Lol. The Synoptic Gospels copy each other word for word—in Greek! That is statistically impossible on any other theory than direct plagiarism (or in a more charitable phrase, redaction or rewriting). The evidence extends beyond that (for example, Mark Goodacre’s database of editorial fatigue; Luke’s deliberate “fixing” of Matthew’s Nativity, per Robert Smith, “Caesar’s Decree (Luke 2:1-2): Puzzle or Key?” Currents in Theology and Mission 7:6 (December 1980), pp. 343-51, and Brad McAdon, Rhetorical Mimesis and the Mitigation of Early Christian Conflicts, Chapter 5; etc.).

It has been well documented in the literature, and now includes evidence John also used the Synoptics as sources, with telltale lifts demonstrating awareness of specific versions of stories, even specific Greek vocabulary. I document many examples in On the Historicity of Jesus (Ch. 10.7).

Thank you. I confess I don’t follow the parallels with the Q debate here though.

I found a peer-reviewed discussion. But there doesn’t seem to be any case here of “hypothesizing” a lost source text when we already have a source text (Q is not needed because we have Matthew and Luke copies Matthew and Mark and that leaves nothing else to explain). And there doesn’t seem to be any real absurd claims in the field of musicology itself, just by outsiders who can’t get anything passed peer-review. Q by contrast is a consensus of peer-reviewed arguments that is illogical. Which is what I don’t see anywhere else. How professional musicologists are handling this issue reflects how history fields usually handle issues like this, and should: with all due admissions of uncertainty, and without wild fanciful conjectures and poorly reasoned conclusions.

I’m sure this is a dead thread and you’re unlikely to see this but firstly, these blogs are a great source of feeling like I’m actually educating myself, and secondly, you mentioned in the comment section you couldn’t think of another area of historical research that relies on such illogical speculation like hypothetical Q sources and faulty reasoning. I know of something a little similar in the form of musicology (I appreciate this isn’t an area you my be to well versed in).

In academies and classical musicology in general, there’s a huge problem with many man 19th century metronome marks where, in essence, they’re way too fast (something resulting in pieces requiring over 20 notes a second to be played) and they can’t explain why these are impossible. In the 80s a guy called Talsma came up with the double beat theory which basically says the metronome should be read at half the tempo. His book didn’t have the best arguments nor a huge amount of research in it so it didn’t pass peer review (and rightly so), but recently a guy called Lorenz Gadient has done a huge amount of research into this idea, and a Youtuber called Wim Winters promotes it publicly and yet this position is seen as fringe and conspiracy theory because it goes against the mainstream consensus. The conservatories reject the theory because of the conclusion basically implying that Beethoven and Chopin etc. played much slower than we do now and thus their piece are nowhere near as difficult as they make out.

The arguments they make to “prove” the single beat reading (as it’s referred to) are shockingly poor and are full of fallacies that even I, a non musicologist, can easily spot. They would rather keep the problem as unresolvable than change perspectives and thus lose the god like status of the great composers of 200 hundred years ago. It’s amazing how blind they are to very well argued points for which Lorenz and Wim can cite their sources directly.

I just thought I’d let you know about that in case you found it interesting.

Regards
Dan

Thank you for curating my previous comment on the Atwill carnival.

On first time through this it occurred to me that if redaction becomes looser over time, then that might argue against Goodacre’s argument from fatigue.

On second thought, it more appears that what you say here about a process of loosening redaction over time really means over whole editions; in other words this effect can be attributed to differing authorial intentions among different authors at different times whether we know or agree on the substance of those intentions or not. Whereas Goodacre’s fatigue is a process that happens within a single edition’s production, and is an argument about the effects of the actual toil involved in physically producing an ancient manuscript.

Redaction loosening is a multi-generational process across editions; Goodacre fatigue is a workplace quality control phenomenon within a single edition.

So both phenomena actually compliment rather than contradict each other. Fatigue within a single manuscript will produce more verbatim copy the closer to the end, but since varying intentions across editions will produce varying choices about which ending(s) will become increasingly verbatim in a given single edition, the expected outcome would be a fractal increase of confusion as the timeline advances right-wise, which seems to be a fair description of what is there. The endings of Mark seem like an example of just that combination.

Thank you for the information. I plan to use it when appropriate.

I found the origin of the misspelling in my own notes that I wrote into your books. I apologize for wasting your time!!

If I ever wrote “posibiliter” with one s, it was a typo.

But I searched my entire website and all my books and found zero instances.

It’s Latin (which was also inherited in the French language): ending possibilis, root possibil-, with the adverbial suffix “-iter,” converting it from the adjective “possible” to the adverb “possibly.”

It’s super easy. Just click “Edit” on the upper right, make the changes you want, write a brief “Edit Summary” in the designated box below (e.g. “minor spelling and grammar corrections” would suffice if that’s all you did), and then click “Publish Changes.”

That’s literally all there is to it.

Other editors will then go in and review and might reverse or undue your edits. But I doubt they’d do that if your corrections were only spelling and grammar. They usually only get militant about substantive changes to what is being said.