𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 ‘𝐔𝐧𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠’ 𝐀𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

This post is a slightly edited compilation of a series of posts I originally wrote for a forum on the synoptic problem and posted on August 30, 2020.

PART 1

I have just finished reading Alan Garrow‘s paper “Plausibility, Probability and Synoptic Hypotheses: A Response to F. Gerald Downing” ETL 26.1 (2020), 131-137, which he posted to the Facebook group back on April 25. As the subtitle implies, Garrow’s paper is a response to Downing’s criticism of Garrow’s Matthew Conflator Hypothesis that Matthew was the third synoptic gospel (Mt3rd) and written with knowledge of both of his predecessors, Mark and Luke.

Garrow points out serious flaws in Downing’s argument that Matthew-writing-third ‘unpicked’ his two predecessors, particularly Downing’s unfounded belief that ancient authors sought out verbatim agreements in their sources to include in their own work, and that failure to include such verbatim agreements would require the authors to have actively avoided, refused, or eliminated such agreements from their works.

I do have a serious concern about one part of Garrow’s paper, though. It appears from p. 131 n. 4 that Garrow is still accepting Downing’s conclusion that, on the Farrer theory, Luke-writing-third “unpicked’ Mark from Matthew, despite the fact that Garrow has now rejected the premises about how the evangelist who wrote third is likely to have treated his sources upon which that conclusion is based. (Garrow does discuss one example of Luke’s supposed ‘unpicking’ on the Farrer theory on his blog, which I’ll examine in a separate post).

I propose mandatory retirement for the allegation that the evangelist who wrote third must have ‘unpicked’ his predecessors until that charge can be substantiated with a great deal more evidence than an appeal to the authority of Downing.

PART 2

Garrow has in the past placed a good deal of weight on the charge of ‘unpicking’ against the Farrer theory (FH).

I think Garrow may have missed an important part of what Goodacre was saying here. It’s not just that proponents of the Farrer theory did not coin and do not use the term “unpicking” to describe what Luke did with Mark and Matthew on their theory. It’s that they contest the claim that such a procedure as Downing describes with the term is actually entailed by their theory, and they have offered arguments in support of their contention that it is not.

This challenge presents a particular difficulty for the FH, according to which Luke treats Mark entirely conventionally, after the manner exemplified by Josephus, but is then required to treat Matthew in a way that is entirely unconventional. That is to say, Luke is required to copy Matthew with remarkable exactness, while also radically reordering Matthew, while also engaging in the extraordinary practice of ‘unpicking’ Matthew’s non-Markan material from its Markan context [F 32]. It is difficult to conceive of a credible motive for this latter activity, let alone a believable reconstruction of how it could physically have been achieved The dramatic inconsistency in Luke’s behaviour seriously undermines the credibility of the FH

[F 32] Compelling presentations of the problem of ‘unpicking’ are offered by F.G. Downing, ‘Towards the Rehabilitation of Q’, NTS NTS 11 (1965); F.G. Downing ‘Compositional Conventions and the Synoptic Problem, JBL 107 (1988) 69-85; and Downing ‘Josephus (I)’ and Josephus (II).

[Alan Garrow, Streeter’s ‘Other’ Synoptic Solution: The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis, New Testament Studies 62.2 (2016) pp. 207-226, at 216; italics mine].

In response to Mark Goodacre saying that he had nothing to add on the subject of “unpicking” to the critiques by Eric Eve and by me [Ken Olson, “Unpicking on the Farrer Theory, in Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique, edited by Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin (2004) 127-150; Eric Eve, “The Devil in the Detail: Exorcising Q from the Beelzebul Controversy,” in Marcan Priority Without Q: Explorations in the Farrer Hypothesis, edited by John C. Poirier (2015) 16-43] other than that no proponent of the Farrer theory actually uses the term ‘unpicking’ to describe what Luke has done on that theory, Garrow replied:

