“BLESSED ARE THE PERSECUTED”
(Mt v, 11-12; Lk vi, 22-23)
The verbal similarity is close only in a few places; notably in the ὁ μισθὸς ὑμῶν πολὺς ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς (τῷ οὐρανῷ). Out of thirty-five words in Matthew and fifty-one in Luke, only twelve are identical. Two considerations prevent the assignment of these verses to two totally different sources. The first is their contiguity to so much Q material. The second is the presence in them of two translation variants.[94] The second of these two verses, at least, therefore goes back to two different recensions or translations of one original Aramaic document—QMt and QLk.
A SAYING ABOUT SALT
(Mt v, 13; Lk xiv, 34)
This saying evidently stood in both Mark and Q. Luke follows Mark in καλὸν οὖν τὸ ἅλα and Q in the rest of his saying. Matthew’s form of the saying, which makes it addressed to the disciples, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” involves a much greater change than Matthew ever permits himself when he transcribes the words of Jesus which he finds in Mark. Luke, on the other hand, could scarcely have found the saying in his source with this application to the disciples, and have changed it to its much less pointed and personal form in his own Gospel. The only conclusion possible from a comparison of Matthew and Luke here is that this saying lay in different forms in their sources. But since it occurs in the midst of so much Q material, it is better to assign it to different recensions of Q than to some other unknown source.
A SAYING ABOUT LIGHT
(Mt v, 15; Lk xi, 33)
This is another saying that stood in both Mark and Q. Mark has the saying in Mk iv, 21. His form of it is the apparently less natural one, “Does the lamp come in order that it may be put under a bushel?” etc. Weiss suggests[95] that it has been given this form to make it refer to the coming of Jesus as the light of the world. 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. Mark says “under the bushel or under the bed”; Matthew, “under the bushel”; Luke once, “in a dish or under the bed,” and a second time, “in a cellar or under the bushel.” Luke’s fondness for the same ending in his two uses of the saying can be explained only by the supposition that it so stood in one of his sources. The same idea in the conclusion of the saying as it appears in Matthew and Luke, and their common avoidance of the opening formula which is peculiar to Mark, would indicate that Matthew and Luke practically forsake Mark in this saying, and follow their other source. Luke, having a doublet for the saying, may be assumed to have taken it once from Mark and once from his other source; but he is evidently much more influenced by his other source than he is by Mark. The non-Marcan source in which the saying was found by Matthew and Luke was evidently an allied, but not an identical, one; the saying is therefore assigned to QMt and QLk.