Βίβλος or, βιβλίον was the term most widely used by the Greeks for book or volume. The usual derivation is from βύβλος the Egyptian papyrus. Comp. Lat. liber "the inner bark of a tree," also " book." Pliny (Nat. Hist. xiii. 11) says that the pith of the papyrus plant was cut in slices and laid in rows, over which other rows were laid crosswise, and the whole was massed by pressure. The name for the blank papyrus sheets was χάρτης (charta) paper. See on 2 John 1:12. Timothy is here requested to bring some papyrus documents which are distinguished from the vellum manuscripts.
Parchments (μεμβράνας)
N.T.o. Manuscripts written on parchment or vellum. Strictly speaking, vellum was made from the skins of young calves and the common parchment from those of sheep, goats, or antelopes. It was a more durable material than papyrus and more expensive. The Latin name was membrana, and also pergamena or pergamina, from Pergamum in Mysia where it was extensively manufactured, and from which it was introduced into Greece. As to the character and contents of these documents which Timothy is requested to bring, we are of course entirely ignorant."
Access to literature, and scribes, and things like that are part of the recent arguments (for example from Robyn Walsh) that the NT authors were from the elite. This is not something I have looked into extensively, but I do find myself skeptical, we have evidence of non-elite village scribes (the likely produces of Q), so I'm not sure why the existence of parchments and the such would rule out non-elite authors. If a house church did have, for example, a Q collection, a version of Mark, (early Church fathers talk about the memoirs of the Apostles being read at churches) or perhaps something from Isaiah, Deuteronomy or the psalms, it may have very well been copied (from a traveling overseer or a synagogue) by a non-elite scribe on behalf of the community.
BTW, the fact that almost ALL our literary evidence comes from the elite is not surprising to anyone who thinks about it for two seconds, and has nothing to say about whether or not there was (however limited) non-elite literary production.
Roman, here is a review of the Walsh book: https://www.academia.edu/114312052/Review_of_Robyn_Faith_Walsh_The_Origins_of_Early_Christian_Literature_Contextualizing_the_New_Testament_within_Greco_Roman_Literary_Culture_Cambridge_Cambridge_University_Press_2021_
Brent Nongbri also wrote a review of the book. Appreciate your thoughts.
"Although we know that the earliest NT documents were written on scrolls, the earliest manuscript we currently have (𝔓52, the John Rylands papyrus, Fig. 3.2 on p. 41) is a page from a codex."
Porter, Stanley E.; Pitts, Andrew W.. Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism (p. 46). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
"In the making of books, Jews used scrolls, while Christians used codices—at least, Christians from the end of the first century and thereafter. The first-generation Christians, who were mostly Jews, probably read the Old Testament from scrolls. The founder of the Christian church, Jesus, is said to have read a passage in Isaiah from 'a scroll' (Luke 4:17). Saul of Tarsus, in his Jewish training, would have used scrolls; later on, he likely switched to the codex format (this is discussed below)."
Comfort, Phillip. Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism (Kindle Locations 850-854). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"A tax collector such as Matthew, accustomed to using such a codex for business notes, could have used such a wooden codex for taking notes on Jesus’ speech. Mark could have done the same with Peter's speech. Writers also used another kind of notebook, called membranae in Latin and membranas in Greek (a Latin loanword). The Greeks did not invent any other word to describe a codex. Thus, membranas was the universal Greek term for the codex. In its earliest form, the codex was a notebook with parchments which allowed for erasing (see Martial's Epistle 14.7.184). These were used in much the same way as the wooden tablets: for making notes or rough drafts. They were very popular among lawyers and writers. Both of these codices were precursors to the full-formed papyrus codex."
Comfort, Phillip. Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism (Kindle Locations 874-880). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Please see the "Critical Reception" section here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Early_Christian_Literature#cite_note-Becker-2
I think it will one day become abundantly clear that the "literary trope" suggestion or elitism for NT scribal activity is a huge fiction. It still perplexes me how anyone who's read Homer in Greek thinks Mark mirrors the poet in his Gospel.
Duncan, the evidence for Q comes from the problems with all the alternatives, Kloppenborg is, to my mind, one of the best contemporary defenders of the 2 source hypothesis, although I actually think Casey's view is more plausible.
The idea that Q came from village scribes is comes from a lot of good work done on Q, from Mack, Robinson, Kloppenborg, Arnal, Bazzana, and others.
This scholarship is pretty mainstream and has stood the test of time, the evidence is in the document itself, as well as evidence that there were non-elite rural scribes from other ancient literature.
I think her claim that "German Romanticism" has infected NT scholarship is wayyyy overblown, German romanticism hasn't been intellectually prominent since before the first world war.
In the article by Carrier, his point about "differences" and "similarities" entirely miss the point that the critique is often intended to make. It's not just how much difference there is between a literary form, but whether the similarities are merely incidental or indicative of mimesis, or whether the differences are actually indicative that the literature is of a different type and drawing from different sources.
As others have pointed out, when you get actual mimesis in Greek literature, the parallels are explicit, not broad conceptual parallels which are much better explained by just general literary enculturation.
