The introductions in the two Gospels are slightly different. After these, fourteen consecutive words are alike, the only deviation being Matthew’s use (as always) of τῶν οὐρανῶν where Luke has τοῦ θεοῦ. The parable stood in Q.
THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND
(Mt xv, 14; Lk vi, 39)
This is another instance of a saying which occurs in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain but outside of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Matthew has apparently inserted it in the midst of a discourse against the Pharisees, the rest of which he has taken from Mark. The sayings in Matthew and Luke are not identical. If the saying stood in Q, and Matthew removed it from its Lucan connection to its present position in his Gospel, this was certainly a very unusual procedure with him. The saying is given as a “parable” in Luke, and has the brevity of the parables that were given in Q, tho not their usual reference to the kingdom of God. It is hard to think of Matthew, with his fondness for these brief parables, deliberately omitting to call the saying by this name when it was so called in his source. On the whole, however, it seems best to assign the saying to Q, and to charge Matthew with its displacement.
A SAYING ABOUT FAITH
(Mt xvii, 20; Lk xvii, 6)
The parallel here is not close. But Matthew has a doublet in xxi, 21, and Mark a similar saying in xi, 22. The saying seems therefore to have been in both Mark and Q, and was taken by Matthew from both sources and by Luke from one. The connection of the saying in Luke indicates that he took it from Q; yet his saying is not the same as Matthew’s, in that he substitutes a sycamore tree for Matthew’s mountain, thus greatly weakening the comparison. The two sayings certainly cannot have been derived by Matthew and Luke from an identical source. It is only on the ground of their general logian character that they can be assigned to QMt and QLk.
A SAYING ABOUT OFFENSES
(Mt xviii, 7; Lk xvii, 1)