THE EXISTENCE AND CONTENT OF Q

Coming back to the theory that Matthew and Luke used a common document for their sayings-material, we have next to determine what the content of that document was.

A reasonable degree of unanimity prevails among scholars as to this content, or at least as to a considerable part of it. Where students differ is as to the sayings which are not very closely parallel in the two Gospels, or as to sayings that are contained in only one of the two. As to the sayings which are practically identical in the two, or which show such very marked literary agreements as to put different sources out of the question, there is no dispute.

There appears to be a disposition on the part of some scholars to extend Q indefinitely. In his essay in the Oxford Studies, Mr. Bartlet seems to use the symbol to cover the general apostolic tradition (it is not always apparent whether he means written or not). Among German scholars, B. Weiss shows the same disposition. Among American scholars, Mr. B. W. Bacon suggests that Q might originally have contained much more and other material than can now be identified for it; as the narrative parts of it, being taken up by Mark, and copied from him by Matthew and Luke, would fail to leave in these latter Gospels any traces of themselves. This is quite true. But if Q, in addition to nearly all the logian material in Matthew and Luke originally contained all the narrative matter of Mark, Q was not only a complete Gospel, but quite as complete a Gospel as that of Matthew or Luke; perhaps more so, since Matthew and Luke may each have omitted something from Q; and no motive remains for the writing of these later Gospels. Mr. Burkitt[86] has maintained that Q very probably contained some references to the passion; but this position has not commended itself to many, if to any, other students.

Q was a collection of sayings. That the content of it, within limits, can be made out with some degree of unanimity is indicated by the following tables. The first represents the content of Q in Matthew, as given by the five scholars whose names head the five columns, with additional statements in the following columns, concerning the amount of agreement or divergence. The second table does the same thing for the Q matter assigned to the Gospel of Luke by the same five investigators.

DEDUCTIONS FROM THE TABLE

In Table II the verses are indicated as they stand in Matthew without their parallels in Luke (which would add nothing for our purpose here), and without indicating the rearrangement of order which most if not all of these scholars attempt at various places. The purpose here is simply to present the content of Q as made out by these different men. Besides showing what each one of them assigns to Q, I have (in the column headed “All Five”) tried to show the verses which all these scholars agree in so assigning; and in the next column the verses assigned to Q by three or more out of the five. In the last two columns I have indicated the total number of verses out of each chapter, assigned to Q by all five, and by three or more, respectively. No attempt was made to select men whose work would have special tendency toward agreement; undoubtedly two investigators[87] might be substituted for Wellhausen and Wernle, whose work would make the total agreement much greater than it is in the present table.

TABLE II
Material from Q in Matthew

The analysis of Wellhausen is the least elaborate of the five, and that of Wernle is almost as simple. The other three show more disposition to select out the verse or part of the verse which, occuring in the midst of Q material, should nevertheless be assigned to some other source. Weiss adds a question mark to several of his sections, but these have been included in the table. All the students say that not the same certainty attaches to all the sections which they have included. Sir John Hawkins, especially, says he does not consider his work a “reconstruction of Q,” which, with Mr. Burkitt, he considers a task beyond the data at our command.

According to these five scholars, Q has furnished a source for Matthew in eleven chapters. According to three out of the five, Q is found in sixteen chapters. Harnack and Hawkins agree in finding one verse each in chaps. xv, xvii, and xix. Weiss alone finds two-thirds of a verse in xxi. Among the five, they find Q in twenty chapters. The only chapters in which Q is not found by any of them are i, ii, xiv, xvi, xx, xxvi, xxvii, and xxviii.