I mean it's not like when the NT authors draw on other literature, such as the Hebrew Bible, they are coy about it, they are pretty explicit. (Btw, I'm not ruling out allusions, I think, for example, in John, there are places where the author/editor may have intended a jab at the Dionysius cult, this, in and of itself, does not imply direct reliance on Euripides for example).
About orality, in Q and Mark signs of oral tradition have been well documented, and not just by the form critics, this does not mean that we are not presented with literary creations, of course we are, and no one is denying that Matthew and Luke (especially Luke) show signs of a higher class education, but to argue that this means the sources come from them is just wrong.
Foster, I personally find Casey's (and others) suggestion that Q may have literally started out as Matthew's notes, extremely plausible, this practice was not unknown in Jewish culture of the time, Q itself has tons of signs of being pre-easter, or at least so early that little post-easter theologizing was done (there are allusions to Jesus's death, which can easily be interpreted as a martyr's death, and only very slight, if any, allusions to resurrection, and the message itself seems to be very much ).
The reconstructions given, all look like a kind of collection of sayings following Jesus's ministry, and with almost no post-easter theologizing, and all more or less reflecting a prophetic declaration of the Kingdom of God, a call for repentance and a focus on ethical and social justice aspects of the torah, and a coming judgement, it also basically presupposes the audience are torah keeping.
The same with Mark, it shows evidence of being an oral performance, it does show signs of post-easter theology, but not much, I agree with Crossley that it assumes it's audience is torah keeping, and it is not really a refined piece of literature at all (which is why Matthew and Luke keep trying to improve it).
The traditional view that Matthew wrote the Logia (I take to be Q) and Mark basically wrote down Peter's preaching fits the evidence pretty well.
We need not take the early Church tradition as gospel, but there's no reason to be apriori suspicious either, especially if the evidence fits.
Roman, I'm probably not going to say much about Q, but I've never seen good evidence for Quelle. I think John Meier issued the reminder that Q is a hypothetical document. Maybe ancient writers alluded to Q, as you say, but no ancient writer explicit mentions it and we have no archeological fragments of Q yet. I don't know. The highly speculative nature of Q has long stood out to me.
This article examines both sides of the Q debate: https://michaeljkruger.com/what-should-we-make-of-the-hypothetical-q-source/#:~:text=If%20Q%20existed%20(and%20can,so%20interested%20in%20this%20question.
I deleted the Carrier material about Quelle. While I agree with much of what he says about Q, I find his approach less than scholarly and his language is abhorrent to me.
And yet, the practical advantages of the codex in terms of size and convenience and the better, more durable protection offered by its covers were not, by themselves, sufficient reasons to replace the papyrus scroll. That impetus came from the early Christian church, which adopted the form of the codex to differentiate its writings from the sacred books of Jewish scripture (which were copied only in the format of the scroll) and from pagan literature, which also was equated with the scroll.
For now, I will point out that the documents in 2 Timothy 4:13 are likely Jewish scriptures. One scholar suggested that biblos and membranas potentially refer to the same thing.
Duncan, where does Kloppenborg say it's 50/50? As far as I have seen he sees it as the most plausible option.
Foster, you're right it's speculative, but any synoptic problem solution is speculative, and the speculation isn't based on nothing, it's posited like any other theory, as best explaining the evidence (just like any other synoptic solution), of course we can't be 100% sure, but with ancient history can one ever really be?
Latest interview of Kloppenborg where he also has some response to Markus Vinzent and the patristica teams work - https://www.youtube.com/live/NvpkU93FDyo?si=K2EAADNEAH5IHhRq
Roman, you're correct that history is not 100%, but I'd feel better about Q if we had an actual fragment or explicit testimony from one of the fathers or Jerome. However, it's not a big issue for me. 🙂
Many ancient documents are reconstructed from second hand quotations (the slim). One thing is sure, that the reconstructions from the fathers own words do not match the accusations made.
To say that the conclusions are being destroyed is an overstatement. What evidence is there for Marcionite priority besides hypotheses and assertions? There is certainly no textual or corroborating evidence.
Foster, I would say that Papias's Mathew just is a reference to Q :).
Duncan, does he ever say that in writing? I mean he has in writing argued for the 2 source being the best solution, I find that strange if he really thought it was only 50/50.
