Marcan Priority Without Q: Explorations in the Farrer Hypothesis 9781472550644, 9780567159137, 9780567367563

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LIBRARY OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

455 Formerly Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series

Editor Chris Keith

Editorial Board Dale C. Allison, John M. G. Barclay, Lynn H. Cohick, R. Alan Culpepper, Craig A. Evans, Robert Fowler, Simon J. Gathercole, John S. Kloppenborg, Michael Labahn, Love L. Sechrest, Robert Wall, Steve Walton, Robert L. Webb, Catrin H. Williams

MARCAN PRIORITY WITHOUT Q: EXPLORATIONS IN THE FARRER HYPOTHESIS

Edited by

John C. Poirier and Jeffrey Peterson

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © John C. Poirier and Jeffrey Peterson, 2015 John C. Poirier and Jeffrey Peterson have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-56715-913-7 PB: 978-0-56767-196-7 ePDF: 978-0-56736-756-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marcan priority without Q : explorations in the Farrer hypothesis / edited by John C. Poirier and Jeffrey Peterson. pages cm – (Library of New Testament studies; 455) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-567-15913-7 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-567-36756-3 (epdf) 1. Bible. Mark– Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Synoptic problem. 3. Q hypothesis (Synoptics criticism) 4. Two source hypothesis (Synoptics criticism) I. Poirier, John C., 1963- II. Peterson, Jeffrey, 1964BS2585.52.M29 2015 226’.066–dc23 2014032586 Series: Library of New Testament Studies, volume 455 Typeset by Forthcoming Publications Ltd (www.forthpub.com) Printed and bound in Great Britain

In Memoriam Eric Franklin (1929–2002) Michael D. Goulder (1927–2010) H. Benedict Green (1924–2007)

CONTENTS List of Contributors Acknowlegments Abbreviations INTRODUCTION: WHY THE FARRER HYPOTHESIS? WHY NOW? John C. Poirier

ix xi xiii

1

Chapter 1 THE DEVIL IN THE DETAIL: EXORCISING Q FROM THE BEELZEBUL CONTROVERSY Eric Eve

16

Chapter 2 PROBLEMS WITH THE NON-AVERSION PRINCIPLE FOR RECONSTRUCTING Q Stephen C. Carlson

44

Chapter 3 CRANK OR CREATIVE GENIUS? HOW ANCIENT RHETORIC MAKES SENSE OF LUKE’S ORDER Heather M. Gorman

62

Chapter 4 TOO GOOD TO BE Q: HIGH VERBATIM AGREEMENT IN THE DOUBLE TRADITION Mark Goodacre

82

Chapter 5 LUKE 11.2-4: THE LORD’S PRAYER (ABRIDGED EDITION) Ken Olson 1

101

viii

Contents

Chapter 6 A STATISTICAL TIME SERIES APPROACH TO THE USE OF MARK BY MATTHEW AND LUKE Andris Abakuks

119

Chapter 7 MATTHEW’S ENDING AND THE GENESIS OF LUKE–ACTS: THE FARRER HYPOTHESIS AND THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY Jeffrey Peterson

140

Chapter 8 RECONSIDERING THE DATE OF LUKE IN LIGHT OF THE FARRER HYPOTHESIS David Landry

160

Chapter 9 DELBERT BURKETT’S DEFENSE OF Q John C. Poirier

191

Chapter 10 THE FARRER/MARK WITHOUT Q HYPOTHESIS: A RESPONSE John S. Kloppenborg

226

Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors

245 260 269

1

CONTRIBUTORS Andris Abakuks, Lecturer in Statistics, Dept. of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, Birkbeck, University of London. Stephen C. Carlson, Research Fellow, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. Eric Eve, Fellow and Tutor in Theology, Harris Manchester College, Oxford. Mark Goodacre, Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Dept. of Religious Studies, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Heather Gorman, Assistant Professor of New Testament, Johnson University, Knoxville, Tennessee. John S. Kloppenborg, Professor and Chair, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, and Research Associate, Dept. of New Testament, University of Pretoria. David Landry, Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Ken Olson, Adjunct Instructor in Religious Studies, Elon University, Elon, North Carolina. Jeffrey Peterson, Jack C. and Ruth Wright Professor of New Testament, Austin Graduate School of Theology, Austin, Texas. John C. Poirier, Chair, Dept. of Biblical Studies, Kingswell Theological Seminary, Middletown, Ohio.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editors wish to thank Professor Mark Goodacre of Duke University for his insightful critiques of the essays in this volume. We also wish to thank Professor John Kloppenborg of the University of Toronto for agreeing to write a response to a view that differs signi¿cantly from his own. We are further indebted to Professor Ken Cukrowski, Dean of the College of Biblical Studies, Abilene Christian University, and Professor Gregory Sterling, Dean of the Yale University Divinity School, for the helpful responses they contributed to a session of the Christian Scholars Conference on the campus of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, on 5 June 2014.

1

ABBREVIATIONS AB ABD AGAJU ANRW BETL Bib BibInt BJS BNTC BTB BZNW CBQ DJD ETL HTR HTS HvTSt JAOS JBL JPTSup JSHJ JSNT JSNTSup JTS LCL LXX

MNTC MT

NIBC NIGTC NovT NovTSup NRSV

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary.Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York, 1992 Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Edited by H. Temporini and W. Haase. Berlin, 1972– Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Biblica Biblical Interpretation Brown Judaic Studies Black’s New Testament Commentaries Biblical Theology Bulletin Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Catholic Biblical Quarterly Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses Harvard Theological Review Harvard Theological Studies Hervormde teologiese studies Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Pentecostal Theology: Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series Journal of Theological Studies Loeb Classical Library Septuagint Moffatt New Testament Commentary Masoretic Text New International Biblical Commentary New International Greek Testament Commentary Novum Testamentum Novum Testamentum Supplements New Revised Standard Version

xiv NTOA NTS NTTS PAST PRSt SAC SBL SBLDS SBLSP SBLSymS SNTSMS SP STDJ SUNT TynBul WBC WTJ WUNT ZNW

1

Abbreviations Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus New Testament Studies New Testament Tools and Studies Pauline Studies Perspectives in Religious Studies Studies in Antiquity and Christianity Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series Sacra pagina Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments Tyndale Bulletin Word Biblical Commentary Westminster Theological Journal Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche

INTRODUCTION: WHY THE FARRER HYPOTHESIS? WHY NOW? John C. Poirier

The reigning source theory in synoptic studies is the Two-Document hypothesis (= 2DH), which consists of two main tenets: (1) Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source, and (2) they did so independently, which necessitates the postulation of an otherwise unattested source, which scholars call ‘Q’. The present book features original essays written from the perspective of a competing source theory – the Farrer hypothesis (= FH) – which agrees with tenet (1) of the 2DH, but which holds, in place of (2), that Luke knew Matthew’s gospel (obviating the need for Q).1 Farrerians are wont to smile at E. R. Goodenough’s remark: ‘Perhaps one of my students was right when he said on an examination that Q was Luke’s German source’.2 Proponents of the 2DH might appreciate the humor, but not the sentiment.

1. The suggestion that ‘Q’ is an errant idea does not imply that Matthew did not derive his non-Marcan material from a ‘sayings source’ of sorts. As E. W. Lummis long ago noted, ‘a second source (besides Mark) for Matthew is a concept quite distinct from “Q”’ (‘A Case against “Q” ’, Hibbert Journal 24 [1925–26], pp. 755– 65 [755]). David R. Catchpole makes a similar observation, but supposes that the pursuit of a Q-shaped ‘M’ would represent but a slight shift in focus for those now pursuing Q (The Quest for Q [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993], pp. 2–3). It is unfortunate that Stephen Hultgren would count the likelihood of a pre-Matthaean origin for the double tradition as a problem for the ‘Farrer–Goulder hypothesis’ in general, when in fact it is only a problem for Michael Goulder’s refusal to countenance pre-Matthaean sources (Narrative Elements in the Double Tradition: A Study of Their Place within the Framework of the Gospel Narrative [BZNW, 113; New York: de Gruyter, 2002], p. 334). See Francis Watson, Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), p. 120. 2. Erwin R. Goodenough, ‘The Inspiration of New Testament Research’, JBL 71 (1952), pp. 1–9, esp. 2.

