Carl S. Patton

“ If we consider the relative length of the sayings, the narratives, and parables of this section, we shall see that the whole is practically a parable section. With the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem, this material stops. From here [Pg 208] on Luke has two brief sayings and one longer one, five sections of narrative, and no parable, in his single tradition.
Whether the source of Matthew’s peculiar material was one or more than one, it suggests itself at once that the birth and infancy stories may have come from a place by themselves. They have, to a considerable extent, a vocabulary of their own. ”

“ Luke especially omitted what would have no significance or interest for his Greek readers—disputes with the Pharisees, questions of Jewish law, and other Judaistic features. Both Matthew and Luke treated the actual words of Jesus, as recorded in Mark, with great respect. But the narrative, and in a less degree the parables, they felt free to work over as they would. Matthew shows much greater fidelity to his source than Luke. ”

“ This suggestion might appear to be seconded by the fact that this material, which has such a striking family [Pg 209] resemblance, is not scattered thru the body of Matthew’s work, but occurs, part of it before he has reached his junction with Mark and Luke, and the rest of it after he has parted from them. He not only begins and ends alone, but he begins and ends with material of a remarkably similar character. This is not enough, of course, to prove the unity of Matthew’s source for the first and last parts of his single tradition; but it is enough to suggest it. ”

“ But Sir John Hawkins is surely wrong when he says [100] that Matthew and Luke need not be expected to adhere more closely to Q than they do to Mark. For in the sayings of Jesus which they find in Mark, Matthew and Luke do generally adhere very closely. It is in the narrative portions of Mark that they permit themselves liberties. But there is little or no narrative in Q; the only certain instance of narrative being that of the healing of the centurion’s son; and in this instance it is significant that the deviations between Matthew and Luke are in the narrative and not in the logian portions. ”

“ A more general reason against the assumption of an Ur-Marcus in the hands of Matthew and Luke is the comparatively small number and importance of their agreements against Mark, as compared with the very large number of the deviations in which they do not agree, and as compared also with the vastly greater number of instances in which both Matthew and Luke follow Mark faithfully. ”

“ That is the presence of dialogue. If this dialogue appeared only in those sayings of Jesus that appear in Luke but not in Matthew, and that are of a character to have come from any form of Q, we should pick out this item as a characteristic of the recension used by Luke. But dialogue is also a characteristic of many of the Lucan parables which could not under any hypothesis be attributed to Q. In spite of its general resemblance [Pg 194] to the Q matter just preceding, it seems best, therefore, to attribute this little section to some peculiar Lucan source. ”

“ No special source, other at least than oral tradition, is necessary to account for so slight an addition. Yet considering Matthew’s general tendency to condense, rather than to expand, Mark’s narratives, and the faithfulness with which he has transcribed the rest of this narrative, it may be easier to regard this insertion as a gloss. ”

“ The single tradition of Luke will now be examined with reference to possible Q material unparalleled in Matthew. Narrative material will not be considered. As Luke has omitted much more of Mark than Matthew has, and as he has a much larger amount of non-Marcan material which obviously bears no sign of having stood in any form of Q, it is natural to expect the additions to our total of Q matter to be much less in the single tradition of Luke than of Matthew. ”

“ The temptation in Q is also primary as compared with Mark, with the exception of the conversation between Jesus and John in Matthew, which is obviously secondary and belongs to QMt. Of the sayings, only a few have a secondary sound. Such are especially those connected with the instructions to the twelve, which seem to embody some of the experiences, or bespeak some of the needs, of the early Christian itinerant preachers: “The laborer is worthy of his hire [or his keep] ”; “I send you forth as sheep among wolves”; “The disciple is not above his master” ”

“ Luke has supplied his own introduction. Matthew has, as parallel to “the eyes that see,” “the ears that hear.” This may be a later addition in Matthew; or Luke, not caring so much for the Aramaic parallelism as Matthew does, may have omitted it. Luke has “kings” where Matthew has “righteous men”; δίκαιος is a favorite word with Matthew; on the other hand, Luke’s use of “kings” may indicate an apologetic intention upon Luke’s part. The saying may be assigned to Q, and the variations charged jointly to Matthew and Luke. ”

“ Thru all three verses Luke seems to have the more primary form. Not only the second person of the verbs, and the direct address of Jesus to the crowd, but the words, “we have eaten and drunk in thy presence and thou hast taught in our streets” have an original sound, whereas Matthew’s form, “Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, we have preached in thy name and in thy name have cast out demons,” would seem rather to come from a time when many men had been preaching in the name of Jesus. ”

