Q Theory and the Didache

Mark Goodacre and Alan Garrow have been at each other's throats lately in a battle over Q theory and the so-called Matthew Conflator Theory. Alan Garrow claims that the Didache has something to say here, and also that everybody has a dog in this fight.

The big showdown is to happen this summer at the British New Testament Conference. Here is a written response by Alan Garrow alerting us to the importance of this debate:

Everyone (Who Cares about Early Christianity) Has a Dog in this Fight

Happy reading,

The Editor

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DMB

Sigh ... such noisy canines. What's so amazing is they have so few bones to fight over. Linguistic neural nets already can demonstrate their arguments are out-dated. I'll keep my dog home. Woof, woof. Though I do wonder at the pronunciation of Twittingham.

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/980546#Comment_980546

I tried to find out what is the Matthew Conflator Theory, but could not really figure it out.

Could someone say it in one sentence? (No internet links, no videos, just as a text.)

I have my own solution to the synoptic problem. It is just a speculation, but I feel it is better than anything else. Nobody else has accepted it so far. [:(]

Paul Caneparo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/980576#Comment_980576

I have my own solution to the synoptic problem. It is just a speculation, but I feel it is better than anything else. Nobody else has accepted it so far.

Veli

Maybe in one sentence (or two) you say what your solution is too!

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/980578#Comment_980578

Maybe in one sentence (or two) you say what your solution is too!

Correspondence was quite common at that time in the Mediterranean area, thus I think there were quite a few written documents available for the Gospel writers written at the time of Jesus' public ministry, in many languages.

David Staveley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/980576#Comment_980576

I tried to find out what is the Matthew Conflator Theory, but could not really figure it out.

Could someone say it in one sentence? (No internet links, no videos, just as a text.)

I have my own solution to the synoptic problem. It is just a speculation, but I feel it is better than anything else. Nobody else has accepted it so far.

The Mathew Conflator Hypothesis is a recent re-working of Austin Farrer's famous theory that Mathew knew Luke's Gospel as a source for his own work. It basically argues that Mathew wrote his Gospel in the Second Century C.E. (this is based on a theory called "scribal activity" and posits that scribes who use scrolls copy things differently than those who use Codexs. Luke is posited as using scrolls for his sources and Matthew is posited as using Codexs as his sources. Codexs were not around until the Second Century, and hence, Mathew could not have written his Gospel before then), and that he "combined" both Q and Luke into one Gospel narrative.

Classically, the 2 Source Hypothesis has always claimed that the idea that Mathew knew Luke is at the most impossible, or at the very least, highly problematic for the 2 Source Hypothesis. But recently, computational data generated by imputing how ridgedly each Gospel writer used their sources, and how often they changed it, and showed this in a set of calculations which estimated these things in percentage terms. This data has given support for the possibility of Mathew knowing Luke, and this has naturally lead to the main arguments against this possibility being significantly diminished. This has opened up the way for us to reconsider the whole question anew. Hence this new theory.

Q is still there. Albeit in a significantly diminished form. This is because there is still some remaining evidence in both Mathew and Luke that calls for a hypothetical source to be posited, a source which is independent of both Mathew and Luke, and which both drew on. In other words the hypothetical source "Q" (which is the first letter of the German word Quelle - which means "source". Historically, it used to be called UrMarkus. Now, it is called "Q")).

Interestingly enough, Alan Garrow is now arguing that the Didache (discovered in a Monastery in Constantinople in 1873) is the fabled "Q"; that is, the Didache is an "extant Q", and that in this respect, it predates all of the Gospels. Garrow gives some interesting arguments in support of this theory, bu I am at the moment, personally unpersuaded by it. As I am about the very existence of Q in general. I am personally an adherent to the 2 Gospel Hypothesis: that is, that Mathew wrote first, then Luke (using Mathew and other sources), and Mark made a conflation of both Mathew and Luke to create his "watered down" Gospel. This is technically known as the Griesbach Hypothesis, named as such after Johann Griesbach, the guy who first proposed it in the 19th Century (well, technically he wasn't the first to propose it, as it was actually Augustine of Hippo who first thought of it in the Third Century).

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/980581#Comment_980581

Purchased a book on the subject from Vyrso 2 years ago that dealt with the so-called Synoptic Problem, but the resource seems to no longer exist on any FL website. However, it is still available from Amazon

The Progressive Publication of Matthew: B. Ward Powers - Amazon.com

David Staveley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/980645#Comment_980645

Purchased a book on the subject from Vyrso 2 years ago that dealt with the so-called Synoptic Problem, but the resource seems to no longer exist on any FL website. However, it is still available from Amazon

The Progressive Publication of Matthew: B. Ward Powers - Amazon.com

I have that book. And I subscribe to its basic argument - that the Mathew we have now is not in its original form. The original form was a Hebrew version, whose structure and layout were different than the one we have now. A later redactor translated it into Greek, and made some significant changes to its basic structure. This theory adequately accounts for all of the evidence which supposedly disproves the theory that Mathew wrote first.

David Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/980649#Comment_980649

Prophecy pretty much requires all four gospels, so I think YHWH inspired each writer to write what he wrote.