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Orality, Writing, and Phantom Sources: Appeals to Ancient Media in Some Recent Challenges to the Two Document Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2011

Alan Kirk
Alan Kirk
Affiliation:
Philosophy & Religion, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA. email: kirkak@jmu.edu
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Abstract

In different ways and with quite different outcomes Dunn, Mournet, Baum, and Burkett invoke practices associated with orality and writing in the ancient world to call into question all or some aspects of the Two Document Hypothesis and to build rationales for alternative source hypotheses. In a criticism of their appeals to ancient media this essay works out the significance of cultural practices associated with orality, writing, and memory for further work on the synoptic problem, especially as regards the uneven patterns of variation and agreement in the tradition.

Keywords

synoptic problemoralityoral traditionmediummediasynoptic traditionQmemory
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Dunn, James D. G., ‘Altering the Default Settings: Re-envisioning the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition’, NTS 49 (2003) 139–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dunn, ‘Q1 as Oral Tradition’, The Written Gospel (ed. Bockmuehl, Markus and Hagner, Donald; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2005) 45–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Mournet, Terence C., Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency: Variability and Stability in the Synoptic Tradition and Q (WUNT 2/195; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2005)Google Scholar; Mournet, , ‘The Jesus Tradition as Oral Tradition’, Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives (ed. Byrskog, Samuel and Kelber, Werner H.; Waco: Baylor University, 2009) 39–62Google Scholar.

3 Baum, Armin D., Der mündliche Faktor und seine Bedeutung für die synoptische Frage (Tübingen: Franke, 2008)Google Scholar; Baum, , ‘Die lukanische und die chronistische Quellenbenutzung im Vergleich: eine Teilanalogie zum synoptischen Problem’, ETL 78 (2002) 340–57Google Scholar; Baum, , ‘Experimentalpsychologische Erwägungen zum synoptischen Frage’, BZ 44 (2000) 37–55Google Scholar.

4 Burkett, Delbert, Rethinking Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2004)Google Scholar; Burkett, , Rethinking Gospel Sources: The Unity and Plurality of Q (Atlanta: SBL, 2009)Google Scholar.

5 Dunn, ‘Default Settings’, 142–8.

6 Dunn, James D. G., Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) 237Google Scholar; Dunn, ‘Default Settings’, 164, 172. See Hawkins, John C., Horae Synopticae (Oxford: Clarendon, 2nd rev. ed. 1909) 54–7Google Scholar; Streeter, B. H., The Four Gospels (London: MacMillan, 1936) 237–8, 257–8Google Scholar; Taylor, Vincent, ‘The Original Order of Q’, New Testament Essays (ed. Higgins, A. J. B.; Manchester: Manchester University, 1959Google Scholar; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) 95–117, esp. 110. Streeter's approach was so documentary that in his view even oral tradition was mediated to the Evangelists via written sources, notably M and L, though he countenanced the possibility that on occasion the Evangelists drew from ‘different cycles of oral tradition’ directly (184).

7 Dunn, ‘Q1’, 57–9.

8 Mournet, ‘Jesus Tradition’, 58–9; Mournet, ‘Oral Tradition and Q: Historical Complexity and the Synoptic Problem’ (paper presented at the SBL Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 19 November 2010) 18. In this paper Mournet also seems to make a mistaken correlation between simple documentary solutions and a belief in fixed original texts (my thanks to Terence for providing me with a copy of his paper, with which I have many points of agreement).

9 Mournet, ‘Jesus Tradition’, 50–1, 61.

10 Baum, Mündliche Faktor, 54.

11 Mündliche Faktor, 241–2.

12 Mündliche Faktor, 395.

13 Mündliche Faktor, 395. William Sanday makes this suggestion (‘The Conditions under which the Gospels Were Written, in their Bearing upon Some Difficulties in the Synoptic Problem’, Studies in the Synoptic Problem [ed. Sanday, William; Oxford, Clarendon, 1911] 3–26, esp. 18–19)Google Scholar, echoed by Cadbury, Henry J. (The Style and Literary Method of Luke [HTS 6; Cambridge: Harvard University, 1920] 99, 105)Google Scholar.

14 Mündliche Faktor, 157, 241–2.

15 Mündliche Faktor, 85–6; Baum, ‘Lukanische und chronistische Quellenbenutzung’, 355–6.

16 Mündliche Faktor, 346.

17 Mündiche Faktor, 99, 108–9.

18 Mündliche Faktor, 88–92.

19 Mündliche Faktor, 93. Baum explains the 65–70% agreement rate in source relationships of the Alexander novels as the residual effect of the Hellenistic stylistic revision criterion (150–4).