I haven't researched much on the Marcionite priority material, however just to through it out there, it being shorter is not evidence that it's earlier at all, almost every pericope from Mark is shorter in Matthew and Luke, that's not evidence that Matthew and Luke's versions are earlier.
btw, I know it's common that people repeat that very few people were literate in the greco-roman near east (I actually think these literacy studies are very much drawing a lot from generalizations, so one cannot really put too much weight on them. But here is an important qualification from Kloppenborg, which should make one immediately suspicious when someone claims it's impossible that the gospel documents came from lower class and rural sources:
"It is not simply that large sectors of the population knew about written communication. Recent studies of literacy in the Roman world suggest that literacies, although admittedly restricted numerically, were not segregated into discrete sectors by language, function and social register. On the contrary, various levels of literacy below full scribal literacy are attested. . . . It would be absurd, however, to imagine that Galileans who needed loan documents, or tax receipts or divorce document, routinely travelled to Jerusalem to obtain these, any more than that peasants, artisans and tenants in the Fayum or the Oxyrhynchite nome travelled to Alexandria each time they needed a loan! The development of writing practices was not autochthonic in rural areas but was the result of the power that the city exerted on the countryside. This power created the need for financial reporting and record-keeping, which in turn created the need for a scribal sector which could accommodate those needs. The common refrain in Graeco-Egyptian legal instruments, “x wrote this because y is illiterate”49, is testimony to the presence in towns and villages of such scribes. . . . The scribes whose existence we must posit to render our data intelligible are other literate (or semi-literate) persons, perhaps one or two in a village, who could be approached to prepare tax, loan, and lease documents, for a small charge51. Archival copies of these documents could then be filed with the κωμογραμματεύς.
We know what the earliest fathers quote and do not quote and also the way they perceived Christianity from it. The majority of "Matthean quotations" are now gone and in reality most reconstructions, not just Vinzent's are significantly shorter than his.
So IMO it's a dispute over nothing.
So what are the earliest quotations of "Luke", the parts that do not coincide with Marcion?
Roman, all you had to do is watch the video, he is all over the place in his conclusions. Also he is framing Vinzent's work in his own theory, one to which Vinzent does not agree with at all. Vincent now thinks that Marcion inherited his text, he did not create it and that Matthew, mark and Luke can always be accounted for after this.
Edgar, this is not assertion, this is proper textual analysis, and there are pronounced textual markers in the fathers quotations of the evangelion, that make it stand apart from later synoptic quotations, and they cannot be accounted for by jus claiming that Marcion is a retraction of Luke. It certainly does not fit the theology as claimed by Irenaeus, and Irenaeus id definitely NOT quoting the standard orthodoxy texts.
As Kloppenborg points out at the end of the video, Luke is for a clearly Roman audience and it treads very carefully. Marcion's text is not and as noted by many others, ACTs is the story of migration of Christianity and it power base to Rome. This is it's overarching goal.
Significantly adding to the instability of this foundation is the work of Goodacre, Case Against Q. Kloppenborg notes, “If his argument should be sustained, Q would become unnecessary and decades of Gospel research will have to be re-thought. . . . The Case Against Q provides the most accessible and compelling defense to date on the theory of Gospel origins championed by James Ropes, Austin Farrer, and Michael Goulder” (back cover of The Case against Q).
The evidence for the Synoptics preceding is stronger than the Marcionite hypothesis/reconstruction: https://www.academia.edu/41107356/MARCION_AND_NEW_TESTAMENT_CANON
Sorry, but that paper is junk and she is quoting others who are also quoting second hand "research". I have already said that Marcion did not invent the evangelion, but that is very different to saying it is a shorter edit of the synoptics.
"However, since he rejected the evil God of the Old Testament, he deleted all the Old texts and some New Testament texts which associated with the God of Old Testament from his canon" - blatantly false assertion. Anybody who has actually done the work knows this.
We can play this game all day, but I think you're mistaken. Here's a quote that I could replicate:
As a revision of Luke (majority view) This still appears to be the view of most scholars today. According to this view, Marcion eliminated the first two chapters of Luke concerning the nativity, and began his gospel at Capernaum making modifications to the remainder suitable to Marcionism.
https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/roth-on-vinzent-on-marcion/ This is drastically out of date in regard to the Patristica's current position.
Ah, but it does not. If you read all references to the evangelion and referenced to OT texts of Marcion, they do NOT coincide at all with such accusations. Patristica's work is nearly ready for release. When you see the fruits the teams labour you will see.
"Leaving aside for a moment what modern scholars think about Marcion and the Gospel of Luke, what evidence is there that anyone had a copy of a book titled ""The Gospel According to Luke," c.140 CE, when Marcion is thought to have come to Rome? In other words, if we didn't have our current New Testament, the writing of Irenaeus, c.180, or of Tertullian, c.200, would we think that Luke existed based on writings roughly contemporary with Marcion?
In the Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2nd ed. (2016), an essay by Michael R. Greenwald, "The Canon of the New Testament," looks at what the apostolic fathers cited. 1 Clement, which thought by many scholars to be roughly contemporaneous with the composition of Luke, doesn't mention any Christian documents, but he does refer to some of Paul's letters. About Ignatius, who is thought to be a couple of decades later, he writes, "Ignatius may show some familiarity with the same tradition that generated Matthew... but he shows no familiarity with the gospel itself. He is much more likely to have used a collection of sayings of Jesus."
Later, Greenwald comes to Justin's First Apology 66-67 (c.155-160). There, Justin refers to "... the apostles [or apostolic men], in the memoirs composed by them which are called gospels," from which he quotes, in the same paragraph, Matthew, Luke, and Mark, in relation to the weekly Eucharistic service, but without naming either apostles or authors.
