These figures show a consistent pattern: that there is greater verbatim agreement (fewer differences) in the text of Matthew and Luke in the DT than in the TT, so pointing to either aMatthew copying from Luke, or aLuke copying from Matthew, instead of both just copying from Q or another common source for the DT. Although these specific numbers have been challenged, the basic result still stands, providing support for synoptic hypotheses that allow for copying from Matthew to Luke or from Luke to Matthew, while not excluding copying from another source common to both Matthew and Luke as well.
The Mark-Q Overlaps and Other Indicators
The following are a collection of 'pointers' that together argue for a synoptic solution other than those currently considered to the 'front-runners,' of which the primary two are the Mark-Q Hypothesis and Farrer / MwQH (Mark without Q Hypothesis).
In section 4 of Fallacies at the Heart of Q Goodacre explains the meaning of the term ‘Mark-Q Overlaps,’ but then in his blog he makes a case for deprecating the term, and instead using neutral expressions such as "major agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark" or "triple tradition pericopae where Mark is not the middle term." However, not least because “middle term” itself does not mean the same to everyone, I will continue to use the term ‘Mark-Q Overlaps’ here, while noting the very concept of an 'overlap' allows for a (hypothetical or otherwise) 'overlapping' source other than Q.
According to the Mark-Q hypothesis Mark and Q are independent. However, as the term implies, ‘Mark-Q Overlaps’ are places where there is text common to both Mark and Q (i.e. where they overlap), that is deemed necessary to explain how, in what is otherwise Double Tradition (DT) material, aMatthew and aLuke (who on the Mark-Q hypothesis worked independently) nevertheless included in their respective gospels common portions of text (some ‘minor’ some ‘major’) that have parallels in Mark. In The synoptic problem: a way through the maze, Goodacre comments that:
The argument from Luke's ignorance of Matthew's additions to Mark runs into insurmountable problems: The examples given are weak: Luke's omissions are quite natural when one looks at them in line with his redactional interests. The argument is based on a fallacy: wherever Luke features Matthew's additions to Mark, these are placed in the category 'Mark-Q overlap' and, as far as this argument is concerned, they are ignored.
Not everyone agrees with Goodacre (for example, how do we know Luke's "redactional interests" other than by comparing Luke with other extant material?), and a good example of a potential Mark-Q overlap can be found very early in the synoptic gospels: All three contain a passage describing John baptizing people in the Jordan, prior to baptizing Jesus. While the passage in Mark is quite short (Mk 1:2-8), it is significantly longer in both Matthew and Luke (Mt 3:1-12 and Lk 3:2-17). Not only that, but the verses in both Matthew and Luke that have no parallel in Mark (Mt 3:7-10, 12 and Lk 3:7-9, 17) contain a distinctly Matthean saying: “O generation of vipers” (which appears in Mt 3:7, 12:34, and 23:33, but in Luke only here in Lk 3:7), followed by several references to fire, also considered to be Matthean in origin.
On both the MwQH and Early Luke hypotheses the interpretation of this text in both Matthew and Luke is that aMatthew used and expanded Mk 1:2-8, while aLuke then further expanded the version he saw in Matthew by adding Lk 3:5-6, 10:16a, and 18:21a. On an Early Luke hypothesis eLk most likely just contained the text from Mark, because if eLk had contained any of what we now see in Lk 3:5-6, 10:16a, and 18:21a then we would expect to see some of this in Matthew.
On the Mark-Q hypothesis aLuke did not know Matthew, and there must therefore be another reason why both aMatthew and aLuke added virtually identical text to a passage they both saw in Mark. The non-Markan text could of course come from Q (which both aMatthew and aLuke used), but in order for both to insert this text into identical positions in the narrative they got from Mark Q must have also contained the same surrounding Markan text, so overlapping with Mark. However, as soon as you allow for Mark and Q to have overlapped, then there has to be a mechanism to allow for this, and there are four possibilities:
1. the author(s) of Q knew Mark;
2. aMark knew Q;
3. aMark and the author(s) of Q both used an earlier hypothetical source; or
4. the text came from a common oral tradition that both aMark and the author(s) of Q knew.
None of these possibilities are really satisfactory. The first two imply a direct dependency link between Mark and Q that is not made explicit in the Mark-Q hypothesis, and in any case with such a link in place the whole rationale for Q as a source independent of Mark is undermined. The third explanation adds a second hypothetical source behind the original hypothetical source (Q), and as this violates the principle of Occams's (or Ockam's) Razor that "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity" it can be dismissed forthwith. The final explanation, 'a common oral tradition,' can be neither proved nor disproved, and is not much more than a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. More rigorously, Klinghardt points out that:
Methodologically, it is not permissible to develop a theory on a certain assumption and then abandon this very assumption in order to get rid of some left over problems the theory could not sufficiently explain. The methodological inconsistency of this solution would be less severe, if “Q” existed. But since “Q” owes its existence completely to the conclusions drawn from a hypothetical model, such an argument flies in the face of logic: it annuls its own basis.
In short, the Mark-Q overlaps may solve some problems with the Mark-Q hypothesis, but then cause others that cannot be resolved. At issue is a problem that seems to be rarely discussed outside what I will call the 'Q community,' and that is What Exactly is Q? This may seem a somewhat esoteric issue, but in fact is fundamental to the question of how any non-Markan source common to Matthew and Luke fits in to a synoptic hypothesis.
There are many other examples of agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark, and Goodacre lists several of them, covering a continuum ranging from:
... pure triple tradition passages which feature Minor Agreements, to Mark-Q overlap passages which feature major agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark, to double tradition passages where Luke is dependent solely on Matthew.
Because of the overlaps all the examples given by Goodacre are problematical for the Mark-Q hypothesis, whereas both the MwQH and the Mark-Ev hypothesis allow naturally for all the required dependencies. The Mark-Q overlaps (the "major agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark") are discussed above, while at the other end of the scale are the minor agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark, i.e. those places in which both aMatthew and aLuke appear to have made the same small (sometimes trivial) change to the text of Mark. In his web-page on the Two Source Hypothesis (2SH), Stephen Carlson writes:
The minor agreements pose a special dilemma for the 2SH, because they are suggestive of a literary connection between Matthew and Luke outside of either Mark or Q, calling into question the relative independence of Matthew and Luke.
For example, a few scholars explain the minor agreements by Luke's use of Matthew in addition to Q and Mark (3SH). The problem is that the modern argument for Q requires Matthew and Luke to be independent, so the 3SH raises more questions than it solves, namely, how to establish Q if Luke is dependent on Matthew. Other scholars keep Q while acknowledging the force of the minor agreements to attribute the minor agreements to a proto-Mark, such as the Ur-Markus in the Markan Hypothesis (MkH) that was adapted by Mark independently from its use by Matthew and Luke. Still other scholars feel that the character of the minor agreements suggests that they are due to a revision of our Mark, called deutero-Mark. In this case, both Matthew and Luke are dependent on deutero-Mark, which did not survive the ages.
Therefore, the minor agreements, if taken seriously, force a choice between accepting pure Markan priority on one hand or the existence of Q on the other hand, but not both simultaneously as the 2SH requires.
Carlson’s first sentence above essentially hits the problem (the nail) on the head: In places where aMatthew and aLuke appear to have made the same small change (for no obvious reason) to the text of Mark, then (on the assumption that one author choosing a trivial change by the other in preference to what was in Mark is very unlikely) why did they both make the same change to the text, unless they had another source that read that way? Two of the possibilities suggested above by Carlson are essentially the same: That aMatthew and aLuke both had access not only to Mark, but also to a text that was related to Mark, and that was slightly different to Mark in the areas of the minor agreements (How close to Mark this other text was in other places is not part of this argument).
In 1899 John Hawkins discussed the agreements in: ‘Horae Synopticae: Contributions to the Study of the Synoptic Problem - Second edition.’ In his Appendix III he refers to: “… a considerable amount of matter, chiefly of discourse, [which] is found in Matthew and Luke, while it is absent from Mark.” He then notes that there are 58 other agreements where different text is present in Mark, discusses and largely dismisses most of them, but then states that for others:
… in these sections there are certain other alterations from, and additions to, the Markan narrative, as to which it seems almost impossible that Matthew and Luke could have accidently concurred in making them. In these cases at least the changes seem to be owing to some influence, direct or indirect, of a common source, and not to the independent judgment of two compilers.
Hawkins then lists 21 instances of these agreements, and continues:
If this evidence is regarded as sufficient to prove that in at least 21 sections - and it is reasonable to suspect in others also - a common source has supplied Matthew and Luke with variations from and additions to the Marcan narrative which apparently forms the basis of these 58 sections, then the difficult question arises, What was the nature of this source?
After discussing the possible nature of this source, he concludes that some agreements may be due to copying from either Matthew to Mark or vice versa, but also that:
… it appears to me now that others of them, and perhaps the majority, may be best accounted for by Dr. Sanday’s suggestion that they are due to the use by Matthew and Luke of ‘a recension of the text of Mark different from that from which all the extant MSS. of the Gospels are derived’.
However, others disagree with Hawkins, with for example in 1909 Cuthbert Turner suggesting instead that these agreements are the result of harmonization:
St. Mark was, from an early date, the least familiar of the three Gospels, and therefore his text had, as a rule, even where it was the fullest, less influence over the other two than they had on his and on each other’s. But the text of Matthew influenced the scribes of Mark and Luke, the text of Luke the scribes of Mark and Matthew, to an almost incredible extent.
The problem with this is that harmonization is not in itself an explanation – it does not identify why scribes would do this. Instead, it assumes a particular scribal behavior on the basis that ‘harmonization’ can be explained as the result of such behavior, with hypotheses as to why scribes would do this being created to support this idea. For example, owing to the (very common) suggestion that the text of Mark or Luke has been harmonized to Matthew because scribes were more familiar with Matthew, harmonization is very infrequently challenged in any particular instance. However, when a non-extant deutero-Mark (or Early Luke) is allowed to enter the picture many of the ‘harmonizations’ can be seen to instead be simply due to aMatthew and aLuke choosing text from different sources, or, in the case of the agreements against Mark, both choosing from deutero-Mark/Early Luke/Ev rather than Mark itself.
