Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 12:50:00 GMT From: Mark Goodacre To: Mike Grondin , crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Re: The Thomas/Q Hypothesis Dear Mike Thanks for the useful clarificatory (is that a word?) post. > The "where" clause does not in fact rule out this position. The > cause of the misunderstanding may lie in confusing (1) "this does > not imply that A preceded B" with (2) "this implies that A did not > precede B". In any case, I hope that Mark will believe that I did > not intend to rule out any position whatsoever on the chronological > priority issue, nor did I take the "where" clause as so doing. Sure. I think I misread the statement. I accept the criticism but still feel that the additional statement (where . . . Thomas) is unnecessary, as I think you now feel. As for the rest of the post, again I am grateful for the comments made but I will avoid a lengthy response because I do not have any stomach to prolong this discussion of something on which there is no great disagreement. I would rather spend my (limited) time looking at the data. These are the two alternatives: > > (H1) Luke's form of Q sayings is generally supported by Thomas > > against Matthew. > > > (H2) Those sayings in Thomas that correspond to Q are usually more > > like the Lukan form than the Matthean form. The advantage of the first is that it is what was stated at the beginning of the enterprise, so there is the potential problem that we would be moving the goalposts after the investigation has taken place. What I mean about its red-bloodedness is that it seems more amenable to a decision at the end of the enterprise of the nature "Yes, investigation of the data supports this" / "No, investigation of the data does not support this" than is the second. On the second we have to say "what do we mean by usually? How often is often? How much "more like" Luke is it than Matthew" etc. However, having said that, H2 does seem to be, in substance, what we were looking for and if everyone is happier with that than with H1, I will go with that. In particular, Mike makes the good point that the wording of the following is more H2 than H1: > > There can be four possible conclusions for each example: > > 1. This one is a spurious example (not-Q or not related to Thomas). > > 2. Matthew's version is more like Thomas than Luke's. > > 3. Luke's is more like Thomas than Matthew's. > > 4. There are elements more like Thomas in both to a roughly > > equal degree... although even so one might be able to say > > [that] Thomas is more like Mt or Lk than the contrary. > > Statements 1 & 4 can be safely ignored; the hypothesis must capture > the difference between 2 & 3. But the exact wording is important! > Statements 2 & 3 use the phrase "more like" (which occurs in H2), > not the phrase "is supported by" (which occurs in H1). What's the > difference? Among other things, by not using the same basic wording > in the hypothesis that was used in the above statements to gather > evidence, there is the real danger that, if statements 2 & 3 had > been worded otherwise, we might have gotten different results. Which > means that H1 is a poor fit for our evidence. Yes, this is a good point. > > But what of the claim that the more robust the hypothesis, the more > amenable to testing? Whether or not this claim is true in general > seems to me to be rather beside the point. The question at this > point is *not* "Which hypothesis is more robust?", but rather "Which > hypothesis best fits the evidence?" And again, the question at this > point is *not* "Which hypothesis is more amenable to testing?", but > rather "Which hypothesis best fits what was in fact tested?" And it > seems to me that H2 is to be preferred over H1 on these grounds. Granted. Indeed, it now occurs to me that some of the extravagant claims that were being made about the investigation might not have been made if H2 had been in mind rather than H1. Thanks again for the useful thoughts. 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