Justin is also the first writer to mention Marcion, in the same Apology, at 1.26. Interestingly, he has nothing to say about Marcion's editions of a gospel or the letters of Paul, but only about his theological conception: "And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the creator. And he, by the aid of devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of the universe, and to assert that some other being greater than he has done greater works." (Stevenson, "A New Eusebius," 1957, pp.67, 97).
Judith Lieu, "Marcion and the Making of a Heretic" (2015), considering this same material, writes that "Justin alludes to or quotes traditions of Jesus' life and teaching, drawn, if not directly, from Matthew, Mark and Luke, then from a harmonizing precursor of these which may have been developed for catechetical purposes." About Marcion's gospel text, she writes "...it is probable that Marcion was following the text that was available to him; on the other hand, it would not be surprising if he did make textual choices or changes""
Writing in a similar vein two decades earlier, Harry Gamble, "Books and Readers in the Early Church" (1995), in his discussion of Marcion's work: "Yet it needs to be emphasized that in his time Marcion's editorial activity was not unique. During the second century Christian scriptural texts were still relatively fluid and subject to revision, even in mainline Christian circles. It was then, for example, that the Gospel of Mark was given its longer ending(s), the Pastoral Epistles were added to the corpus of Paul's letters, and the gospels were harmonized with each other. Moreover, Marcion's textual revisions were rather less numerous and extensive than was once supposed: many readings are now recognized as variants stemming from an earlier non-Marcionite tradition. What is too little recognized, however, is that Marcion's editorial activity did not arise from caprice, nor from an overbearing ideology, but from critical, scholastic judgment, however idiosyncratic that may have been...The same canons of textual and literary criticism can to some extent be observed before Marcion in Papias, in Tatian, who was Marcion's contemporary, afterward in the followers of Theodotus in Rome, and later still in Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, and others."
"Did Marcion redact Luke, a proto-Luke, or some other document? It would be very difficult to say. Lieu warns the reader about imposing anachronistic concepts using ideas that Irenaeus introduced later in the 2nd century. His goal was defense of what he regarded as correct Christian practice, and against what he viewed as heretical. Accurately describing his pluralistic and eclectic predecessors was not part of his agenda.""
"More and more scholars now believe that Marcion's Gospel was first and that Canonical Luke represents a later catholic redaction. Scholars making this argument include Markus Vinzent (Resetting the Origins of Christianity), who thinks that Marcion's Euaggelion is the original gospel and predates even mark. Mark Gilby supports this with statistical analysis of vocabulary and grammar.
Against the theory of Marcion cutting stuff out of Canoical Luke is that it would have required him to cut out stuff that helps his theology and leave in stuff that hurts it. Bart Ehrman also thinks that at least the Nativity of Luke is later. The style is different and Ehrman says that genealogies usually come first in ancient bios, not on chapter 3. Marcion's gospel supposedly had no birth story and just has Jesus literally dropping out of Heaven before his baptism.
All that really supports the tradition is Tertullian, who knew Marcion's Gospel was different from his own but didn't really know why."
Marcionite Priority is still a minority position and I am pretty confident that the upcoming fruitage of Patristica will not substantiate the hypothesis that he came before the Synoptics. It's pretty difficult to posit that Marcion wrote before the Gospels when everything we know about Marcion comes from the hands of others. There are no fragments made by his own hand. And again, we get in the weeds when this thread had nothing to do with Marcion.
64 comments:
Vincent's Word Studies:
"The books (βιβλία)
Βίβλος or, βιβλίον was the term most widely used by the Greeks for book or volume. The usual derivation is from βύβλος the Egyptian papyrus. Comp. Lat. liber "the inner bark of a tree," also " book." Pliny (Nat. Hist. xiii. 11) says that the pith of the papyrus plant was cut in slices and laid in rows, over which other rows were laid crosswise, and the whole was massed by pressure. The name for the blank papyrus sheets was χάρτης (charta) paper. See on 2 John 1:12. Timothy is here requested to bring some papyrus documents which are distinguished from the vellum manuscripts.
Parchments (μεμβράνας)
N.T.o. Manuscripts written on parchment or vellum. Strictly speaking, vellum was made from the skins of young calves and the common parchment from those of sheep, goats, or antelopes. It was a more durable material than papyrus and more expensive. The Latin name was membrana, and also pergamena or pergamina, from Pergamum in Mysia where it was extensively manufactured, and from which it was introduced into Greece. As to the character and contents of these documents which Timothy is requested to bring, we are of course entirely ignorant."
Access to literature, and scribes, and things like that are part of the recent arguments (for example from Robyn Walsh) that the NT authors were from the elite. This is not something I have looked into extensively, but I do find myself skeptical, we have evidence of non-elite village scribes (the likely produces of Q), so I'm not sure why the existence of parchments and the such would rule out non-elite authors. If a house church did have, for example, a Q collection, a version of Mark, (early Church fathers talk about the memoirs of the Apostles being read at churches) or perhaps something from Isaiah, Deuteronomy or the psalms, it may have very well been copied (from a traveling overseer or a synagogue) by a non-elite scribe on behalf of the community.
