CHAPTER VI
DID MARK ALSO USE Q?
In the introduction to his Beginnings of Gospel History, Bacon remarks that the “dependence of Mark upon Q can be demonstrated.” Wellhausen says that “independence [between Mark and Q] is not to be thot of.” Streeter, in Oxford Studies, has made the most recent and thoro study of the relation of Mark and Q, and some of his results have already been utilized and acknowledged. Even Dr. Sanday, in the introduction to Oxford Studies, confesses himself an unwilling convert to the theory that Mark was acquainted with, and made some use of, Q. Wellhausen alone, so far as I know, maintains the apparently untenable position that Q is later than Mark, and that where the two overlap, Q has used Mark instead of Mark using Q. His acceptance of this position is partially explained by the fact that he makes no distinction between the original Q and the recensions of it in the hands of Matthew and Luke; he also allows to Q much material (e.g., the conversation between John and Jesus at the baptism) which other scholars, without the hypothesis of QMt and QLk, ascribe to the hand of Matthew or Luke. Harnack and Wernle maintain the priority of Q to Mark. Wernle concedes some small use of Q by Mark, and Harnack thinks Mark was at least “acquainted with” Q.
The discrimination between QMt and QLk and the original Q makes unnecessary a good deal of the work that has heretofore been done toward determining the primary and secondary traits in Mark and Q respectively. Assuming that Mark used either the original Q, or as near to the original of that document as we can yet get, the recensions used by Matthew and Luke would be perhaps thirty, certainly twenty, years later than that used by Mark. In the fifty or more verses of Mark that appear to have stood also in Q, there is nothing that can be shown to be later than the year 70 (the date generally assigned to Mark). There is nothing to suggest that the author had witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, or the events immediately leading up to it. The presence of the same material in Mark and Q is demonstrated by the agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark, or by the deviations of the one or the other of them from the Marcan form of a saying, in such way as not to admit of explanation except by the assumption of two sources (Mark and Q) in the hands of Matthew and Luke. In other words, if Mark did use Q, but if he used the same text of it as was used by Matthew and Luke, and if the three followed Q with equal faithfulness, in all such instances Q would fail to appear, since both Matthew and Luke would appear to be following only Mark. It is therefore where there are deviations of either Matthew or Luke from Mark in sections where the other follows Mark closely, or where there are agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark in sayings-material, that the presence of Q behind Mark can be detected.
Upon the hypothesis of Q without QMt or QLk, the argument by which the use of Q by Mark, as against the use of Mark by Q, was proven, consisted of picking out the primary and secondary traits in Mark and Q respectively, and of showing that the primary traits were in Q and the secondary in Mark. But this was very difficult to do, so long as, e.g., the Peter incidents peculiar to Matthew, or the conversation during the baptism, were attributed to Q. For these were indisputably secondary. If the priority of Mark was to be maintained, all such traits had to be removed from Q and assigned to the evangelist or to some special source.
Upon the theory now advocated by the writer, these secondary traits are practically all assigned, not to the original Q, but to QMt or QLk.[132] But if Mark used any form of Q, it was not QMt or QLk, but some much simpler, more primary, and doubtless less extended, form. The presence of secondary traits in QMt and QLk therefore does nothing toward proving the secondary character of Q in its original form, or in such an early form as would have been used by Mark. Since nothing can be found in Q which is either demonstrably or probably later than the date of Mark, the assumption that Mark used Q may be permitted to stand; and with the removal of the secondary traits to the recensions, it does not require the minute analysis which earlier hypotheses made necessary, since there are no longer any indications militating against Mark’s use of Q. What now remains therefore is to determine as nearly as possible what material stood in Mark and Q.
WHAT MATERIAL DID MARK TAKE FROM Q?
In the attempt to determine what material Mark has taken from Q, an effort will also be made to decide whether Matthew and Luke took the same material directly from Q, or indirectly from Q thru Mark. The verses which one or both of them appear to have taken directly from Q (tho these verses stand also in Mark) will be added to the number of verses already attributed to Q (or QMt and QLk). We shall thus have before us the largest possible sum-total of Q material. The tables of contents already made out for the Q material, as it now stands in Matthew and Luke respectively,[133] will throw further light upon the propriety or impropriety of regarding QMt and QLk as recensions of one original document. The same tables will serve to indicate the probable order of Q, and the investigation now following will then be used to determine what acquaintance, if any, Mark had with Q, and what use, if any, he made of that document.
THE MESSIANIC ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE BAPTIST