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Re: Q and Papias
On Thu, 27 Oct 1994, Michael I Bushnell wrote:
> Whatever the origin of the narrative (and for the record I side with
> the "piece of the whole cloth theory") it is not some primal
> autographic ur-text that Christians look to, but the canonical text of
> the Gospel. To understand Matthew one cannot begin by retreating to
> some earlier text which is not Matthew.
>
This does sound as though words are being put into Christians' mouths;
not only _sola scripture_ but (very much like Luther) _sola mea scriptura_.
I'm not sure Christian history supports an arbitrary restriction
to the canonicals, although at present there's little else to look to (no
archaeologists uncovering copies of Q to the horror of some). Anyone
who's scanned through Eusebius's Eccl. Hist. knows how freewheeling the
canonization process was, and at best, this higher criticism just seems
a more careful, modern retreading of what the church did in the centuries of
canon formation.
On that note, however - why was it that there was so little controversy
over the gospels, esp. considering their discrepancies and similarities
(the former would seem to have made some suspect as fraudulent, and the
latter would seem to have made some superfluous and thus unpreserved)?
Greg Jordan
jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu
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