The short article by Merton is worth a read. . . . if for no other reason than this: you should probably be doing something else and it will feel a little naughty to read an academic piece from 1968. See especially his section on the social-scientific pressures at work. I believe that this effect is relatable to a kind of memory distortion that I've called "mnemonic cross-pollination." If you are familiar with gezera shava, this will be old hat for you.
Legacy (a special kind of collective memory) can act like a tornado. A tornado can pull objects toward it and cast other objects off. In the case of a legacy like Albert Schweitzer or Jimmy Carter, the drawing force is the simplified, dominant narrative of their life. Some details don't fit quite well with the narrative (like Schweitzer's nationalism or Carter's theological anti-Judaism). These details are cast off until an alternative narrative emerges. The Matthew Effect, it seems to me, is the part of the mnemonic tornado that sucks. And, let's be real, tornados suck big time. St. Francis could very plausibly have said something like this:
New Testament scholars have long wondered if some of John the Baptist's sayings might have come from Jesus or vice versa. In this case, the problem is even more pronounced because Jesus and John may have influenced each other. Another like example: if I listed all of the most memorable sayings of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, would their fans be able to disentangle their legacies?
So now, let's have fun. Who can come up with the best Mark Goodacre saying that he didn't say? Remember, it must fit plausibly within the Goodacre legacy.
Maybe I'm taking this too seriously but...
ReplyDelete"The two-source hypothesis - when complicated by the addition of Proto- and Deutero-Mark, further sources, two versions of Q, Mark-Q overlaps, and Proto-Luke - can handle most of the material. Yet even with these complications difficulties remain. The two fatal ones are (1) the evidence that Luke knew Matthew (which not even the theories of Proto-Mark and Mark-Q overlaps entirely meet) and (2) the verbatim agreement between Mark and 'Q' in the supposed overlap passages. Of all the solutions, this one, which remains the dominant hypothesis, is least satisfactory."
If the writers of Matthew and Luke shared a lost, hidden, or secret source, it can only have been because both worked for the Herodian Intelligence and Security Services, and the "asset" list with his name on it was very obviously lost in the Jewish War.
ReplyDeleteIt's not entirely an anachronism to see a relatvely modern Machiavellian state at work in the Roman period and Roman provinces.
DeleteIn empirical courts, odd things happen. Whether by accident or design, we cannot always say.
"The question is not whether Brian is Jesus, But whether Jesus is Brian."
ReplyDeleteThis one is interesting. Because Mark actually said this. Though rumor is he was quoting from someone else.
This is one common way that two different figures become conflated.
This example for that matter though, might work in more than one way.
DeleteOh man, this is too much fun. Ok, here's my contribution of a Goodacreism:
ReplyDelete"There is no hard evidence of its existence. In spite of the confidence with which scholars have reconstructed Q, and even claim to be able to give an account of its own literary history and development, no one has ever seen it. There is not even a fragment of any ancient manuscript of Q, nor is there a single reference to its existence anywhere in ancient literature. Nineteenth-century scholars believed that Papias was referring to Q in his statement that Matthew ‘compiled the logia in the Hebrew language.’"
I believe that Mark actually posted this comment this in pseudonymity.
DeleteSo Mark/Mark knows but rejects Q?
Delete