BTW, the fact that almost ALL our literary evidence comes from the elite is not surprising to anyone who thinks about it for two seconds, and has nothing to say about whether or not there was (however limited) non-elite literary production.
https://youtu.be/TC9p6LmrYBo?si=XGKWy8VVvgsN6IR5
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex%23:~:text%3DAs%2520early%2520as%2520the%2520early,scrolls%2520(see%2520Herculaneum%2520papyri).&ved=2ahUKEwjZqPbF9vyJAxW0QEEAHe24KjIQFnoECBsQBQ&usg=AOvVaw3LFatFwE87Jnuo3Kn86Ftw
Roman - "we have evidence of non-elite village scribes" - where?
"the likely produces of Q" - evidence of Q?
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/22609#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20ancient%20literary%20elites,are%20not%20strange%20or%20unique.
Thanks, Terence. Good stuff and I appreciate the last thing that Vincent wrote in those comments.
Roman, here is a review of the Walsh book: https://www.academia.edu/114312052/Review_of_Robyn_Faith_Walsh_The_Origins_of_Early_Christian_Literature_Contextualizing_the_New_Testament_within_Greco_Roman_Literary_Culture_Cambridge_Cambridge_University_Press_2021_
Brent Nongbri also wrote a review of the book. Appreciate your thoughts.
"Although we know that the earliest NT documents were written on scrolls, the earliest manuscript we currently have (𝔓52, the John Rylands papyrus, Fig. 3.2 on p. 41) is a page from a codex."
Porter, Stanley E.; Pitts, Andrew W.. Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism (p. 46). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
"In the making of books, Jews used scrolls, while Christians used codices—at least, Christians from the end of the first century and thereafter. The first-generation Christians, who were mostly Jews, probably read the Old Testament from scrolls. The founder of the Christian church, Jesus, is said to have read a passage in Isaiah from 'a scroll' (Luke 4:17). Saul of Tarsus, in his Jewish training, would have used scrolls; later on, he likely switched to the codex format (this is discussed below)."
Comfort, Phillip. Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism (Kindle Locations 850-854). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"A tax collector such as Matthew, accustomed to using such a codex for business notes, could have used such a wooden codex for taking notes on Jesus’ speech. Mark could have done the same with Peter's speech. Writers also used another kind of notebook, called membranae in Latin and membranas in Greek (a Latin loanword). The Greeks did not invent any other word to describe a codex. Thus, membranas was the universal Greek term for the codex. In its earliest form, the codex was a notebook with parchments which allowed for erasing (see Martial's Epistle 14.7.184). These were used in much the same way as the wooden tablets: for making notes or rough drafts. They were very popular among lawyers and writers. Both of these codices were precursors to the full-formed papyrus codex."
Comfort, Phillip. Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism (Kindle Locations 874-880). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Please see the "Critical Reception" section here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Early_Christian_Literature#cite_note-Becker-2
I think it will one day become abundantly clear that the "literary trope" suggestion or elitism for NT scribal activity is a huge fiction. It still perplexes me how anyone who's read Homer in Greek thinks Mark mirrors the poet in his Gospel.
https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/pompeian-holding-scrolls/
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76394422.pdf
Duncan, the evidence for Q comes from the problems with all the alternatives, Kloppenborg is, to my mind, one of the best contemporary defenders of the 2 source hypothesis, although I actually think Casey's view is more plausible.
The idea that Q came from village scribes is comes from a lot of good work done on Q, from Mack, Robinson, Kloppenborg, Arnal, Bazzana, and others.
This scholarship is pretty mainstream and has stood the test of time, the evidence is in the document itself, as well as evidence that there were non-elite rural scribes from other ancient literature.
I think her claim that "German Romanticism" has infected NT scholarship is wayyyy overblown, German romanticism hasn't been intellectually prominent since before the first world war.
In the article by Carrier, his point about "differences" and "similarities" entirely miss the point that the critique is often intended to make. It's not just how much difference there is between a literary form, but whether the similarities are merely incidental or indicative of mimesis, or whether the differences are actually indicative that the literature is of a different type and drawing from different sources.
As others have pointed out, when you get actual mimesis in Greek literature, the parallels are explicit, not broad conceptual parallels which are much better explained by just general literary enculturation.
I mean it's not like when the NT authors draw on other literature, such as the Hebrew Bible, they are coy about it, they are pretty explicit. (Btw, I'm not ruling out allusions, I think, for example, in John, there are places where the author/editor may have intended a jab at the Dionysius cult, this, in and of itself, does not imply direct reliance on Euripides for example).
About orality, in Q and Mark signs of oral tradition have been well documented, and not just by the form critics, this does not mean that we are not presented with literary creations, of course we are, and no one is denying that Matthew and Luke (especially Luke) show signs of a higher class education, but to argue that this means the sources come from them is just wrong.
