Oral tradition, people, oral tradition..... decades, maybe centuries of people telling their children stories before they finally got around to writing it down ..... again.....ever hear of the game of "telephone" kids used to play at parties? Julie Krueger taking *everything* with a mound of salt ========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Reframing Christianity [was hijacking] Date: 2/26/06 2:22:52 P.M. Central Standard Time From: _phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on: Eric Yost wrote: "In other words, the 'purpose of Q'--which is by no means sinister or partisan--is to account for 'agreement between the Synoptic Gospels.'" This is not quite accurate. A purpose for hypothesizing a Q source is to account for the agreement. However, the claim that there is an ur-text arises from an ideological commitment. Virtually all the Biblical scholars I know accept that the Synoptics draw on earlier sources. What most of them reject is the claim that there is an originary text that the Synoptic writers drew from. What makes Q scholarship so controversial is the claim that there is a single authorial voice behind the Synoptics. The partisanship comes into view when the Synoptics are dismissed as 'corruptions' of that ur-text. 'What we learn from Q is that Jesus was really ..." It is shoddy scholarship but it fits a certain liberal agenda. Eric continues: "As for the historicity of NT Scriptures, they are not as contestable as their putative authorship." It is a mistake to think of the NT as history. As I have been arguing, the NT arises out of the lived experience of the earliest Christian communities. The NT certainly has historical aspects to it, but it is, first and foremost, Scripture. To take the NT as being historical accounts, as some Christians do, or as being the sectarian corruption of a more original historical document, as most Q scholars do, is to operate under a category mistake. Sincerely, Phil Enns Toronto, ON ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html