Mk xii, 3 (Mt xxi, 35; Lk xx, 10): Matthew’s account here is quite different from Mark’s (which is followed much more closely by Luke). According to Mark, only one servant was sent, whom the vineyard-keepers “caught and beat and sent away empty.” According to Matthew several servants were sent; the vineyard-keepers caught them, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. This form of the story indicates the times of persecution in which it was worked over by Matthew—when more than one man had suffered more than one kind of indignity. Luke sticks close to the story of Mark, and merely omits the λαβόντες which Matthew retains. Perhaps Luke had reflected that the servant had to be caught if he was to be beaten, and so regarded the item as superfluous. It does happen to come before the items that Luke retains, but there is no reason to suppose Luke would have had any greater antipathy to omitting it if it had stood last or if Matthew had also omitted it. It is not only hard to detect any influence of Matthew upon Luke here, but much harder to see, if Luke were copying Matthew, why he should not have preferred his several servants to Mark’s one. Later in the same story, Luke again omits Mark’s λαβόντες where Matthew retains it (Mk xii, 8), tho here both Matthew and Luke change the order of the incidents in the verse, probably to make them conform more exactly to the experience of Jesus. The omission of the participle by Luke and its inclusion by Matthew is most simply explained by Luke’s greater interest in stylistic improvement. The instance seems to be barren for Mr. Smith’s purpose.
Mk xiv, 1 (Mt xxvi, 2; Lk xxii, 1): Matthew’s account is here very different from Mark’s. He introduces it with the words, “And it came to pass when he had ended these sayings.” This is a formula which Matthew uses five times,[74] and which is found in Matthew alone. Since the construction ἐγένετο followed by a finite verb is found in these five passages alone in Matthew, the formula appears to have stood (once, at least, if not in all five instances) in Q.[75] It also seems to be used by Matthew to mark his transition from one of his sources to the other.[76] The remark which Mark here makes about the approach of the passover, Matthew puts into the mouth of Jesus as a part of the speech which Mark does not have. Luke follows Mark in making the statement a part of his narrative and in omitting the speech which Matthew gives. These facts would seem to indicate that Matthew is here following Q, while Luke follows Mark. Luke’s looser statement (omitting the μετὰ δύο ἡμέρας, and substituting his own favorite ἤγγιζεν,[77] and adding his ἡ λεγομένη πάσχα) would seem to go back to his desire not to trouble his Greek reader with too exact details, and yet to supply him with a little information about the Jewish feast. Here again, as in the last instance, it seems especially strange to suggest Matthew as a source of Luke where he shows such an absence of any influence from him.
Mk xiv, 12 (Mt xxvi, 17; Lk xxii, 7): Here, says Mr. Smith, Matthew gives the first and second parts of Mark’s phrase, Luke the second and third parts. The fact seems to be that Matthew here, with his usual habit of condensing Mark’s narrative, omits (what his Jewish readers would know without his stating it) the statement that on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread they “killed the passover.” Luke changes this from a particular to a general statement, so (as above) conveying to his Greek reader some information about the custom of the occasion (ἔδει θύεσθαι τὸ πάσχα). Luke here shows the influence of Mark and not of Matthew; since he follows Mark (Mk xiv, 13; Lk xxii, 10) in including eleven words which he copies very closely and which Matthew omits. He also agrees with Mark in the ascription of supernatural knowledge to Jesus upon this occasion, whereas Matthew’s narrative does not carry this implication.
Mk xiv, 65 (Mt xxvi, 67, 68; Lk xxii, 63, 64): Mr. Smith finds the influence of Matthew upon Luke in this passage, in the fact that while Mark says that they “spat upon Jesus, blindfolded him and smote him, Matthew records the first and third of these actions, Luke the second and third.”[78] Why Luke omits the spitting, may not be easy (or necessary) to say. But that Luke here shows the reverse of any influence from Matthew is indicated in the fact that whereas Matthew follows Mark in relating, first the examination of Jesus, then the mockery, and third the denials of Peter, Luke rearranges the Marcan narrative to make it run, first the denials, second the mockery, and third the examination. He has received his suggestion for this rearrangement from the fact that Mark, just before he begins the story of the mockery, has mentioned that Peter was outside the hall, warming himself by the fire.[79] It has seemed (quite naturally) to Luke that this is the place where the story of the denials should be related, tho Mark inserts the story of the mockery before he goes on[80] with the denials. In a passage where Luke has so thoroughly rearranged Mark it seems unnecessary to account for his omission of one word, especially by such a remote theory as that of Mr. Smith; and in a passage, too, where his rearrangement of Marcan material contradicts Matthew’s slavish following of it.
Mk xv, 42 (Mt xxvii, 57; Lk xxiii, 54): “Where Mark says, ‘When the even was come because it was the preparation, that is the day before the Sabbath,’ Matthew says, ‘When even was come,’ and Luke ‘the rest.’”[81] But Luke does not quite say “the rest.” He says,[82] “It was the day of preparation, and the Sabbath was dawning.” And this he says, not in the same connection, nor with the same purpose, as Mark (and Matthew). Mark and Matthew use their statement about the evening having come as an introduction to their story about the request of Joseph of Arimathea. Luke tells his story of Joseph without any such introduction, and mentions the time only after he has finished that story, apparently with reference to the story of the women which follows, rather than to that of Joseph which precedes. The argument of the last paragraph will apply here.
It will not be necessary to go with equal care thru the five other instances in which Mr. Smith detects in a similar way the influence of Matthew upon Luke.[83] He admits “two, or three, or at the most four, cases of Marcan expressions” of which (without explanation) it might appear that Luke uses the first part and Matthew the last. His willingness to push his theory to the extreme may be inferred from his general estimate of the character of Luke as a writer: “He blurs, obliterates, blunders, fabricates, falsifies, flattens out, mutilates, murders.”[84]
The secondary interest of the writer would also seem to have influenced his work somewhat too strongly. That interest is indicated in the following statements: “If Acts was written in A.D. 62, ... and Luke was written before Acts, then Matthew, slipping in between Mark and Luke must throw Mark still further back.... We thus would come very close to the resurrection, perhaps to within fifteen years, and the possibility of legendary and controversial elements having entered into the gospel story would accordingly be reduced to a minimum.... With our understanding of Lucan derivations from Matthew, as well as from Mark, the ghost of a chance of existence belonging to postulated common sources, such as an earlier or a later Mark and a Q is frightened away, and we are left with the Gospels Mark, Matthew, Luke, written in that order,” etc.[85]
Passing from the details of Mr. Smith’s statement to the general argument upon which they rest, the present writer can see no cogency in that argument. Even if the use of Matthew by Luke were not contradicted by so many characteristics of both those Gospels, the writer cannot see how the choice by Luke of the second part of a phrase of which Matthew has taken the first part should prove the use of Matthew by Luke. Why should not Luke feel free to take precisely that part of a Marcan phrase which Matthew has taken—if he wanted it? Why should his finding it in Matthew make him feel that he was not at liberty to use it? Why, indeed, if Luke was copying Matthew, should he not have followed him in his quotation of a certain part of a Marcan phrase, instead of putting himself every time to the trouble of going back to his Mark to pick out that part of the phrase which Matthew had left? It does not quite appear why the facts cited by Mr. Smith (so far as analysis of the passages from which they are cited leaves any of them standing) might not just as well be turned against his theory as for it.