Foster, I personally find Casey's (and others) suggestion that Q may have literally started out as Matthew's notes, extremely plausible, this practice was not unknown in Jewish culture of the time, Q itself has tons of signs of being pre-easter, or at least so early that little post-easter theologizing was done (there are allusions to Jesus's death, which can easily be interpreted as a martyr's death, and only very slight, if any, allusions to resurrection, and the message itself seems to be very much ).
The reconstructions given, all look like a kind of collection of sayings following Jesus's ministry, and with almost no post-easter theologizing, and all more or less reflecting a prophetic declaration of the Kingdom of God, a call for repentance and a focus on ethical and social justice aspects of the torah, and a coming judgement, it also basically presupposes the audience are torah keeping.
The same with Mark, it shows evidence of being an oral performance, it does show signs of post-easter theology, but not much, I agree with Crossley that it assumes it's audience is torah keeping, and it is not really a refined piece of literature at all (which is why Matthew and Luke keep trying to improve it).
The traditional view that Matthew wrote the Logia (I take to be Q) and Mark basically wrote down Peter's preaching fits the evidence pretty well.
We need not take the early Church tradition as gospel, but there's no reason to be apriori suspicious either, especially if the evidence fits.
Kloppenborg on Q thought it’s 50/50 it even existed.
Roman, I'm probably not going to say much about Q, but I've never seen good evidence for Quelle. I think John Meier issued the reminder that Q is a hypothetical document. Maybe ancient writers alluded to Q, as you say, but no ancient writer explicit mentions it and we have no archeological fragments of Q yet. I don't know. The highly speculative nature of Q has long stood out to me.
Interesting comments here about the proto orthodox nature of marcions gospel. https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11163
This article examines both sides of the Q debate: https://michaeljkruger.com/what-should-we-make-of-the-hypothetical-q-source/#:~:text=If%20Q%20existed%20(and%20can,so%20interested%20in%20this%20question.
I deleted the Carrier material about Quelle. While I agree with much of what he says about Q, I find his approach less than scholarly and his language is abhorrent to me.
Additionally, this thread was supposed to be about codicies, papyri, and the Pastorals, etc.
Codices are second century phenomena in Christianity, just like Q there is no evidence of such usage in the first century.
Not exactly correct, Duncan: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=11
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Codex
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380846149_%27me_manus_una_capit%27_Martial_and_the_Codex
I know the history of the codex and it goes back even further than the 3rd cent. Bce., but that is not what I actually wrote.
Any codex found at Pompeii 70ce? One cannot underestimate Pompeii as a direct reflection of Roman culture as the playground of the rich.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/scroll/scrollcodex.html
And yet, the practical advantages of the codex in terms of size and convenience and the better, more durable protection offered by its covers were not, by themselves, sufficient reasons to replace the papyrus scroll. That impetus came from the early Christian church, which adopted the form of the codex to differentiate its writings from the sacred books of Jewish scripture (which were copied only in the format of the scroll) and from pagan literature, which also was equated with the scroll.
This is pure supposition, baseless.
For now, I will point out that the documents in 2 Timothy 4:13 are likely Jewish scriptures. One scholar suggested that biblos and membranas potentially refer to the same thing.
Duncan, where does Kloppenborg say it's 50/50? As far as I have seen he sees it as the most plausible option.
Foster, you're right it's speculative, but any synoptic problem solution is speculative, and the speculation isn't based on nothing, it's posited like any other theory, as best explaining the evidence (just like any other synoptic solution), of course we can't be 100% sure, but with ancient history can one ever really be?
https://brill.com/view/journals/nt/50/1/article-p1_1.xml
Latest interview of Kloppenborg where he also has some response to Markus Vinzent and the patristica teams work - https://www.youtube.com/live/NvpkU93FDyo?si=K2EAADNEAH5IHhRq
https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780190491949/resources/ans/app1/
Roman, you're correct that history is not 100%, but I'd feel better about Q if we had an actual fragment or explicit testimony from one of the fathers or Jerome. However, it's not a big issue for me. 🙂
https://vridar.org/2012/09/09/the-marcionite-gospel-and-the-synoptic-problem-a-new-suggestion/
Slim better than none.
https://www.academia.edu/81046131/Marcion_s_Gospel_and_the_History_of_Early_Christianity_The_Devil_is_in_the_Reconstructed_Details
https://jbtc.org/v27/TC-2022-Klinghardt-Roth.pdf
Many ancient documents are reconstructed from second hand quotations (the slim). One thing is sure, that the reconstructions from the fathers own words do not match the accusations made.
The conclusions in that last paper are already being destroyed by the patristica team and there version of marcions text is significantly shorter.
Also, that carries the assumption that the Matthew we have predated Maricon.
To say that the conclusions are being destroyed is an overstatement. What evidence is there for Marcionite priority besides hypotheses and assertions? There is certainly no textual or corroborating evidence.
Foster, I would say that Papias's Mathew just is a reference to Q :).
Duncan, does he ever say that in writing? I mean he has in writing argued for the 2 source being the best solution, I find that strange if he really thought it was only 50/50.
