SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The positions reached in this study may be gathered up in a few brief statements:

1. Matthew and Luke depend for the structure of their Gospels, and for practically all of their narrative material, upon Mark.

2. In the order of Marcan material, Matthew and Luke have made such changes as were desirable from the use to which they wished to put this matter. Matthew has made fewer omissions, Luke fewer transpositions.

3. The changes which Matthew and Luke have made in the substance or wording of the Marcan material, including their omissions from it, may be accounted for by a desire to produce a better literary form, to avoid statements that offended the growing sentiment of the church, and to adapt their own narrative to their own public. Some changes must go unaccounted for.

4. The hypothesis of a more primitive form of Mark in the hands of Matthew and Luke is not demanded by the facts. Matthew and Luke used substantially our Mark.

5. Matthew and Luke also used a document Q, whose content, within limits, is well agreed upon.

6. Various facts, especially translation variants, require the assumption that this Q was originally an Aramaic document, used by Matthew and Luke respectively, in two Greek translations that went back to two different Aramaic texts.[138]

7. This furnishes the clue for the analysis of Q into QMt and QLk, and for the assignment to these two recensions of Q of much material which has hitherto been assigned to unknown sources.

8. Mark has some literary dependence upon Q; but the Q which he knew was an earlier form than those in the hands of Matthew and Luke.

9. The original order of Q is best seen in the order of the Q material preserved in Luke.