The Derrenbacker-Kloppenborg Defense

Abstract

(ProQuest Information & Learning: Formula omitted....) I am grateful to editor of jBL for opportunity to reply to comments made by Robert Derrenbacker and John Kloppenborg Verbin on my article Self-Contradiction in IQP.1 Ongoing debates are often wearisome and repetitive, but IQP is monumental work whose standing is certain to affect scholarship for decades, and if there is claimed flaw in its foundations, it is important that issue be clarified at beginning. Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin have helpfully divided issues into four heads, with subpoints, and I follow order of their discussion. 1. The criteria used by IQP for isolating text of Q. I appealed throughout my article to one central criterion used by IQP, characterization of particular words and phrases as Matthean or Lukan. I have added (p. 507) short reference to a second, related on Matthew's thought as being characteristic, and I gave as an instance of this its relation to Jewish liturgy. Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin are mistaken in saying that this is not mentioned in IQP evaluation: Shawn Carruth writes, fact] that [the additional phrases in Matthew] can easily be attributed to liturgical usage supports conclusion that they are expansions.2 Further, it is seriously misleading for them to speak repeatedly as if my argument turned on Matthew's Jewishness. This is misreading of what I have said and should be dropped: what we are discussing are apparent similarities in language of Q and Matthew.3 Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin clarify criteria used in instance I have taken, first phrase of Lord's Prayer. The first, and most significant, criterion is that phrases (....) are found twenty times in Matthew, once in Mark, and never in Luke; Matthew inserts phrases redactionally into Mark or uses them in editorial passages. This, they say, that phrase is This is precisely logical step I had inferred and had cited James Robinson three times as making it. This logical move is constantly being repeated, for instance, with choice between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven: latter phrase being common in Matthew and unexampled in Mark or Luke, with redactional and editorial instances in Matthew. All this suggests again that phrase is Matthean. Now in these (and many other) cases IQP has concealed presumption, which even now Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin do not admit: it is that Matthew's language and Q's language are different. For obviously if Q and Matthew used similar language, IQP would put Matthean phrases like your Father in heaven or the kingdom of heaven into its reconstructed Q text; and this it does not do. It is this twofold obfuscation that prevents Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin from seeing clearly pit of error into which they are leading their colleagues. Half of Q material (QD) consists of words and phrases in which Matthew and Luke diverge. In these IQP selects Q-wording on (unargued) basis that in general Q's language and Matthew's are different. But in other half (QC) wording is in common, and here IQP has no choice but to accept Matthean (= Lukan) wording; and in scandalous number of examples (which I have listed) it includes notoriously Matthean language. So here presumption is that Q's language and Matthew's are very similar. Hence self-contradiction. Keeping to Lord's Prayer heading, Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin appeal to two further minor arguments in IQP evaluation. The first is that Luke is not averse to phrase like (....), for he has rather similar phrases twice elsewhere (....) [10:21QC]; (....) (....) [11:13QD]): so if he found Matthean form in Q, why should he change it? This is weak point. Luke prefers absolute address (. …