Date: Wed, 3 Apr 96 14:31:07 CST Message-Id: <9604032031.AA23240@mailbox.mail.umn.edu> From: "Maureen Smith" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Q2 and Thomas (fwd) Remember Dennis Ingolfsland, who succumbed to e-mail overload not long ago and unsubscribed? I was sorry to see him go, because IMO he is a smart, knowledgeable, and reasonable evangelical. It was his posts that first tipped me off that I should be worrying about what use Burton Mack and others were making of Kloppenborg's stratification of Q, so I sent him a copy of my recent post on the subject. He has given me permission to post his response. I also just sent him Stephen Carlson's post on the advantages of a proto-Matthew hypothesis, which I am finding more and more intriguing. Now here's Dennis: Maureen, Congratulations on your new celebrity status. I'm assuming that you know that you have been cited in the latest issue of Time magazine in their cover story on Jesus (Time, April 8, 1996). I think that's pretty exciting. I also thought you had some very good observations: > When I noticed on Steve's list of parallels that there were some > parallels between Q2 and Thomas, I asked if that would be an > argument against the stratification of Q. Steve pleased me by > calling that a "nice sophisticated observation," and I'll have to > admit I thought it was pretty good myself in view of the fact that > I never heard of Q1 and Q2 and Q3 before I got mixed up with this > group. But Bill said it wasn't a good argument because Kloppenborg > always said that the Q2 redactors drew on existing (oral?) tradition > for some of their material. > Mack (following Kloppenborg) makes the point that "approximately one third of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas have parallels in Q, and 60% of these [ie 20% of the whole?] are from the earliest layer of Q" (Who Wrote the New Testament, 61; the bracketed remarks are mine). The other 40% comes from the rest of Q. In Mack's timeline in Appendix A of "The Lost Gospel" he indicates that GosThom borrowed from Q as redacted by Q2. Mack's argument seems to be that this proves that there was a GosThom community, distinct from the Q community, the Markan Community, Christ community, etc, which dates from at least as far in time as the Q1 community. But this proves nothing of the sort! All it would show is that the writer(s) of GosThom wrote sometime after Q was compiled (Q3 is only 10% of Q so its absense from GosThos would not prove that Q3 was not yet in existence). It does not prove that the "Q community" had a history prior to the completion of Q. For all we know, they may have been the group which split off from the so called "Johannine school" in the 90's (and I think this is a very good possibility). Maureen, I think your observations about GosThom containing parallels in Q2 is significant because it demonstrates, IMO, that the Q community did not date back before Q2 as Mack assumes, or at lest, if it did, there is absolutely no evidence to support such a contention. If I understand Mack and Kloppenborg correctly, they believe that the Q2 redactions were created in response to the negative reaction the Q1 community had received. Even if Q2 drew on existing tradition, the apocalyptic and judgemental elements would still presumably be part of the Q2 redaction and would not have existed before Q2 (if someone says that the apocalyptic and judgemental elements existed in tradition previous to Q2,there would be no basis on which to stratify Q). Since GosThom has parallels to the Q2 tradition all we can say about a GosThom community is that it produced the GosThom sometime after Q2. Mack, however, argues that the Q1 parallels in GosThom prove that the GosThos community was one of the earliest Jesus groups, along with the Q1 community. I think your observation proves him to be in error. [Please note that I am writing all this off the top of my head without having thought it through very carefully. If you see errors in my logic, I would be greatful if you pointed them out to me] Second, I question the assertion that themes deemed > traditional "should" appear in the other versions. Jesus surely said > a lot of things in three years of ministry. If we have several sources, > I would expect there to be some overlap (which there is) and some > traditional material in each source that is unmatched in the others. I think you are right on with this one! Multiple attestation can be used to strengthen confidence in the historicity of an event or saying, but it cannot validly be used to undermine the historicity of an event or saying. Just because only one source records and event or saying does not mean that the event or saying never occurred. I suspect that if we threw out everthing in the history books which were not attested by multiple sources, we wouldn't have much left (comparatively speaking). I also suspect that critical scholars bring MUCH more skepticism to bear on the biblical sources than historians do on their sources (Heroditus, Tacitus, Seutonius, etc.). > > Am I correct in assuming that Crossan, the Jesus Seminar, and Mack > took Q1 to be the only part of the Q with authentic sayings of Jesus > and took Q2 to be the work of redactors and thus not attributable to > the historical Jesus? But if Kloppenborg says the redactors drew on > traditional materials, how could the Jesus researchers make this > assumption? I don't think Mack would agree that Q1 has a lot of authentic sayings of Jesus either. He thinks these early communities felt very free to create and edit Jesus sayings. I have a lot of trouble believing this. It seems to assume that Jesus' original followers just disbanded after Jesus died. If so, why were there Jesus' communities in the first place? And why were they willing to suffer such persecution? Granted, people will often suffer persecution for a good cause....but would they suffer, and watch their loved ones suffer, for stories they were just making up? (My understaning of early Christian suffering comes not only from Acts, but from Paul's genuine epistles, Josephus, and Tacitus). Mack's explaination that they were all just mythmaking while engaging in social formation around the notion of the kingdom is, IMHO, simply nonsense (though I don't have time to defend my positon on this right now). I would be happy to pursue this train of thought later, but 'nuf said on it for now. Anyway, I think your point is valid. Keep up the good work. Some day we will all be reading and commenting on YOUR books! I would be very interested in what Bill Arnal said in response to your post. Sincerely, Dennis ------------ Forwarded Message ends here ------------ _____________________________________________________________________________ Maureen