(Mt v, 17, 19-24, 27-28)
Concerning the section v, 17-48, Hawkins says, “I would place this section by itself as one which we may regard as more likely to have formed part of Q than any other which is to be found in a single Gospel.”[102] Yet it is to be noted that in the section of which Hawkins makes this statement there are eleven verses (vss. 18, 25, 26, 32, 39, 40, 42, 44-47) which are not “found in a single Gospel,” but which have very close parallels in Luke, and would on this latter consideration be assigned to Q. This fact heightens the probability that the unduplicated verses should also be assigned to some form of that document. Only those verses are considered here which have no parallel in Luke.
Thruout these verses there is a strong Judaistic coloring. They may be compared in this respect with such other New Testament passages as Rom iii, 31; x, 4; Jas ii, 10; II Pet ii, 14. The words, “till heaven and earth pass away” at the beginning of vs. 18 do not quite agree with the words “until all things be fulfilled” at the end of the verse; the latter words have been suggested by Schmiedel as being a gloss. If, with the two verses that follow them, they be not such a gloss, they are, says Schmiedel,[103] not from the final editor, who does not care for Jewish legalism, but from some earlier editor. In other words, universally attributed as the section is to Q, these words were not in Luke’s version of that document, and it is inconceivable that Matthew should have added them. They are part of the accretion that took place in Matthew’s recension of Q before it reached Matthew. Harnack, however, maintains that there is no inconsistency in attributing the words to Jesus himself. Vs. 20 illustrates the unchronological placing of the sayings, since it implies that the break with the pharisees has already occurred. In vss. 21 and 22 is the word ἔνοχος, occurring four times; Matthew uses it in one other passage where he has taken it from Mark, who uses it twice; but Luke consistently avoids it, both in his Gospel and in Acts. Unchronological in their setting are also the words in vss. 23-24; they were evidently spoken in Jerusalem, not in Galilee. They would not have been added from an oral tradition, much less invented, in times as late as those of the final editor of the Gospel.
A SAYING ABOUT OFFENSES
(Mt v, 29-30)
For this saying there is a doublet in Mt xviii, 8-9, taken from Mk ix, 43-48. Mark may in this passage also have been following Q. That this saying should have been absent from Luke’s recension of Q, while present in that of both Matthew and Mark, and that it should also, as Dr. Stanton maintains, have been absent from Luke’s copy of Mark, seems rather too much of a coincidence. But the saying is like several others which Luke omits because of their strong tincture of asceticism, or because the instructions in them might be understood in too literal a way. Whether it was or was not in Luke’s recension of Q, its character and connection seem to indicate its presence in Matthew’s recension of that document.
THE COMMANDMENT ABOUT DIVORCE
(Mt v, 31)
Like vss. 21, 27, 33, 38, and 43 of this same chapter, this verse quotes an Old Testament commandment, as introductory to the teaching of Jesus upon the subject of that command. Since much of the teaching of Jesus upon these items is duplicated in Luke, but this quotation of the Old Testament commandment is omitted by him each time, the quotation will be ascribed either to Matthew or his source. The fact that it is his source, and not the final editor (who for convenience is all along here called Matthew), who is responsible for the Judaistic coloring of the Gospel, the universalistic tendency being attributed to Matthew, inclines us to assign all these verses in quotation of the commandments to QMt.
ABOUT OATHS