SBL/AARdvent Calendar: Day 21

Why do I want people to attend Mark Goodacre's session at SBL (even though I can't be there myself)? This piece by Tim Murray offers a pretty comprehensive answer:

Tim Murray recently completed his PhD in New Testament Studies at the University of Nottingham. Here, he reflects on his experience of the Garrow/Goodacre session at the British New Testament Conference in 2018.

Tim writes: "Like a few others, I abandoned my chosen stream at BNTC for this particular session as I was intrigued to see what Mark Goodacre had to say about Alan Garrow’s MCH. Having always been quite sceptical about Q (and even more so reading scholarship that was attempting to identify levels of redaction on Q and then speculate quite fancifully about the issues facing ‘Q communities’ at various stages of their existence…), I read Goodacre’s Case Against Q as a MRes student and that, for me, put the nail in Q’s coffin. I did not give much thought to whether Matthew used Luke or Luke Matthew and was happy to accept Goodacre’s version of the FH (although the awareness that Hengel argued for the reverse has always made me think at some point I should get around to looking into this!).
 
My doctoral studies did not really address the Synoptics so I pursued the issue no further, however towards the end of my PhD I was made aware that Garrow’s thesis was attracting the support of some serious scholars. Without making the effort to watch the videos or read any of Garrow’s work I turned up to the debate expecting Goodacre to offer some substantial critique against the MCH, especially given his role in the $1000 challenge. From that context, here were my reflections:

1. I was surprised that Goodacre’s major critique was (to my mind) insubstantial. He seemed to concentrate on an area of Garrow’s methodology (or expression, perhaps), which he rightly critiqued. But what he was attacking was in no way central to Garrow’s thesis; it seemed to me that Goodacre could be right on the point he emphasised but leave Garrow’s thesis unharmed. That struck me as odd.
2. It was easy to see how Garrow could address Goodacre’s major concern without altering his thesis in any substantial way.
3. Goodacre’s other reflections were on the detail of the Synoptic Problem; elements of the texts that he argued pointed in the direction of the FH. These were interesting and for an outsider to the debate were what I was expecting – a cumulative argument from probability based on textual details.
4. Goodacre’s failure to offer any substantial critique has made me conclude that there may be more to Garrow’s hypothesis than I imagined and has given me some work to do.

 
Like I say, these are the reflections of a non-synoptic scholar, but I think I understood the thrust of the arguments. To my mind it certainly established that Garrow’s thesis could not be easily dismissed (otherwise Goodacre would surely have done that, but he wasn’t able to). I look forward to further debates."

The BNTC 2018 session caused Tim to review his assumptions. A similar shaking up of assumptions features at the start of the stories told by Ron Huggins, Rob MacEwen, Erik Aurelius, Richard Bauckham, and myself. Who knows, perhaps Mark Goodacre's session at SBL will encourage others to embark on a similar journey.