20 Mündliche Faktor, 178–9, 416.

21 On practices associated with Torah and Mishnah see Jaffee, Martin S., ‘Oral Tradition in the Writings of Rabbinic Oral Torah: On Theorizing Rabbinic Orality’, Oral Tradition 14 (1999) 3–32, esp. 9Google Scholar; Jaffee, ‘Gender and Otherness in Rabbinic Oral Culture: On Gentiles, Undisciplined Jews, and their Women’, Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark (ed. Horsley, Richard A. et al. ; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 21–43, esp. 26–7, 42Google Scholar; Carr, David M., Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University, 2005) 82–104, 204–8Google Scholar.

22 Mündliche Faktor, 178–84, 416.

23 Hezser, Catherine, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr–Siebeck, 2001) 39, 69, 95Google Scholar. Baum acknowledges that the evidence for widespread schooling is problematic. His fall-back position is that in a Torah-centered society synagogue attendance would have inculcated a text model for memory mastery of the oral Jesus tradition (184).

24 Mündliche Faktor, 187–8.

25 See Mündliche Faktor, 209.

26 See Rubin, David C., Memory in Oral Tradition: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-out Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University, 1995)Google Scholar.

27 Mündliche Faktor, 268–9.

28 Mündliche Faktor, 194–5, 356, 400.

29 Mündliche Faktor, 255 (‘…auswendig zu kennen’).

30 Mündliche Faktor, 157–8; see also 394. The simple correspondence Baum sets up between the phenomenological profile of oral tradition and the cognitive functionalities of individual memory reprises the conceptual misstep of McIvor, Carroll, and to a certain extent Bauckham. See McIver, Robert K. and Carroll, Marie, ‘Experiments to Develop Criteria Determining the Existence of Written Sources, and their Potential Implications for the Synoptic Problem’, JBL 131 (2002) 667–87, esp. 668–78Google Scholar; Bauckham, Richard, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006) 314–55Google Scholar.

31 Tradent here and throughout this essay describes someone or some entity that exercises the function of cultivating and transmitting—handing down—a foundational tradition.

32 Though at one point Baum attributes to memory in relation to oral tradition the ability to effect ‘intentional changes’ (Mündliche Faktor, 386), he lacks the theoretical framework to account for it.

33 Mündliche Faktor, 246; see Bartlett, Frederic C., Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1932, repr. 1967) 245Google Scholar.

34 Mündliche Faktor, 390.

35 Mündliche Faktor, 230–1.

36 Mündliche Faktor, 389.

37 Mündliche Faktor, 390, 408.

38 Mündliche Faktor, 401, 416.

39 Mündliche Faktor, 401–2.

40 Mündliche Faktor, 252, 402, 409.

41 Mündliche Faktor, 395, 411. Baum notes but never explores the possibility that the Evangelists ‘einen schriftlichen Markustext kannten und diesen aus dem Gedächtnis reproduzierten’ (304).

42 Mündliche Faktor, 402, though Baum adds an equivocating and unelaborated ‘zum Teil’. Earlier he opines that the double tradition is ‘auf eine (relativ flexibel) mündliche Tradition zurückzuführen’ (386) and still earlier speaks of ‘einer gemeinsamen mündlichen Quelle für das Q-Material’ (242), but in his last word on the matter merges these with the ‘mündliche Markustradition’ (402).

43 Mündliche Faktor, 52.

44 See Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart; Jaffee, Martin S., Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 B.C.E–400 C.E. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carruthers, Mary J., The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990)Google Scholar. For further discussion and bibliography see Kirk, A., ‘Manuscript Tradition as a Tertium Quid: Orality and Memory in Scribal Practices’, Jesus, the Voice, and the Text (ed. Tom Thatcher; Waco: Baylor University, 2008) 215–34Google Scholar; Kirk, , ‘Memory, Scribal Media, and the Synoptic Problem’, New Studies in the Synoptic Problem (ed. Foster, Paul, Gregory, Andrew, Kloppenborg, John S., and Verheyden, Joseph; BETL 239; Leuven: Peeters, 2010) 459–82Google Scholar.

45 Burkett, Proto-Mark, 5.

46 Sanders, E. P. and Davies, Margaret, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM, 1989) 60, 81, 105–17Google Scholar; Boismard, M.-E., Synopse des quatre évangiles en francais, vol. 2 (Paris: Cerf, 1972)Google Scholar; Boismard, , ‘Théorie des niveaux multiples’, The Interrelations of the Gospels (ed. Dungan, David L.; BETL 95; Leuven: Peeters, 1990) 231–43Google Scholar.