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The FH has an easier time in 2015 than it did in (say) 1975. Why is this the case? It would be dif¿cult to name a point at which the FH became (as it now is) the 2DH’s leading challenger, and it would be even more dif¿cult to account for all the reasons for this development. But if the FH has been faring better in recent years, this is at least partly due to a number of more general developments in NT scholarship, developments that sometimes betray a hollowness in some of the older complaints lodged against the idea of Luke’s dependence on Matthew. There are at least four such developments: (1) increased awareness of the evangelists as writers and reshapers of tradition rather than as strict (scissors-and-paste) compilers, (2) wider acceptance of the view that Luke wrote in response to other gospel writers, (3) increased awareness of Luke’s literary ability, and (4) wider acceptance of a late date for Luke. These points, of course, do not tell the whole story, particularly as the FH’s newfound respect is also owed in large part to the efforts of some of its more able defenders.3 Nevertheless, it appears that scholarship in general has become much more accepting of the FH’s major facilitating adjuncts – viz. the ideas that help it make sense within the reality of the NT world4 – and that this is at least partly responsible for the FH’s recent fortunes. A word about each of these developments is thus in order. 1. Increased Awareness of the Evangelists as Writers and Reshapers of Tradition Perhaps the most obvious development in scholarship’s view of the evangelists is that the older understanding of them as scissors-and-paste compilers is fading fast.5 While it is true that view has not entirely left 3. One thinks immediately of the three dedicatees of this present volume: Michael Goulder, H. Benedict Green, and Eric Franklin. More than anyone, however, it is Mark Goodacre who has transformed the FH from a (mostly) British phenomenon into a transatlantic phenomenon. See esp. Mark Goodacre, ‘Fatigue in the Synoptics’, NTS 44 (1998), pp. 45–58; idem, The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze (The Biblical Seminar, 80; London: Shef¿eld Academic, 2001); idem, The Case against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2001). 4. John S. Kloppenborg Verbin writes, ‘The real point of disagreement among Synoptic Problem specialists is not what is logically possible, but which hypotheses imply plausible editorial procedures on the part of the evangelists’ (Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000], p. 43). 5. An extreme example of the way some scholars have resisted the notion that any of the evangelists could have omitted or altered his source, while at the same 1

Introduction

3

us,6 many who deal with the gospels are now slower to infer an evangelist’s ignorance of a source text from his failure to reproduce that text word for word, or (with respect to order) link for link.7 The most obvious manifestation of the older scissors-and-paste model are the ‘Why would Luke…?’ questions often directed against the idea of Luke’s use of Matthew (e.g., ‘Why would Luke break up Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount?’, or, ‘Why would Luke replace Matthew’s infancy narrative with something completely different?’). Thus Joseph Fitzmyer considers it probative to ask, ‘[W]hy would Luke have wanted to break up Matthew’s sermons, especially the Sermon on the Mount, incorporating only a part of it into his Sermon on the Plain and scattering the rest of it in an unconnected form in the loose context of the travel account?’, and ‘If Luke had before him the fuller form of the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3,6) or the fuller form of the Our Father (Matt 6:9-13), what would have motivated him to reformulate them as he has (see Luke 6:2021; 11:2-4)?’8 Of course, Farrerians are more insistent on the weakness time allowing those sources to change the material as drastically as necessary (!), can be found in the work of Heinrich Helmbold, Vorsynoptische Evangelien (Stuttgart: Klotz, 1953). Helmbold held that Luke gave the utmost respect to his sources, that Luke’s failure to preserve a Marcan pericope represents evidence of damage to his copy of Mark, and that Matthew and Luke used different recensions of Mark. See Jay M. Harrington, The Lukan Passion Narrative: The Markan Material in Luke 22,54–23,25. A Historical Survey: 1891–1997 (NTTS, 30; Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 310. Helmbold’s suggestion that Luke used a damaged copy of Mark recalls a similar suggestion in Burnett Hillman Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins Treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship and Dates (London: Macmillan, 1924), pp. 175–8, 290. 6. Barbara Shellard notes, ‘It seems to be assumed by some critics that none of the evangelists, and especially not Luke, could ever have used his sources creatively, as other ancient writers frequently did: they were by implication mere compilers who were adept at wielding scissors and paste, not writers or theologians’ (New Light on Luke: Its Purpose, Sources and Literary Context [JSNTSup, 215; London: Shef¿eld Academic, 2002], p. 69). 7. Mark Goodacre makes this same correction in considering the Gospel of Thomas’s relation to the synoptic gospels: ‘Writers are not obliged to take over everything they ¿nd in their sources, and it is never surprising to see authors editing material to suit their needs’ (Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012], p. 18). 8. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke (AB, 28; 2 vols.; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981–85), vol. 1, p. 74. Maurice Goguel had used the same reasoning nearly ¿fty years earlier: ‘A comparison [of Luke’s beatitudes] with Matthew’s form shows such points of resemblance as to forbid the idea that the two sets are independent of one another; yet the relation between them must be indirect, for if Matthew had used Luke, or Luke’s immediate source, he would have had no

4

Marcan Priority without Q

of this line of questioning, but it is encouraging that Lucan scholarship in general has begun to move toward a more realistic view. As Christopher Hays (a Farrerian) notes, ‘UnÀattering judgments about Luke’s ordering of material have faded since narrative-critical scholarship has highlighted the logic and artistry of Luke’s narrative progression’.9 The scissors-and-paste model treats the gospels as composed entirely of discrete blocks of material found in the earlier sources, and makes the evangelists so beholden of their forebears that it might even seem strange that they decided to write new gospels.10 The following reasoning, for example, appears in Werner Georg Kümmel’s classic Introduction to the New Testament: ‘[T]he dependence of Mk on Mt and/or Lk, or of Mt on Lk, or of Lk on Mt is inconceivable, since the omissions which would have to be assumed are incapable of explanation’.11 The obvious question to ask in response to Kümmel is whether these omissions need an ‘explanation’ per se, as though slavish copying should be our default expectation.12 Should it not be enough to observe that equally ‘unexplainable’ reason for leaving out the Woes; while if Luke had known the text of Matthew, he would have had no reason for not giving in his gospel all the Beatitudes that he found there’ (‘Luke and Mark: With a Discussion of Streeter’s Theory’, HTR 26 [1933], pp. 1–55 [3]). 9. Christopher M. Hays, Luke’s Wealth Ethics: A Study in their Coherence and Character (WUNT, 2/275; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2010), p. 71 n. 2. Hays refers to the positive assessments of Luke’s artistry by Goodacre and Matson – see Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem, pp. 123–8; idem, The Case Against Q, pp. 105–20; Mark A. Matson, ‘Luke’s Rewriting of the Sermon on the Mount’, in Mark S. Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin (eds.), Questioning Q (London: SPCK, 2004), pp. 43–70. 10. John Van Seters writes, ‘[Bultmann] has a rather lengthy section [in The History of the Synoptic Tradition] on the “editing of the spoken word” (die Redaktion des Redenstoffes), which deals with the process of assembling the oral tradition into collections of sayings, their arrangement into speeches, and their integration into narrative before the composition of the Gospels. Consequently, this notion of “editorial process” (Vorgang der Redaktion) that encompasses virtually the whole of tradition-history has gone beyond anything that was originally suggested in the Documentary Hypothesis and is simply made to function at the convenience of a literary theory. This effectively does away with authors and sources as they are understood in the Documentary Hypothesis, in spite of what Bultmann has said earlier about presupposing the work of literary criticism’ (The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the ‘Editor’ in Biblical Criticism [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006], pp. 291–2). 11. Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (17th ed.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), p. 57. 12. See Watson, Gospel Writing, pp. 159–60. Our reference to ‘slavish copying’ is hardly a caricature: Sir John C. Hawkins long ago judged transpositions in the 1

