Matthew and Luke didn't think Mark was inerrant

[♦ ficino ♦]

This seems so obvious that I can't believe I never thought of it before. Matthew used Mark and "corrects" Mark in various places. Scholars debate how Luke comes in, whether he used both Mark and Matthew or only Mark. I suspect he used both. But he too changes/"corrects" Mark.

 

So the authors of Matthew and Luke could not have believed that Mark was inerrant. We don't know whether they had a concept of a New Testament standing as "scripture" equal to or above an "Old Testament." I suspect they did not even think of Mark and whatever epistles they may have seen (probably zero) as "scripture."

 

So we can be pretty sure I think that the early church did not regard at least one gospel as scripture and/or as inerrant. It probably didn't think of the gospels as "scripture" at all. 

 

When did the group that was to become the catholic church conceive of the gospels as scripture and as inerrant?

 

Since gospel writers didn't see the activity of writing a gospel as being kept free of error by God, we can't say that "it was Tradition." A doctrine of scripture and its inerrancy undoes what the post-Markan gospel writers did, so it can't have been tradition in their day. Doctrines about scripture and its inerrant status are clearly a later development and thus historically conditioned the way the rest of theology is so.

 

All the more reason to dismiss people who insist that the Bible presumes its own inerrancy.

[disillusioned]

It seems to me that the simplest explanation is that each gospel was written to be "THE GOSPEL", ie, the one and only correct account. They authors probably never intended for them to be entirely consistent with each other.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

My Intro to Theology professor at bible college tried to clarify this by stating that Mark was "inerrant, but incomplete."  I'd imagine most apologists would embrace that idea, or some variant thereof.

[disillusioned]

Yes, but in that case it seems to me that the subsequent gospels would have most likely focussed on clarifying specific aspects of Christ's life rather than on attempting to depict his life as a whole. But what we actually have is a number of different accounts of Christ's entire life, none of which agree on all of the major issues. This seems problematic to me.

[♦ ficino ♦]

At least three ways in which Matthew and Luke change stuff in Mark:

1. add something

2. take away something

3. substitute Y for X, i.e. change something

 

I'll just give a couple of unquoted examples:

1. Matthew adds "except in the case of adultery" re divorce

2. Matthew and Luke take away the young man in the garden who left his loincloth and ran away naked, Mark's "he could not work many miracles there because of their unbelief"

3. geographical errors in Mark "corrected" in Matthew

 

Prof, I agree that your former Intro to Theology professor did not confront the problem. On the other hand, disillusioned, while it may be true that each gospel writer thought he was writing "the gospel," we still have to confront Matthew's and Luke's modifications of Mark. I don't know that it's a well-established thesis that neither Matthew nor Luke had access to the text of Mark but rather only used material that came to them by some other channel and which also happened to pop up in Mark. If we go with the view that Matthew and Luke modify Mark - seems the better view - then they cannot have regarded Mark as "scripture." Since Deuteronomy forbids anyone to add to or subtract from the law, right?

 

Apologists can always retort, well, the Church did not gain a robust understanding of the nature of scripture until the age of revelation had ceased. But at least then, that apologist should not claim that the NT writings were regarded by Tradition as inerrant, authoritative, etc. during the first hundred years or so of the cult.

 

I don't suppose I'm making a hugely important point. These intertextual complications are endlessly fascinating.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Just came across this by chance: St. Cyril of Alexandria, Treasurehouse on the holy consubstantial Trinity. It is an example of how in the patristic period, word for word inspiration of scripture was believed, however strange the result might sound:

 

"And in general each of the prophets had not used his own words but had "Thus saith the Lord" on his tongue. One can see from these examples that many others have been made known as having done service to the words that came from God. For they themselves also came up with paradoxical statements, but they got the power from God, as has been said."

 

It was not with this sort of attitude that Matthew and Luke gave themselves permission to modify what had stood in Mark.

 

 

 

[disillusioned]

On 2017-4-29 at 8:47 AM, ficino said:

 

 

Prof, I agree that your former Intro to Theology professor did not confront the problem. On the other hand, disillusioned, while it may be true that each gospel writer thought he was writing "the gospel," we still have to confront Matthew's and Luke's modifications of Mark. I don't know that it's a well-established thesis that neither Matthew nor Luke had access to the text of Mark but rather only used material that came to them by some other channel and which also happened to pop up in Mark. If we go with the view that Matthew and Luke modify Mark - seems the better view - then they cannot have regarded Mark as "scripture." Since Deuteronomy forbids anyone to add to or subtract from the law, right?

 

Yes, this seems correct to me. I can't see a way that either Matthew or Luke could have viewed Mark as scripture.