Corpus-Paul

["Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>]

At 11:25 PM 4/2/99 -0500, Thomas P Roche wrote:
>On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Stevan Davies wrote:
>> Dale Allison  recently wrote "The Jesus Tradition in Q" reviewed online 
>> by Edward Meadors 
>> from which I quote the following:
>> 
>> "Allison advances his own past arguments that Paul knew and alluded 
>> to Q's missionary
>> discourse (Q 10:1-16).
>
>Again, breaking 'Q' into biblical-style chapter and verse enumerations
>does nothing to alter its 20th century man-made, totally unattested
>status.

The difficulty I have is not so much about Q (although I invite you to
Synoptic-L to discuss that question), but that the strength of these
allusions is weaker than other contacts between Paul and the gospels,
viz. in Matthew.  For example, 1 Thess. includes several contacts with
Jesus' eschatological teaching, especially in the Matthean form, but
only few scholars (e.g. Orchard, Biblica 19 (1938): 19-42) argue that 
Paul is dependent on Matthew rather than upon oral tradition.  This
eschatological material, by the way, does not belong to Q.

Thus, if we are to accept Allison's weak contacts between Paul and Q
as evidence of Paul's use of Q, must we, a fortiori, accept Orchard's
contacts between Paul and Matthew as evidence of Paul's use of Matthew?

I know there are problems with this conclusion (e.g. Matthew's
composition is typically dated after Paul's death), but this could be
handled by (a) expanding Q to include the eschatological discourse,
(b) dispensing with the two source hypothesis altogether and converting
to Matthean priority (e.g. Griesbach), or (c) thanking Allison very
much for his bold proposal while expressing doubts about whether his
methodology is strong enough to prove his point.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35