In Fallacies at the Heart of Q Goodacre defines “alternating primitivity” in this way:
The argument from "alternating primitivity" is a key element in the standard case for the existence of Q. For if sometimes Matthew and sometimes Luke has the more primitive wording in the double tradition, this might well seem to be a sign that both were dependent on a prior document.
He then continues by raising difficulties with this argument:
The difficulties can be divided into two categories: (a) problems with the means by which scholars arrive at the conclusion that Luke's material is more original than the Matthean parallels and (b) problems with the assumption that greater primitivity in Luke would necessitate the existence of a Q document.
As Goodacre suggests, but does not make explicit, the term "alternating primitivity" is not meant to imply that the originality of Matthew and Luke actually reverses in a regular pattern, but just that sometimes Matthew seems more original than Luke, while at other times Luke seems more original than Matthew. For this reason "bi-directionality" is more appropriate, even though "alternating primitivity" is the commonly used term. There is however a more serious problem with Goodacre’s definition, as he couches it purely in relation to Q. Although it may be considered a standard test for Q, it should be a standard test for any synoptic hypothesis. That is, if Matthew in some places seems earlier (more primitive) than Luke, while in others Luke seems earlier than Matthew, then any valid synoptic hypothesis (not just Mark-Q) must provide a mechanism whereby this could occur. This then would be a problem for any synoptic hypothesis that (like the MwQH) does not provide for such a mechanism. As Klinghardt points out:
Whereas Goodacre’s criticism of the 2DH is convincing, his attempt to understand Luke in direct dependence on Matthew is not: The observation that in some cases Luke seems to be earlier and in other instances Matthew seems to be earlier, cannot be explained with the help of a simple “Benutzungshypothese” (the proposal of MwQH) but necessarily requires an additional source. Thus the Janus-faced character of the double tradition is one of the strongest arguments for the 2DH: The assumption of “Q” seemed to solve this problem of mutual influence in the double tradition. For want of an alternative text that could explain this problem of mutual influence in the double tradition, many scholars seem to put up with “Q” in spite of the apparent weaknesses of the 2DH. [Ed: Such an alternative text could of course be Mcg]
Perhaps not surprisingly, Goodacre argues that bi-directional primitivity is hard, if not impossible, to prove:
In short, the difficulty is that scholars have routinely confused issues of literary priority with issues over the relative age of traditions. The theory of Luke's literary dependence on Mark and Matthew does not necessitate the assumption that his material is always and inevitably secondary to Matthew's and Mark's.
Even though Goodacre argues that Q is not necessary to account for the fact that Luke is in places more primitive than Matthew, he argues that instead, oral sources are likely to account this phenomenon:
Just as most of us do not deny the likelihood that Luke interacted with oral traditions when he was working with Mark, so too we should not think it odd that he might have interacted with oral traditions when he was working with Matthew.
This appeal to oral traditions raises problems for Goodacre, as Foster notes:
A significant point at which Goodacre diverges from the earlier formulation of the Farrer-Goulder form of the theory is in his allowing the possibility that other traditions, apart from Mark and Matthew, influenced the Lukan narrative. In effect this possibility is an attempt to address the charge that at times Luke has the more primitive form of a Double Tradition pericope, and this appears inexplicable on the assumption of Lukan dependence on Matthew. Thus he states,
Not only has the extent of Luke's supposed primitivity been greatly overestimated, based partly on misconstrued assessments of the presence of Matthean language, but even on occasions where Luke does show possible signs of primitivity, this is only evidence for Q if one is prepared to deny a role to the living stream of oral tradition in the composition of Luke's gospel. [The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze, Mark Goodacre]
Here Goodacre is aware that such a possibility stands in direct opposition to the Farrer-Goulder form of this theory, which vigorously denies any source material outside of the fourfold gospel canon. Quite sensibly Goodacre acknowledges the reality that the writing of a gospel did not instantaneously supplant the stream of traditions that had fed into its composition. However, apart from the words of institution (Lk. 22:20) and the Lord's Prayer (11:2b-4), there are no examples provided to illustrate where Luke is drawing upon a pre-Lukan tradition rather than creating material de novo.
For instance, is the Lukan Passion Narrative tradition or redactional formulation, what about the distinctive parables of the third gospel, the infancy narrative and the unique genealogy? If Goodacre is willing to admit that alternative sources are being used in some of these cases, (and this seems to be the implication of his statement about "other traditions"), how is he able to determine with such confidence that such material was oral and not written?
Although it should be obvious that all the synoptic authors could have had non-written sources, i.e. information they received orally, whether in ‘interviews,’ overheard conversations, from preachers, etc., any resort to ‘oral tradition’ to solve a synoptic issue should raise a red flag, as it indicates an inability to find a non-oral solution within the constraints of the synoptic hypothesis under discussion, and, as previously noted, can neither be proved or disproved. Therefore, solutions that do not need to invoke ‘oral traditions’ to solve synoptic issues are preferable to those that do.
N.B. One point that needs to be stressed is that the Old Testament is a far more reliable witness than 'oral traditions' (!), and hence before resorting to them potential sources in the OT must be examined first. For example, much of the text of the temptations has parallels in various OT books.
Despite Goodacre’s statement above, many people do find evidence of ‘non-oral’ alternating primitivity between Matthew and Luke. For example, Burkett comments on the following:
… Luke probably preserves the more original form of the sign of Jonah (Luke 11:30/Matt 12:40)… Likewise, in the Beelzebul debate, Luke’s “finger of God” is probably more original than Matthew’s “Spirit of God” (Matt 12:28/Luke 11:20)… So too in the pericope on faithful and unfaithful slaves, Luke’s “unbelievers” is probably more original than Matthew’s “hypocrites” (Matt 24:51/Luke 12:46).
… if Luke has a more original form of the tradition than either Matthew or Mark, such instances speak against every form of the theory that Luke used Matthew. Since Matthew provided the triple tradition in the Griesbach hypothesis, and Mark did in Farrer’s theory, the Gospel of Luke should never have the earliest form of the triple tradition in any of these theories. Yet there is good reason to think that it does.
Other evidence of bidirectional primitivity can be found in variants in Luke that are typically attributed to assimilation to either Mark or Matthew. For example, the story of the woman with the issue of blood in Lk 8:42b-48 has a very similar parallel at Mk 5:25-34 and a much shorter one at Mt 9:20-22. Several mss of Luke (including P75, B, and Bezae) also have shorter variants of the story, omitting various details from Lk 8:43-45. On the Early Luke hypothesis a likely scenario for these otherwise difficult variants is that the shorter variant in Luke originated in a predecessor of Luke (eLk), and that aMatthew also based his shorter version on that in eLk, but later assimilation from Mark resulted in the longer Byzantine variant in Luke.
Also, in Mk 9:7 and Mt 17:5 the voice from the cloud refers to Jesus as: “my beloved son.” Most mss of Luke also have this reading at Lk 9:35, although many mss [P45, P75, 01, B, L, Θ, Ξ, f1, 579, 892, 1241, 1342, pc, Lat(b, c, e, f, q, r1, vg), Sy-S, Sy-Hmg, Co, arabMS] have “my chosen one” instead. The latter phrase is considered to be original, with “my beloved son” being an assimilation to Mark or Matthew. However, while on the MwQH there is no obvious source for “my chosen one,” it can be seen as the original reading in eLk.
Although there may be doubt as to whether alternating (as opposed to bi-directional) primitivity does exist, there is no doubt that synoptic hypothesis that do not allow for Matthew and Luke to have a common source (eLk/SS) for the DT text have a problem when compared to those that do. While both the Mark-Q and Early Luke hypotheses do allow for it, the MwQH does not, and on this basis it is the least-preferable of the three.
Matthew’s Additions to Triple Tradition Text
One problem that affects synoptic theories in which aLuke knows both Mark and Matthew (such as the MwQH and an Early Luke hypothesis) is that in a number of places Matthew adds to what is otherwise triple tradition material. When defending the Mark-Q hypothesis, Christopher Tuckett writes:
Luke never appears to know any of Matthew's additions to Mark in Markan material. Sometimes, in using Mark, Matthew makes substantial additions to Mark, cf. Matt. 12.5-7; 14.28-31; 16.16-19; 27.19, 24. If Luke knew Matthew, why does he never show any knowledge of Matthew's redaction of Mark? It seems easier to presume that Luke did not know any of these Matthean additions to Mark and hence that he did not know Matthew.
Although not stated exactly this way, what Tuckett is asking is: If aLuke knew Matthew, why did he not use what we see as Sondergut Matthew (and the question can be reversed if aMatthew knew Luke)? Goodacre defends this charge in Fallacies at the Heart of Q, a defense on which Kloppenborg comments:
What the objection normally has in view are the Matthean additions to Markan pericopae in Matt 3.15; 12.5–7; 13.14–17; 14.28–31; 16.16–19; 19.9, 19b; 27.19, 24, all of which Luke lacks. Two of these offer no difficulty to the MwQH: Matt 14.28–31 (Peter’s maritime outing) and 19.9 (Matthew’s qualification of the divorce prohibition with mē epi porneia) are additions to Markan pericopae that Luke omits entirely. Goodacre does not comment on the Matthean additions in 12.5–7; 13.14–17; 19.19b; 27.19, 24, and instead focuses his defence on Matthean additions to Mark at Matt 3.15 and 16.16–19.
Kloppenborg then provides an explanation for Mt 3:15, but with regard to Mt 16:16-19 states that:
Goodacre invokes Farrer’s notion of certain elements of Matthew being ‘Luke pleasing’. Thus Luke omitted some elements of Matthew because they were not ‘Luke pleasing.’
In other words, there were some places where aLuke simply chose not to use aMatthew’s words because he did not like them, but, as Kloppenborg notes, this: “merely renames the problem; it does not offer an explanation.” In other words, it does not explain why aLuke did not like them. Goodacre does suggest that this is part of a redactional pattern in Luke, but Kloppenborg is not convinced, and argues that the idea of aMatthew using ‘Luke displeasing’ words cannot be used in the case of Mt 12:5-7 (because aLuke employs a similar argument at v. 14:4-6), and 13:14-17 (because aLuke has similar quotes from Isaiah elsewhere). Kloppenborg also points out that:
Pilate’s wife’s dream (Matt 27.19, inserting into Mark 15.10–11) and Matthew’s hand-washing scene (27.24, added to Mark 15.15) would have served Luke’s purposes admirably.