Introduction

5

omissions happen whenever a later tradent gives a new version of what happened?13 At the worst moments within the older model’s line of questioning, it has even been suggested that Luke would have treated his predecessor gospels as scripture (or nearly so), and thus was constrained to reproduce all their best parts. Morton Enslin (a ‘Farrerian’ before Farrer) responds to all this with a more measured understanding: It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the only support for this hypothetical Q…is the assumption that neither Matthew nor Luke could have been satis¿ed to use the other so meagerly. What this really means is that we could not so have done. It is easy to forget that none of these writings, which we prize so highly today, was “Holy Scripture” or “canonical” to the other writers.14

Certain aspects of the scissors-and-paste model should have been questioned long ago. It is particularly hard to understand how so many scholars can hold to the Fourth Gospel’s or the Gospel of Thomas’s dependence on the synoptic gospels, with no apparent misgivings about how much material the author of those works passed over or rearranged, and yet ¿nd the idea of Luke omitting or rearranging Matthew’s material

synoptic gospels as evidence of dependence on an oral source, because ‘they are the kind of alterations which a copyist is very unlikely to make [!]’ (‘Three Limitations to St. Luke’s Use of St. Mark’s Gospel’, in W. Sanday [ed.], Studies in the Synoptic Problem [Oxford: Clarendon, 1911], pp. 29–94 [88]). 13. At the same time, it should also be noted that explanations for Luke’s omissions of Matthaean material are often not nearly as dif¿cult to ¿nd as some have supposed. For example, Charles H. Talbert and Edgar V. McKnight ¿nd it ‘dif¿cult to see why Luke would have omitted Matt 16:17-19 had he been using Matthew as his source since it would have ¿tted into both his architectural plan and his theological tendency’ (‘Can the Griesbach Hypothesis Be Falsi¿ed?’, JBL 91 [1972], pp. 338–68 [347]), but it is not unlikely that Luke had his equivalent depiction of Peter as the church’s foundational preacher in mind (Acts 2) when he decided against reproducing Matthew at this point. 14. Morton S. Enslin, ‘Luke and Matthew’, in Abraham A. Neuman and Solomon Zeitlin (eds.), The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Volume of The Jewish Quarterly Review (Philadelphia: Jewish Quarterly Review, 1967), pp. 178–91 (181). Eric Franklin responds to Stein’s praise of the Sermon on the Mount as ‘one of the greatest works of literature ever written’, by noting that Stein has judged Matthew and Luke ‘from a viewpoint reÀecting modern criteria rather than those of the ¿rst century’ (Luke: Interpreter of Paul, Critic of Matthew [JSNTSup, 92; Shef¿eld: JSOT Press, 1994], p. 316 [see Robert H. Stein, The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), p. 96]). See Mark Goodacre, ‘The Synoptic Jesus and the Celluloid Christ: Solving the Synoptic Problem through Film’, JSNT 80 (2000), pp. 31–43.

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Marcan Priority without Q

objectionable.15 Why the double standard? If so many feign dismay at the suggestion that Luke broke up the Sermon on the Mount, why is there no corresponding dismay at the suggestion that John felt free to ignore the stories of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son?16 Farrerians have always been ahead of the curve with respect to scholarship’s view of Luke’s redactional creativity. Already in 1926, E. W. Lummis ridiculed those who disallowed the evangelists to change their source material, while at the same time allowing the authors of those sources to make any sort of change imaginable: ‘[M]urder on the stage is forbidden’, he wrote, ‘but murder behind the scenes is admissible’.17 And in 1938, Enslin prevailed upon scholars to assign more credit to Luke for the way his text differs from Mark.18 2. Wider Acceptance of Luke Writing in Response to his Forebears The second way in which scholarship has moved on to positions potentially facilitating the FH has to do with our understanding of Luke’s motivation for writing. This point is closely related to the move away from a simplistic view of the evangelists as scissors-and-paste compilers (noted above), but it ¿lls out the possibilities thereby afforded with an 15. At one place, in fact, Graham Stanton repeats the standard line that Luke would not have ‘dismantled’ Matthew, ‘scatter[ing]’ or ‘omit[ting]’ material from his ‘¿ve impressive discourses’: ‘Surely Luke would have included [the] words [of Mt. 11.28-30] if he had known them’ (Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus and the Gospels [Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995], pp. 69, 65). This makes it more than a little odd that Stanton, later in the same book, should argue that Thomas’s failure to preserve the canonical order of its synoptic parallels does not logically imply Thomas’s ignorance of the synoptic gospels: ‘the sayings may well have been arranged according to a logic which is not clear to us, in view of our ignorance of Gnostic patterns of thought’ (!) (Gospel Truth?, pp. 90–1). Is it Thomas’s presumed ‘Gnosticism’ that makes the difference for Stanton? 16. Although the arguments for Marcan priority are strong, it should be noted that G. C. Storr’s 1786 attempt to establish that view was based on the dif¿culty of believing that Mark chose to omit so much material from Matthew and Luke. See C. M. Tuckett, ‘The Griesbach Hypothesis in the 19th Century’, JSNT 3 (1979), pp. 29–60 (35). 17. Lummis, ‘A Case against “Q” ’, p. 762. It is worth noting that Matthew’s failure to record all of Mark’s dramatic details was once held against the theory that Matthew used Mark – see Frédéric Louis Godet, A Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke (2 vols.; Clark’s Foreign Theological Library 4/45–46; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1875–89), vol. 1, pp. 291–2. 18. Morton Scott Enslin, Christian Beginnings (New York: Harper & Bros., 1938), p. 434. 1

Introduction

7

appreciation of Luke as a writer seeking to displace his forebears. In the words of Enslin, ‘[E]ach of the evangelists was apparently dissatis¿ed with the work of his predecessors and thought that he could do a better job’.19 Samuel Sandmel would echo this sentiment: ‘Matthew wrote because he disapproved of Mark; and Luke, because he disapproved of Mark and Matthew’.20 For the most part, the recent willingness to consider Luke as writing to supplant, rather than supplement, stems from a deeper appreciation of Luke’s preface: Luke 1 1 Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been ful¿lled among us, 2 just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3 I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very ¿rst, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

The traditional view of the evangelists as writing to supplement one another is based, of course, on their canonical ‘partnership’. But scholars have increasingly detected in Luke’s words a note of dissatisfaction: Luke wrote his gospel because he was not happy with the gospels already on offer, and (in the words of Enslin) ‘thought that he could do a better job’.21 Luke registers one speci¿c disagreement with his 19. Enslin, ‘Luke and Matthew’, p. 181. See David C. Sim, ‘Matthew’s Use of Mark: Did Matthew Intend to Supplement or to Replace His Primary Source?’, NTS 57 (2011), pp. 176–92. In his earlier work, Enslin wrote that ‘it is not unlikely’ that Matthew was one of the ‘many’ to whom Luke refers in 1.1 (Christian Beginnings, p. 433). See now David T. Landry, ‘Luke’s Revision of Matthew’s Infancy Narrative’, in Tat-siong Benny Liew (ed.), Reading Ideologies: Essays on the Bible and Interpretation in Honor of Mary Ann Tolbert (Bible in the Modern World, 40; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Phoenix, 2011), pp. 45–75. 20. Samuel Sandmel, Two Living Traditions: Essays on Religion and the Bible (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972), p. 152. But cf. Watson, who denies that there is any ‘overt criticism’ in Luke’s reference to earlier attempts to write about ‘the events that have taken place in our midst’ (Gospel Writing, p. 123). 21. See Franklin, Luke, p. 170. Sim writes, ‘since [Luke] describes his own Gospel as the result of careful investigation with an emphasis on accuracy and order, it is dif¿cult to avoid the conclusion that those sources that preceded him were not characterised by these qualities’ (‘Matthew’s Use of Mark’, p. 189). See John Moles, ‘Luke’s Preface: The Greek Decree, Classical Historiography and Christian Rede¿nitions’, NTS 57 (2011), pp. 461–82 (482). Marianne Palmer Bonz writes,

