Sec.Chap.VerseSubjectSource
1i, 7-8Messianic announcement of the BaptistQ
2i, 12-13The temptationQ
3iii, 22-29The Beelzebul controversyQ
4iv, 21The light and the bushelQ
5iv, 22Things hidden and revealedQ
6iv, 24With what measure (about judging)Q
7iv, 25Whoever has, to him shall be givenQ
8iv, 30-32Parable of the Mustard SeedQ
9vi, 7-11Mission of the twelve, what to take, conduct
by the way, if any place does not receive you
Q
10viii, 12A sign refusedQ
11viii, 34,38Conditions of discipleshipQ
12ix, 42About offensesQ
13ix, 49-50Salt is good. If the salt has lost, etc.Q
14x, 11-12About divorceQ
15x, 31First last and last firstQ
16x, 43-44Whoso would be great among youQ
17xi, 23About faithQ
18xii, 38-40Against PharisaismQ
19xiii, 11Take no thot what ye shall sayQ

The above content being made out for the material common to Mark and Q, the use of Q by Mark may be permitted to rest upon its general probability, there being nothing to contradict it or to substantiate the opposite hypothesis. How closely Mark used Q, whether actually copying certain passages from him, or merely recalling what he had read or heard read from Q, cannot be determined, since what stood in the text of Q used by Mark is only an inference from what stood in the recensions used by Matthew and Luke.

DO THE VOCABULARY AND STYLE OF MARK AND Q, RESPECTIVELY, THROW ANY LIGHT UPON THEIR LITERARY RELATIONSHIP?

The inquiry might perhaps be carried a step farther by a comparison of the vocabularies of Mark and Q. Hawkins, between the first and second editions of his Horae Synopticae, made a second and more diligent search for linguistic peculiarities in Q, and declares himself unable to find any. Harnack, on the contrary, believes he finds some such.

Sentences in Q, according to Harnack, are generally connected by καί, δὲ being used but seldom. The same is true of Mark. But this only indicates the comparative nearness of both Mark and Q to the Semitic. The same may be said of the preponderance of simple verbs in distinction from compound in both Mark and Q. Ἐὰν is used twice as frequently as εἰ; Mark also appears to use the former thirty-six times and the latter but fifteen. This fact seems to have more significance by reason of the other, that Luke uses one word thirty-two and the other thirty-three times. Matthew, however, uses ἐὰν exactly twice as often as εἰ. When we remember that all we have of Q is contained in Matthew and Luke, and only a small portion of it in Mark, these facts do seem to indicate a preference for ἐὰν over εἰ as between Mark and Q on the one side and Luke on the other, but between Mark and Q on the one side and Matthew on the other no such contrast appears. Mark and Q are here no nearer to each other, or very little, than either of them is to Matthew.

The particle τε is never found in Q.[135] It occurs five times in Mt and seven times in Lk, and but once in Mk. Ὡς in temporal clauses seems to be absent; it is also absent from Matthew, while Luke uses it nineteen times and Mark but once. Clauses with γίνομαι, frequent in Matthew and Luke, are absent from Q; they also occur in Mark; but their absence from Q may be due simply to Q’s lack of historical matter. Παρὰ and σὺν are absent; the first is used about evenly by Mark and Matthew, and more frequently by Luke; the second, three times by Matthew, five times by Mark, and twenty-four times by Luke.

CONCLUSION AS TO MARK’S DEPENDENCE UPON Q

These facts do not all point in the same direction. They seem sometimes to indicate a linguistic affinity between Q and Mark, but this affinity usually extends to Matthew also. What seems to be proved by them is that Mark and Q and Matthew all stand nearer to the Semitic than does Luke. But this is only the obverse of the statement that Luke is the best Grecist. It throws no light upon the literary relation of Mark and Q. Such literary relation, in fact, cannot in the strict sense be “proved.” It can only be rendered probable, tho perhaps extremely probable, by the unlikelihood that Mark and Q should have fifty verses in common without any literary relationship. Such relationship being assumed, the dependence is on the side of Mark.