{"id":1984,"date":"2009-10-29T08:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T08:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/10\/questioning-q-and-mark\/"},"modified":"2009-10-29T08:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T08:58:00","slug":"questioning-q-and-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/10\/questioning-q-and-mark.html","title":{"rendered":"Questioning Q&#8230;and Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Having read Mark Goodacre\u2019s <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1563383349?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1563383349\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Case Against Q<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"1\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1563383349\" width=\"1\" border=\"0\"><\/i>, I followed up by reading the volume he co-edited with Nicholas Perrin, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0830827692?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0830827692\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Questioning Q<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0830827692\" width=\"1\" border=\"0\">. It contains a lot of interesting and intriguing studies, but part of the problem with the study of the Synoptic Gospels and their interrelationship is that, as with the historical Jesus, it is hard to make a convincing case about the whole picture by studying individual pieces of the puzzle. And so a book like this, however useful, is unlikely to change the prevailing paradigm, because it has always been known that the Synoptic Gospels contain passages that seem to fit poorly within <i>any<\/i> of the suggested explanations. That\u2019s presumably why the issue is still a topic considered worthy of scholarly investigation and discussion.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most creative <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ivpress.com\/cgi-ivpress\/book.pl\/toc\/code=2769\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">chapters<\/a> was by Eric Eve, and it demonstrated well the problems we would encounter trying to reconstruct Mark if we only had Matthew, Luke and Q. In some cases we would surely make errors in our reconstruction, we would fail to recover crucial and typically Markan features, and we would inevitably as a result misconstrue the theology of the Gospel of Mark. The warning is perhaps more relevant to those who accept Q than those who question it, that attempts to talk about the precise wording of Q or its theology are highly problematic.<\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019d like to do sometime as a thought experiment is see whether I could explore a similar thought experiment and try to <i>disprove<\/i> the existence of a hypothetical Gospel \u201cMark\u201d if we didn\u2019t have it (It could still be called \u201cMark\u201d because it consists of material which <b><u>Ma<\/u><\/b>tthew <b><u>r<\/u><\/b>etained and Lu<b><u>k<\/u><\/b>e from this hypothetical source that is no longer extant). The point would be to try arguing, as Mark Goodacre and others do about Q, that there is no need to posit Mark in order to account for the similarities and differences between Matthew and Luke as we now have them.<\/p>\n<p>Until then, I offer this as a <i>sign<\/i> of ongoing friendship with Mark Goodacre and other Q skeptics:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_BtqUSG7RCA0\/SumQfRErCNI\/AAAAAAAAAhE\/DeQK0t_IHwQ\/s1600-h\/NoQbus.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_BtqUSG7RCA0\/SumQfRErCNI\/AAAAAAAAAhE\/DeQK0t_IHwQ\/s400\/NoQbus.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/a><br>[Created using the <a href=\"http:\/\/ruletheweb.co.uk\/b3ta\/bus\/?s1=THERE%27S+PROBABLY+NO+Mark&amp;s2=SO+STOP+WORRYING&amp;s3=AND+ENJOY+Your+Q\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Bus slogan generator<\/a>]<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-6916693390029563443?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having read Mark Goodacre\u2019s The Case Against Q, I followed up by reading the volume he co-edited with Nicholas Perrin, Questioning Q. It contains a lot of interesting and intriguing studies, but part of the problem with the study of the Synoptic Gospels and their interrelationship is that, as with the historical Jesus, it is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Questioning Q...and Mark<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Having read Mark Goodacre&#039;s The Case Against Q, I followed up by reading the volume he co-edited with Nicholas Perrin, Questioning Q. It contains a lot of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/10\/questioning-q-and-mark.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Questioning Q...and Mark\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Having read Mark Goodacre&#039;s The Case Against Q, I followed up by reading the volume he co-edited with Nicholas Perrin, Questioning Q. It contains a lot of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/10\/questioning-q-and-mark.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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