I haven't researched much on the Marcionite priority material, however just to through it out there, it being shorter is not evidence that it's earlier at all, almost every pericope from Mark is shorter in Matthew and Luke, that's not evidence that Matthew and Luke's versions are earlier.
Okay Roman :-)
Here's something that might help with the Kloppenborg question: https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/23913/02chapter2.pdf?sequence=3
btw, I know it's common that people repeat that very few people were literate in the greco-roman near east (I actually think these literacy studies are very much drawing a lot from generalizations, so one cannot really put too much weight on them. But here is an important qualification from Kloppenborg, which should make one immediately suspicious when someone claims it's impossible that the gospel documents came from lower class and rural sources:
"It is not simply that large sectors of the population knew about written communication. Recent studies of literacy in the Roman world suggest that literacies, although admittedly restricted numerically, were not segregated into discrete sectors by language, function and social register. On the contrary, various levels of literacy below full scribal literacy are attested.
. . .
It would be absurd, however, to imagine that Galileans who needed loan documents, or tax receipts or divorce document, routinely travelled to Jerusalem to obtain these, any more than that peasants, artisans and tenants in the Fayum or the Oxyrhynchite nome travelled to Alexandria each time they needed a loan! The development of writing practices was not autochthonic in rural areas but was the result of the power that the city exerted on the countryside. This power created the need for financial reporting and record-keeping, which in turn created the need for a scribal sector which could accommodate those needs. The common refrain in Graeco-Egyptian legal instruments, “x wrote this because y is illiterate”49, is testimony to the presence in towns and villages of such scribes.
. . .
The scribes whose existence we must posit to render our data intelligible are other literate (or semi-literate) persons, perhaps one or two in a village, who could be approached to prepare tax, loan, and lease documents, for a small charge51. Archival copies of these documents could then be filed with the κωμογραμματεύς.
https://www.academia.edu/38356011/_Oral_and_Literate_Contexts_for_the_Sayings_Gospel_Q_
We know what the earliest fathers quote and do not quote and also the way they perceived Christianity from it. The majority of "Matthean quotations" are now gone and in reality most reconstructions, not just Vinzent's are significantly shorter than his.
So IMO it's a dispute over nothing.
So what are the earliest quotations of "Luke", the parts that do not coincide with Marcion?
Roman, all you had to do is watch the video, he is all over the place in his conclusions. Also he is framing Vinzent's work in his own theory, one to which Vinzent does not agree with at all. Vincent now thinks that Marcion inherited his text, he did not create it and that Matthew, mark and Luke can always be accounted for after this.
Edgar, this is not assertion, this is proper textual analysis, and there are pronounced textual markers in the fathers quotations of the evangelion, that make it stand apart from later synoptic quotations, and they cannot be accounted for by jus claiming that Marcion is a retraction of Luke. It certainly does not fit the theology as claimed by Irenaeus, and Irenaeus id definitely NOT quoting the standard orthodoxy texts.
As Kloppenborg points out at the end of the video, Luke is for a clearly Roman audience and it treads very carefully. Marcion's text is not and as noted by many others, ACTs is the story of migration of Christianity and it power base to Rome. This is it's overarching goal.
There is No evidence to suggest that the orthodox synoptics come before Marcion's text.
https://www.biblindex.org/citation_biblique/?lang=en
Significantly adding to the instability of this foundation is the work of Goodacre, Case Against Q. Kloppenborg notes, “If his argument should be sustained, Q would become unnecessary and decades of Gospel research will have to be re-thought. . . . The Case Against Q provides the most accessible and compelling defense to date on the theory of Gospel origins championed by James Ropes, Austin Farrer, and Michael Goulder” (back cover of The Case against Q).
The evidence for the Synoptics preceding is stronger than the Marcionite hypothesis/reconstruction: https://www.academia.edu/41107356/MARCION_AND_NEW_TESTAMENT_CANON
That paper is in error straight out of the gate "Marcion‘s canon version containing a shorter Luke", it is not.
Sorry, but that paper is junk and she is quoting others who are also quoting second hand "research". I have already said that Marcion did not invent the evangelion, but that is very different to saying it is a shorter edit of the synoptics.
"However, since he rejected the evil God of the Old Testament, he deleted all the Old texts and some New Testament texts which associated with the God of Old Testament from his canon" - blatantly false assertion. Anybody who has actually done the work knows this.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00145246211017544?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.5#:~:text=Marcion%20and%20the%20Canonical%20Gospels%20%2D%20Paul%20Foster%2C%202021
We can play this game all day, but I think you're mistaken. Here's a quote that I could replicate:
As a revision of Luke (majority view)
This still appears to be the view of most scholars today. According to this view, Marcion eliminated the first two chapters of Luke concerning the nativity, and began his gospel at Capernaum making modifications to the remainder suitable to Marcionism.
https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/roth-on-vinzent-on-marcion/
This is drastically out of date in regard to the Patristica's current position.
While we're at it, I think Vinzent's work is garbage, being rife with unsupported hypotheses. He does have a good imagination.
