My personal opinion is that there is a Q author and that Mark gets priority. That said, once you admit Q as an additional source, you basically jettison single authorship of the gospels and introduce at least one role of editor/redactor. And if we’re going to have multiple authors, then why not multiple editors/redactors?

To me, the gospels that have come down through tradition as canonized make the most sense when they are conceived of documents that started their use among very small groups of people and went through multiple revisions as they gained influence. This allows for successive cross-influences among the gospels, rather than a simple Matthew used Mark and Luke used Matthew and Mark type of relationship. This also explains why the synoptic gospels had almost no influence at all until a very late date (mid to late 2nd century) and why they reached that stage of influence in somewhat uniform condition (they’re not the Masoretic Text by any means, but in spite of the conflict between mormons/evangelicals and scholars over the preference for the Byzantine vs the Alexandrian texts, the differences don’t really amount to that much and (if I recall correctly) there aren’t any early texts that are entirely one or the other anyway).

A Quel text that was oral and adopted by various communities, and then reduced to writing around 70 AD or so, could easily morph from Mark to John, though many oral texts are surprisingly resistent to change.

Really enjoyed this conversation, it has been a while.

1. J. Watkins (#12) Elaine Pagels has recently made a strong case, I think, that John actually responds to and critiques Thomas, or at least the Thomas school which produced the work, which leads me to believe Thomas was earlier than a couple of hundred years after Jesus. Certainly Thomas has gnostic elements in it, but the gnostic myth in all its splendor is missing. To me it looks like it’s been tampered with by gnostics. More on this later.

I actually think that Papias might have been referring to Q rather than our Matthew, and that the Matthew in the form we have it isn’t by Matthew the tax-collector at all. Perhaps more on that later as well.

2. Jonathan (#14) I might be able to elaborate on 003(f) later when I make a more definitive stab at my preferred Historical Jesus.

I’m working on a book for the LDS market on the NT. We have a general introduction to textual studies (it remains to be seen whether this material will even make the final cut; we’re going to have to slash pages mercilessly), which had a brief description of the Synoptic Problem.

The text was reviewed at one point by a BYU Religion professor (who is also a friend of mine), who told me that there is a *lot* of suspicion of Q among his colleagues. So we added a bit of a disclaimer to our little treatment, to address those with (what in my view is an overly defensive) attitude towards Q. Here is what we added:

It is not our intention to take any dogmatic stance with respsect to this question either way in our notes, although we occasionally refer to such-and-such a passage as deriving from Q as a convenient shorthand identifying it as common to both Matthew and Luke. A full consideration of the Synoptic Problem is beyond the scope of this book. The issues are complex and likely irrelevant to the interests of most of the readers of this book, and they can be pursued more fully in any of the general introductions of the New Testament listed above. Although some scholars have made elaborate claims based on the posited existence of Q, and although some modern “Historical Jesus” research attempts to use Q to portray Jesus as nothing but a wandering philosopher, such claims go far beyond the evidence and cannot be substantiated. At its base, Q is simply a hypothetical source posited to answer some perplexing questions about the relationship among the Gospels. The existence or nonexistence of Q has no bearing on the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

LDS scholars generally assume that the Gospels derive from a combination of written sources (such as Luke mentions in Luke 1:1-4), and eyewitness accounts (such as John’s Gospel). In such a context, one may take Q as merely being a source (written or oral) available to both Matthew and Luke. The Q hypothesis in and of itself should not be taken as undermining the historical or spiritual accuracy of the Gospel records, despite some of the nonsense published in its name.

If Mark was first, the only reason there are other gospels* is because someone thought Mark was in some way inadequate. Hence, the fact that any other gospels were written is evidence itself that Mark was falling out of favor.

“So if Mark is intentionally showing a weaker, more human Jesus, why couldn’t he have conciously done it after Matthew wrote his Gospel?”

This is possible; but if you sit down with the texts and look at things like grammar and word choice, it appears far more likely that Mt sat down with Mk than that Mk sat down with Mt.

That said, I think that your general point holds: it does pay to have some caution about Q. People get a little silly about Q, specualting on the composition of its community, its theology, etc. It is also possible that Q was an oral source. We just don’t know.

*Unless you think their writers were unaware of Mark, which is possible for John but not possible for Mt or Lk unless you think there has been h-e-a-v-y editing.

I have two other beefs with this idea too. First, it is very popular today to almost completely ignore the early Fathers in everything they say by coming up with creative ways to circumvent them. They didn’t just think Matthew was first, they cited and quoted Matthew far more than they ever used Mark. If Mark was really first, why did he fall out of favor so fast? And you can’t say that Matthew was better or Apostolic because Luke has him beat hands down by the Fathers too.

Second, every Gospel’s Jesus has a distinct personality. Mark gets the early nod here because his Jesus seems the most fallible, most human if you like. Matt’s and Luke’s is more knowledgeable, powerful, better. John’s thinks he’s already resurrected. This could be seen as a progression that fits the 2-source/Q-hypothesis theory. But it doesn’t have to. Imposing our logic on history doesn’t always work; history has a tendancy of progressing in ways that seem illogical to us in retrospect. Besides that, isn’t it weird that every Gospel gives Jesus a different personality? If you pick one to be the “real” Jesus’ personality are you saying that the rest of them were lying? Probably not. You’d say that they were each trying to portray Jesus in a certain light for a certain reason. So if Mark is intentionally showing a weaker, more human Jesus, why couldn’t he have conciously done it after Matthew wrote his Gospel? Plus, I’m of the opinion that Mark is writing with a clear purpose in mind and that purpose didn’t include the long ending.
I don’t have an answer for every point for that supports the Q-hypothesis but there are serious questions about it that I think should be laid out before we turn the Bloggernacle into Q-ers.

I suppose the possibilities are:

(1) Matthew is really, really inspired and the same Spirit that told Matthew what to write is responsible for the BoM record.

(2) Joseph Smith relied on Matthew for the shape of 3 Nephi; the untranslated 3 Nephi may have looked different. (I have never heard anyone actually say this, but I have heard this argument re the Isaiah chapters in the beginning of the BoM.)

Are there other possibilities?