A SAYING ABOUT THE LAW
(Mt v, 18; Lk xvi, 17)
There are twenty-seven words in Matthew’s form of this saying; fifteen in Luke’s. Only nine words show any correspondence. Matthew’s “until all be fulfilled” is held by Schmiedel[96] to be a gloss, added, not by the final editor of Matthew, who did not care for Jewish legalism, but by an earlier editor. Harnack maintains that it goes back to Jesus, and does not necessarily mean that the law shall ultimately pass away. In his essay in the Oxford Studies Hawkins maintains that the section can be made “very probable” for Q. Considering the wide divergences, the writer would add that this probability can be established only upon the hypothesis of two recensions of Q; upon that hypothesis it would be granted by everyone.
“AGREE WITH THINE ADVERSARY”
(Mt v, 25-26; Lk xii, 58-59)
Luke prefaces this saying with one peculiar to his Gospel: “Why do ye not, of yourselves, judge what is right?” The close connection of this saying with the passage here under consideration, and the verbal resemblances and divergences of the sections in Matthew and Luke—twenty-five identical words out of a total of forty-three in Matthew and forty-nine in Luke—warrant their assignment to QMt and QLk.
ABOUT NON-RESISTANCE AND LOVE OF ENEMIES
(Mt v, 39, 40, 42, 44-48; Lk vi, 27-30, 32, 36)
It is possible to choose out of these verses here and there a few words which, if they stood alone, would be naturally assigned simply to Q. By regarding only the words which very closely correspond, this is accomplished, but with the result that the other words, standing in the same context and in closest connection, must be assigned to totally different sources, or ascribed to the invention or alteration of one of the evangelists. The verbal similarity thruout the section is sometimes close, sometimes remote. Transpositions are frequent. Where Matthew has the simile of the rain and sun, Luke has the comparatively weak words “good to the unthankful and evil.” This is a substitution that Luke certainly would never have made for the strong words of Matthew if these had stood in his source. The author assigns the section to the two recensions, QMt and QLk.
THE LORD’S PRAYER