47 Proto-Mark, 224–5; also 264–5.

48 Proto-Mark, 91–2, 222, 264–6.

49 Proto-Mark, 37, 42, 60. Burkett relies on evidence that David Peabody assembled for a ‘Markan Overlay’; see Peabody, David B., with Cope, Lamar and McNicol, Allan J., One Gospel from Two: Mark's Use of Matthew and Luke (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002) 35–45Google Scholar; Peabody, David, Mark as Composer (Macon, GA: Mercer University, 1987) 115–47Google Scholar.

50 Proto-Mark, 15.

51 E.g. Luke 8.56 reduces Mark 5.42b–43 from 17 to 13 words, πολλά being one of the words left out in the reduction. See Neville, David J., ‘The Phantom Returns: Delbert Burkett's Rehabilitation of Proto-Mark’, ETL 84 (2008) 135–73, esp. 148Google Scholar.

52 Proto-Mark, 15.

53 In fact Matthew has dropped the sequence ἤρξατο κηρύσσειν πολλά as a unit from Mark 1.45. We note that Burkett's argument from πολλά usage entails that he take Matt 9.31 as the parallel to Mark 1.45 (Proto-Mark, 15). Later he will derive three sources common to Matthew and Mark (Proto-Mark A, sources B and C) from Matthew and Mark's disagreements in the order of pericopes, an analysis that requires he depict Matt 9.27–31 (Healing of Two Blind Men) as Matthean without any source parallel (90), and that he line up Matt 8.2–4 with Mark 1.40–45 (79). In other words the premises of the first argument conflict with the premises of the second: in the first Matthew does not see πολλά in copying Mark 1.40–45 (from common Source B) in Matt 9.31; in the second, at 8.2–4 he has either copied Mark 1.40–44 (B), dropping or not seeing Mark 1.45 at all, in which case the whole verse would be part of the late Markan redactional layer and no special significance would attach to the absence of πολλά, or he has created 9.27–31 with no source reference (likewise no significance attaching to the absence of πολλά in 9.31), though this is belied by ἐνεβριμήθη and ἐξελθόντες διεϕήμισαν in Matt 9:30b–31, forms of which stand in Mark 1.43a, 45a. Though undecided what relationship of Mark 1.40–45 and Matt 9.27–31 might be indicated by this common vocabulary, Burkett makes two suggestions. One is that ‘these elements originally stood in the leper story (from B). While Mark retained them there, Matthew moved them to the story of the two blind men’ (74–5). But if Matthew could intervene to shift certain lexical elements out of Mark 1.40–45 in abbreviated and modified form to 9.30–31, it is not clear why a collateral omission of πολλά should call for a different sort of explanation. Burkett's other suggestion is that ‘Mark must have known the story of the two blind men (from B?), omitted most of it, but moved these elements [ἐνεβριμήθη and ἐξελθόντες διεϕήμισαν] to conflate with the leper story’ (74). But if Mark omits most of a pericope, retaining of it (and reassigning) just three lexical elements, why is much to be made of Matthew's omission of πολλά, or why is Matthew's abbreviating Mark 1.40–45 and using elements of it in the M pericope 9.27–31 inconceivable?

54 Proto-Mark, 15–16.

55 Proto-Mark, 17–18.

56 Proto-Mark, 18.

57 Of 23 cases of omission of Mark's periphrasis cited by Burkett Luke either lacks the entire verse(s) or has no verb at all 11 times, replicates the periphrastic construction 2 times, retains the participle without ἦν or ἦσαν 2 times, supplies a different participle 1 time, substitutes the imperfect or aorist finite verb for the participle 5 times, infinitive 1 time, substitutes ἦν + adjective for ἦν + participle 1 time. Matthew omits the entire verse or passage 7 times, reproduces Mark's periphrastic construction 5 times, retains the participle without ἦν 4 times, and so forth. Taken together Matthew and Luke reproduce 6 of Mark's periphrastic constructions, coinciding in one of these.

58 Proto-Mark, 28–37.

59 Moreover Matthew and Luke agree and disagree in their patterns of omission in this pericope, as is to be expected in independent abbreviation. Burkett attends only to the agreements in omission.

60 Proto-Mark, 42.

61 Proto-Mark, 60.

62 Proto-Mark, 73.

63 Proto-Mark, 66.

64 Proto-Mark, 61–6.

65 ‘K’ is not so much a source as it is a placeholder for unattached traditions and the late layer of Markan redaction (Proto-Mark, 225).