The use of quotations marks around ‘unpicking’ is not, I affirm, because this was term coined by any proponent of the Farrer Hypothesis. The quotation marks are merely intended to indicate that, in the absence of a suitable technical term, an everyday word has been used in a technical sense. The idea to be captured is essentially that of ‘the opposite of conflation’. That is to say that, under the Farrer Hypothesis, Luke is required to perform a task that, at a range of different levels of detail, is ‘the opposite of conflation’. Conflation is an operation performed by numerous author-compilers from the second century onwards. Individuals who perform this activity in reverse are a rarer breed. Thus far, Luke (as understood by the Farrer Hypothesis) appears the sole example.

https://www.alangarrow.com/blog/goodacre-and-whats-good-enough

It must have come as something of a shock to Garrow when Downing himself suggested that Garrow’s Matthew was a member of that rare breed of “unpickers” and “deconflators” of whom Garrow thought Farrer’s Luke was the sole example:

In this section of Matthew no UCVSTs [Unconventional Verbatim Shared Texts] seem to appear to be ignored or refused by Garrow’s Matthew. What is noteworthy here, however, on the “Commissioning”, and in the next section on “Beelzebub”, is the extent of ‘unpicking’ of imagined Lucan changes to his Markan source. Not only does Mt3rd refuse Mark-Luke agreements, as noted, and as will be illustrated further, but here also takes implausible pains to separate out the Lucan matter on its own, often verbatim. This is a phenomenon that I have discussed in a number of previous articles, and I will not repeat the argument here, only noting that such “deconflation” would be very difficult to achieve, and is quite unprecedented. And it is worth noting that to make such excisions from memory would be even harder than doing so from parallel texts in view.

(F. Gerald Downing, ‘Plausibility, Probability, and Synoptic Hypotheses’, ETL 93.2 (2017) 313-337, at 236).

PART 3

In this instance, however, Garrow found Downing’s case for “unpicking” not at all compelling. I find myself largely in agreement with Garrow’s criticisms of Downing’s case against the Matthew-coming-third hypothesis, not least because I had made very similar criticisms of Downing’s case against the Luke-coming-third hypothesis some years earlier:

There is nothing to suggest that the authorities Downing cites saw particular virtue in dual verbatim testimony (Garrow, Plausibility, 134).

None of the classicists cited in Downing’s study describe any procedure resembling the one Downing suggests of going through two or more sources looking for ‘common witness’ to include. (Olson, Unpicking, 132).

Downing claims, in the examples he cites, that Matthew “assiduously avoids,” “refused to include”, “eliminated”, and “miss[ed]”, these elements of exact Mark-Luke agreement. If this were actually the case, then it would seem difficult to achieve without Matthew having access to both Mark and Luke (admittedly with a need for prodigious amounts of effort for no discernible reward). (Garrow, Plausibility, 137).

At first glance, Downing might appear to be claiming that Luke’s use of Mark is inversely correlated to Matthew’s use of Mark. Luke fails to follow Mark especially where Matthew has followed Mark closely. If this were so, it would be a problem for the Two-Document Hypothesis. How could Luke, if he did not know Matthew’s Gospel, have chosen not to follow Mark especially where Matthew does follow Mark? (Olson, Unpicking, 131)

Garrow concludes:

In reality however, nothing so dramatic has occurred. Matthew appears simply to have used the same range of editorial options that he uses elsewhere in his treatment of Mark: complete omission, partial omission, emendation, paraphrase, expansion and complete inclusion. This means, of course, that the data in question is compatible with any number of synoptic hypotheses (Garrow, Plausibility, 137).

My conclusion with regard to Farrer’s Luke was broadly similar to Garrow’s with regard to his own Matthew Conflator. Downing had not made out the case for “unpicking” and there are other, more plausible explanations (‘editorial options’ in Garrow’s words) by which Luke could have achieved his result:

Downing’s ‘Farrer’s Luke’ is not Farrer’s Luke, by which I mean that the assumptions Downing makes about how Luke must have behaved are not the assumptions made by advocates of the Farrer theory. Downing argues that Luke must have deliberately ‘unpicked’ the Markan material from the Matthean passages he used. As this is an implausible procedure, this would mean that Farrer’s Luke (i.e., a Luke that used Mark and Matthew as sources) is an implausible concept. It may be that the procedure Downing describes is implausible. The problem is that Downing has not shown that it would be necessary for Farrer’s Luke to have acted in this implausible manner. There are too many exceptions to Downing’s generalization and too many other, more plausible explanations for why Farrer’s Luke might have rewritten Matthew the way that he did …I do not by any means claim either to have proved the Farrer theory or to have disproved the Two-Document Hypothesis. (Olson, Unpicking, 150).

