Re: What's Wrong with Q?

From: Nichael Lynn Cramer (nichael@sover.net)
Date: Fri Oct 13 1995 - 19:53:51 EDT


At 5:42 PM 13/10/95, Travis Bauer wrote:
> We don't have Q. Thus all we can count on is the historical
>wittness.

Exactly so.

The point here, however, is that the historical witnesses are _precisely_
neutral on the question of the existence of Q. Or to state this another
way, the physical/archaeological/etc evidence in support --or against-- the
existence of Q is exactly the same as it is for any and all other
comtemporary sources that any of the Evangelists might have used.

Are we then to argue that there are _no_ sources lying behind the Gospels?
Or that we can make no attempt understand the structure of the Gospels and
where they came from?

No, to repeat the earlier point, given this state of affairs, given the
complete absence of data in this regard, this argument has no more
relevance to the subject at hand than do the discussion of any other
unanswerable questions such as the colour of John the Baptist's eyes. The
only question at hand is: Does or does not this model explain the data that
we _do_ have?

> ... This would be traces of it in the other texts, such as the
>Gospels, or what other people had written about it.

To point out the obvious, there are those who argue that in fact it does
leave --hightly discernable--traces in these documents.

Nichael - deep autumn my neighbor what does she do
nichael@sover.net
http://www.sover.net/~nichael



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