Despite the various explanations from Goodacre, it remains that case that there are a number of places where, on the MwQH, there is no obvious reason why aLuke would have omitted these Matthean additions to the text in Mark. However, on the eLk hypothesis the situation is very different, and there is a simple and natural reason why aLuke did not include any of the above additions to Mark. One of the main points is that aLuke's second source (eLk) preceded Matthew, and hence aLk did not see Matthew. Consequently, it would be impossible for any Matthean additions to the text of Mark to be in eLk, and it then follows that, if eLk was aLuke’s primary source, he would have used what he saw in eLk (and perhaps Mark) in preference to Matthew.
Unscrambling the Egg With a Vengeance
Many people regard the order of events in Matthew to be greatly preferable to that in Luke, in particular suggesting that aMatthew’s Sermon on the Mount is a tour de force that is unmatched by anything in Luke, so raising the question: If aLuke used Matthew, how do you explain him spoiling aMatthew's order? Of course, not everyone agrees that Luke’s order in some way ‘spoils’ Matthew’s, as Foster reports:
Goodacre sees the Q theory as an attack on the artistry of the Lukan narrative. By comparison he states, "adherents of the Farrer theory, in denying themselves the expedient of the Q hypothesis for accounting for every peculiarity in Luke's order, are inevitably more inclined to look to Luke's literary skill as a means of explaining the narrative development of his gospel." However, Goodacre is incorrect to imply that proponents of the 2ST suggest that there is no narrative thread or literary artistry in the third gospel. The problem for supporters of the 2ST is not the narrative continuity in Luke's gospel, but the implausibility of the evangelist unpicking double tradition material from Matthew's gospel. This becomes more problematic since such a procedure is unknown in ancient literary documents.
Goodacre answers this charge in Frequently Asked Questions on the Case Against Q (also assuming Luke used Matthew):
'Matthew's order' is precisely that, Matthew's order and it is straightforward to see why Luke would have wanted to alter it. Whereas Matthew's order is more wooden, with its five great edifices (5-7, 10, 13, 18, 24-25), Luke has a plausible, sequential narrative. In the words of Luke Johnson, his narrative is 'essentially linear, moving the reader from one event to another ... Instead of inserting great blocks of discourse into the narrative, Luke more subtly interweaves deeds and sayings' (Anchor Bible Dictionary IV, 405- 6).
Despite Goodacre’s defense of aLuke’s order, many people see those differences as a particular problem for the MwQH, and indeed any synoptic solution in which Luke depends on Matthew. For example, in defense of the Mark-Q hypothesis, Kloppenborg comments on how (on the MwQH), aLuke apparently broke up coherent blocks of text in Matthew into small pieces that were then spread around Luke:
A major challenge for the MwQH concerns its necessary supposition that Luke reordered the Matthean ‘double tradition’. Famously, Luke has drastically abbreviated Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount in Luke 6.20–49 and distributed other portions of it throughout Luke 11–16. In other instances, Luke would have disengaged ‘Q’ sayings from the Markan setting that Matthew had given them, and used them elsewhere. For example, Matthew uses the saying about having faith as a mustard seed in a Markan pericope (Mark 9.14–29 || Matt 17.14–21), but Luke, who uses the Markan pericope in Markan sequence (Luke 9.37–43), relocates the saying to Luke 17.6. The phenomenon is observed with Matthew’s twelve thrones saying (19.28), inserted into a Markan pericope that Luke also uses (Matt 19.23–30 || Mark 10.23–31 || Luke 18.24–30); Luke, however, moves the saying to 22.28–30. R. H. Fuller once characterized Luke’s procedure on the MwQH as ‘unscrambling the egg with a vengeance’, and it is this phrase that Goodacre chooses as a title for his Chapter 4.
Goodacre’s defense of what appear to be very peculiar choices made by aLuke when adding to his gospel material that originated in Matthew (so creating the DT) relies largely on what he perceives to be rational choices made by aLuke. For example, where Matthew had relocated material in Mark but then added to it, Luke chose to keep the order as in Mark, and so re-located the Matthean additions accordingly. In other places, Goodacre argues that aLuke simply prefers shorter thematic units than aMatthew. However, aLuke himself appears quite happy with long discourses, e.g. in Lk 12:1-13:9, and in particular Lk 14:7-17:1, in which Jesus talks to various different groups of people with there being no apparent change of venue. If this is aLuke unscrambling aMatthew’s egg, then after having done so, he re-scrambled it in a different order.
Together with bi-directional primitivity, “unscrambling the egg” is perhaps the most serious problem facing the MwQH. However, on the eLk/MaSS hypothesis aLuke can be seen to be making perfectly reasonable decisions. In this case his primary source for the DT material is not Matthew, but eLk/SS. Consequently, even if aMatthew uses non-Markan material from eLk/SS and re-orders it to suit his purposes, if aLuke uses the same material then he is likely to use it in the order in which he saw it in eLk/SS, not that in Matthew. Although aMatthew may have scrambled the eLk/SS egg, aLuke does not have to then unscramble it, because the egg he used (eLk/SS) was never scrambled in the first place.
The Absence of Evidence of Matthew in Luke, in Favor of Q
In the webpage The Existence of Q Peter Kirby lays out a number of arguments for the existence of Q as used in the Mark-Q hypothesis:
Independence in the Special Material
Independence in the Triple Tradition
Disuse of Matthean Additions in the Triple Tradition
Absence of Matthew's Use of Mark
Absence of Matthean Redaction in the Triple Tradition
Independence in the Double Tradition
Absence of Matthean Redaction in the Double Tradition
Primitivity of the Double Tradition in Luke
The Order of the Double Tradition in Luke
Different Markan Contexts for the Double Tradition
The Evidence of Doublets in Matthew and Luke
After presenting evidence from several scholars in support of these arguments Kirby concludes:
I do not pretend to have achieved a certainty but only a probability in favor of the Q hypothesis. Perhaps each of these arguments are surmountable, but each points in a certain direction, and the cumulative force of these arguments lead me to favor the Q hypothesis as the best explanation of the synoptic data. The presence of the minor agreements is the only one very serious argument against the Q hypothesis, and it has been successfully addressed in detail by writers from Streeter to Neirynck. An assessment of the totality of the evidence indicates a balance in favor of the Q hypothesis, and thus it is my working hypothesis.
Several of the arguments are discussed above (e.g. the issues of primitivity, order, and doublets), and almost all the remainder are arguments that the lack of Matthean text (or a particular feature of the Matthean text) in Luke is best explained by Matthew and Luke being independent. For example, Kirby quotes from "Towards the Rehabilitation of Q" by F. G. Downing, who concludes that: “the Lukan omissions of pure Mark from his rendering of material similar to that which Matthew has conflated with Mark" present difficulties for the MwQH. Regarding the Beelzebul controversy in particular, Downing writes:
On Dr. Farrer's argument, we have to suppose that Luke sat down (or stood) with Matthew's and Mark's works before him. He must have then, we have suggested, decided to follow Matthew (he has only three Markan words not in Matthew, and two in another context). But for some incomprehensible reason, he decides not to follow Matthew throughout, but to follow Matthew only where the latter has added new material to Mark or has largely altered him. He notes that one and a half sentences exactly quote Mark, and so omits them. It is not that he is going to use them somewhere else. He just arbitrarily excludes them, in one case actually in favor of writing his own version (verses 21-22): so it is not even that he finds the Markan material repetitive. It is not that he objects either, to Mark as such, for on Dr. Farrer's thesis, Luke does not know (as we have noted) that the B material is not basically Mark, but slightly emended; and he includes this, quite happily. All that he excludes is the material in Mark that Matthew obviously saw fit to include pretty well as it stood!
It seems very much more sensible to assume that Luke did not know Matthew's use of Mark, and in fact here reproduced his own version of the B and C (= Q) material, with no reference either to Matthew or Mark.
This argument, as with several others presented by Kirby, is couched in terms of the absence in Luke of evidence that aLuke knew and used Matthew. Strictly speaking, these are not arguments in favor of the Mark-Q hypothesis, but arguments against the MwQH, essentially on the basis that if aLuke knew Matthew then he would have included in his gospel text from Matthew that is not seen in Luke. However, even if we allow that aLuke’s actions in apparently omitting Matthean material seem at least unusual, there is the problem that the assumption that these arguments support the Mark-Q hypothesis is itself based on the assumption that the MwQH (in which aLuke’s only sources are Mark and Matthew) is the only alternative.
On the Early Luke (eLk) hypothesis the situation is very different from the MwQH, because both aMatthew and aLuke also have eLk as a source. For aMatthew eLk is a second source for at least some Markan parallels, as well as being the source of material added by aeLuke to his Markan source (which when used by aMatthew becomes DT material). In this hypothesis aLuke now has two sources for at least some of the TT and DT material, and if he so wishes he can therefore choose:
‘More primitive’ versions of material from eLk rather than later versions from Matthew;
To exclude additions by aMatthew on the basis that they were not in eLk, and
To include text in the order seen in eLk rather than that in Matthew.
The arguments presented by Kirby therefore can be used against the MwQH, but can only be used to support the Mark-Q hypothesis if the Mark-Ev/MaSS and other similar hypotheses are ignored.
Could "Marcion’s" Gospel of the Lord (Ev) be an Early Luke (eLk)?
See also Is Mcg (Marcion's Gospel?) Based on Mark? regarding the basis on which the hypothesis Mark -> Mcg -> Luke stands, with Mcg in all the essentials being an early form of Luke (eLk).
Most people who have commented on Mcg have considered it to be a later, edited, version of Luke, not only due to it being associated with Marcion (despite the lack of evidence supporting any direct association), but also because that does not 'upset the (synoptic) apple cart'. Consequently, few have considered Luke to be an expanded version of an earlier form (eLk), and fewer still have considered that if the author of Luke had Mcg as a source, then so too may have the author of Matthew.