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predecessors – he ¿nds their order unsatisfactory22 – but taking him at his word in this matter opens the door to suggestions that Luke is responding to other perceived de¿ciencies. For whatever reason, Michael Goulder did not take the route of viewing Luke as writing in response to perceived de¿ciencies, despite the possibilities of that view. In this regard, the tendency for some of the FH’s detractors to concentrate solely on Goulder’s writings is unfortunate, as Goulder’s views on Luke’s basic reasons for writing perhaps represent one of the weakest parts of his overall argument. Goulder looks upon Luke’s gospel as a Baur-style eirenicon – Goulder’s Luke wrote in order to ‘reconcile’ Mark and Matthew.23 Although Farrerians today owe an obvious debt to Goulder, most of them are ‘Luke…begins his own writing with a hint of dissatisfaction with the work of his predecessors’ (Past as Legacy: Luke–Acts and Ancient Epic [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000], p. 87). 22. Luke is hardly the only ancient writer to improve the order of material as presented in his/her sources. In a recent study of the changes made by the authors/editors of 4QRewritten Pentateuch (consisting of 4Q158 and 4Q364–367), the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Temple Scroll, Molly Zahn found several examples of improvements to the ‘logic of the sequence’: ‘[4Q366 and the Temple Scroll] each evidence a concern for the topical grouping of law: laws on similar subjects should not be scattered haphazardly, but occur together. In 4Q365, the concern for sequence applies to narrative: the logical progression of the storyline prompts the removal or relocation of irrelevant intervening material. Similarly, [the Samaritan Pentateuch] uses rearrangement to solve the logical dif¿culty of the Israelites “seeing the thunder” in Exod 20:18. In other instances, though, other criteria seem to cause the change of sequence. The two largest cases of rearrangement in [the Samaritan Pentateuch] are harmonistic in the sense that the new sequence conforms the text more closely to the sequence of a corresponding pericope’ (Molly M. Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture: Scripture and Exegesis in the 4QReworked Pentateuch Manuscripts [STDJ, 95; Leiden: Brill, 2011], p. 235). Cf. also Josephus’ reordering of biblical events in his Antiquities (see Shaye J. D. Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita and Development as a Historian [Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, 8; Leiden: Brill, 1979], pp. 39–42; Mark Goodacre, ‘On Choosing and Using Appropriate Analogies: A Response to F. Gerald Downing’, JSNT 26 [2003], pp. 237–40, esp. 240). The changes made by Luke on the FH are more numerous, to be sure, but they are not different in kind. It only remains to point out that the 2DH must posit that Matthew changed the sequence of Q just as radically as Farrer’s Luke changed the sequence of the double tradition, even though it is Luke (and not Matthew) who admits to making changes in sequence. 23. Goulder’s working view was that ‘Luke is writing a reconciliation of Mark and Matthew to reassure Theophilus that the apparently dissonant Gospel tradition is trustworthy’ (Luke, p. 200). 1

Introduction

9

unconvinced of his view of Luke’s fundamental motivations.24 Luke’s attitude to his predecessors, as already hinted in his preface (1.1-4), is not nearly as appreciative as Goulder imagines. Luke more likely did not write to supplement or polish Matthew’s gospel, but rather to replace it.25 Mark had made enough blunders, but Matthew, instead of improving things, often made them worse. Luke, in turn, wrote to set the record straight. Most Farrerians writing after Goulder have thought of Luke as writing in response, mainly to Matthew, but also (in some measure) to Mark. Eric Franklin’s work on Luke as a ‘critic of Matthew’ has proven especially valuable in this regard.26 According to Franklin, The immediate spur to writing was quite probably the discovery of Matthew’s Gospel. Luke had lived long with Mark and…its basic stance (revised as he revised Paul’s) remained appropriate for his vision. With Matthew, however, it was otherwise. That Gospel reÀected a stance which basically was inimical to his own. It ran counter to his attitude to the Law by advocating a mixed community living consciously in relation to it and responding to its terms. Its rigorism cut across the outreach which lay at the heart of his own understanding to encourage a closed community, living consciously in a stance of separation from those around them, self-consciously concerned with a standard which denied the legitimacy of those of a different persuasion, building up the status of the community as an anticipation of the kingdom of God, and deliberately denying the sphere of the kingdom to the people of Israel.27 24. Goodacre’s ¿rst book was dedicated to testing Goulder’s views, effectively ‘weeding out’ many of the more unfortunate aspects of his particular arguments for the FH – see Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (JSNTSup, 133; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1996). 25. Mogens Müller writes, ‘It could be maintained that the obsession for having sources for reconstructing the life of Jesus made blind the more obvious view that the later gospels are to be seen as rewritings of their predecessor(s)’ (‘Luke – the Fourth Gospel? The “Rewritten Bible” Concept as a Way to Understand the Nature of the Later Gospels’, in Sven-Olav Back and Matti Kankaannieni [eds.], Voces Clamantium in Deserto. Essays in Honor of Kari Syreeni [Studier i exegetik och judaistik utgivna af Teologiska fakulteten vid Åbo Akademi, 11; Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 2012], pp. 231–42 [233]). 26. Franklin, Luke. Franklin writes, ‘[S]ubjectivity…is to the fore in [Graham] Stanton’s question…, when he asks, “Why did Luke ¿nd Matthew so unattractive, when in almost all other parts of early Christianity it became the favourite gospel?” But would Paul have found Matthew attractive if he had known it? The answer is by no means obvious, and if it could be guessed at, it would almost certainly be “No” ’ (p. 307 n. 1). See also Shellard, New Light, pp. 59–84. Stanton’s question can now be found in his The Gospels and Jesus (2d ed.; Oxford Bible Series; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 25. 27. Franklin, Luke, p. 381. Müller similarly writes (apparently independently of Franklin), ‘[B]y making fruitful the concept of “rewritten Bible/Scripture”, it could