The most conspicuous absences of Q from Matthew are in his first two chapters, in his chapters dealing with the Passion (chaps. xxvi-xxvii), and in his story of the empty grave and the resurrection appearances (chap. xxviii).Concerning the absence of Q from chaps. xiv, xvi, and xx, and its practically negligible presence in chaps. xv, xvii, xix, and xxi, it will be observed that these chapters do not deal exclusively with narrative material. Their content is, in brief, the death of the Baptist, the return of the disciples, the feeding of the five thousand, the walking on the sea, the dispute about hand-washing, the Canaanitish woman, the feeding of the four thousand, the demand of the Pharisees for a sign, the confession of Peter, the demands for discipleship, the transfiguration, the healing of the epileptic boy, the prediction of Jesus’ sufferings, the temple-tax, the strife about rank, the strange exorcist, the speech about offenses and about the rescue of the lost, the rules for reconciliation with a brother and for forgiveness, the parable of the Evil Steward, the dispute about marriage and divorce, the blessing of the children, the danger of riches, the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, the second prediction of sufferings, the demand of the sons of Zebedee, the healing of Bartimaeus, the entry into Jerusalem, the offense of the scribes and priests, the cursing of the fig tree, the purification of the temple, the parables of the Dissimilar Sons and the Evil Vineyard-Keepers.

So far as the narrative material in these chapters is concerned, it is derived from Mark. Of the discourse material, some is connected with the narrative in Mark, and taken, like the narrative, from him.[88] Other passages of discourse material, like the demands of discipleship (Mt xvi, 24-28), not closely connected with Marcan narrative, yet apparently taken from Mark, contain verses elsewhere duplicated in Matthew. For these verses, some of which Luke takes from Mark, he has duplicates elsewhere. Since these duplicates in both Matthew and Luke are elsewhere closely connected with Q material, and are in their other connections apparently uninfluenced by Mark, it appears that in these chapters, where Matthew forsakes Q, he has nevertheless embodied certain material from Mark which originally stood alike in Mark and Q.

Other instances of this kind occur in Mt xviii, 1-5, the strife about rank; in xviii, 6-9, about offenses; and in xx, 24-28, about true greatness. These verses represent passages in which, according to Sanday’s statement,[89] Mark and Q “overlapped”; or, according to other students (notably Mr. Streeter in the same volume), Mark also copied from Q. As we are here interested, not in the relation of Mark to Q, but only in the content of the latter as it is found in Matthew, we may go back to our statement that Matthew has combined his material from Q in his chaps. iii-viii and x-xii, and practically (if not quite) forsaken him in chaps. xiii-xxii.

Going back once more to Table II, the largest content ascribed to Q is given by Wernle: three hundred and two verses (including a few parts of verses). The next largest are from Weiss and Wellhausen, two hundred and forty-eight and two hundred and fifty-six verses respectively. Harnack and Hawkins assign only one hundred and ninety and one hundred and ninety-four.[90] But the facts that out of the largest content ascribed by any one of the five students (three hundred and two by Wernle), two hundred and eight of the same verses are likewise assigned by two others, and that out of the smallest content (one hundred and ninety by Harnack), one hundred and one are likewise assigned by all five, show that as to the nucleus of Q, including more than half of it according to Harnack and one-third of it according to Wernle, there is practically no dispute.

Table III will show the results of the work of the same five scholars as to the Q material in Luke.

DEDUCTIONS FROM TABLE III

Table III, containing the content ascribed to Q as it is found in Luke, by the same five scholars mentioned above, discloses some interesting results when compared with Table II (pp. 110-11). As was the case with Q in Matthew, the smallest total is assigned by Harnack. That he finds one hundred and ninety verses (including a few parts of verses) in both Matthew and Luke indicates that he has limited his Q pretty closely to the duplicate matter in both Gospels. Hawkins’ results are very close in this respect to Harnack’s (one hundred and ninety-four Q verses in Matthew and one hundred and ninety-two in Luke), and indicate the same basis of computation. Wellhausen finds Q in two hundred and fifty-six verses of Matthew, and in only two hundred and ten of Luke.