It is well established that, textually, Mcg is almost entirely a shorter form of Luke (mainly omitting Lukan Sondergut, i.e. material that aLuke could have added to an earlier source if one existed!), and the idea that Mcg might pre-date Luke is not in any way new, dating back at least to J.S. Semler in the 18th century, and to the views of Albrecht Ritschl and Ferdinand Christian Baur in the 19th century. Then, although the orthodox view (that Mcg is an edited version of Luke) was strongly defended, in 1936 Paul-Louis Couchoud supported Baur’s views when he published an article entitled: ‘Is Marcion’s Gospel One of the Synoptics?’, regarding which Dieter T Roth comments:
He recognized the merits of Harnack’s work on Marcion’s Gospel, though pointing out that it was “not perfect” and was influenced by Harnack’s own convictions. Couchoud concluded that Marcion’s Gospel was very similar to Streeter’s and Taylor’s Proto-Luke and that a methodical comparison of the Gospels and Luke would reveal the former as original, and the latter as corrected and considerably amplified.
The discussion regard the status of Mcg vs. Luke has since swung back and forth several times, and on 23rd March 2015, on his blog Alan Garrow was asked the following question regarding his Matthew Conflator Hypothesis (MCH) ...
It's so refreshing to hear an argument on the subject laid out with such unobfuscating rigor... At least the best case since Klinghard's. I wonder how well your hypotheses might be harmonized; that is, what if we consider Marcion's gospel in place of GLuke?
... to which Garrow answered (referring to 'versions' of Luke):
The first question to determine, I think, is whether it is probable that Matthew used a version of Luke. If this does seem likely then there is a follow-up question: which version of Luke did Matthew use? If Matthew used Marcion's Gospel (or some other form of Proto-Luke) then this could explain some of Matthew's omissions from Luke. Having Luke composed in two stages - both before and after Matthew - might also explain some instances of Alternating Primitivity. So, incorporating Marcion into the MCH could offer some useful refinements. The downside of taking this route is that it brings in fresh elements of speculation and complexity. My preference at this stage, therefore, is to work with the broad notion that Matthew used something similar to canonical Luke - while accepting that there is always scope for greater complexity.
Although Garrow recognized that Mcg could be an early version of Luke (and so is akin to this author's Early Luke), he did not (at this point) explore this possibility. Neither, it seems, did either Harnack or Roth, and in this Roth was influenced by Harnack, as he comments that: “The text of Marcion’s Gospel as reconstructed by Harnack, with its continuous text and copious documentation, quickly became the standard reference for subsequent scholarship,” and notes that Harnack observed that:
… Marcion’s Gospel text reveals a strong influence of Matthew and Mark, both in readings that are elsewhere attested in the “Western” textual tradition and in otherwise unattested readings. Following this observation Harnack noted that he considered it highly unlikely that Marcion himself was responsible for these harmonizations and that therefore Marcion possessed a text that had already been harmonized to Matthew and Mark. Yet, he did not pursue the import of this fact other than simply to observe in a footnote that it is of great significance for the history of the canon.
Not only did Harnack not “pursue the import of this fact,” but it appears that neither did Roth, as neither he nor Harnack seem to have realized that the observation that: “Marcion’s Gospel text reveals a strong influence of Matthew and Mark” is in reality not a fact. Rather, it is an interpretation of the fact that the text of Mcg has great similarities to that of Matthew and Mark, but which on its own does not suggest the direction of any influence. As a result, both Harnack and Roth miss the reasonable inference that this supposed 'fact' also supports the idea that Mcg was not an edited version of Luke, but instead not only preceded Luke but may also have preceded Matthew, and so instead have influenced aMatthew. In 2025 this author explored this view in more detail in Marcion's Gospel Today.
As mentioned above, in The Marcionite Gospel and the Synoptic Problem: A New Suggestion (2008), Mattias Klinghardt suggests that the inclusion of Mcg in a synoptic solution avoids the problems of both the 2SH and MwQH, with the Abstract to Klinghardt’s article reading:
The most recent debate of the Synoptic Problem resulted in a dead-lock: The best-established solutions, the Two-Source-Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goodacre-Theory, are burdened with a number of apparent weaknesses. On the other hand, the arguments raised against these theories are cogent. An alternative possibility, that avoids the problems created by either of them, is the inclusion of the gospel used by Marcion. This gospel is not a redaction of Luke, but rather precedes Matthew and Luke and, therefore, belongs into the maze of the synoptic interrelations. The resulting model avoids the weaknesses of the previous theories and provides compelling and obvious solutions to the notoriously difficult problems.
Contrary to the majority opinion, Klinghardt places Mcg earlier than either Matthew or Luke, and therefore potentially capable of being used as a second source (with Mark being the first) by both aMatthew and aLuke. In this respect it functions exactly as eLk in this author's Mark with Early Luke Hypothesis, so raising the question: Could Mcg actually be Early Luke? An obvious hurdle is that, as just indicated, the majority opinion is that Mcg is an edited version of, and so later than, Luke. However, when the text (as far as we can reconstruct it) of Mcg is compared with that of Luke in isolation, i.e. without being influenced by the almost universal views of Tertullian, Epiphanius, et al. of aMcg as a heretic, it is clear that textually Luke is more likely to be an edited and expanded version of Mcg than Mcg being a ‘cut down’ version of Luke. However, even taking that as given, it is still necessary to determine whether the text of Mcg could have been a second source for both Matthew and Luke (with Mark being the first) by testing whether it meets the constraints on the text of Early Luke identified above. Only if it does could we say that Mcg might be Early Luke.
As shown in the large table in Appendix 2 there are a number of obvious similarities between Mcg and eLk: Mcg lacks Luke 1-2 and also the genealogy; Nazareth and Capernaum are reversed; and it has no mention of Lk 4:14b-15 and 38-39. In addition, there is no reference to the text of the Great Omission having been in Mcg, and Mcg also has shorter versions of both the Lord’s Prayer and the Last Supper. Also, from the writings of both Tertullian and Epiphanius Mcg appears to omit several verses of the resurrection account, and it does not contain any material that is absent from the synoptic gospels, as Klinghardt points out:
The gravest objection against Marcion’s assumed redaction of Luke is the fact that Mcn [Marcion] obviously did not contain any additional, non-Lukan texts: According to the traditional view, Marcion’s assumed editorial alterations would only have consisted of abridgments but not of enlargements, not to speak of any substantial additions. With respect to what we know about editing older texts within the New Testament and its literary environment this procedure would be unique. There is not a single example of a contemporary re-edition of an older text that did not support its editorial concept by including additional material. The supporters of the traditional view have duly and with great surprise noted the uniqueness of Marcion’s assumed redaction but did not take this hint seriously enough to rethink their presuppositions.
In other words, if Mcg was a 'cut down' version of Luke then, uniquely, the author of Mcg added nothing new. In her review of The Text of Marcion’s Gospel by Roth, Judith Lieu comments on the impact that Mcg being earlier than Luke would make (emphasis added):
Such a possibility might seriously disrupt one of the fundamental principles — or, rather, hypotheses — on which much New Testament study is built. Often early in their introduction to the critical field, generations of students have been taught to observe and to analyze the interrelationships between the so-called Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke: most adopt the majority position that both Matthew and Luke drew on Mark, with additional shared material between Matthew and Luke being explained either by further literary dependence (usually of Luke on Matthew) or, more commonly, by their recourse to a lost common source (‘Q’); a minority might opt for the older principle of Matthean priority. The exercise, however, depends on the assumption that the texts to be studied, compared, and explained are in all that is essential — allowing for known textual variants — those known through the subsequent canonical manuscript tradition. Inserting Marcion’s Gospel early into the equation would be far more significant than the discovery or the removal of Q; it would demand rethinking the theological as well as the literary processes in the formation of a threefold (or fourfold) Gospel tradition and the timescale against which they took place.
Given the potential impact of adding Mcg as described by Lieu, it is perhaps not surprising that, for many, the heavily biased statements of Tertullian, Epiphanius, et al. regarding Marcion the person (see these previous Conclusions by this author) outweigh what their discussions of the actual content of Mcg tell us about Mcg itself, which is that the text of Mcg is almost a strict subset of that in Luke. Although Mcg does not contain everything in Luke, Luke contains virtually everything in Mcg, with the only exceptions being a few short phrases reported by Tertullian to be in Mcg that today we see in Matthew instead of Luke (which can be explained as aLuke simply choosing not to include some text from Mcg). If Luke followed Mcg then it would be natural to expect that at least some material that we know as Sondergut Luke would not be in Mcg (because aLuke added it!), and that is indeed the case.
However, according to both Tertullian and Epiphanius there is also some material in Luke and Mark (and in some cases also Matthew) that was not in Mcg. On the eLk hypothesis any material in both Mark and Luke (whether also in Matthew or not) would by default also be expected to be in eLk, and by the same token (assuming that Mcg preceded Luke) that material would also be expected to exist in Mcg, and so it is necessary to explain why some of this material was not in Mcg. One possible explanation is that Mcg was derived from an earlier version of Mark that also did not contain that material, but because this requires another hypothetical text an explanation that does not require an earlier version of Mark is preferable.
To find such an explanation, each case in which material in both Mark and Luke was known to have not existed in Mcg must be examined to see whether (assuming that Mcg preceded Luke) there is a valid reason why it was not in Mcg. That examination is undertaken by this author in Is Marcion's Gospel Based on Mark?, where it is shown that even if Mcg pre-dated Luke, there are valid reasons why it does not include some passages present in both Mark and Luke, as summarized here:
A significant portion of the content (often complete verses) of some of the otherwise triple tradition passages that have no parallel in Mcg is actually material we see as unique to Luke, and hence would not be expected to exist either in eLk, or in Mcg if it preceded Luke.
Similar to the above, some of the content (again, sometimes complete verses) we see as being unique to Mark, and therefore also should not be required to be in either eLk or Mcg.
Some of the text in Luke contains small (in some cases trivial) differences in comparison with the parallel text in Mark and Matthew. If in these places eLk followed Mark then aLuke changed what he saw in eLk, but if instead the author of eLk changed what he saw in Mark, and aLuke then followed eLk, we might expect to see the same changes in Matthew. Neither explanation is completely satisfactory, suggesting perhaps that in these places there may have been no text in eLk, as also in Mcg.