10

Marcan Priority without Q

Craig Keener exempli¿es the older way of thinking: ‘material like the tensions between the infancy narratives and the two authors’ divergent treatments of Judas’s death (Matt 27:3–10; Acts 1:18–19)’, he tells us, makes Luke’s dependence on Matthew ‘well-nigh impossible’.28 This way of thinking is still prominent in many circles, but it shows an unwillingness to put oneself in the sandals of Farrer’s Luke. How many theologically thoughtful evangelists would be open to Matthew’s birth narrative, with its scandalous suggestion that Jesus’ birth was astrologically determined? And how unlikely is it that Luke preferred Judas to meet his doom at God’s hand rather than his own? The idea that Luke was responding to Matthew has also helped to overturn the presumption that Luke’s handling of Mark’s material can serve as a template for his use of other sources. Streeter had laid it down as a ‘cardinal principle’ to presume ‘that Matthew and Luke would each deal with his second authority in much the same way as he dealt with his ¿rst’,29 and one can see this presumption behind his well-known characterization of a (proto-)Farrerian Luke as a ‘crank’.30 Christopher Tuckett reÀects this way of thinking: ‘Why should Luke have had so much respect for the order of Mark, scarcely changing it at all, and yet change

very well be argued that the Sermon on the Plain is one of several devices in Luke to deconstruct the picture of Jesus as the new Moses prevailing in Matthew. Thus the attitude to the Law of Moses is quite another in Luke than in Matthew where a number of places show that the law is upheld in principle although the ceremonial parts of it are relativized by being prioritized below not least the commandment of love of one’s neighbour’ (‘Luke’, p. 236). Cf. James Hardy Ropes, The Synoptic Gospels (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), pp. 73–4. 28. Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary. Vol. 1, Introduction and 1:1–2:47 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), p. 395 n. 77. 29. B. H. Streeter, ‘On the Original Order of Q’, in Sanday (ed.), Studies in the Synoptic Problem, pp. 141–64 (145). See the response to Streeter in H. G. Jameson, The Origin of the Synoptic Gospels: A Revision of the Synoptic Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1922), p. 34. Maurice Casey objects to Streeter’s ‘cardinal principle’, on the terms of the 2DH itself: ‘Streeter…stored up future trouble by arguing that very little was omitted from Q by Matthew and Luke. His arguments for this position carry no weight at all. His ¿rst is that Matthew omitted very little from Mark. This, however, demonstrates nothing, since Matthew might have preferred Mark because it gave a coherent outline for the ministry, but felt that it needed expanding with some more of Jesus’ teaching’ (An Aramaic Approach to Q: Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke [SNTSMS, 122; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], p. 5). 30. Streeter, The Four Gospels, p. 183. See Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels, pp. 127–8. 1

Introduction

11

the order of Matthew at almost every point?’31 This line of questioning has had a hold on gospels research for far too long.32 The idea that Luke wrote in response to one or more of his sources immediately suggests that he might not have handled all his sources even-handedly. For example, he might have shown much greater respect for Mark’s order of material than for that of some other source. In fact, that he should do so makes perfect sense, especially if one grants that he knew just how arti¿cial Matthew’s non-Marcan structures are. Lummis long ago wrote, ‘[Luke] had Mark before him, and he must have perceived, as clearly as we do, that when Mark mentions a discourse Matthew takes occasion to insert a series of Sayings. Luke is not bound to infer that those Sayings were spoken at that particular time, or at that time only.’33 The turn toward a more realistic understanding of Luke’s attitude toward his sources is certainly a welcome development, all the more so for Farrerians. 3. Increased Awareness of Luke’s Literary Ability In keeping with the views displaced by the previously discussed developments, scholars have often denigrated Luke’s literary ability. When they fail to understand the logic behind Luke’s arrangement of material, they often ascribe this failure to literary obtuseness on Luke’s part. This, in turn, plays into their judgments over whether Luke would have rearranged Matthew’s material in the manner that the FH suggests. Robert Stein, for example, ¿nds in the idea of Luke’s use of Matthew no way of explaining ‘why Luke would have rearranged this material in a 31. Christopher M. Tuckett, ‘The Existence of Q’, in Ronald A. Piper (ed.), The Gospel behind the Gospels: Current Studies on Q (NovTSup, 75; Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 19–47 (45). 32. The idea that Luke was resistant to any change of order was applied most inÀexibly during the heyday of the proto-Luke hypothesis, which saw Joachim Jeremias famously describe Luke as ‘an enemy of rearrangement’ (The Eucharistic Words of Jesus [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966], p. 98). See also idem, ‘PerikopenUmstellungen bei Lukas?’, NTS 4 (1958), pp. 115–19. Franklin writes, ‘[B]elief in Q as a source of Luke almost of necessity demands postulating something like the proto-Luke theory if the hypothesis upon which Q is built, namely Luke’s conservative handling of his sources, is to be upheld’ (Luke, p. 288). See also Arthur Vööbus, The Prelude to the Lukan Passion Narrative: Tradition-, Redaction-, Cult-, Motif-Historical and Source-Critical Studies (Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 17; Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1968), p. 136. 33. Lummis, ‘A Case against “Q” ’, p. 762.

12

Marcan Priority without Q

totally different and “artistically inferior” format’.34 This raises the question, of course, as to whether Luke’s arrangement is really ‘artistically inferior’. Mark Goodacre notes, As long as Luke’s order in the Central Section is regarded as incomprehensible, recourse to a conservative dependence on a hypothetical lost source seems necessary. As soon as one begins to value Luke’s creative expertise, his use of Matthew becomes more plausible. Or, to put it the other way round, the more that those who believe in Q appreciate Luke’s literary ability, the more the argument that Luke’s order equals Q’s order will break down.35

At one time, scholars were so bafÀed by Luke’s arrangement that some (including Farrer’s forerunners) even questioned his ‘force of intellect’.36 Times have really changed. In the past twenty years, Lucan scholarship has expended considerable effort rehabilitating Luke’s ability as a writer. In fact, it would appear that Luke is undergoing the same vindication of literary accomplishment that Mark underwent during the 1970s and 1980s. If we may say so, Luke is more deserving of the treatment than Mark ever was. 4. Wider Acceptance of a Late Date for Luke The past couple of decades have also seen a widened acceptance of a later date for Luke, a development that plays conveniently into the Farrerian claim that Luke knew Matthew’s gospel. In fact, the later we date Luke, the more dif¿cult it becomes to maintain his ignorance of Matthew.37 Although many scholars continue to date Luke sometime in the 80s (or thereabouts), a signi¿cant number now date Luke–Acts a whole generation later. Many now put Luke within the New Testament’s 34. Stein, The Synoptic Problem, p. 95. Heather Gorman addresses the claims of Stein and others in her contribution to the present volume. 35. Mark S. Goodacre, ‘Blind Alley?’, JSNT 76 (1999), pp. 33–52 (44–5). 36. According to William Manson, Luke is ‘less intellectual and less theological than Matthew’ (The Gospel of Luke [MNTC; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930], p. xxiv). Although Ropes correctly recognized how much freedom Luke exercised, he also found him to be ‘a man of far less originality or force of intellect’ than Matthew (The Synoptic Gospels, p. 59). Ropes plays Luke’s ‘artistic feeling’ over against ‘deeper relations of thought’ (p. 72). 37. Watson notes that the 2DH must, of necessity, date Matthew and Luke to the same time, ‘for otherwise the earlier of the two will be known to the later and independence will be compromised’ (Gospel Writing, p. 131). 1

