Ah, I accidentally wrote a reply to your Questioning Jesus post that I meant to post here.
Anyway, yeah, the whole business about Q, oral traditions, and other such hypothetical sources is nonsense. But its not simply nonsense because those sources are hypothetical. It's nonsense because we have better explanations for how the Gospels were written than the use of those hypothetical sources.
Every aspect of how the Gospels were written is better explained by other facts that don't include the use of Q or oral traditions, that's why those explanations fail, not simply because they aren't demonstrable, but because alternatives ARE demonstrable.
To Kenneth: I think Dothery's work is very important and raises many significant issues and gets a lot of things correct, but he also gets some things wrong, especially his analysis of the Gospels IMO.
Ah, I accidentally wrote a reply to your Questioning Jesus post that I meant to post here.
Anyway, yeah, the whole business about Q, oral traditions, and other such hypothetical sources is nonsense. But its not simply nonsense because those sources are hypothetical. It's nonsense because we have better explanations for how the Gospels were written than the use of those hypothetical sources.
I address some of this on my website here: http://www.decipheringthegospels.com/on_q.html
Every aspect of how the Gospels were written is better explained by other facts that don't include the use of Q or oral traditions, that's why those explanations fail, not simply because they aren't demonstrable, but because alternatives ARE demonstrable.
To Kenneth: I think Dothery's work is very important and raises many significant issues and gets a lot of things correct, but he also gets some things wrong, especially his analysis of the Gospels IMO.