Mark without Mark: problematizing the reliability of a reconstructed text of Q

Abstract

Scholars use widely accepted criteria for reconstructing source texts within the gospels in order to "get behind the text" for the sake of historical inquiry. As these reconstructed sources are relied upon with greater frequency, sound scholarship needs a model that helps scholars assess the reliability of a text that has been reconstructed from presumably independent witnesses that used it as a source. This study reconstructs a text of Mark based upon the evidence in Matthew and Luke in triple tradition pericopes. The aim is to create a hypothetical, parallel situation that the gospel sayings source Q survived instead of Mark. So then, the task at hand is to identify all the places where Matthew and Luke share material that they did not get from Q. Furthermore, the present approach achieves the best possible reconstruction of Mark, one that benefits from the privileged position of knowledge of Mark's canonical text, in order to amplify the significance of the differences found when comparing this reconstructed text with the canonical form of Mark. Examination of the resulting text, including a comprehensive comparative stylographic statistical analysis between the reconstructed Mark and canonical Mark, will provide a means for evaluating the reconstruction process. Assessing what is lost in the reconstruction, what is introduced, and what is changed in relation to canonical Mark, highlights what limits may also apply to the study and use of a reconstructed text of Q. Among the conclusions are the determinations that a reconstructed text will lack features pervasive in the real text it is approximating, a reconstructed text will bear its own characteristics that have no correlation to the historical text, and that a reconstructed narrative text will contain more sayings material than did the historical original.