Introduction

13

second-century stratum, along with the Pastoral Epistles, 2 Peter, and perhaps a few other writings. Farrerians are not agreed as to whether Luke postdates the Fourth Gospel, but most of them are agreed that Luke is later than traditional scholarship allows. Richard Pervo’s book advancing a second-century date for Acts has made a signi¿cant impact, not only on Farrerians but on Lucan scholars in general.38 The recent trend toward af¿rming Luke’s dependence on a collection of the Pauline letters has also caused some rethinking of the date of Acts.39 38. Richard I. Pervo, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2006), pp. 149–200. See also John C. O’Neill, The Theology of Acts in its Historical Setting (2d ed.; London: SPCK, 1970), p. 21; Niels Hyldahl, ‘Über die Abfassungszeit des lukanischen Doppelwerks’, in Martina Janßen, F. Stanley Jones, and Jürgen Wehnert (eds.), Frühes Christentum und Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (NTOA/SUNT, 95; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), pp. 75–82; Müller, ‘Luke’, pp. 231–42. Keener responds negatively to Pervo (Acts, pp. 396–400), but his arguments for dating Acts much earlier are not strong. E.g., he thinks it counts against the view that Luke knew Paul’s letters that Luke never cites the letters – since ‘historians…frequently displayed their documentary research (or invention at times) by citing them’ (p. 234) – but he fails to note that Luke does not cite any of his sources for Acts. This point also blunts Keener’s reference to Stanley Porter as one who thinks that Luke did not use Paul’s letters for Acts (p. 234 n. 91, citing Stanley E. Porter, Paul in Acts [Library of Pauline Studies; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008 (orig. 1999)], p. 206): Porter elsewhere writes, ‘[E]ven though Luke knew important facts, he did not feel compelled to relate them. The same is perhaps true regarding knowledge of Paul’s letters. What saves this from being sheer hypothesis are indicators throughout Acts that, although Luke does not depict Paul as a letter-writer or quote his letters explicitly, he seems to know what Paul had written in some of his letters. This is shown by numerous verbal, conceptual and perspectival factors, as Walker has shown’ (‘When and How Was the Pauline Canon Compiled? An Assessment of Theories’, in Stanley E. Porter [ed.], The Pauline Canon [PAST, 1; Leiden: Brill, 2004], pp. 95–127 [126], citing William O. Walker, ‘Acts and the Pauline Corpus Reconsidered’, pp. 63–70). In other words, if Porter still maintains that Luke did not use Paul’s letters directly, he appears to think that he at least used them indirectly. 39. This is not to say that the contrary view is crumbling – there is still a tendency in some circles to assume that a ¿rst-century date is intrinsically more likely. It is almost as though the year 100 C.E. represents (for some) a line drawn in the sand, and that any willingness to date a NT writing after that date represents a dangerous departure from a well-advised convention. E.g., E. E. Ellis writes that ‘second-century dates’ have ‘little to commend them’, but his argument for an early date is based solely on the importance of Jerusalem for Luke (The Making of the New Testament Documents [BibInt, 39; Leiden: Brill, 1999], p. 389 n. 67). Brevard Childs writes that a date for Luke ‘between 100 and 130 is highly unlikely and lacks any alleged dependency on Josephus or Marcion’ (The Church’s Guide for Reading

14

Marcan Priority without Q

The Present Volume The present volume consists of nine essays defending or exploring aspects of the FH, together with a response, from the perspective of the 2DH, by John S. Kloppenborg. A word of clari¿cation on the title of this book is in order. The words ‘Marcan Priority without Q’ are based on the label ‘Mark without Q’, which E. P. Sanders had applied to the theory in Studying the Synoptic Gospels.40 Several Farrerians warmed to the label ‘Mark without Q’/ ‘Marcan Priority without Q’, as it certainly conveys its meaning transparently. For purposes of the present work, however, the label ‘Farrer hypothesis’ has the advantage of being better established and less ambiguous. (One disadvantage of using ‘Marcan priority without Q’ as a label for the FH is that there are other source theories that could also be described in those terms – most notably, the ‘Matthaean posteriority’ position associated with Ronald Huggins and others.41) In using ‘Marcan Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008], p. 224). He does not explain why he ¿nds a second-century date so unlikely, unless he thinks that the alleged lack of ‘dependency on Josephus or Marcion’ somehow makes it so. For the evidence of Luke’s dependence on Josephus (contra Childs), see now Pervo, Dating Acts, pp. 149–200. See Shellard, New Light, pp. 23– 34; and David Landry’s essay in the current volume. 40. E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM, 1989), p. 63. The FH has gone by a number of labels. As its most proli¿c defender in the generation following Farrer was Michael Goulder, the theory was sometimes named after Goulder rather than after Farrer. (This could lead to confusion among abbreviations, as ‘Goulder hypothesis’ would presumably be abbreviated similarly to ‘Griesbach hypothesis’.) Sometimes the theory was called the ‘Farrer–Goulder hypothesis’, or even (adding in the theory’s leading defender today) the ‘Farrer–Goulder–Goodacre hypothesis’. ‘Farrer hypothesis’ seems the best to us, as it is Farrer’s well known article, ‘On Dispensing with Q’, that planted the seed of the position (A. M. Farrer, ‘On Dispensing with Q’, in D. E. Nineham [ed.], Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot [Oxford: Blackwell, 1955], pp. 55–88). Yet it should be pointed out that Farrer himself is not the originator of the theory bearing his name, as there were others before him who argued that Luke’s use of Matthew was preferable to resorting to Q – see Lummis, ‘A Case against “Q” ’, pp. 755–65; Ropes, The Synoptic Gospels, pp. 67–8, 93; and Enslin, Christian Beginnings, p. 433. 41. See Ronald V. Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority: A Preliminary Proposal’, NovT 34 (1992), pp. 1–22; Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Collection and Origin of the Canonical Gospels (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 169–207; Erik Aurelius, ‘Gottesvolk und Außenseiter: Eine geheime Beziehung Lukas-Matthäus’, NTS 47 (2001), pp. 428–41; George A. Blair, The Synoptic Gospels Compared (Studies in 1

Introduction

15

Priority without Q’ in its title, therefore, the present volume is not calling for that label to be applied in place of ‘the Farrer hypothesis’ (as the subtitle makes clear).42 The subtitle (‘Explorations in the Farrer Hypothesis’) forges a link with an earlier collection of essays. In 2004, Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin edited a volume entitled Questioning Q, ¿ve contributors to which have also contributed to the present volume (Eve, Goodacre, Olson, Peterson, Poirier). In the closing paragraph of that volume’s ¿nal essay, Goodacre described a ‘world without Q’ as something ‘full of potential for future investigation’, and signed off with encouragement for the task: ‘Let’s begin exploring it’.43 We see the present volume as an answer to that call.44

Bible and Early Christianity, 55; Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2003); Robert K. MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority: An Exploration of Matthew’s Use of Mark and Luke as a Solution to the Synoptic Problem (LNTS, 501; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). 42. The study of the synoptic problem has been plagued by confusing labels in the past, and we should welcome anything aiming to lessen that confusion. Few conventions brought more confusion than when neo-Griesbachians, in pointed opposition to the ‘Two-Document hypothesis’, began to refer to their position as the ‘Two-Gospel hypothesis’. Although ‘2GH’ is now the accepted designation, works that use that convention are needlessly dif¿cult to read. (In at least one instance, the label ‘Two-Gospel’ was confused throughout a review with ‘Two-Document’, leading to a strange discussion in which the ‘TDH’ is treated as a competitor with the ‘TSH’ [!] – see J. Verheyden, review of David Laird Dungan, A History of the Synoptic Problem, in International Journal of the Classical Tradition 8 [2002], pp. 471–75.) 43. Mark Goodacre, ‘A World without Q’, in Goodacre and Perrin (eds.), Questioning Q, pp. 174–9 (179). 44. The present volume does not in all respects continue with Questioning Q’s focus. Questioning Q was devoted, not to the FH in particular – although it featured prominently – but rather to Q skepticism in a broader sense. One might say that the critical goal of the essays in Questioning Q was to advance a negative argument. By contrast, the present work features essays that are negative in their critical goals, as well as several that are positive.