66 Proto-Mark, 172.

67 Unity and Plurality, 214; see also 165.

68 Kloppenborg, John S., ‘Variation and Reproduction of the Double Tradition and an Oral Q?’ ETL 83 (2007) 53–80Google Scholar, esp. 55–6, 61–3. Kloppenborg limits his remarks to the revision practices of Greco-Roman authors, whereby an author's rhetorically styled performance before friends of a work-in-progress generated recommendations for improvements that might be incorporated in subsequent drafts, and he suggests that a procedure of this sort might account for variation in the Beatitudes. The case illustrates how composer and scribe mediate the movement of a work back and forth between the oral and the written medium; nevertheless the Sitz does not map well onto the gospels. The context is the elite literary salon, and aesthetic, rhetorical, and stylistic considerations are primary drivers of modifications; correspondingly, variation is a by-product of successively revised drafts in a terminal process of refinement. Stylistic, rhetorical, and authorial concerns are not foreign to the gospels, but what is at stake is a programmatic rehearsal of a tradition constitutive of the life of a community, with the identity and personality of the scribe absorbed into the tradition. Variation here is not a by-product but definitive of the tradition.

69 ‘Variation’, 76–7. ‘[C]ompilation’ is ‘where predecessor documents were taken over nearly unchanged and extra materials simply interpolated and appended to a core’.

70 ‘Variation’, 73–4, 77.

71 Lewis, Charleton T., An Elementary Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University, 1985)Google Scholar.

72 ‘Variation’, 78–9.

73 ‘Variation’, 61.

74 ‘Variation’, 78–9. The Greco-Roman example Kloppenborg adduced (n. 68), suggesting an analogy to the origins of the variant versions of the Beatitudes, was highly compositional.

75 ‘Variation’, 77.

76 Burkett, Unity and Plurality, 102; also 165, 214. Burkett tends to associate scribal function tout court with straight copying (‘The Return of Proto-Mark: A Response to David Neville’, ETL 85 [2009] 117–34, esp. 119).

77 Unity and Plurality, 104–6. ‘If we did not have Mark and we compared Matthew and Luke… we might suppose that one Evangelist or the other redacted the material much more heavily than is actually the case’ (106).

78 Unity and Plurality, 51–92.

79 Unity and Plurality, 68: Matt 10.24–39//Luke 6.40; 12.2–9, 51–53; 14.25–27; 17.33.

80 Unity and Plurality, 100.

81 Unity and Plurality, 103–6.

82 Streeter, Four Gospels, 240–54, 265, 282; Taylor, ‘Original Order’, 112. See Paul Foster, ‘The M Source: Its History and Demise in Biblical Scholarship’, New Studies in the Synoptic Problem (ed. Foster et al.) 591–616.

83 Unity and Plurality, 108–9.

84 Unity and Plurality, 110. Hence Luke 6.37a, 38c is Q, 6.37b–38b is L.

85 Unity and Plurality, 145–54.

86 Unity and Plurality, 103, 106, 110, 216.

87 Foster (‘The M Source’) notes that past such attempts in regards to M have failed.

88 Unity and Plurality, 154.

89 Though Burkett regards the Golden Rule as a Q saying, on some occasions he suggests Luke placed it in its Q 6.31 location (90–1, 150, 152), but here he opines, correctly, that 6.31 ‘may reflect its original position in the Q document’ (153).

90 ‘We can infer that Matthew conflated two different versions of the saying [Q 6.31//Matt 7.12]: one similar to the Two Ways version in the Didache and one from Q. Since the former version is unique to Matthew in the Synoptics, by definition it belongs to his special material M’ (Unity and Plurality, 155).

91 Unity and Plurality, 108–9; similarly 135, 154, 168–9.

92 Unity and Plurality, 42–3.

93 See Burkett's methodological discussion (Unity and Plurality, 101–2).

94 Unity and Plurality, 215.

95 Unity and Plurality, 124; see Matt 12.38–42//Luke 11.16, 29–32.

96 Unity and Plurality, 210; see Matt 11.2–19//Luke 7.18–35.

97 Proto-Mark, 77.

98 Proto-Mark, 31.

99 That is, Mark–Q doublets and additional ones like M–Q and L–Q, the latter two necessary postulates of his hypothesis. Burkett may conceive variation initially arising as single units of tradition are differentially brought into written connection with other units; see his analysis of the Golden Rule (Unity and Plurality, 150). But this does not explain the rise of pervasively variant versions of a single source like On ConfessionMatt and On ConfessionLuke.

100 For the most part I prefer the term ‘enactment’ over ‘performance’. Though without doubt the latter captures something essential to how tradition is manifest as a cultural phenomenon, the term originates in and is most suited to the narrow context of oral poetry; its generalized use obscures the wide spectrum of forms a culturally foundational tradition can assume, the ways and media in which it can come to expression.

101 For fuller discussion and bibliographic resources see the literature cited in n. 44 above.