We now turn to Delbert Burkett's discussion of the centurion's pericope, found in his recent work Rethinking the Gospel Sources, Volume 2: The Unity and Plurality of Q. We'll discover that this discussion (p. 175-183) helps show how my Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis explains some features of this pericope.
ETA I have changed my position on this and edits are below. Basically I no longer see a need to assume that Marcion had access to any documents besides Q and canonical GMk.
Unlike Matthew's centurion, who meets Jesus himself, Luke's centurion sends two delegations to ask for the healing. First, he sends a delegation of Jewish elders (which is itself odd) asking Jesus to come to his house. Second, he sends a delegation of "friends" who say he doesn't need to come.
The first delegation occurs in material not found in GMatt, though Aland finds parallels with the Johannine account. I myself would say it's the second delegation that is parallel to the Johannine account. The second delegation involves Q material. This strongly suggests to Burkett that the first represents a version in a source shared by GLuke and GJohn, and the second represents a version in a source shared by GLuke and GMatt. However, I no longer agree with this.
The two delegations are created by Marcion out of elements found in Q and GMk. Q must have featured a delegation at the end, which informed the centurion that his child was healed. Marcion, inspired by the healing of Jairus, replaced the centurion with a first delegation, then had a second delegation deliver the centurion's message to Jesus.
The first delegation in GLuke speaks to Jesus naturally, but the second speaks in the first-person voice of the centurion in GMatt. Jesus remarks that he had not found such faith in Israel--nonsensical when addressed to Jewish elders, though it makes sense if addressed to a gentile centurion. This is why Marcion's second delegation is one of "friends" of the centurion.
It's also odd that the Jewish elders would say that the centurion is worthy in the first version, whereas the centurion himself says he is unworthy in the second (paralleling the Matthean usage). It looks like Marcion wants to be faithful to the words of the centurion in his source material, but decided he needed to demonstrate that the centurion was worthy, after all, hence he sends the first delegation to accomplish this task.
Marcion can't have based his delegation on the one found in GJohn--GJohn remains far too distant from them to be related. And it's probably not Secret Mark either--GLuke shows traces of canonical GMark, but not any of the known SGM (though GJohn did use SGM). But since there is a delegation in GLuke, there likely was one in Q, that Matthew has just edited out. Notice that in Mt 8:13b, the child is simply said to be healed. But we must wonder, how was this known? The Johannine source seems to preserve a more primitive version of the story: the centurion returns to home, and is greeted by servants who, being present when the child was healed, report to him that the healing has already happened. The ultimate source for this delegation, and the reason why it's found in GJohn, is the proto-Gospel, i.e. the Signs Gospel. John is just preserving most of the original form of this healing, taken directly from Signs.
It gets even better...I propose that the Markan story of the synagogue elder in Mk 5 (named Jairus in canonical GMark) is yet another version of this story. This was originally written by Secret Mark--i.e. the author of SGM (who is really just “Mark”). From there, it found its way into GMark, and from there into Marcion's gospel (and thence into GLuke).
I also propose that the SGM version of this story more closely resembled the Matthean version, where the Jewish elder is unnamed; Cerinthus picked up this version, and it made its way into GMatt, who preferred it over the canonical Markan version. I leave open the possibility, however, that Matthew just abbreviated the canonical Markan version. However, if the Q author did indeed have his own version of the healing of Jairus' daughter, that would explain why Marcion combines elements from that healing (the first delegation of Jewish elders) here, even though he uses the Jairus story independently. Marcion is just combining the versions together.
At any rate, the synoptic stories of the synagogue elder with a dying daughter stems one way or another from a rewrite by Secret Mark of the original pG pericope. Whether Secret Mark invented the new details himself, or whether he knew a slightly different oral tradition, I couldn’t say for sure.
In the original, one or more Jewish leaders approach Jesus to ask him to heal a dying child.
Burkett notes that there is still yet another version: a Talmudic story about Haninah ben Dosa, in which Gamaliel has a sick son, and sends a delegation to ben Dosa to request a healing--which is granted, at a distance. Burkett writes "We need not assume that Luke's version is genetically related to the ben Dosa story," (p. 178) but why not? They seem clearly linked. Either the Talmud story is the original of this pericope, or they are both different versions of the same story, in one case assigned to ben Dosa, in another to Jesus.
Burkett sees the two stories as follows: the "L" version (which I assign to pG) with a delegation asking for a healing, and the Q version, with the centurion himself asking for the healing. Burkett thinks that in the first, the delegation was sent by a centurion, but I disagree: the uniquely Lukan language nowhere says the delegation was sent by a centurion. Only the Q version (the part of GLuke that parallels GMatt) speaks of a centurion. The Lukan material speaks of "The one to whom you would provide this" who "loves our nation and himself built the synagogue for us" (Lk 7:4-5). This may be more evidence that Marcion is conflating two Cerinthean stories in Q, one inspired by the original story in Signs, the second inspired by the Markan version.
I'm guessing the orginal pG version was closely related to the Talmudic version, and may indeed have referred to Gamaliel.
Notice also that in the Markan/Lukan versions of the Jairus pericope, Jairus is described as a "ruler of the synagogue", or "one of the rulers", as in GMark (ARXWN TES SUNAGWGHS--Lk 8:41, ARXISUNAGWGWN--Mk 5:22). This echoes the mention of a SUNAGWGHN in Lk 7:5 that the centurion built, implying that a synagogue was mentioned somehow in the original pG version and that this is the source at least of the Markan "synagogue ruler". (And notice that a centurion could not have built a synagogue, but perhaps a different officer could have...like the BASILIKOS mentioned in Jn 4:46, or maybe just an ARXWN, as in GLuke. But this may simply have been Marcionic invention.)
So:
1) The original version in pG (=Signs) would have been a Christianized version of the ben Dosa healing.
2) This is what Secret Mark rewrote into the Jairus story in SGM
3a) Then the Q author took his turn in Q, using Josephus and Signs, and possibly including his own version of the Jairus story as well.
3b) John took his own turn, as I have written above (i.e. using Signs)
3c) Canonical Mark kept the Secret Mark version.
4) Marcion then used Q for his own version, possibly conflating the centurion story with a Cerinthean version of the Jairus story, or else adding elements from the Jairus story found in GMk.
5) Matthew used Q as well, redacting one or two elements.
6) And Luke just kept Marcion's version.
(Burkett also sees a parallel in all this with the Gentile woman's child in Mt 15 and Mk 7, though I leave that aside for now.)
In Part 4, we'll turn to the vocabulary of this pericope for a further demonstration of my hypothesis.
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