Both tables show that Wellhausen’s analysis of Q is much less elaborate than that of any of the other students. Since the number of Q verses which he finds in both Matthew and Luke is considerably larger than that which Harnack and Hawkins find, the disparity between his Q matter in Matthew and in Luke may be accounted for by his willingness to go farther beyond the duplicate material in those two Gospels for his Q. His two hundred and ten Q verses ascribed to Luke are not greatly in excess of the number ascribed by Harnack and Hawkins to both Luke and Matthew. He gives to Luke twenty more Q verses, and to Matthew sixty-six more, than Harnack. Of these sixty-six, he may consider thirty to be duplicates in Matthew and Luke (since what constitutes derivation from a common source must always be matter of opinion). The other thirty-six verses he assigns to Q in Matthew, tho lacking duplicates in Luke, on the ground of their general characteristics. The habits of Matthew and Luke, respectively, in their treatment of Mark, render it practically certain that Matthew would feel less at liberty to omit Q material than Luke. Wernle’s assignments (three hundred and two Q verses to Matthew and two hundred and fifty-five to Luke) may be explained in the same way.

TABLE III
Material in Luke Taken from Q

Somewhat more difficult to understand is Weiss’s assignment of two hundred and forty-eight Q verses to Matthew against only one hundred and seventy-four to Luke. He has here in common sixteen fewer verses than Harnack and Hawkins assign in common to Matthew and Luke from Q. But he also assigns to Matthew seventy-four Q verses not paralleled in the Q material which he assigns to Luke. The difference goes back again to the difference of opinion as to the degree of literary similarity which must be taken to indicate a common source; as also to Weiss’s interest in the special source (S) of Luke. If we deduct from Weiss’s Q in Matthew the twenty-eight verses after which he places an interrogation mark, this will leave him with only forty-six Q verses in Matthew unduplicated in Luke. This is only ten more than Wellhausen has.

All five scholars find Q material in nine of Luke’s chapters (against eleven of Matthew’s). Three find it in fourteen chapters. Chaps. iii and iv in Matthew correspond with the same chapters in Luke. Harnack finds in Matthew’s two chapters seventeen Q verses, and in Luke’s two chapters, eighteen. Hawkins finds fourteen in Matthew’s two, and fifteen in Luke’s. Matthew’s chaps. v-viii (Sermon on the Mount) contain according to Harnack sixty-six Q verses, according to Hawkins sixty-eight. To these three chapters of Matthew, chap. vi of Luke forms a partial parallel. It contains, according to Harnack, twenty-six, and according to Hawkins twenty-eight Q verses, parallel to that number of Matthew’s sixty-six. Of the remaining forty Q verses in Matthew (chaps. v-viii), Luke has in other connections, in chaps. xi, xii, xiii, xiv, and xvi, thirty-four parallel Q verses. All but six of the verses assigned by Hawkins and Harnack to Q in the Sermon on the Mount are therefore paralleled by Q material in Luke. But of this Q material in Luke more than half is scattered about in different chapters, in marked contrast to its concentration in Matthew. This is perhaps the best single illustration of the fact, often mentioned, that Luke blends his Q material with material from other sources, while Matthew inserts it in blocks.

It does not appear upon the surface why the same five investigators should not reach results concerning Q in Luke with the same consensus as concerning Q in Matthew. It is perhaps explained by the fact that Luke’s blending of his material from different sources and his freer treatment of it render Q less identifiable with him. If, however, Wernle, Wellhausen, and Weiss be disregarded, and attention be paid only to the lists of Hawkins and Harnack, these latter lists will be found to agree as closely in their identification of Q material in Luke as in Matthew. This merely shows that we are on firm ground in the identification of Q, so long as we restrict ourselves closely to the duplicate passages in Matthew and Luke, and require a reasonably strict agreement before admitting a common source. It is when we leave this duplicate material, to extend the limits of Q beyond it, that the uncertainties begin.

THE NECESSITY FOR A FURTHER EXTENSION OF Q

Yet the presence in both Matthew and Luke, especially in the former, of much sayings-material which is not only imbedded in Q matter, but has all the characteristics of Q; the presence of “translation variants”; the natural assumption that even if Matthew and Luke had before them the same identical copy of Q, they would not agree entirely in the amount of material they would respectively quote from it; and the desire to assign as much as seems reasonable to this source before positing another, all lead us to the task of a further determination of the content of Q. This further determination issues in an analysis of Q into QMt and QLk.

PART II
ANALYSIS OF Q INTO QMt AND QLk