Chapter 1

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAIL: EXORCISING Q FROM THE BEELZEBUL CONTROVERSY Eric Eve

1. Introduction In all three synoptic gospels, the Beelzebul Controversy (Mt. 12.22-37 // Mk 3.20-30 // Lk. 11.14-23) takes the form of a sorcery accusation.1 It also provides a textbook example of where, exceptionally, it is Matthew rather than Mark that constitutes the ‘middle term’ among the three synoptics.2 On the Two-Document hypothesis (henceforth 2DH) this is explained as a Mark–Q overlap, meaning that versions of this pericope appeared in both Mark and Q, and that Matthew combined the two (while Luke, in this case, broadly followed Q alone).3 On the Griesbach hypothesis (henceforth GH) the data are explained on the basis that Luke and Mark each adapted Matthew (there would be little need to argue for Mark’s conÀation of Matthew and Luke in this case).4 Supporters of the Farrer hypothesis (henceforth FH) would instead argue that here Matthew adapted Mark and Luke adapted Matthew.5 1. So, e.g., John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark (SP, 2; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2002), p. 130; see also Eric Eve, The Jewish Context of Jesus’ Miracles (JSNTSup, 231; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 2002), pp. 361– 76. 2. For this terminology and its application to the Beelzebul Controversy, see E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM, 1989), pp. 54, 67–83. 3. For a classic statement of this position, see Burnett Hillman Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1924), p. 186. 4. For a treatment of this pericope from a Griesbachian or GH perspective, see Allan J. McNicol, David L. Dungan and David B. Peabody, Beyond the Q Impasse: Luke’s Use of Matthew (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1996), pp. 176–8. 5. See, e.g., R. T. Simpson, ‘The Major Agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark’, NTS 12 (1965–66), pp. 273–84, reprinted in Arthur J. Bellinzoni (ed.), The Two-Source Hypothesis: A Critical Appraisal (Macon: Mercer University

1. The Devil in the Detail

17

While at ¿rst sight the Beelzebul Controversy seems to offer opponents of the 2DH a parade example of a major agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark, it has been used by some defenders of the 2DH, notably F. Gerald Downing, to argue for the implausibility of the FH. In particular, Downing argues that since Luke more closely resembles Matthew where Matthew is not following Mark in this pericope, Luke must have deliberately gone to the trouble of unpicking Mark from his use of Matthew, which would be quite unlike any procedure employed by any other ancient author.6 Downing’s case relies in part on the belief that where an ancient author was working with more than one source, he would try to follow the common witness of his sources (which Luke appears not to do in this pericope). However, K. A. Olson has argued that this is not the case, and that an ancient author would be more likely to follow one source at a time in his account of each incident, although he might be inÀuenced by his recollection of his other sources. Olson also suggests that Downing over-estimates the extent to which Luke departs from the ‘common witness’.7 Again, part of Downing’s argument against the FH is that ancient authors did not closely conÀate two or more sources as he believes the FH Luke would have to have done. Downing nevertheless regards the conÀation Matthew would have to have performed on Mark and Q as being of a very basic Press, 1985), pp. 381–95; Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974), pp. 330–3; idem, Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNTSup, 20; 2 vols.; Shef¿eld: JSOT, 1989), pp. 502–6; H. Benedict Green, ‘Matthew 12.22-50 and Parallels: An Alternative to Matthean ConÀation’, in Christopher M. Tuckett (ed.), Synoptic Studies: The Ampleforth Conferences of 1982 and 1983 (JSNTSup, 7; Shef¿eld: JSOT, 1984), pp. 157–76. 6. F. Gerald Downing, ‘Towards the Rehabilitation of Q’, NTS 11 (1964), pp. 169–81, reprinted in Bellinzoni, Two-Source Hypothesis, pp. 269–93; idem, ‘Contemporary Analogies to the Gospels and Acts: “Genres” or “Motifs” ’, in Tuckett (ed.), Synoptic Studies, pp. 51–65; idem, ‘Compositional Conventions and the Synoptic Problem’, JBL 107 (1988), pp. 69–85, reprinted in F. Gerald Downing, Doing Things with Words in the First Christian Century (JSNTSup, 200; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 2000), pp. 152–73; idem, ‘Disagreements of Each Evangelist with the Minor Close Agreements of the Other Two’, ETL 80 (2004), pp. 445–69; see also M. Eugene Boring, ‘The Synoptic Problem, “Minor Agreements”, and the Beelzebul Pericope’, in F. Van Segbroeck, C. M. Tuckett, G. Van Belle, and J. Verheyden (eds.), The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck (BETL, 100; 3 vols.; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 587–619; Christopher M. Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity: Studies on Q (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), pp. 31–4. 7. Ken Olson, ‘Unpicking on the Farrer Theory’, in Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin (eds.), Questioning Q (London: SPCK, 2004), pp. 127–50.

18

Marcan Priority without Q

type that was within the range of ancient authorial techniques.8 Olson counters that unless Q very closely resembled Matthew here (in which case Q would be superÀuous to explain Luke), Matthew’s conÀation of Mark and Q would be a novel and problematic procedure.9 While Downing’s and Olson’s discussion of how ancient authors would have worked injects some helpful controls into the debate, there is a further, more fundamental question to be asked, and that is whether the gospel authors worked with texts in the visual manner effectively presupposed by most synoptic source criticism of the past two centuries or so. This is not to deny the existence of some sort of literary relationship between the synoptic gospels, but rather to raise questions about how their authors actually made use of written sources. Over the last decade a growing chorus of voices has started to be raised against treating the relationship between the gospels as a purely literary one. In particular, four further related factors need to be taken into account. The ¿rst is the likelihood that the gospel authors were already authoritative performers of the oral tradition, and thus thoroughly steeped in it, before they ever set pen to papyrus (or, more likely, before they got their scribes to do so, since ancient authorship was most usually by dictation). A corollary of this is the likelihood that all the Evangelists were familiar with much of the material in their sources before they came across it in a written text, and that they may have continued to treat it with the same mix of freedom and stability that is characteristic of oral tradition. The other three factors relate to the role of memory in composition, the social memory of the communities to which the Evangelists belonged (which would have provided what Werner Kelber calls the ‘biosphere’ in which they operated), and the fact that in common with many other ancient authors the Evangelists probably relied on their memories of their sources to a much greater extent than most modern authors would. Thus, for example, Matthew and Luke’s use of Mark by no means necessitates that they had a copy of Mark open in front of them as they wrote or dictated their own gospels, or even that they had someone read the text of Mark to them just before they wrote or dictated their own version. Instead, one must reckon with the possibility that, at least for some if not the much of the time, they worked from their memory of whatever sources they used, and that their use of them was not so much a matter of redaction in the sense of literary editing as of reworking the material in memory.10 8. Downing, Doing Things with Words, pp. 159–68. 9. Olson, ‘Unpicking’, pp. 147–9. 10. Werner H. Kelber, ‘The Case of the Gospels: Memory’s Desire and the Limits of Historical Criticism’, Oral Tradition 17 (2002), pp. 55–86; James D. G.

1

1. The Devil in the Detail

19

This is not the place to work out all the consequences of these insights, and in dealing with gospel parallels in some detail it will be hard not to give the impression that one is envisaging authors scrutinizing written sources open before them. In an attempt to correct that impression I shall speak of Matthew and Luke ‘reworking’ their sources rather than ‘redacting’ (or ‘editing’) them, and invite readers to entertain the probability that this reworking was, to a greater or lesser extent, carried out in memory on the basis of previous oral performances of the source texts in question rather than with the source texts laid out in front of the Evangelists for visual consultation, and also that Matthew and Luke may have known oral versions of something like or something related to the Beelzebul Controversy quite independently of anything they found in written documents. Again it must be emphasized that this is not to dispute that Matthew and Luke used written sources, it is rather to question how they used them. In making a close comparison of gospel parallels it is also hard not to give the impression that their authors were working with ¿xed, stable texts the precise wording of which we know, which clearly is not the case. The procedure of attending to the precise wording of each gospel as it appears in a printed synopsis must therefore be seen as a pragmatic approximation to what may have happened, justi¿ed on the assumption that what now appears to be distinctive to each gospel is quite likely to go back to its author. Although no one will be persuaded of the truth of a particular solution to the Synoptic Problem on the basis of a single pericope, the Beelzebul Controversy does provide a useful test case.11 This essay will argue that Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making, 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 210–38; Vernon K. Robbins, ‘Interfaces of Orality and Literature in the Gospel of Mark’, in Richard Horsley, Jonathan Draper, and John Miles Foley (eds.), Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory and Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), pp. 125–46; Richard Horsley, Jesus in Context: Power, People and Performance (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), pp. 56–71, 89–103, 110–25; Rafael Rodriguez, Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text (LNTS, 407; London: T&T Clark International, 2010), pp. 21–38, 106–12; Andrew Gregory, ‘What Is Literary Dependence?’, in Paul Foster, Andrew Gregory, John S. Kloppenborg, and J. Verheyden (eds.), New Studies in the Synoptic Problem (BETL, 139; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2011), pp. 87–114 (95–103). 11. As Boring, ‘Beelzebul Pericope’, p. 600, also suggests. Unfortunately, Boring’s own treatment of the Beelzebul Controversy from the point of view of the FH in ‘Beelzebul Pericope’, pp. 612–14, is largely limited to disputing Goulder’s claim to have identi¿ed Matthaean vocabulary in the non-Marcan material. That Boring effectively presupposes the existence of Q in his attempted rebuttal of Goulder makes his case look suspiciously circular.

