(Mt x, 24-25; Lk vi, 40)
The agreement here is close for a part of the saying; but Matthew adds a clause about the servant and his lord, and a reference to the Beelzebul controversy. Whether attributed to Luke or his source, his addition of κατηρτισμένος may indicate the feeling that the statement as to the equality of the disciple and his teacher required some qualification. This would be more strongly felt, however, if Luke had preserved the word κύριος, which would refer more unmistakably to Jesus. In Luke this section occurs in the Sermon on the Plain; since Matthew has put much material in his corresponding Sermon on the Mount which is not in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, even when he has had to bring this from many other connections, it is strange that he has left out of that sermon this saying, which stands in the corresponding discourse in Luke. This is one of the phenomena difficult of explanation upon the simple hypothesis of Q; since upon that hypothesis Matthew should have found this saying in the same connection as that in which Luke found it, and why, so finding it, he not only took pains to add so much to it, but to transpose it upon the opposite principle to that which he has followed in the transposition of most other Q material, is not easy to explain. On these grounds the saying is ascribed to QMt and QLk.
EXHORTATION TO FEARLESS CONFESSION
(Mt x, 26-33; Lk xii, 2-9)
The agreements and variations in this section are precisely such as to indicate an ultimate common source, but immediate different sources. In Matthew’s vs. 27 and Luke’s vs. 3, with many of the same words retained, the meaning is directly reversed. On the other hand, φοβεῖσθε (φοβηθῆτε) with ἀπὸ is found here only in the New Testament, and not at all in the Septuagint. Unless this be ascribed to assimilation, it is a coincidence too marked to be explained except by the supposition of an ultimate common source. The same thing is to be said of the phrase ὁμολογήσει ἐν in Matthew’s vs. 32 and Luke’s vs. 8. Yet in the midst of the section there is a passage of twenty or twenty-five words in which there is practically no verbal coincidence, tho the idea is the same. Luke substitutes “have not anything else that they can do,” for Matthew’s phrase “can not kill the soul”; it has been suggested that this latter was not congenial to Luke’s Greek method of thot. Where Matthew mentions the price of sparrows as “two for a farthing,” Luke specifies it as “five for two farthings.” The section contains no narrative matter. A comparison of the deviations between Matthew and Luke here, with their agreements with each other in sections where they are taking over the discourse material of Jesus from Mark, will show that these deviations are decidedly too great to be ascribed to the agency of either Matthew or Luke. The passage is therefore assigned to QMt and QLk.
STRIFE AMONG RELATIVES
(Mt x, 34-36; Lk xii, 51-53)
Luke’s version seems more elaborated and less original than Matthew’s. Luke certainly would not have substituted the comparatively colorless word διαμερισμόν for μάχαιραν if this latter had stood in his source. Without the hypothesis of the two recensions this section would have to be assigned to totally different, perhaps oral, sources. διαμερίζω is used once by Mark, and Matthew and Luke have both copied it from him in that connection. Neither Matthew nor Mark uses the word again; Luke uses it in five other places in his Gospel, including the section now under consideration. As he uses it but twice in Acts, it seems more likely to have been found in his source than to have been here inserted by him. This would tell strongly against the supposition that Matthew and Luke are here working over an identical source; in other words, it would remove this section from simple undifferentiated Q. Only the general character of the material, its close resemblance in meaning in the two Gospels, and its proximity in each Gospel to other Q material, can justify its assignment to QMt and QLk—and then, even, with uncertainty.
CONDITIONS OF DISCIPLESHIP
(Mt x, 37-39; Lk xiv, 26-27; xvii, 33)