Towards the Rehabilitation of Q

The hypothetical phenomenon known as Luke’s ‘unpicking’ of some of Matthew’s Markan material has occupied the attention of synoptic problem specialists since the seminal article by F. Gerald Downing (1965). The discussion has received a number of contributions in recent years, first with an exchange between Christopher M. Tuckett and Francis Watson (both essays published in 2018) and now with a separate analysis by Eric Eve (2021). A comprehensive tabulation of the phenomenon, however, is still lacking, with the authors selectively focusing on some of the data. Eve concludes his discussion by suggesting that he has explained the phenomenon for the Farrer Hypothesis. However, Eve’s analysis does not include a number of the instances tabulated just a few years earlier by Watson. Moreover, Watson’s tabulation itself is need of an update, being unnecessarily narrow. In this article, I analyze Watson’s contribution to the discussion, developing his recognition of the phenomenon of unpicking and adjusting several aspects of his analysis. Assessment of the procedure’s difficulty does not belong to the article’s scope. Rather, this article aims to provide a comprehensive tabulation of Farrer Luke’s unpicking that can be utilized by synoptic specialists on all sides of the current discussion.

Section: Watson and Fh Luke’s Unpickingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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FH Luke’s ‘Unpicking’: Some Observations on Francis Watson’s Recent Analysis (2018) and the Extent of the Phenomenon

Andrejevs¹

2022

“…However, these two hypotheses are not completely without their own problems in this regard. According to Downing (1964; 1988: 168-72), Luke’s use of Matthew on the FGH appears problematic because he needed to ‘unpick’ Matthew’s Markan material from his use of Matthew, a procedure that breaks down the cognitive units in Matthew. For example, in Lk.…”

Section: Cognitive Units In Scribal Cued Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning the Feasibility of the Major Synoptic Hypotheses: Scribal Memory as the Key to the Oral–Written Interface

Chang

2019

Instead of blurring the oral and the literary media in antiquity (R. Bultmann and B. Gerhardsson) or dividing them with unsatisfying principles (J.D.G. Dunn), this article follows recent scholarship on orality to explore the mechanical operation of ancient scribal memory as the oral-written interface. In so doing, I argue that the agreement of order between the Synoptic Gospels is characteristic of memory-based utilizations of written texts and does not necessarily indicate the scribes’ visual contact with those texts. It is, rather, the very high degree of verbal agreement that indicates Matthew’s frequent visual contact with Q 10–11 and 12–13 throughout the gospel, even when following Mark’s narrative sequence by memory. This approach explains the infrequent micro-conflations on the Two Document Hypothesis (2DH) with a more mechanically probable procedure, and so strengthens the argument that the 2DH is more feasible than the Two Gospel Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis.

“…(These complaints are interrelated: a task may be presumed atypical because it is difficult.) Downing has been joined in this line of critique by Robert Derrenbacker, who has tested and improved Downing’s arguments, and who has added force to some of their finer points (Downing 1964, 1980, 1988, 1992; Derrenbacker 2005; see Tuckett 1996: 32-33).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Roll, the Codex, the Wax Tablet and the Synoptic Problem

Poirier

2012

The Farrer hypothesis, especially as defended by Michael Goulder, has often been faulted for its supposed reliance on an anachronistic and technically impracticable understanding of Luke’s compositional practices. A closer look at the arguments against Farrer and Goulder, however, reveals a number of problems with this charge, including (but not limited to) its dependence on an inadequate understanding of how works were actually composed in antiquity. Goulder’s suggestion that Luke worked backwards through Matthew, in particular, has received a certain amount of criticism, but that scenario is shown here to be both technically feasible and perfectly in keeping with the way the ancients sometimes worked. Perhaps the greatest problem with the arguments made against the Farrer hypothesis is that they ignore Luke’s likely use of the wax tablet as a compositional aid—a medium that would have allowed Luke to rearrange Matthew’s material as freely as Farrerians suppose.