Re: OT More pens (was Re: Phoneme winnowing continues)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, June 10, 2003, 21:44 |
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On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 04:44:09PM -0400, John Leland wrote:
> Tracing documents is more scientific than guesswork, but much less certain
> than some of the physical sciences.
Clearly; I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's much harder to come up
with experiments to test hypotheses about history, for instance.
> There are serious scholarly debates
> about whether Mark or Matthew came first; for a while the Mark side
> seemed to be established, but then John Robinson and others revived the
> Matthew side.
The very fact that it's debated and that the prevailing opinion can
change, however, demonstrates the disprovability criterion of the
scientific method.
> On the number of sources, note that most (not all) scholars
> believe that Matthew and Luke incorporate material from both Mark and a
> source they call Q, which some believe was similar to the Gnostic Gospel
> of Thomas.
Okay, if we have Mark, Q, and John, that's three sources, which is
closer to four than one. Again, though, they're not necessarily
primary, independent, or disinterested ones. :)
> Even this is a simplification of the state of the debate, but
> it gives some idea of its complexity.
Thank you. My research into the topic is admittedly dated.
-Mark
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