FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS TO THE DISCIPLES
(Mt x, 16b-25, 41-42)
Of the chapter in which this section occurs Mr. Streeter says that Matthew begins with Mark, adds some Q material parallel to Luke’s Q material in the same connection, then Q material unparalleled, then Q material paralleled in other connections in Luke, then material from a totally different part of Mark.[106] The verses enumerated here are not paralleled in either Mark or Luke. They are not like the verses, for the most part, which Matthew and Luke agree in taking from Q; and they show marked difference in some respects from those which we have thus far assigned to Matthew’s recension of Q. In his Apostolic Age Professor James Hardy Ropes[107] suggests that at least one purpose of the collection of Jesus’ sayings was “to furnish a kind of handbook of missionary practice for those times.” These verses, better almost than any other section out of the instructions to the disciples, answer this purpose. If they rest upon words of Jesus spoken at the time he sent out his disciples, they are at least colored by the needs of Christian missionaries who went out toward the end of the apostolic age. They betray the conviction that the time of the parousia is near. As coming from Jesus they contain a prediction so obviously unfulfilled as to make their later invention and ascription to him very difficult. On the other hand no words ascribed to him would by themselves more easily originate in the times of the early Christian missions. Considering their position here, and giving due weight to Professor Ropes’s suggestion, it seems much more probable that they are taken by Matthew from some written source than from an oral tradition. If so, no better source can be posited than Matthew’s recension of Q.
A SAYING ABOUT ELIJAH
(Mt xi, 14)
Like the reference to Elijah in Mk ix, 12, this verse sounds like a parenthesis. It adds nothing to the context, and rather interrupts than furthers the matter. If not inserted by Matthew from some unknown, perhaps oral, source, it may perhaps best be considered as a gloss.
“HE THAT HATH EARS, LET HIM HEAR”
(Mt xi, 15)
This is a proverbial saying occurring seven times in the Gospels (eight times in the received text); three times in Matthew, twice each in Mark and Luke. It also occurs eight times in the Apocalypse. Each evangelist has a form of his own, to which he adheres thruout. The saying sounds here as if it were intended to drive home what has just been said about Elijah, and may with propriety be assigned to the same hand as the preceding verse.
THE OCCASION OF PRONOUNCING WOES UPON THE GALILEAN CITIES