Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 18:39:47 +0000 From: Mark Goodacre To: E. Bruce Brooks Cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Re: Thomas/Q Project Bruce wrote: > . . . I find the data to be extraordinarily suggestive, and am > preparing a query for general comment, but in the meantime, could > Mark Goodacre (or Stevan Davies, or anybody else) state for me and > perhaps for others: of what hypothesis was this project a test? As I see it, the value of the project is to test the following statement: >"Luke's form of Q sayings is generally supported by > Thomas against Matthew," which was made by Mahlon in June 5. I balked at the statement because it did not seem to me, at first sight, to correspond to my own reading of the evidence. It thought it "a little strong". I have therefore been happy to see the matter investigated properly. We will have to see if the results do bear Mahlon's statement out. I am most grateful to Bob for his summarising of the results. These will need to be adjusted a bit in relation to the later comments on the material. I will have a look at this myself on Monday. I am afraid that I am a terrible stickler and I want to go back to one or two of the examples, including one of my own. Bruce wrote: > What sequence of texts is implied here? I can read statement (1) as > envisioning the sequence Q > Luke > Mt/Thos, and statement (2) as > countersuggesting the sequence Q > Luke/Thos > Mt, in which case the > project to test the relative affinity of Mt/Thos vs Luke/Thos makes > experimental sense, since its results would tend to support one over > the other. But I suspect that the writers may easily have had other > and more complex text sequences in mind, or even > authorial/redactional agendas rather than text sequences per se. As I understand it, (2) is the key (testing to see whether Thomas supports the thesis that "Luke's form of Q sayings is generally supported by Thomas against Matthew,") and Bruce's comments about the sequence and "experimental sense" are right. The discussion of the results will be the key. All the best Mark ------------------------------------------- Dr Mark Goodacre M.S.Goodacre@bham.ac.uk Dept. of Theology, University of Birmingham Homepage: http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre -------------------------------------------- Crosstalk Web Archive: http://www.findmail.com/list/crosstalk