Featured Quelle

Historical Apologetics..that is why..if liberal theology is allowed to go unchecked, it will lead to terrible things. IMO

 

Compare the contents of the two sermons. They are just too different, while obviously the same basic "big idea": Luke includes woes, Matthew doesn't, and so forth.

Now if you want to say Matthew gave Luke some other content, I'm not against that. For instance, Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer is very close to Matthew's. It's just not in the Sermon on the Plain, but over in Luke 11.

 

I'm saying they are drawing from the same tradition.

If I went w/ the progressive publication of Matthew theory, then the scraps that Luke had which were Mathaen but not the actual gospel of Matthew would account for the similarities yes shorter versions plus whatever Luke brings to the table.

 

See, this is the problem. We're veering into speculation. There is nothing extant, Q or otherwise, to tell us who Luke's human sources were. Sure, he got his Sermon on the Plains from the same "tradition" as Matthew's Sermon on the Mount in the sense that there were 12 apostles (including Matthias), 70 other disciples who had been directly commissioned by Christ, and over 500 witnesses of the Resurrection--not to mention Paul who met Jesus personally. And all of these people were talking about Jesus all the time and telling the stories all the time, I have no doubt. Who did Luke talk to? Many of them, I'm sure.

 

Question related to this: do you believe that the sermon as it exists in Matt. 5-7 is the verbatim sermon/teaching of Jesus? Is Matthew retelling an actual event or is he is narrativally giving us the sum total of Jesus' most essential teachings?

 

I'm with John on this...

The obvious answer, at least to me, is that the sermons in Matthew and Luke were two different occasions. The content is similar because of the vast importance of giving His listeners a vision of what the Kingdom of the Heavens (Matthew)/Kingdom of God (Luke) being available to them means in their lives. It is the essence of His message!

Jesus probably preached many variations on this sermon through His ministry.

 

I believe it was an actual event, an actual sermon, and people took notes on it and reproduced it afterwards. I don't know why the disicples of Jesus, maybe the woman disciples even, could not have done something similar. They were just as capable as we are, right? And if it wasn't a real event, the readers of the Gospels would have known so. So why would Matthew and Luke make up sermons for Christ?

Back in the days before recording devices, preachers would have their secretaries (or a church secretary) take notes on the message. Then afterwards the message would be written out by the secretary, checked by the preacher, then published. I have a few volumes of those old time sermons: Revival Addresses by R. A. Torrey (1903), The Candle of the Lord and Other sermons, by the great Phillips Brooks (1902), lots of the old Moody pocketbook series, from those days, some sermon books by John R. Rice, etc. Those old timers did a great job of reproducing the sermons in print.

It's Jan. 1 here in Japan. Happy New Year! :wavey:

Edited in: I remember hearing R. G. Lee preach "Payday Someday" almost 40 years ago at Tennessee Temple College. The event is still clear in my mind, though I couldn't give you the content of the message. However, I also heard "God's Three Deadlines" by J. Harold Smith at TTC, and I could discuss the main points with you. I heard Jack Hyles preach a message about 35 years ago (never mind discussions about his failings, please) that was so memorable I could discuss all seven points with you. Surely the sermons of Jesus were even more memorable than these were, so that 35-40 years later Matthew and Luke and their readers knew all about the event and content.

 

This is where we part ways again. I hold to an impsissima vox, especially of the Sermon on the Mount. It is clearly theologically arranged in a text that is also theologically arranged. For example, 5-7 being Jesus' teaching and gospel and 8-9 being his healing, bookended in Matt. 4:23 to 9:35.

I also think that if this is a verbatim sermon, then we have a very strange understanding of how the Jesus tradition was passed on (orally or written). I think Matthew is quite eloquently arranging Jesus' words and summarizing his most famous teachings as an exemplar for his teaching and gospel of the kingdom.

By the way, your postulation of women or someone writing down his words like a secretary was basically a version of what the Q hypothesis is. There was a written tradition of Jesus words, either verbatim (can't be since it was not likely spoken in Greek) or in summary (so we still end up with ipsissima vox) that later made its way into the gospels. You just made your own Q hypothesis!!!!

Btw... read this by Dan Wallace... he agrees w/ me

 

Well, the problem with source criticism is that it is usually just speculation and hard to prove. We'll agree to disagree then. I do think a discourse analysis would be interesting for your point.

