Sunday, April 10, 2005

How Luke Was Written

I’m working on a response to Richard Anderson’s question about Gary J. Goldberg’s theory that Luke’s Emmaus’ story and the Testimonium share a common source and also a response to Stephen Carlson’s argument that Tacitus knew at least some version of the Testimonium. As you might guess, I think they’re both wrong. But I suppose I’ll have to say more than that.

In the meantime, the University of Maryland has made my MA Thesis, “How Luke Was Written”, available online in pdf format. The title is borrowed from E. W. Lummis’ 1915 book. Lummis was a pre-Farrer advocate of the theory that Matthew used Mark and Luke used Mark and Matthew, though Lummis introduced some unnecessary complications to the theory.

The thesis is a slightly longer version of my article, “Unpicking on the Farrer Theory”, from Questioning Q, edited by Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin. Now, I want to encourage everyone to go ahead and buy Questioning Q. It’s a fine book, with many good contributions from Q critics both inside and outside the Farrer camp. And it’s available pretty cheap from Amazon. But for those who want some anti-Q material to read while they’re waiting for it to be delivered, you can find the abstract of my thesis and download the pdf here:

https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/handle/1903/1378