Ah, but it does not. If you read all references to the evangelion and referenced to OT texts of Marcion, they do NOT coincide at all with such accusations. Patristica's work is nearly ready for release. When you see the fruits the teams labour you will see.
It Vinzent's imagination that has been removed by the patristica team.
"Leaving aside for a moment what modern scholars think about Marcion and the Gospel of Luke, what evidence is there that anyone had a copy of a book titled ""The Gospel According to Luke," c.140 CE, when Marcion is thought to have come to Rome? In other words, if we didn't have our current New Testament, the writing of Irenaeus, c.180, or of Tertullian, c.200, would we think that Luke existed based on writings roughly contemporary with Marcion?
In the Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2nd ed. (2016), an essay by Michael R. Greenwald, "The Canon of the New Testament," looks at what the apostolic fathers cited. 1 Clement, which thought by many scholars to be roughly contemporaneous with the composition of Luke, doesn't mention any Christian documents, but he does refer to some of Paul's letters. About Ignatius, who is thought to be a couple of decades later, he writes, "Ignatius may show some familiarity with the same tradition that generated Matthew... but he shows no familiarity with the gospel itself. He is much more likely to have used a collection of sayings of Jesus."
Later, Greenwald comes to Justin's First Apology 66-67 (c.155-160). There, Justin refers to "... the apostles [or apostolic men], in the memoirs composed by them which are called gospels," from which he quotes, in the same paragraph, Matthew, Luke, and Mark, in relation to the weekly Eucharistic service, but without naming either apostles or authors.
Justin is also the first writer to mention Marcion, in the same Apology, at 1.26. Interestingly, he has nothing to say about Marcion's editions of a gospel or the letters of Paul, but only about his theological conception: "And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the creator. And he, by the aid of devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of the universe, and to assert that some other being greater than he has done greater works." (Stevenson, "A New Eusebius," 1957, pp.67, 97).
Judith Lieu, "Marcion and the Making of a Heretic" (2015), considering this same material, writes that "Justin alludes to or quotes traditions of Jesus' life and teaching, drawn, if not directly, from Matthew, Mark and Luke, then from a harmonizing precursor of these which may have been developed for catechetical purposes." About Marcion's gospel text, she writes "...it is probable that Marcion was following the text that was available to him; on the other hand, it would not be surprising if he did make textual choices or changes""
Writing in a similar vein two decades earlier, Harry Gamble, "Books and Readers in the Early Church" (1995), in his discussion of Marcion's work: "Yet it needs to be emphasized that in his time Marcion's editorial activity was not unique. During the second century Christian scriptural texts were still relatively fluid and subject to revision, even in mainline Christian circles. It was then, for example, that the Gospel of Mark was given its longer ending(s), the Pastoral Epistles were added to the corpus of Paul's letters, and the gospels were harmonized with each other. Moreover, Marcion's textual revisions were rather less numerous and extensive than was once supposed: many readings are now recognized as variants stemming from an earlier non-Marcionite tradition. What is too little recognized, however, is that Marcion's editorial activity did not arise from caprice, nor from an overbearing ideology, but from critical, scholastic judgment, however idiosyncratic that may have been...The same canons of textual and literary criticism can to some extent be observed before Marcion in Papias, in Tatian, who was Marcion's contemporary, afterward in the followers of Theodotus in Rome, and later still in Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, and others."
"Did Marcion redact Luke, a proto-Luke, or some other document? It would be very difficult to say. Lieu warns the reader about imposing anachronistic concepts using ideas that Irenaeus introduced later in the 2nd century. His goal was defense of what he regarded as correct Christian practice, and against what he viewed as heretical. Accurately describing his pluralistic and eclectic predecessors was not part of his agenda.""
"More and more scholars now believe that Marcion's Gospel was first and that Canonical Luke represents a later catholic redaction. Scholars making this argument include Markus Vinzent (Resetting the Origins of Christianity), who thinks that Marcion's Euaggelion is the original gospel and predates even mark. Mark Gilby supports this with statistical analysis of vocabulary and grammar.
Against the theory of Marcion cutting stuff out of Canoical Luke is that it would have required him to cut out stuff that helps his theology and leave in stuff that hurts it. Bart Ehrman also thinks that at least the Nativity of Luke is later. The style is different and Ehrman says that genealogies usually come first in ancient bios, not on chapter 3. Marcion's gospel supposedly had no birth story and just has Jesus literally dropping out of Heaven before his baptism.
All that really supports the tradition is Tertullian, who knew Marcion's Gospel was different from his own but didn't really know why."
Marcionite Priority is still a minority position and I am pretty confident that the upcoming fruitage of Patristica will not substantiate the hypothesis that he came before the Synoptics. It's pretty difficult to posit that Marcion wrote before the Gospels when everything we know about Marcion comes from the hands of others. There are no fragments made by his own hand. And again, we get in the weeds when this thread had nothing to do with Marcion.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/marcion-getting-unhitched-old-testament/
If there's nothing else to be said about 2 Timothy 4:13, I will close the thread. Thank you.
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