Parallel lives

My post earlier won't offer much news to regular readers here; I've been on the Evan Powell case for some decades now. I am thoroughly convinced of the external and internal evidence that "Mark" presents the defence of Peter to a then-skeptical Christian community and that no reason exists to doubt that some man called Mark (maybe "Johanan Marcus") assembled this defence.

Whether or not Marcus Johanan had this from Peter himself or from his posthumous defenders against (principally) the Johannines, isn't my concern. I'm concerned now with the parallel accounts of Mark in Papias, with those of Matthew in Papias. Frankly Matthew is concerning, here.

Pitre - who I stress was writing for the Imprimatur - kicks a long punt in his seventh chapter, The Dating of the Gospels. This handles the Synoptic Problem. Pitre throws up his hands except to dismiss "Q", the missing source between Luke and Matthew, with Mark being the nonmissing source. Pitre considers Goodacre (and Farrer) to have convinced him - but of what, is difficult to sus out. I am guessing, at least that Luke used Matthew and Mark.

In an earlier chapter, Pitre flags the Gospel of Matthew's note that Matthew-the-disciple was a tax-collector. Matthew would, then, be literate. Elsewhere Pitre considers that Zebedee the father of James and John was not just a fisherman but someone more like "Joe The Plumber", one who hired a fleet, so with his sons as apprentices and, presumably, provided with primary education. (Why hire an accountant like Matthew over there if your kids will do it after school.)

The point to all this: Pitre offers a theory that Matthew learnt from Christ Himself and wrote stuff down, before - one assumes - Mark came into the scene after the AD 30s and, also, learnt from Peter writing Peter's stuff down. Matthew wasn't there during the various scenes where Peter (and usually James and John) were talking to Jesus in private; so Matthew got that information from Peter directly.

The first problem with that theory is the critical finding which the Imprimatur cannot allow: that our Mark and Matthew each develop a source which is basically just Mark. We'd have to assume that urMark is Peter's dictation. Papias does not allow this; Papias says that Mark took this dictation.

Papias also insists that Matthew had taken his notes in Hebrew. Sure: this is northern Judaea we're (mostly) talking about; "Hebrews" there and then intermingled a lot of Aramaic. Still. None of this Semitica is Greek, and "Matthew" as we have it is a Greek gospel.

By contrast with Papias' account of Mark, which as a work done for Peter's sake fits that text; Papias' account of Matthew looks nothing like what we have of Matthew, which is at base just Mark in Greek with bonus (Greek) content, if anything in better Greek.

I do not believe that Pitre can have it both ways. I do not think that Pitre can tout the Patristic support for Mark whilst dismissing the same support against Matthew.