“ The criteria for distinguishing Q material in Matthew unduplicated by Luke are the general character of the material, chiefly its eschatological use of the phrase “the kingdom of heaven,” its Jewish coloring, its antipathy to the Pharisees, the absence of indications of Matthean invention, and the proximity to and connection with other material heretofore attributed to Q or QMt. This last item is not so important in Matthew, on account of his habit of transposing his Q material; yet within limits it is a valuable criterion. ”

“ Thus in the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks the lawyer which of the three men he considers to have been neighbor to him who fell among the thieves. The lawyer makes his reply, and upon the basis of it Jesus dismisses him with a word of pointed advice. In the same manner the story of the Rich Fool is introduced as a rebuke to the man who asks Jesus to help him secure his portion of an estate, and closes with the reflection that whoever has the riches of this world but is not “rich toward God” is like this man. ”

“ Can the verbal agreements of Matthew and Luke as against Mark, or their deviations from him without apparent reason, be explained upon any simpler hypothesis than that of Ur-Marcus? It appears to the writer that they can. ”

“ It is only fair to admit that these instances, in which Matthew heightens, once by insertion and once by omission, the Jewish coloring in a story taken from Mark, tell against the theory generally advocated by the writer, that the Judaistic features of Matthew’s Gospel are referable to his source, and the universalistic features to Matthew himself. ”

“ The assignment of this section to simple Q, and the ascription of all divergences to one or the other of the evangelists, would be easier if it could be shown that either evangelist shows a uniform tendency in the divergences. But such is not the case. Luke seems more primary, and nearer to the source, when he quotes the words of the passage from “The Wisdom of God”; for no evangelist, finding the words ascribed to Jesus in his source, would take them away from him and ascribe them to anyone else. ”

“ This little section certainly has a Q sound. If it stood in Matthew’s recension, reasons may easily be given for his omission of it; he would not have understood the non-apocalyptic statement, “the kingdom of God is within [or among] you.” But it cannot be proved, at least, that the section stood in Matthew’s Q; therefore if it is assigned to Q at all it would better be assigned merely to Luke’s recension.
Later than this in the Gospel of Luke there is nothing that needs to be examined for possible Q material. ”

“ But there are also three such Lucan words in the two following verses, where the story of Luke runs quite closely parallel to that of Matthew (διὸ, ἠξίωσα, τασσόμενος) . The changing of a detail, even an important detail, in the narrative part of such a section, especially when contrasted with general faithfulness to the source in that part containing the words of Jesus, would be characteristic of Luke. The humility and faith of the centurion are much enhanced by the change. Yet, as Jülicher remarks, Luke probably did not invent this item of his story ”

“ But that this, and not Matthew’s indefinite form, was what stood in the original Q is shown by the fact that Matthew adds, “If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is unworthy, let your peace return to you.” [97] Luke has here the phrase “son of peace,” similar to the phrases elsewhere found in his Gospel, “sons of light,” “sons of consolation,” “sons of this generation,” “sons of the resurrection.” These phrases have an Aramaic sound which we should expect to encounter in almost any of the Gospels sooner than in Luke’s. He certainly never would have invented them. ”

“ Mark makes Jesus say, “Why callest thou me good?” Matthew changes this to “Why askest thou me concerning that which is good?” tho his following words, “There is One who is good,” betray the fact that he had Mark’s reading before him. Matthew shows his Jewish affinities by making Jesus say that the questioner may “enter into life,” by keeping the commandments. Both Matthew and Luke omit one commandment which Mark quotes, because it is not found in the Decalogue. Matthew changes Mark’s order of the commandments to agree with the Old Testament. ”

“ It sounds almost like an abstract of the saying as it stands in Matthew—if only a precedent could be shown for Luke’s making such an abstract. One can hardly speak with any assurance; but considering the difference of setting, the fact that in Luke the verses we are here considering are part of a considerably longer speech, and the slight verbal resemblances, it may be best to assign Matthew’s version to Q, and Luke’s to some [Pg 141] source of his own, whether oral or written. If assignment to QMt and QLk is not impossible, it is certainly difficult. ”

“ Unless this be ascribed to assimilation, it is a coincidence too marked to be explained except by the supposition of an ultimate common source. The same thing is to be said of the phrase ὁμολογήσει ἐν in Matthew’s vs. 32 and Luke’s vs. 8. Yet in the midst of the section there is a passage of twenty or twenty-five words in which there is practically no verbal coincidence, tho the idea is the same. Luke substitutes “have not anything else that they can do,” for Matthew’s phrase “can not kill the soul”; it has been suggested that this latter was not congenial to Luke’s Greek method of thot. ”