In other triple tradition passages the text in Mark is very similar to, and sometimes almost identical to, the parallel text in Matthew, while the parallel text in Luke is significantly different, with no obvious explanation. In some the ‘framework’ of the passage in Mark/Matthew is used in Luke, but changes to the text significantly alter the message conveyed by the passage.
Given that on the Early Luke hypothesis Mark is a source for eLk, in these cases we would reasonably expect that where eLk contains text parallel to that in Mark, it would be similar to the text in Mark. Similarly, we would expect the text in Luke to be similar to the parallel in eLk, although perhaps with some changes originating in Matthew where Matthew also has parallel text (i.e. in triple tradition passages). However, what we actually see here is more complex, with either there being significant differences between Mark, Matthew, and Luke, or in some places Mark and Matthew being very similar, with Luke being different. Exactly the same applies if Mcg is Early Luke.
Could "Marcion’s" Gospel of the Lord (Mcg) be Q?
Mcg exists in the same sense that the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) exist, not just because we have early references to them all but because in one form or another the text contained within them has been preserved – or rather, has been preserved to a greater or lesser extent:
For the synoptic gospels we have enough copies (either full or partial) for there to be a high probability that we know the original text of all of them (assuming that to have been in Greek), but we cannot know for certain whether or not we have the original text in any specific instance.
For Mcg we have to rely on the small number of people (primarily Tertullian and Epiphanius) who commented on it and in some places we have to infer what it read, primarily by comparing it with Luke as it is either very close to being a shortened form of Luke, or Luke being an expanded form of Mcg.
In the case of Q we know that by definition it must have contained AT LEAST all the Double Tradition (DT), but there is no actual barrier to it containing other text that we don’t see anywhere else (so was not in any other biblical document), or material we do see in other gospels, letters, or similar materials.
In the Biblical Criticism & History Forum at earlywritings.com there is a long discussion of Mcg, with 47 posts from Sep-Oct 2023 under the heading Doubters of Marcion's Evangelion: whence and whither omissions?, largely focused on the issue of whether the Jesus as portrayed in Mcg is the same as the Jesus of the gospels or not, but also whether Mcg was “Marcion’s” gospel or not. Although the discussion is wide-ranging, many contributors do not appear to consider the following point from a post on Sep 28:
In terms of quantitative analysis and methods, content attested as missing from Marcion's Gospel may be just as important, if not more important, than content attested as present, because omissions more than anything else reflect clear and unambiguous differences.
While this certainly applies to, for example, the fact that Mcg contains no equivalent to Lk 1-2, and begins with v. 3:1a followed immediately by v. 4:31a (so having Capernaum before Nazareth), it does not appear to address the fact that Mcg is just as likely as any other biblical text to contain textual variants as well as other content differences.
Note: Referring to text "missing from Marcion's Gospel" is begging the question as to WHY it "should have" been present, while at the same time suggesting that the text it is being compared against is more important in some way, while the opposite might actually be the case.
A study of the textual variants in the copies of the gospels that we do have shows that while many are fairly trivial (spelling differences or little more) there are enough with significant differences for them to be split into two main text ‘camps,’ the ‘Neutral’ text and the Western Text (see also here), with the latter being associated with Marcion, Tatian, Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Cyprian (who mainly quoted using that text), and which predominated in the 2nd century as stated in this obviously biased (and much mis-quoted) passage from Westcott and Hort:
The chief and most constant characteristic of the Western readings is a love of paraphrase. Words, clauses, and even whole sentences were changed, omitted and inserted with astonishing freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness. They often exhibit a certain rapid vigour and fluency which can hardly be called a rebellion against the calm and reticent strength of the apostolic speech, for it is deeply influenced by it, but which, not less than a tamer spirit of textual correction, is apt to ignore pregnancy and balance of sense, and especially those meanings which are conveyed by exceptional choice or collocation of words.
The view of Westcott and Hort that “Words, clauses, and even whole sentences were changed, omitted and inserted with astonishing freedom” has come under criticism, but given the above references to the Western text it should not be surprising if Tertullian (and possibly Epiphanius nearly two centuries later) used a Western form of Luke when comparing it with Mcg, especially as it is quite possible that Epiphanius in particular was using a Latin bible. From BiblicalTraining.org the “Western Text” is (also from a biased perspective):
The name given by Westcott* and Hort* to a type of text of the Greek NT which had special affinities with the West. Its chief representatives are Codex Bezae (D) for the gospels and Acts, and Codex Claromontanus (Dp) for the Epistles (in both of which the text is written in Greek and Latin), the Old Latin version, and the Curetonian Syriac… The characteristics which Westcott and Hort found in it included an apparent freedom to change things in order to bring out the meaning better. This might involve the omission or insertion of words, clauses, or even whole sentences. They also found a tendency to assimilate words and phrases found close to each other and, more seriously, through a process of harmonization to obliterate differences in similar or parallel passages.
(The above is written from the perspective that the Western Text represents changes to the so-called 'Neutral' Text, with the Old Latin versions being generally Western.)
For the reasons just given we should not expect the text of Mcg as recorded by both Tertullian and Epiphanius to exactly match the corresponding text in any known manuscript of Luke (even where neither note a difference between Mcg and Luke), nor to match each other, commenting as they did nearly two centuries apart.
For example, as Tertullian’s whole purpose was to compare the text of what he referred to as Marcion’s gospel (that we now refer to as Mcg as it does not support what we know of Marcion's theology and Christology) with what he saw in his copy of Luke we have to allow that we do not know the exact text in either, and that instead what is important is to know what portions of text Tertullian is referring to when he comments on Jesus as portrayed in Mcg vs. the equivalent text in Luke. From what he writes it is clear that while he does see differences, the portrayal of Jesus in Mcg is the same as he sees in Luke, i.e. the Jesus in Mcg is in all respects (actions, words and deeds) no different to that in Luke, as he tendentiously states at the very end of Adv. Marcion IV:
Et Marcion quaedam contraria sibi illa, credo industria, eradere de evangelio suo noluit, ut ex his quae eradere potuit nec erasit, illa quae erasit aut negetur erasisse aut merito erasisse dicatur
And Marcion, I believe, purposely refused to erase from his Gospel certain things that were contrary to himself, so that from those things which he could have erased and which he did not, those which he did erase may either be denied as having erased or may be rightly said to have been erased.
In contrast, with Epiphanius we get specific details of the differences he sees between his copies of Luke and Mcg, but here we have to contend with some text that we do not see in any Greek ms of Luke, and that Epiphanius could have been using a Latin copy of Luke and/or Mcg. Nevertheless, between the two (Tertullian and Epiphanius) we have every reason to believe that what they both refer to as “Marcion’s Gospel” was an actual text that began with the equivalent of Lk 3:1a then immediately 4:31a, so omitting Luke 1-2 and virtually all of Luke 3, and having Capernaum before Nazareth (as previously noted).
The questions that then remain are what exactly did Mcg contain, how accurately do Tertullian and Epiphanius record what they saw in Mcg, and what do we have from which to deduce that content given that neither quote the whole of Mcg. From a post by vocesanticae on earlywritings.com:
… No peer-reviewed academic paper has or will ever argue that Tertullian's Against Marcion is almost entirely derivative of a prior production of Irenaeus and fabricates a Marcionite text from him, because the whole … thing reads as Tertullian's (trained Latin lawyer that he was) incisive legal speech, and does not resemble in the least the style nor much of the substance of Irenaeus' writing. Certainly, Tertullian was influenced by many aspects of the proto-orthodox project that Irenaeus championed and helped to crystallize, but no scholar of Tertullian's works sees him as wholly or even largely derivative as a thinker or writer, and certainly not plagiarizing a Greek forebear.
The post then goes on to point out that knowing what was NOT in Mcg is as important as knowing what was in it:
The omission of Luke 1.1-2.52 from Marcion's Evangelion is attested by five witnesses (Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Tertullian, Origen (secondarily in Latin), and Jerome. This omission amounts to 2035 word tokens, over 10% of the total content of canonical Luke, or roughly half of the word token totals for Marcion's Gospel as reconstructed by Harnack and Roth!
Another 203 words (the Temptation, Luke 4.1-13) is explicitly attested by both Tertullian and Epiphanius as missing from Marcion's Gospel. While this is only about 1% of the total content of the canonical text, it is still arguably a very significant episode for many reasons.
Yet another 1842 words are explicitly attested by Epiphanius as missing, all of which are skipped over without comment by Tertullian. Scholars unanimously concur that these are not reasonably understood as mere coincidences, or as Epiphanius depending slavishly on Tertullian. Time and again, Tertullian goes passage by passage, and even verse by verse, then suddenly skips over what would otherwise be large, concentrated blocks of words. For example, he comments clearly on the parable of the lost sheep, then the parable of the lost coin, but then makes no mention of the huge and climactic parable of the prodigal son, only to pick up at the very beginning of GMcn/Luke 16. These large blocks that Tertullian skips, Epiphanius expressly omits. To trained ears, it sounds like they are listening to the same musical score, even if there are quite a few minor variations in the performances.
Of course, where the above post refers to text being “missing,” or to “omissions,” this suggests that perhaps it SHOULD have been present, whereas it is quite possible that this indicates places where text was added in subsequent documents. Also, while Epiphanius’ aim was to record all the differences between Luke and Mcg, Tertullian specifically only comments on places in Mcg that records the words, deeds, actions, etc. of Jesus, and hence the lack of comment on other text of Mcg in Adv Marcion IV is a “feature,” not a “bug,” i.e. it indicates nothing regarding this text in Mcg, and specifically cannot be used to indicate text not being present in Mcg.
Above 'vocesanticae' comments: "For example, he [Tertullian] comments clearly on the parable of the lost sheep, then the parable of the lost coin, but then makes no mention of the huge and climactic parable of the prodigal son ..." Yes, this is true - for the simple reason that the parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-32), although being close to two-thirds of Luke 11, nevertheless does not itself feature a teaching directly from Jesus but is instead a third-party story related by him, in contrast to the two very short and 'pithy' parables at Lk 15:3-7 and 15:8-10. Even though it is usually referred to as a parable it differs from the preceding parables in this chapter both in length and the lack of a 'wrap-up' verse directed at Jesus' audience (e.g. containing "I say onto you... "). Also, after having commented on the other parables in Lk 15, here Epiphanius explicitly states that: "he falsified the entire parable of the two sons, the one who took his share of the property and spent it on dissipation, and the other."
