, however [unlike Eusebius], seems to have been interested, not in arguing for the apostolic origin of the Gospels he discusses, but rather in explaining how Gospels which were agreed to be of apostolic origin came to differ so much in their "order." [p226]

But is it merely the chronological order that Papias is concerned about? Papias may simply not be very impressed with the Synoptic Gospels because they are not in his opinion written by apostles (or the "seven"[!] disciples of Jesus) and so are not any more impressive than his own books on Jesus. The Greek Gospels would only be providing that which Papias himself was also able to provide by having also relied on eyewitness testimony of others. This would explain why, unlike most other people, Papias was not so very impressed by that which was contained in such books and why he does not really seem to be defending them after all.

I would have liked Bauckham to have addressed the notion that Papias was censored by Eusebius. There are only two sentences I noticed addressing the notion:

Alternatively, Eusebius has omitted something of which he did not approve. He had his own ideas about the origins and differences among the Gospels (see especially _Hist. Eccl._ 3.24.5-16) and is likely to have suppressed material in Papias that was not consistent with them.

These sentences only relate to it the likelihood "that Eusebius has omitted some material" prior to the "Therefore Matthew" quotation. Didn’t Eusebius have access to Papias’ five books and only quoted a few lines. Isn’t this showing him to be a little suspicious of Papias considering Eusebius’ purpose should have been helped by depending more on Papias? Hmm.

Is Papias defending the Greek Gospels? Bauckham suggests that Papias is not necessarily responding to critics but he may be intending "to set any such misgivings [differences between the Gospels] to rest." [p229] But it seems Bauckham is assuming that Papias must have thought more highly of the Greek Gospels than he gives evidence for. Bauckham says,

Given this limitation, [that Mk was only complete in the first stage of the historian’s task] Papias valued Mark’s Gospel because of its scrupulously accurate record of the _chreiai_ as Peter related them. [p228]

but he has not sufficiently demonstrated that "Papias valued Mk’s Gospel" though perhaps Bauckham simply means "Mark, in Papias’ opinion, at least was accurate in reproducing Peter’s preaching."

Transmission models

The synoptic problem is usually solved with literary theories and such source theories might be categorized according to which Gospel is dependent on the others (e.g. Lukan posteriority) or source of the others (e.g. Markan priority) for their literary traditions. But what of categorizing (and incorporating) oral transmission theories? I’m not aware of any comprehensive list of transmission theories and it would appear that there is an increasing number of oral transmission models on offer. I wonder if any or all of them are just as compatible with any literary model? And I wonder why the two are not more often treated together when articulating one’s source theory? The following three are the oral transmission theories usually named (with various labels):

Form-critical model (traditions generated in and for the community who transmitted them).
Rabbi-disciple model (rabbinic-like memorization where Jesus taught his disciples to memorize his teachings).
Informal controlled model of Ken Bailey (control exerted over certain types of traditions by the community but anyone could participate in transmission process).

There are of course various other transmission models (of which I only have a more vague understanding) such as those of Werner Kelber, Vernon Robbins, James Dunn, and Richard Bauckham (and of course the no-oral-transmission model of Michael Goulder). It would be helpful if scholars in future could articulate not only which literary source theory they subscribe to, but also which transmission model they find most attractive and how such a model is to be integrated into their overall source theory. I think that it is much less helpful to compare and discuss literary theories whilst ignoring theories of transmission.

Perhaps one could also appeal to various transmission models according to the type of tradition? Or perhaps each Gospel author should be explained by recourse to a slightly different oral source theory? I get the impression that no one model can yet claim to explain the whole pre-literary process behind all of the Gospels (from every stage of every tradition—i.e. from birth to inclusion in the first written account) and I guess this is one reason why literary models usually dominate the discussion.

Admitting oral source models into one’s source theory does make a difference. Otherwise one can categorize source theories incorrectly and speak, for example, of the ‘Goulder-Goodacre theory’ which are really two very different composition theories since, unlike Goodacre, Goulder supposes that the non-Markan traditions in Mt and Lk do not stem not from any oral sources.