RE: Evangelicals, Trump and a Quick Bible Study
October 28, 2020 at 9:16 am
(This post was last modified: October 28, 2020 at 9:45 am by The Grand Nudger.)
The arthur legend is a great example.
We'll use Monmouth as a standin for Luke, and Monmouth makes a conveniently familiar claim. That though the events were known, he wasn't aware of much in the way of a written history of arthur. He then claims to have been given a most ancient text™, by a friend, and with that and the works of gildas, bede, and nennius spins his arthur myth.
The question being, if there were such a text, could we tease out passages that, given the relationships between all known sources, might suggest some portion of the body of an unknown source shared by two or more members of the various literary traditions that, together, make up the arthur myth?
Approached from another angle, if there were such relationships, would this not pose an equivalent synoptic problem of arthur?
Now I want to have some fun with it. We should keep in mind that none of the answers to these questions will verify the contents of any of the respective literary traditions. Our hypothetical q of arthur, above, may have been the original source for gildas, bede, and nennius.....and perhaps they all heard the story and thought "this is obvious bullshit...an exaggerated king", and wrote him in as a minor footnote of tribal politics. Monmouth, armed with those men's work but not the knowledge of their own source, may see those three men as establishing the historicity of a character in an unbiased way - and armed with the contents of this unknown (to us) q document re-expounds upon the mythical elements left out by other sources. Incredulous, as it were, that people didn't write more about this amazing guy.
To bring it back round to the new testaments synoptic problem, q can be pretty much anything, yes. It may be an oral tradition but we expect that there was some written form that shared tradition authors referred to. This, in order to explain not just the presence of shared material, but it's ordering, grammar, spelling, etc. An anthology of beliefs recorded as a survey, address, or soliloquy can serve the purpose. A common favorite is a hypothetical collection of sayings - teacher of wisdom type stuff.
We'll use Monmouth as a standin for Luke, and Monmouth makes a conveniently familiar claim. That though the events were known, he wasn't aware of much in the way of a written history of arthur. He then claims to have been given a most ancient text™, by a friend, and with that and the works of gildas, bede, and nennius spins his arthur myth.
The question being, if there were such a text, could we tease out passages that, given the relationships between all known sources, might suggest some portion of the body of an unknown source shared by two or more members of the various literary traditions that, together, make up the arthur myth?
Approached from another angle, if there were such relationships, would this not pose an equivalent synoptic problem of arthur?
Now I want to have some fun with it. We should keep in mind that none of the answers to these questions will verify the contents of any of the respective literary traditions. Our hypothetical q of arthur, above, may have been the original source for gildas, bede, and nennius.....and perhaps they all heard the story and thought "this is obvious bullshit...an exaggerated king", and wrote him in as a minor footnote of tribal politics. Monmouth, armed with those men's work but not the knowledge of their own source, may see those three men as establishing the historicity of a character in an unbiased way - and armed with the contents of this unknown (to us) q document re-expounds upon the mythical elements left out by other sources. Incredulous, as it were, that people didn't write more about this amazing guy.
To bring it back round to the new testaments synoptic problem, q can be pretty much anything, yes. It may be an oral tradition but we expect that there was some written form that shared tradition authors referred to. This, in order to explain not just the presence of shared material, but it's ordering, grammar, spelling, etc. An anthology of beliefs recorded as a survey, address, or soliloquy can serve the purpose. A common favorite is a hypothetical collection of sayings - teacher of wisdom type stuff.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