A further point is that, as stated above, in Mcg Nazareth and Capernaum are ‘swapped’ in comparison with Matthew and Luke, and it is worth noting here that the International Q Project (IQP) was unable (or unwilling?) to come up with any text featuring Nazareth other than a different version of the name: “Nazara.” In Capernaum or Nazareth First this author addresses the issue of the order of Nazareth and Capernaum, beginning:
Did Jesus preach in Capernaum before Nazareth, or in Nazareth before Capernaum? In all three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) Jesus is baptized by John, is tempted, and then enters Galilee (Mk 1:14, Mt 4:12, Lk 4:14). In Mark Jesus then goes to the sea of Galilee (Mk 1:16) and afterward enters Capernaum (Mk 1:21), while in Matthew he enters Capernaum first (Mt 4:13), afterward goes to the sea of Galilee (Mt 4:18), and returns to Capernaum sometime later (Mt 8:5). Later still (Mk 6:1 and Mt 13:54) Jesus enters the synagogue in Nazareth, but in Luke this sequence is quite different, with Jesus going to Nazareth first, then Capernaum, and lastly the Sea of Galilee.
... and, after quoting from a presentation by E. Bruce Brooks to the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in which he concludes: "that Lk 4:16-30 is out of place", ending:
With Lk 4:14b-15 in its current position, by the time we get to Lk 4:43 it appears that Jesus has forgotten that he had already taught in the synagogues of “the region round about” Galilee, and so has to preach throughout Galilee all over again! This repetition makes no sense, and appears to have been added purely to allow something (unspecified) to have happened in Capernaum that could later be referred to in Nazareth. In addition, because Jesus had to have met Simon before healing his mother-in-law there would have had to be an early parallel to Mk 1:16-20 before entering Capernaum...
With the Capernaum and Nazareth episodes in Luke in their original positions ... not only would Lk 4:14b-15 be redundant (in particular with Lk 4:14b at this point located only three verses after what we now see as Lk 4:37), but the version of Lk 4:31a seen in Bezae then makes perfect sense, as not only does it introduce Capernaum, but Mt 4:12b-13b closely parallels Lk 4:14a,31a, and is probably dependent on these verses. It should also be noted that with this early order (without Lk 4:14b-15), the variant ‘Galilee’ in Lk 4:44 is the obvious original, as Lk 4:14a and Lk 4:44 then neatly ‘bracket’ the Capernaum and Nazareth teachings.
There is ample proof, both from inconsistencies in the Lukan narrative that we see today and the other synoptic gospels, that at some point in the development of Luke Jesus taught in Capernaum before he did so in Nazareth. This should come as no surprise, as this is the order we see in both Mark and Matthew. The surprise is that this order was ever changed to what we see today in Luke.
Clearly the beginning of Mcg differed from both Luke and Matthew, being much closer to the beginning of Mark, and in particular having no parallel to any of Lk 1-2, 3:7-9 and 16b-17 (Note: What is usually referred to as v. 16b is in reality just the end of v. 16, so much more like v. 16d or e, but will here be referred to as 16b unless the distinction is relevant), nor 4:1-13 (The Temptation), all of which are in Matthew and Luke but not Mark, so not having these sections of the DT text. However, there is nothing in the Mark-Q hypothesis that requires Q to be a single document, so leaving the door open for there to have been one or more other source(s) for these and/or other DT portions of Q for which there is no parallel in Mcg.
Unfortunately, it is generally not so clear as to the exact text that was present in Mcg (as seen by Tertullian and Epiphanius) and what was not. While Epiphanius states that he went through Mcg and noted all the differences he saw, he often does not provide the full quote of what he saw as a difference between Mcg and his copy of Luke, but rather a paraphrase of the difference. There is also the issue that he might have been using a Latin bible for comparison. Even so, we can at least be certain of where he saw differences in Mcg and his copy of Luke, even though he generally does not record the full text of the difference.
In the case of Tertullian we know (because he tells us) that he was not looking for ALL the differences between Mcg and Luke. From what we see in Adv Marcion I – III it is clear Tertullian is focusing on the issue of Marcion believing that Jesus was the son of a New Testament God, and in Adv Marcion IV he compares just those portions of Mcg (that he believes to be Marcion’s Gospel) that directly feature Jesus’ deeds, words, etc., and has no interest in anything else in Mcg v. Consequently, Tertullian does not comment on deeds, actions, etc. by anyone else, except as they may apply to interactions with Jesus. Also, close to the end of Adv Marcion, Book IV, he writes:
Et Marcion quaedam contraria sibi illa, credo industria, eradere de evangelio suo noluit, ut ex his quae eradere potuit nec erasit, illa quae erasit aut negetur erasisse aut merito erasisse dicatur
(And I believe that Marcion on purpose did not want to delete some material from his Gospel which contradicted him. He left it in the text although he could have deleted it, either so that one could not say that he deleted anything, or that one could say that he deleted material for good reason).
Without any evidence, Tertullian suggests that Marcion deliberately did NOT remove text that went against his (Marcion’s) theology/Christology. Also, apparently Marcion also chose to NOT include material that supported his theology/Christology, so that with his final words Tertullian could write: “Marcion, I pity you; your labour has been in vain, for the Jesus Christ who appears in your Gospel is mine.”
In other words Mcg, supposedly Marcion’s gospel, did not (does not) contain anything to support his supposed theology/Christology. However, there is a perhaps significant difference noted by both Tertullian and Epiphanius that begs the question Is Mcg (Marcion's Gospel?) Based on Mark?, in which this author suggests:
Whether or not Marcion is the diminutive form of Mark, and whether or not Marcion and the evangelist we know as Mark were the same person (as has also been suggested), what is undeniable are the similarities between Marcion’s gospel of the Lord … and the Gospel according to Mark. While the majority opinion is that Mcg is a ‘cut down’ edited version of the gospel of Luke, what is usually not stated is that, from everything we know of the text, it is at least equally valid to consider Mcg to be an expanded version of Mark.
and concludes:
The above analysis leads to some obvious questions: Why would the author of Mcg use as his 'base text' a gospel (Luke) from which he felt the need to remove so much text, when there already existed a shorter gospel (Mark) in which the great majority of the text that he wanted to remove simply did not exist? Then, assuming that aMcg did in fact edit Luke to create Mcg, how was he able to arrange that 95% of the text that he did remove was actually text that had no parallel in Mark? And finally, having gone to all that trouble, why also did aMcg, according to the evidence of both Tertullian and Epiphanius, still leave in Mcg so much of the text of Luke that went against his position that both were able to refute him just from what he left? Why did he (apparently) remove the wrong text from Luke?
Even allowing for the possibility that aEv might have wanted to simply exclude from Luke everything prior to the start of Jesus’ preaching, we are still left with the fact that nearly three-quarters of the other 110 verses that Epiphanius states that Marcion had removed from Luke have no parallel in Mark. To have achieved this by selectively cutting text out of Luke, as Marcion is accused of doing, would have required him to have had a very detailed synopsis comparing Mark with Luke, as the chances of him being able to achieve the result described by Tertullian and Epiphanius without careful selection of the Lukan verses not in Mcg based on their presence in or absence from Mark, are very slim indeed.
As stated above: “Mcg contains no equivalent to Lk 1-2, and begins with v. 3:1a followed immediately by v. 4:31a, so having Capernaum before Nazareth.” While this may not appear to be significant, it does suggest that Mcg could not be the Q in the Mark-Q hypothesis as Q 3:7-9 (John's Announcement of Judgment), Q 3:16b-17 (John and the One to Come) and Q 4:1-13 (The Temptations) were not in Mcg.
However, while Q is generally hypothesized to be a single document, there is nothing that requires it to be so – all that is required is that whatever else it may contain, Q must contain the whole of the DT. So, Mcg (that includes 95% of the DT) could form the great majority of Q – providing there are other viable sources for the remaining 10% of Q, and in particular the nearly 9% that exist in John’s preaching and the Temptations.
The question posed at the beginning of this section is: “Could Mcg be Q?” While the foregoing does not directly address this question, it does lay the groundwork for the following.
The IQP's 'Sayings Gospel Q' and Mcg are (at least) close relatives. How close?
Note: See Appendix 2 (below) for a pericope-by-pericope comparison of the contents of Luke, Q and Mcg.
On the eLk hypothesis an Early Luke (possibly Mcg) provides a second source for both Matthew and Luke (with Mark being the first). So, in places where Matthew and/or Luke differ significantly from the text of a Markan parallel (e.g. in Triple Tradition text) it is possible that here aMatthew and/or aLuke used Early Luke rather than Mark. It is also possible that in this scenario the difference between Mark on the one hand and Matthew / Luke on the other is due to the latter using Mcg (essentially a shorter form of Luke) as a source rather than Mark, in what could be seen as a Mark-Q overlap, but is actually a Mark-Mcg overlap.
Essentially, the lack in Mcg of some of what we see as triple tradition passages does not prevent Mcg from being a candidate for Early Luke. However, this does not mean that Mcg must be Early Luke, but only that Mcg meets the criteria for Early Luke, and so could be Early Luke. As Klinghardt concludes in his own investigation (The Marcionite Gospel and the Synoptic Problem: A New Suggestion):
Although the inclusion of Mcn [Ev] is a similar augmentation of "sources", the evolving picture is different: whereas the 2DH tried to explain the complexity of the data by the addition of two basic sources (Mark + Q), the inclusion of Mcn demonstrates that both Matthew and Luke received their triple tradition material via two different routes: Matthew read Mark directly and in its revised edition in Mcn, and Luke used Mcn both directly and in Matthew's revised and enlarged edition...