Nope, not at all, I'm not advocating a Q-type theory. The original Q postulates a document circulating. The more recent Q still requires circulation. My thought is just someone taking down notes and then giving them to Matthew. In fact, it could have been Matthew taking his own notes--wouldn't be at all surprising, since he was a tax collector and worked with written materials as a profession before becoming a disciple.

I'm happy for you! :laugh:

 

Liberal theology has gone unchecked for centuries. It exist. I don't see how a presumed theory would have any effect on it. The Quelle denies the inspiration of the Word of God and places inspiration all on a single document closely associated with Gnosticism. It seems to me this would be more harmful than helpful. The best tool any of us can have is the truth of scripture.
MB

 

Almost everything you've said here is false.

 

My goodness what a charge. Prove it.
MB

 

Actually, you made the wild assertions and offered no proof. The onus is on you to verify your claims. The gnosticism thing was the wildest, IMO. But the denial of inspiration is also false. I'd like to see you back up your statements too.

 

As GT said, you're claims in the referenced post are wildly out of control and quite simply in error, thus the burden for proving them is up to you. Up until the last two sentences everything you said is unsubstaniated and in error. So I'd start there and work through it all.

Please reference my above posts about the nature of inspiration and how the Q theory doesn't disrupt an evangelical viewpoint.

 

The Q or Quelle is the is a hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus, It is assumed without proof for the purpose of reasoning and deducing proof. Simply put you cannot make a lie into truth.

As far as it being associated with Gnosticism. In The New Testament Apocrypha There is a gospel of thomas which is suppose to be the sayings of Jesus. The Gnostics version ( Just in case there are other versions) has 114 sayings in it only half of which are actually in the Bible we have today. If you would but read them then you'd agree.

It matters little to me whether you agree or not. However just for those who believe they need to make such out landish statements like this one below
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"if liberal theology is allowed to go unchecked, it will lead to terrible things."

Obviously this person believes he is going to wipe out free will believers with a discussion on the "Q" When it was actually first written about by a man who hated Calvinism. Herbert Marsh in 1801 first Hhypothesized this nonsense because he just could not believe that God's word was inspired by God. Like Thomas He doubted. So he set out to prove that Mathew and Luke were copies of Mark and the "Q" source because of there similarities. May I say here they are similar because God dictated it to them, and not because of a document they copied.
The whole reason this is a thread is because we have those amoung us that doubt the inspiration of the books of Mathew and Luke. Why should I be surprised that Calvinist doubt God's Holy and Inspired Word.

Next we will see a thread on "M" and "L" that are even more so called documents used in the writing of the gospel.
MB

 

Wow, that came out of nowhere! How did we get from Q to calvinism?

(BTW, in case anyone missed it, my Christmas facts ("Is that in the bible") thread also got Calvinism thrown into it before it was all over.) :laugh:

 

I suppose you don't know who Herbert Marsh is. You have the internet look him up and see for your self.

 

Herbert Marsh (1757–1839) was a bishop in the Church of England.
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Life
He was educated at Faversham Grammar School (now Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Faversham), The King's School, Canterbury and St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA as second wrangler and was elected a fellow of St John's in 1779.[1] He studied with J. D. Michaelis in Germany and learned the Higher criticism.

When he returned to England, he translated Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament and added his own "hypothesis" on the inter-reliance of the Gospels (that they might have derived from each other, see synoptic problem). This brought him under attack from the conservatives of his church.

In 1805 he began to preach against Calvinism, and in particular against the doctrines of justification by faith and the inamissability of grace, which brought him into conflict with the Evangelicals. He was elected the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1807 and began presenting lectures on Higher Criticism. He was the first person in the theological school there to give his lectures in English rather than the traditional Latin.[2] In 1816 he was appointed the bishop of Llandaff and was translated to bishopric of Peterborough in 1819.

As a bishop, Marsh was controversial for preaching against the Evangelicals and for refusing to license clergy with Calvinist beliefs (for which he incurred the ire of Sidney Smith). He was a rigorous proponent of strict ecclesiastical conformity.

 

You still made no links of Q w/ gnosticism. Fact is, if Q is legit (not saying it is), then you are saying significant portions of Matthew and Luke are Gnostic. Do you really understand what you are saying?