The analysis of Wellhausen is the least elaborate of the five, and that of Wernle is almost as simple. The other three show more disposition to select out the verse or part of the verse which, occuring in the midst of Q material, should nevertheless be assigned to some other source. Weiss adds a question mark to several of his sections, but these have been included in the table. All the students say that not the same certainty attaches to all the sections which they have included. Sir John Hawkins, especially, says he does not consider his work a “reconstruction of Q,” which, with Mr. Burkitt, he considers a task beyond the data at our command.
According to these five scholars, Q has furnished a source for Matthew in eleven chapters. According to three out of the five, Q is found in sixteen chapters. Harnack and Hawkins agree in finding one verse each in chaps. xv, xvii, and xix. Weiss alone finds two-thirds of a verse in xxi. Among the five, they find Q in twenty chapters. The only chapters in which Q is not found by any of them are i, ii, xiv, xvi, xx, xxvi, xxvii, and xxviii.
The most conspicuous absences of Q from Matthew are in his first two chapters, in his chapters dealing with the Passion (chaps. xxvi-xxvii), and in his story of the empty grave and the resurrection appearances (chap. xxviii).
Concerning the absence of Q from chaps. xiv, xvi, and xx, and its practically negligible presence in chaps. xv, xvii, xix, and xxi, it will be observed that these chapters do not deal exclusively with narrative material. Their content is, in brief, the death of the Baptist, the return of the disciples, the feeding of the five thousand, the walking on the sea, the dispute about hand-washing, the Canaanitish woman, the feeding of the four thousand, the demand of the Pharisees for a sign, the confession of Peter, the demands for discipleship, the transfiguration, the healing of the epileptic boy, the prediction of Jesus’ sufferings, the temple-tax, the strife about rank, the strange exorcist, the speech about offenses and about the rescue of the lost, the rules for reconciliation with a brother and for forgiveness, the parable of the Evil Steward, the dispute about marriage and divorce, the blessing of the children, the danger of riches, the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, the second prediction of sufferings, the demand of the sons of Zebedee, the healing of Bartimaeus, the entry into Jerusalem, the offense of the scribes and priests, the cursing of the fig tree, the purification of the temple, the parables of the Dissimilar Sons and the Evil Vineyard-Keepers.
So far as the narrative material in these chapters is concerned, it is derived from Mark. Of the discourse material, some is connected with the narrative in Mark, and taken, like the narrative, from him.[88] Other passages of discourse material, like the demands of discipleship (Mt xvi, 24-28), not closely connected with Marcan narrative, yet apparently taken from Mark, contain verses elsewhere duplicated in Matthew. For these verses, some of which Luke takes from Mark, he has duplicates elsewhere. Since these duplicates in both Matthew and Luke are elsewhere closely connected with Q material, and are in their other connections apparently uninfluenced by Mark, it appears that in these chapters, where Matthew forsakes Q, he has nevertheless embodied certain material from Mark which originally stood alike in Mark and Q.
Other instances of this kind occur in Mt xviii, 1-5, the strife about rank; in xviii, 6-9, about offenses; and in xx, 24-28, about true greatness. These verses represent passages in which, according to Sanday’s statement,[89] Mark and Q “overlapped”; or, according to other students (notably Mr. Streeter in the same volume), Mark also copied from Q. As we are here interested, not in the relation of Mark to Q, but only in the content of the latter as it is found in Matthew, we may go back to our statement that Matthew has combined his material from Q in his chaps. iii-viii and x-xii, and practically (if not quite) forsaken him in chaps. xiii-xxii.
Going back once more to Table II, the largest content ascribed to Q is given by Wernle: three hundred and two verses (including a few parts of verses). The next largest are from Weiss and Wellhausen, two hundred and forty-eight and two hundred and fifty-six verses respectively. Harnack and Hawkins assign only one hundred and ninety and one hundred and ninety-four.[90] But the facts that out of the largest content ascribed by any one of the five students (three hundred and two by Wernle), two hundred and eight of the same verses are likewise assigned by two others, and that out of the smallest content (one hundred and ninety by Harnack), one hundred and one are likewise assigned by all five, show that as to the nucleus of Q, including more than half of it according to Harnack and one-third of it according to Wernle, there is practically no dispute.
Table III will show the results of the work of the same five scholars as to the Q material in Luke.
DEDUCTIONS FROM TABLE III
Table III, containing the content ascribed to Q as it is found in Luke, by the same five scholars mentioned above, discloses some interesting results when compared with Table II (pp. 110-11). As was the case with Q in Matthew, the smallest total is assigned by Harnack. That he finds one hundred and ninety verses (including a few parts of verses) in both Matthew and Luke indicates that he has limited his Q pretty closely to the duplicate matter in both Gospels. Hawkins’ results are very close in this respect to Harnack’s (one hundred and ninety-four Q verses in Matthew and one hundred and ninety-two in Luke), and indicate the same basis of computation. Wellhausen finds Q in two hundred and fifty-six verses of Matthew, and in only two hundred and ten of Luke.