... it is clear that this paper only intends to open the window for further discussion: I am fully aware that I am far from seeing all the implications and consequences of this suggestion, neither within the realm of the traditional issues of the synoptic problem nor the historical consequences that lie beyond it. But since this model provides a solution of the contentious issues of the present debate, it may help to break the deadlock in which the discussion of the synoptic problem seems to be caught for too long now.
The International Q Project (IQP)'s 2001 Preface to 'The English Translation of Q' begins:
The Sayings Gospel Q is an archaic collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus, even older than the Gospels in the New Testament. In fact, it is the oldest Gospel of Christianity. Yet it is not in the New Testament itself. Rather, it was known to, and used by, the Evangelists of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and then lost from sight.
The IQP suggests that Q may be older than any other known gospel. So, was Q actually lost from sight, is it purely hypothetical, or was it perhaps 'hidden in plain sight,' being very close to a reconstruction of Mcg? Although Q is entirely hypothetical, it contains in all the essentials the DT, for convenience both ordered and numbered according to the parallels in Luke. Although in this form the DT is not a complete gospel, the IQP took that text and used it as the basis of a gospel in its' own right, "The Sayings Gospel Q," beginning with Q 3:2b, 7-9, 16b-17, 21-22 (i.e. the equivalent of those verses in Luke and their parallels in Mark and Matthew), and ending at Q 22:30.
In comparison Mcg begins with the equivalent of Lk 3:1 followed directly by Lk 4:31 (so not having either Jesus' baptism or temptation). It also 'swaps' Capernaum and Nazareth, and ends later than the IQP's Q, at the equivalent of Lk 24:47. In comparison with Luke Q is truncated at both ends and Mcg is truncated at the beginning, with approximately 95% of Mcg attested as directly paralleling Q, rising to close to 95% when the Triple Tradition baptism and temptation narratives in the IQP's Q (which do not exist in Mcg but could have other sources) are excluded.
Because Q is defined as containing all the DT the only Lukan Sondergut or Triple Tradition text in the IQP's Q is what they chose to add to make it read like a complete gospel (e.g. like Luke). To do so the IQP chose to include the baptism even though it is mostly Triple Tradition text (as it is also in Mark), as also with the Temptation (although here the Markan portion is much smaller). In other words the IQP's Q includes text from Mark that (according to the 'definition' of Q as the source of the double tradition) need not be present.
In contrast, what we know of Mcg is that which both Tertullian and Epiphanius wrote (effectively 'summarizing' the text of Mcg) to tell us what was (or was not) present in Mcg in comparison with Luke, but alluding to rather than directly quoting much of the text. More specifically, Tertullian's stated aim was to compare the portrayal of Jesus (his words, deeds, etc.) in Mcg with that in Luke, ending with him finding no difference between the Jesus in Mcg and the Jesus in Luke. In contrast, Epiphanius simply went though Mcg noting textual differences compared to what he saw in Luke. Even though (and because) their aims were different we do have very good knowledge of the text of Mcg, and also can use their two very different (but complementary) procedures to 'validate' each others' comments.
As Roth points out, both Knox and Tyson make essentially the same observation, although their numbers differ somewhat due to different assumptions regarding which verses of Luke were not in Mcg:
Knox observed, “Of the verses which [sic] there is positive evidence to show did not belong to Marcion, 79.7 per cent are peculiar to Luke. Of all the verses of Luke which are peculiar to Luke, 39 per cent are known to be missing in Marcion, whereas of verses of Luke paralleled in Matthew or Mark or both, only 10 per cent are known to be missing from Marcion.”
Tyson also employed this argument in his recent attempt to revitalize Knox’s views, once again relying on Harnack’s reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel and creating tables like those of Knox. Although there are slight differences in the numbers due to Tyson’s occasionally different evaluation about certain Lukan pericopes, the results are quite similar. Tyson states, “About 12 percent of Lukan material with synoptic parallels is probably absent from Marcion’s Gospel. But 41-43 percent of Lukan Sondergut material is omitted.”
We therefore have a very strange situation. With the exception of the text of the Great Omission (which both Luke and Mcg lack), Mcg basically contains parallels to the majority of the text of Mark, together with only some of the non-Markan text that we also see in Luke. The material in Luke that is not in Mcg is mainly the Sondergut (or Special) Luke material, with a little DT, and therefore is not in Mark either.
According to Epiphanius, overall Marcion deliberately removed 266.5 verses from Luke, 88% of which had no parallel in Mark, and 70% of which contained text unique to Luke. To put this another way, the great majority of the text that Epiphanius states Marcion had cut out of (and so followed) Luke is text that had no parallel in Mark, and is also primarily Lukan Sondergut, i.e. text that (assuming Markan priority) had been added by aLuke before Marcion later removed it! This tells us that Epiphanius knew the contents of Luke 1-3, that Mcg contained nothing from Luke 1-2, and that it began with v. 3:1a “and so on,” whatever we can take from that. However, Epiphanius then just summaries the contents of the following section of Mcg, stating just that:
He starts from there then and yet, again, does not go on in order. He falsifies some things, as I said, he adds others helter-skelter, not going straight on but disingenuously wandering all over the material.
After this very general statement suggesting great differences between Mcg and Lk 3-4, Epiphanius returns to specifics, using his scholia to comment on individual verses in Mcg, the first of which is v. 5:14. As a result, all we know from Epiphanius regarding the parts of the gospel corresponding to Lk 3:1b–5:13 is that in comparison with what he saw in Luke some text was not present in Mcg, other text was added, and that the order of the text was different. The implication of this appears to be that here the text in Mcg was so different from what Epiphanius saw in Lk 3:1b–5:13 that he either did not want to, or could not, identify specific differences.
Repeating from just above:
"The great majority of the text that Epiphanius states Marcion cut out of Luke is text that had no parallel in Mark, and is also primarily Lukan Sondergut, i.e. text that (assuming Markan priority) had been added by aLuke before Marcion later removed it! "
From Tertullian we know that Mcg began with the equivalent of Lk 3:1a followed by 4:31a: ("In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius (for such is Marcion’s proposition) he "came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum," so apparently omitting Nazareth - except that in Mcg Nazareth follows Capernaum, so not as in Luke. As this author states in Luke 4 - Capernaum First ...
In both Matthew and Mark the first details of Jesus' ministry describe events in Capernaum, and it is only later that we read of Jesus entering the synagogue in Nazareth, at Mt 13:54-57 and Mk 6:1-6 respectively. In Luke this same episode is described in Lk 4:16-30, immediately before Jesus' visit to Capernaum in Lk 4:31-41. However, from Lk 4:23 the words: "What we have heard that you did in Capernaum, do here in your hometown too" make it clear that Jesus' works in Capernaum are by then already known in Nazareth. Because of this difference it seems that at some point the events in Capernaum and Nazareth occurred in a different order in Luke (or in a predecessor such as Mcg). At the beginning of Chapter 7 of Adv Marcion IV Tertullian states that Mcg begins with Jesus coming to Capernaum, and later in the same chapter he describes the rest of the events in Mcg 4:31-36, followed in his Chapter 8 by Ev 4:22-30 of the Nazareth episode, thus swapping Capernaum and Nazareth as suggested in Capernaum or Nazareth First?. As Tertullian does not express any form of surprise at finding Capernaum mentioned before Nazareth in Mcg it is likely that this is the order he also saw in his copy of Luke... Both Tertullian and Epiphanius comment that the textual order in Mcg and Luke did not always agree, so we can be sure that at least some rearrangement of the text took place at some point.
From there Mcg closely follows the order of Luke (but not all its text) until a final parallel to Lk 24:47. This writer again:
There is ample proof, in both historical information and inconsistencies in the narrative that we see today that, either in Luke or a predecessor, at some point Jesus taught in Capernaum before Nazareth. This should come as no surprise, as it is the order we see in both Mark and Matthew. The surprise is that this order was ever changed to what we currently see in Luke. It appears as though the order in Mcg here is more original than that in Luke, and this is unlikely to have been a creation of Marcion himself.
Tertullian does not refer to the Mcg equivalent of every Lukan verse, nor does he refer to every verse present in the IQP's Q, because his only interest is in regard to how Jesus is portrayed in Mcg. However, 65% of the Q verses are attested in Mcg, 13% are attested to have not been in Mcg, so leaving 22% unknown. From this we know that between 65 - 87% of the verses in the IQP's Q have parallels in Mcg. Given Tertullian's statement that Mcg did not have anything (except Lk 3:1a) prior to Lk 4:31a AND that several of the early verses in the IQP's Q were not part of the DT, we know that an additional 8 Q verses in the early part of Mcg do not count in this calculation, and that Mcg therefore had parallels to close to 95% of the remaining verses in Q, i.e. that Q and Mcg are at worst very close relatives, and at best are the same thing.
Given that there is no debate regarding Q preceding both Matthew and Luke, the obvious implication is that the text that "Marcion cut out of Luke" is simply text that the author of Mcg did not know because Luke had not yet been written, i.e. that Mcg preceded Luke.
"Marcion’s" Gospel of the Lord (Mcg) is the basis of 95% of Q
From above: Many people believe that Mcg could not precede Luke, and that instead Mcg is a smaller, edited, version of Luke (i.e. that Mcg followed Luke). These arguments are discussed in Is Mcg (Marcion's Gospel?) Based on Mark? and are the basis on which this hypothesis stands: Mark -> Mcg -> Luke, with Mcg in all the essentials being an early form of Luke (eLk).
In Luke 3:1 - 4:15, 31a this author noted that Tertullian and Epiphanius both recorded that Mcg did not include ALL the text in Luke, differing as to how much (and what) they so noted, but they agreed that: "Mcg begins with v. 3:1a followed immediately by v. 4:31a, so having Capernaum before Nazareth." While this suggests that Mcg does not have (for example) Nazareth or The Temptation, it simply means that the order is different in Mcg when compared with Luke, with some of the intervening verses from Matthew and Luke appearing later. However, it is true that Mcg does not have (Note: I do not use terms such as "lacks" or "omits" because that suggests a comparison against something else prior to Mcg) some text that we see in both Matthew and Luke but not Mark, i.e. Double Tradition (DT) text. As P. C. Sense remarks in 'A Critical and Historical Enquiry Into the Origin of the Third Gospel':
Tertullian barely or only generally accuses Marcion of removing the preliminary chapters of the Gospel, but rather states that he made a beginning from a certain place in the Canonical gospel. But he specifically and very plumply charges him with removing certain verses, clauses, and words from the Gospel of Luke. And it ought to be remarked that the erasures or omissions and alterations charged by Tertullian against Marcion are not those charged by Epiphanius. Tertullian apparently does not support Epiphanius so far as these erasures are concerned, and vice versa… and it is difficult to think that Tertullian only mentioned these comparatively insignificant erasures or variations, and passed over the considerable erasures, amounting to 97 verses, which Epiphanius two centuries after charged against Marcion.