Garrow contends that Matthew-writing-third’s intention would, in fact, have been to use his non-Markan source to supplement, rather than to duplicate, Mark:

There is, more to the point, plenty of evidence that, if Matthew was particularly concerned about anything, it was to find material with which to supplement, rather than to duplicate, Mark. Seen in this light, the elements of Luke that would have been of least interest to Matthew would have been those where Luke was exactly similar to Mark. Conversely, Luke’s text would have been of greatest interest where it included valuable supplementary material. (Plausibility, 135).

This seems to reject the very basis of Downing’s criticism.

To be sure, Downing has claimed that, in the case of Farrer’s Luke, there are four pericopes Farrrer’s Luke (i.e., Luke as third evangelist using the work of his predecessors) has ‘unpicked’ Markan material from his use of Matthew, and reproduced Matthean additional material fairly closely, and therefore Luke would be “deconflating” Mark from Matthew to reproduce the Matthean additions alone. (Downing has also claimed that Garrow’s Matthew has ‘unpicked’ in two of these cases, but I’m going to leave that aside here). The problem with Downing’s argument is that he’s showing only that Luke omitted some of the material where Matthew followed Mark closely, In three of the four cases (i.e., Luke 11.15, 3.3b, and 17.31) Luke has retained close agreements between Matthew and Mark, and in all four cases there is Matthew only material Luke has greatly altered or omitted. If Luke were trying to deconflate Mark from Matthew to reproduce only Matthew’s additional material, he did a very poor job of it. More likely, that was never his intention at all, and Downing has not showed that it was. It’s not that Luke, in his use of Matthew, has never preserved verbatim sequences of agreement between Matthew and Mark, it’s that he doesn’t do it as often as Downing thinks he should have, because Downing erroneously presupposes that the evangelists’ intention would have been to preserve the ‘common witness’ of their sources (a presupposition that Garrow rightly rejects).

If we agree that appeal to Downing’s authority is not enough to establish that a particular source theory must presuppose “unpicking” on the part of the third evangelist, then I suggest we should all stop making the “unpicking” allegation until some firmer foundation for it is produced.

PART 4

Garrow discusses one example of Farrer’s Luke’s supposed ‘unpicking’ on his blog.

According to the Farrer Hypothesis (FH) Luke indulged in what might be called ‘reverse conflation’ or ‘unpicking’. So, for example, in the Beelzebul Controversy, Goodacre’s Luke is required to follow Matthew 12.27-28 very closely but then, just as Matthew (12.29) starts to follow Mark very closely, Luke stops following Matthew – only to return to following Matthew as soon as, once again, Matthew has no parallel in Mark. This is just one of a series of editorial procedures required of Luke, under the FH, that are exceptionally difficult to achieve from a practical point of view and that are not exhibited in any contemporary literature.

https://www.alangarrow.com/blog/the-1000-challenge-3-garrow-responds-to-goodacre1162174

We should first note that when Garrow says “according to the Farrer theory,” he’s not talking about what actual proponents of that theory claim about it, he means that he himself supposes that the Farrer theory necessarily entails the procedures he describes. I’m not aware that any proponents of the theory who agree that the ‘editorial procedure’ Garrow describes is necessary to suppose. I certainly don’t suppose it

Garrow finds the data difficult to comprehend on the Farrer theory, and proposes that instead we should believe, on Garrow’s own theory in which Matthew was writing third, that Matthew followed Luke very closely for two verses (Matt 12.27-28=Luke 11.19-20), but then decides not to follow Luke for the saying on the Strong Man (Luke 11.21-22), but switched over to follow Mark closely for a single verse (Matt 12.29=Mark 3.27), before returning again to follow Luke again for the verse after that (Matt 12.30=Luke 11.23).