“ Still more welcome is the assignment of vi, 45-viii, 27, to the redactor. The great stumbling-block of this section is its feeding of the four thousand, so obviously copied from the feeding of the five thousand. That one and the same author should have written both these accounts has seemed strange to many readers. But this duplication is as easily disposed of upon von Soden’s theory as upon Wendling’s. Von Soden’s analysis into two strata (without the assumption of two writers) is much simpler than Wendling’s analysis into three, with three writers. ”

“ These thirteen parables have not only a striking similarity among themselves, but an equally striking dissimilarity to those parables which Luke has in common with one or both of the other evangelists. Matthew’s parables are usually brief sayings, beginning with the [Pg 215] phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like,” etc. The parables peculiar to Luke (there are fourteen in all and thirteen of them occur in this section) are stories rather than parables in the strict sense. Some of them are introduced by the brief formula, “And he said unto them,” or “And he said to his disciples,” etc. ”

“ Neither Matthew nor Luke has copied this feature of Mark’s saying. By his context Matthew makes the saying refer, like the saying about salt, directly to the disciples. Luke has the saying twice: in xi, 33 and viii, 16. In both cases his context would indicate that he took the saying to refer to the teaching of Jesus. Matthew says the light is to give light “to all that are in the house.” Luke does not mention the house, but implies it in his statement that “those who are entering in see the light,” this form being found in both his reports of the saying. ”

“ Perhaps, as Bacon says, Matthew the Palestinian wishes to encourage the hope of the speedy coming of Jesus, while Mark the Roman wishes to discourage it; but the reasons for this are not perfectly clear. Schmiedel considers the omission of the εὐθέως in Mark as a sign of his secondary character at this point.
In the passage about the time of the parousia (Mk xiii, 30-32; Mt xxiv, 34-36; Lk xxi, 32-33) , Luke omits Mark’s statement that “the son” does not know the time; because he always avoids any implication of a limitation in the knowledge of Jesus. ”

“ Matthew and Luke avoid Mark’s verb ἐπιράπτει, a word found nowhere but in this verse of Mark’s (ix, 21) . At the end they avoid Mark’s clumsy expression, “The wine and the bottles will be destroyed,” and say, “The wine will be spilled and the bottles destroyed.” [25] They both omit the last part of Mark’s vs. 19, an obvious [Pg 43] pleonasm and possibly a later insertion. Luke’s addition in his vs. 39 does not fit well, but is bracketed by Westcott and Hort and is probably an insertion. ”

“ Matthew’s demonstrated faithfulness to his sources raises serious doubt as to whether he could have known this Perean source and have omitted so much of it. The assumption that he did so, and the assignment of the double tradition thruout this portion of Luke, would require also an entire rearrangement of Q. Burton accepts this requirement, and, instead of Q, goes back to the Logia as a special source of Matthew. ”

“ We have now gone over all the logian sections of Matthew unparalleled in either Mark or Luke. We have found some of these that ought, in our judgment, to be assigned to Matthew’s recension of Q. This assignment cannot claim to be anything more than a suggestion; in many instances, however, it may reach a very high degree of probability; and we have tried to restrict it to such instances. By saying that a certain section should be assigned to a “special source,” it is not meant that this is one and the same source for all sections so assigned ”

“ Luke avoids Jesus’ address to the man as τέκνον. In the words of Jesus to his critics and to the paralytic, both follow Mark with general fidelity, and tho Mark’s vss. 5b-10 appear to interrupt the story, both follow him in their inclusion of these verses. Luke’s change of Mark’s vs. 7 is a fine example of his ability to make an improvement in the sense with the least possible change in the wording. Mark reads, τί οὗτος οὕτως λαλεῖ; βλασφημεῖ· Luke changes to τίς ἐστιν ὃς λαλεῖ βλασφημίας; The latter fits much better into the question, “Who has power to forgive sins except God?” ”

“ The phrase καὶ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου in Mark’s vs. 35 sounds like a later addition; it would hardly have been omitted by Matthew and Luke if it had stood in their source. [Pg 59] Matthew makes Jesus say that “the son of man is about to come”; Mark and Luke say “when the son of man comes”; Matthew betrays his own attitude, or the attitude of his time, to the long-expected parousia. Mark’s extremely awkward order of words, τινες ὧδε τῶν ἑστηκότων, [38] each of the other evangelists corrects in his own way. ”