20

Marcan Priority without Q

the pattern of agreements and disagreements it exhibits are more plausibly explained on the FH than on the 2DH, and will attempt to do so in more detail than is possible in the context of a broader discussion.12 For the sake of reasonable brevity, Marcan priority will simply be assumed. 2. The Beelzebul Controversy in Mark In Mark’s gospel the Beelzebul Controversy occurs towards the end of ch. 3, and represents a culmination of Jesus’ clash with the authorities. The section Mk 2.1–3.6 contains a series of controversy stories, culminating in the Pharisees and Herodians plotting together to destroy Jesus (Mk 3.6). On the face of it this plot seems to have no apparent effect, but at Mk 3.22 the ‘scribes who came down from Jerusalem’ (Mk 3.22) appear on the scene with an accusation that could destroy Jesus’ reputation (or honour). More immediately, Mark’s account of the Beelzebul Controversy is intercalated between two parts of a story in which Jesus’ family think him mad, and Jesus declares his true family to be those who do the will of God (Mk 3.20-21, 31-35). The nature of the scribes’ accusation is clear enough. That Jesus can cast out demons is not in dispute; the issue is by what power he does so. The scribes claim that it is by Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Jesus retorts that if Satan colluded in the casting out of demons his kingdom would be on the point of collapse; presumably we are meant to suppose either that Satan would not be so self-destructive, or else that Satan was quite evidently not yet defeated.13 Several counters would have been available to the scribes (for example, that evil spirits do not constitute an organized kingdom but a chaotic free-for-all, or that Satan might well order the tactical withdrawal of the odd demon or two in order to aid the legitimation of a false prophet), but Mark’s scribes are not allowed any come-back, and instead his Jesus continues by arguing that the success of his exorcisms demonstrates that the strong man (presumably Satan or Beelzebul) has been bound, allowing his possessions to be plundered

12. For example, neither Streeter, Four Gospels (arguing for the 2DH), nor Mark S. Goodacre, The Case against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002) (arguing for the FH), ¿nds the space to argue about this pericope in any detail. 13. So D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark (rev. ed.; Penguin New Testament Commentaries; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 116; cf. Donahue and Harrington, Mark, p. 131. Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel according to St Mark (BNTC; London: A. & C. Black, 1991), p, 116, identi¿es some tension in Jesus’ reply: Satan’s kingdom is toppling, but through invasion rather than civil war. 1

1. The Devil in the Detail

21

(presumably referring to the freeing of possessed persons).14 Finally, Mark brands the wilful blindness of his opponents – seeing the Holy Spirit at work and attributing it to Beelzebul – as the one unforgivable sin, presumably because there can be no hope for those who see something good but label it as evil.15 3. Matthew’s Treatment Matthew’s version is complicated by an anticipation of the Beelzebul Controversy at Mt. 9.34 prior to the controversy proper at Mt. 12.22-32 (see Table 1 below). On the assumption of Marcan priority this may have arisen from Matthew’s desire to preserve the Marcan context of the Beelzebul Controversy while scattering that context in his reordering of Mark. Matthew 8–9 contains a sequence of miracle stories that incorporate, at Mt. 9.1-17, the ¿rst three of the controversy stories that appear at Mk 2.1-18. This is interrupted by the Matthaean parallel to the Healing of the Ruler’s Daughter and the Woman with a Haemorrhage (Mt. 9.1826) before the purely Matthaean stories of the Healing of two Blind Men (Mt. 9.27-31) and the Healing of a Dumb Man (Mt. 9.32-34), which were perhaps suggested by the pair of healings at Mk 7.31-37 and Mk 8.22-26. By making the dumb man a victim of demon possession, Matthew sets up the contrasting reaction of the crowds (Mt. 9.33b, cf. Mk 7.37) and the Pharisees, who complain, in words borrowed from Mk 3.22 (but lacking the name Beelzebul), that Jesus casts out demons by the prince of demons. These contrasting reactions may well be intended by Matthew as contrasting reactions to Jesus’ healing ministry throughout chs. 8 and 9. Certainly there is little in the wording of Mt. 9.32-34 to suggest that it is anything other than a Matthaean composition (loosely based on Mark).16 14. Donahue and Harrington, Mark, p. 131, Hooker, Mark, pp. 116–17, and Nineham, Mark, p. 120, all take Mark’s language here to be reminiscent of Isa. 49.24–25. 15. Donahue and Harrington, Mark, pp. 131–6; Hooker, Mark, p. 117; Nineham, Mark, pp. 121–2. 16. The passage contains the following words that Goulder, Midrash, pp. 476– 85, classi¿es as Matthaean or semi-Matthaean, with vocabulary statistics in the form (Matthew–Mark–Luke): ÁÑÎŦË (7–3–4), ÇĎ ĚÏÂÇţ (33–2–15), šºÑÅ (114–42– 96), θţÅÇĸÀ (13–1–2), ÇĥÌÑË (32–10–21) and `ÊɸŢ (12–2–12); of these Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (JSNTSup, 133; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1996), pp. 70–1, regards only ÁÑÎŦË and ÇĎ ĚÏÂÇţ as (semiթ)Matthaean, but this does not make the rest unMatthaean. The ¿nal phrase, ëÅ ÌŊ ÓÉÏÇÅÌÀ ÌľÅ »¸ÀÄÇÅţÑÅ ëÁ¹ŠÂ¼À ÌÛ »¸ÀÄŦÅÀ¸, could be lifted straight from Mk 3.22, and also supplies the vocabulary for the opening ëÁ¹Â¾¿šÅÌÇË ÌÇı »¸ÀÄÇÅţÇÍ. The remaining words of any consequence are ÂŠÂ¼Ñ (26–21–31),

Marcan Priority without Q

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Table 1 Mt. 9.32-34

Mt. 12.22-24

Mk 7.32, 3.22

ĤÌľÅ »ò ëƼÉÏÇÄñÅÑÅ Ċ»Çİ ÈÉÇÊûżºÁ¸Å ¸ĤÌŊ ÓÅ¿ÉÑÈÇÅ ÁÑÎġÅ »¸ÀÄÇÅÀ½ĠļÅÇÅ. Á¸Ė ëÁ¹Â¾¿ñÅÌÇË ÌÇı »¸ÀÄÇÅĕÇÍ ëÂÚ¾ʼŠĝ ÁÑÎĠË. 33 Á¸Ė 뿸įĸʸŠÇĎ ěÏÂÇÀ ÂñºÇÅ̼Ë, Ĥ»ñÈÇ̼ ëÎÚž ÇĩÌÑË ëÅ ÌŊ `ÊɸûÂ. 34 ÇĎ »ò ¸ÉÀʸėÇÀ 켺ÇÅ,