Garrow apparently finds the idea of Matthew rapidly switching between his two written sources, following Luke very closely, leaving him to follow Mark closely for a single verse, and returning to follow Luke very closely again, to be less ‘difficult to achieve from a practical point of view’ and more in keeping with what is exhibited in contemporary literature. It is not at all obvious why someone should think this. Indeed, one could see (if one had a mind to) why Downing accuses Garrow’s Matthew of ‘unpicking’ or ‘deconflation’: he prefers to follow Mark for pure Mark but Luke for Luke’s additional material.

I think, however, that Downing and Garrow (when he’s examining the Farrer theory, rather than his own) are making an unjustified assumption about causality and intentionality. On the theory that Luke is writing third, he is basically copying Matthew 12.27-28, skipping Matthew 12.29 to provide his own version of the saying on the Strong Man in Luke 11.21-22, and then returning to copy Matthew 12.30. Downing seems to think that, since the skipped verse, Matthew 12.29, follows Mark fairly closely, while the other verses have no Markan parallel, the fact that Matthew is following Mark closely in Matt 12.29 must be what caused Luke not to follow Matthew for that verse. That is, Luke has deliberately and intentionally left off following Matthew 11.29 because it is paralleled by Mark.

This is a non sequitur. Luke departed from Matthew and provided his own version of the saying of the Strong Man because he thought he could write a better version of that saying. He had almost certainly read Mark and might well have been aware that Mark had a version of the Strong Man similar to Matthew’s, but that played no role in his decision to set aside the Markan/Matthean version but to provide his own instead. But for Downing (and Garrow, and, admittedly, many others) the fact that Matthew is following Mark for precisely the same verse that Luke is not following Matthew is too strong a correlation not to infer causality. Luke simply must have stopped following Matthew there because Matthew is following Mark.

PART 5

Downing’s basic (and inaccurate) claim grows in the telling. According to Garrow:

These passages, sometimes referred to as ‘Mark–Q overlaps’, generate very real difficulties for any hypothesis that sees Luke as dependent on Matthew. This is because, as Tuckett notes, they require that ‘Luke must have decided to use only those parts of Matthew which Matthew added to Mark and to exclude all the elements where Matthew has used Mark directly’.

(Garrow, ‘Streeter’s Other Synoptic Solution’, p. 219/p. 13, citing C. M. Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity, 32; emphasis mine).

Tuckett has absolutized Downing’s claim to say flatly, and mistakenly, that a Luke using Matthew must have removed *all* the elements where Matthew has used Mark directly, and Garrow has repeated it. A look at a synopsis of the Parable of the Mustard Seed (which Downing, perhaps wisely, did not use to try to make his case in ‘Rehabilitating’) is enough to show that this is not true.

Mahlon Smith, who advocates the Two-Document Hypothesis has a Greek (and and English synopsis) of the Parable of the Mustard Seed online here:

https://virtualreligion.net/primer/mustard_gr.html

The words in blue represent triple agreements, where Mark Matthew and Luke have the same wording. On the Farrer theory, these would represent place where Matthew has taken over Mark’s wording and Luke has reproduced it (and not ‘unpicked’ it). What Luke has omitted from his use of Matthew is not all of Matthew’s use of Mark but rather  the comparison of ‘the smallest of all the seeds’ with ‘the greatest of shrubs’ found in the middle of Matthew’s Parable. It would seem most reasonable to think that that Luke’s reason for omitting it is probably based on its content, not on its agreement with Mark.

As Mark Goodacre observes in ‘Taking Our Leave of the Mark-Q Overlaps’:

It is one of the curiosities of scholarship on the Synoptic Problem that a point with so slim an evidentiary basis is so often repeated. It is simply not the case that Luke lacks Marcan material in the Mark-Q Overlap passages

Mark Goodacre, “Taking our leave of Mark-Q Overlaps: Major Agreements and the Farrer Theory,” in Mogens Müller and Heike Omerzu, Gospel Interpretation and the Q Hypothesis (2018) 201-224, p. 214.