From y.kuchinsky@utoronto.ca Mon Jun 1 01:02:18 1998 Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 15:05:19 -0400 From: y.kuchinsky@utoronto.ca To: Mark Goodacre Cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Re: Thomas and the Synoptics On Thu, 28 May 1998, Mark Goodacre wrote: > Yuri wrote: > > > Mark, your probably mean 1 Cor 15. I previously pointed you to the > > evidence that this is an interpolation. This is the only place in > > the whole Pauline courpus mentioning "the twelve" which alone should > > make us suspicious. > > Thanks for the correction; 1 Cor. 15 it is. I am unconvinced by the > argument that this is an interpolation, though Robert Price's article > on the subject (http://daniel.drew.edu/~ddoughty/rp1cor15.html) is > as good a defence as could be made of the claim. Mark, Well, perhaps this matter cannot really be settled definitively if we only take this passage in isolation. A more general theory is needed, such as proposed e.g. by Loisy and by Munro. But Price's arguments seem well thought out. > The lack of 'twelve' elsewhere in Paul does not tell in favour of > interpolation. But we are still permitted to ask, If the 12 were so well established and so important at the time of Paul, how come he doesn't mention them, except for this one instance? > Paul is passing on what he says he has "received" > here and the rareness of the term might as easily be a sign of > authenticity. I don't see how. > > I said it before, and will say it > > again: There's little more than unreasoned faith on which to base > > our myth of the "basic textual unity of the gospels". Any wholesale > > comparison e.g. of "the unity of Mt" against the "unity of Mk" seems > > rather naive to me. In this sense, the "Synoptic Problem" as such is > > a myth in so far as these questionable assumptions are adhered to. > > You are raising genuinely important issues here and ones that -- > working in Birmingham -- make me more sensitive to than most. As you > know, David Parker's recent book is all about the "Living Text" of > the Gospels. It features a fine discussion of the Synoptic Problem > in the light of text criticism. Yes, Mark, I've already read his book. While I don't agree with everything he says there, that part seems valid to me. D. C. Parker, THE LIVING TEXT OF THE GOSPELS, Cambridge, 1997. He seems to support the idea of continuing general harmonization of gospel texts well after the time when they were first written. And he directly confronts the validity of the usual approach to the "Synoptic Problem" (so-called). Here are some quotes. I don't have the book with me at the moment, so I cannot give more page citations, although I think these quotes are all from p. 121. [begin quotes] "I'm proposing that the evidence does not permit us to attempt a documentary solution. ... ...the comparison of published editions assumes, in its two-dimentional diagrams, that there is a single point of contact between two texts, for example, the single contact when Mt copied Mk, and there was an end of the matter. I am proposing a three-dimentional diagram, in which the third dimension represents a series of contacts between texts each of which may have changed since the previous contact. For example, Mt copies bits out of Mk in reproducing a tradition; then a later copy of Mk is enriched by some of Mt's alteration; and next a copy of Mt (already different from the one we began with) is influenced by something from the also changed Mk. (p. 121) [end quotes] Best wishes, Yuri.