TABLE V
Contents of Q Material in Luke
* The asterisk indicates Q material in Luke duplicated in Matthew.
As to the generally homogeneous character of the sections marked Q, there will be no dispute. Since these are restricted to the passages showing the very closest parallelism, there can be no question about the propriety of assigning them to Q. The only question will be as to the assignment of any unduplicated material to any form of Q, and the assignment of the duplicated but not closely paralleled sections to QMt and QLk instead of simply to Q. Reasons have been given[127] for such assignments in each case. But a few sections may be taken as again illustrating the advantages of the QMt-QLk hypothesis.
PASSAGES CLOSELY SIMILAR, YET WITH DIVERGENCES TOO GREAT TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR UPON THE HYPOTHESIS OF AN UNDIFFERENTIATED Q
Sections 42 in Matthew and 16 in Luke contain the saying about the house on the rock and the sand (with and without foundations). These sections are universally ascribed to Q, both from their general similarity and from their position in each Gospel as the conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount (Plain). But the wording is very dissimilar. Only those words are alike which must necessarily be so if two men were using the same subject as an illustration; and this is true, not only of the wording, but of the thought. Those who assign the passage simply to Q are compelled to suppose that, Matthew representing the original text, Luke has observed that the correct antithesis is not between a house built on a rock and a house built on the sand, but between one built with a foundation and one built without one. So he says nothing about the soil, whether rock or sand, but says that in one case the man built upon the surface, and that in the other he digged deep and laid a good foundation. The amount of re-working, reinterpreting, and re-writing thus required of Luke is wholly unjustified by any treatment he has accorded to any of the sayings of Jesus in Mark. It is presumable that he exercised his editorial function on his recension of Q as he did upon the sayings-material in Mark. But it is much more natural to suppose that the story that lay before him in his source lay before him in a form considerably different from that which it had in Matthew’s source. The assumption of the two recensions therefore has the advantage of preserving the section for Q, without the disadvantage of ascribing to Luke a wholly unwarrantable amount of re-working.
Sections 4-11 in Matthew and 4-6 in Luke contain their different versions of the beatitudes. Those who assign indiscriminately to Q all the verses contained in these sections have to assume that Luke omitted five of the beatitudes. No reason can be assigned for his doing so, and it is wholly improbable that he would have deliberately mutilated a passage so liturgically complete and impressive. The five omitted beatitudes are additions to the teachings of Jesus, manufactured on the basis of Old Testament exemplars. But if anything stood in Q, these five beatitudes stood there, only not in Luke’s recension, but in Matthew’s.
WITH MATTHEW’S Q BEFORE HIM, LUKE WOULD NOT HAVE OMITTED SO MUCH OF IT
Those who argue for Luke’s omission of so much Q material which (according to their assumption) stood before him, allege as a precedent his omission of so much Marcan material, especially of the continuous section Mk vi, 45-viii, 21. It is held by many students that the copy of Mark used by Luke did not contain this section.[128] The writer does not see the necessity for this assumption as there are obvious reasons for Luke’s omission of the section if it stood in his copy of Mark. It contains the doublet of the feeding of the four thousand. Luke avoids doublets as far as possible. It contains the story of the walking on the sea, a story similar in many respects to that of the storm at sea which Luke had already taken from Mark. The dispute about hand-washing and the things that defile would have no interest for Luke or his gentile readers. The story of the Canaanitish woman and her difficulties in securing help from Jesus, and the methods of healing the dumb man, would offend Luke’s non-Jewish sympathies and his artistic sense. The discussion about leaven he would omit because he had a partial parallel from another source. In this whole section which Luke omits from Mark there are very few sayings of Jesus, and those of a character not to please or interest Luke. The omission of such a section, or of anything else that Luke omits from Mark, offers no precedent for the omissions he is alleged to have made from Q.