The above mentioned differences are not at all surprising: While Epiphanius's aim was to note (while often not recording the exact text of) all differences between Mcg and Luke, Tertullian's only interest was in comparing just that text in Mcg that directly featured acts by or speech of Jesus with the corresponding Lukan text, in order to record the differences. Consequently, Tertullian did not comment on text in Mcg in which Jesus was portrayed as in Luke or where Mcg did not have text, so for example not commenting on the lack of the parable of The Prodigal Son in Mcg, nor Lk 10:29-42 (The Good Samaritan and Martha and Mary - See also Luke-10). However, while these are preceded by text that IS mentioned by both Tertullian and Epiphanius (The Inquiring Lawyer: Lk 10:25-28) and are considered to be part of the parable they are not (at least, do not appear to be so), because Lk 10:29-42 function perfectly well without Jesus.
As a result of the above different ways in which Tertullian and Epiphanius approach Mcg we do not always know the exact text of verses in Mcg. What we do know is that Tertullian's comments are specifically aimed at identifying differences in the the words, deeds and/or actions of Jesus in Mcg vs. Luke, and that he is simply not interested in (and so does not comment on) text such as parables, or descriptions of actions or speech of other people. In contrast, Epiphanius' aim is simply to identify the text in Mcg that differs from what he sees in Luke. A consequence of these differences is that significant portions of Mcg are not quoted, or even otherwise referred to, by either or both. Full details of the commenting 'policies' of both can be found in Tertullian and Epiphanius, in which this author examines in detail their different approaches to the text of Mcg.
Below are several discussions that address issues regarding the exact extent of the 'overlap' between Q and Mcg. As suggested by the above heading the great majority of Q has obvious close parallels in Mcg (See the table in Appendix 2 for details). However, there are a very small number of other places that require investigation due to the overlap not being obvious, and/or where it may be necessary to invoke another source (for example Thomas or the Psalms) in order to show the connection between Q and Mcg, and/or where Q / Mcg may have been following another non-synoptic source.
Luke 1-2 and much of 3-4 have no parallel in Mcg
In The Beginning of 'Marcion's Gospel Of the Lord (Ev) up to Luke 5:13 this author quotes Epiphanius regarding the author of Mcg (who Epiphanius believed to be Marcion):
At the very beginning he excised everything Luke had originally composed—his “inasmuch as many have taken in hand,” and so forth, and the material about Elizabeth and the angel’s annunciation to the Virgin Mary, John and Zacharias and the birth at Bethlehem; the genealogy and the story of the baptism. All this he cut out and turned his back on, and made this the beginning of the Gospel, “In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,” and so on. He starts from there then and yet, again, does not go on in order. He falsifies some things, as I said, he adds others helter-skelter, not going straight on but disingenuously wandering all over the material. Thus:
Go shew thyself unto the priest, and offer for thy cleansing ...
While the above is true, it is only superficially relevant to this discussion, which is not to compare Mcg with Luke as a whole, but to compare Mcg with that part of Luke that is Double Tradition material, i.e material that has no parallel in Mark, and which on the Mark-Q hypothesis has the hypothetical Q as its source. At issue here is how close Mcg is to being Q, based to a large extent on what Tertullian and Epiphanius say about what they refer to as Marcion's gospel, even though the text of Mcg does not support Marcion as its author because it contains nothing of Marcion's known theology or Christology.
In total Epiphanius identifies 302.5 verses in Luke (much of which does not directly feature Jesus) that were not in Mcg, while Tertullian records only 192.5 such verses (plus short pieces of text in seven other places). Both saw a great deal of difference between Luke 1-4 and the equivalent text in Mcg, including Capernaum and Nazareth being 'swapped' in comparison with Luke.
As Luke 1-2 are purely Lukan Sondergut they have no role to play here, and hence the evaluation of Mcg vs. Luke below begins with Luke 3, with Tertullian writing: "In the fifteenth year of the leadership of Tiberius it is proposed that he descended into the city of Capernaum in Galilee ..." so suggesting that Mcg began with parallels to Lk 3:1a followed directly by Lk 4:31a. However, as shown later this apparently large omission (most of Lk 3 and 4) is due mainly to Capernaum and Nazareth being reversed in Mcg (so being in the order as in Mark and Matthew), and not that virtually all of Luke 3 and much of Lk 4 had no parallel in Mcg.
A small portion of the double tradition (and hence also Q) text is known to have not been present in Mcg, for example Q/Lk 3:7-9 (John's Announcement of Judgment) and Q/Lk 3:16b-17 (John and the One to Come), both of which have parallels in Matthew but not Mark and hence are DT parallels. In the IQP's Q they are both preceded (Q 3:2b, 3) and followed (Q 3:21-22) by Triple Tradition (TT) text that in the parallel in Matthew is one contiguous piece (Mt 3:7-12).
Because Q 3:7-9 and 16b-17 (for example, and also see below) are both portions of DT text the fact that neither have a parallel in Mcg could be considered to be fatal flaw in any hypothesis that appears to require that Mcg = Q (More accurately: "that Mcg is the physical manifestation of Q"). However, that only applies if there is no other source for Q material not present in Mcg, but it is clear that other potential sources do exist, the most obvious of which is the Old Testament, but also an early form of Luke, as for example in the Semler hypothesis. Unless it can be conclusively shown that none of these sources could be the source of any of the Q text that is not in Mcg then the Mark-Mcg hypothesis is viable, and more robust than the Mark-Q hypothesis.
NOTE: Having Q as the source of the double tradition does not mean that what we see in Matthew and/or Luke is necessarily identical to the Q parallel. Or, rather, neither Matthew nor Luke are required to contain the exact text of Q, in exactly the same way that we do not require (or expect) Matthew and Luke to have exactly the same text in Mt / Lk parallels, or as in parallels in Mk. They may do, and in the case of John the Baptist's preaching in Mt 3:7-10 // Lk 3:7-9 they are very close to being identical (and so close to the text of Q) even though traditionally the verse divisions are different. More succinctly, Matthew, Luke, and Q might all be different to varying degrees in Q parallels.
Mt 3:7-10 // Lk/Q 3:7-9 - The Generation of Vipers
Even though there are a number of potential OT sources that both Matthew and Luke COULD have used here (other than Q) the closeness of the text in Mt 3:7-10 // Lk 3:7-9 appears to suggest otherwise, leading to the logical supposition that either one copied from the other, or there was another source that we do not have, in this case Q or Mcg - except that Mcg does not have any parallels to a small number of these verses, while Q (being hypothetical) obviously CAN contain the Double Tradition parallels, and by definition DOES contain all of them.
The preceding common text in Mt 3:3 // Lk 3:4 makes it clear that the source for these is Isaiah 40:3, with parallels in Mk 1:3, Mt 3:3b, Lk 3:4b, and Jn 1:23, and which is referred to by both Tertullian and Epiphanius:
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
However, following the above the accounts differ: Mt 3:4-6 and Lk 3:5-6 have nothing in common, with both Mark 1:5-6 and Matthew 3:4-6 paralleling the text we see in the Gospel of the Ebionites and Mk 1:6,5 (so following the order of Ebionites), and Lk 3:5-6 paralleling Isa 40:4 and 5b. Then, despite the above differences Mt 3:7-10 // Lk 3:7-9 are very close indeed, with no obvious common source, and so (not surprisingly) are considered to be Double Tradition parallels. Even so, there are multiple potential sources for this text, with the snakes in Psa 58, 74.5, 140, and Isa 59; Isa 51:1-2; Psa 74.5, and (almost certainly) Jer 11:16 being the source for Mt 3:10b / Lk 3:9b.
Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that Matthew and Luke would (or even could) independently create almost the same text, and without any parallels in Mark it appears likely that either Matthew or Luke copied from the other. However, what is odd is that Matthew placed his verses after his parallels of text in Mk 1:5-6 (that themselves have parallels in Ebionites), while Luke has nothing parallel to those verses, and instead follows his 'copy' of the verses (Lk 3:7-9) with apparently anomalous text unique to him at Lk 3:10-15.
For whatever reason, Mt 3:7-10 // Lk 3:7-9 function differently in Matthew and Luke, with Luke using his additional verses as a 'lead-in' to John the Baptist that has no counterpart in Matthew. Instead, in Matthew there is no 'transition' from Mt 3:10 (referring to trees with bad or no fruit being burned) directly to the baptism 'speech' in John that appears in all four gospels, beginning at Jn 1:26, Mk 1:6, Mt 3:11, and Lk 3:16 respectively.
The processive 'elaboration' of Mt 3:11-12 // Lk/Q 3:16-17
As stated above Q 3:16-17 (John and the One to Come) were not in Mcg, with these verses appearing to be the result of text growth in which (in both Matthew and Luke) John the Baptist refers to the one to come (without giving him a name), the baptism (with fire), and the Holy Ghost's fan. What is particularly interesting here is how the text grows from gospel to gospel:
Jn 1:26-27 is the shortest version. John refers to loosening shoes but not the Holy Ghost, and adds the (unique in the gospels) reference to a person in the crowd being the one to come after him;
Mk 1:7-8 is 'next.' Mark also refers to loosening shoes, and adds that the one to come (who is not mentioned as being in the crowd) will baptize with the Holy Ghost;
Mt 3:11-12 essentially adds the fan and burning the chaff to what we see in Mark, except that the reference to the baptism being with fire in Mt 3:11 is not present in mss with the Byzantine (Byz) text-type (The form found in the largest number of surviving manuscripts of the Greek New Testament), Also, Matthew is the only one of the four gospels to refer to wearing the shoes rather than just loosening them.
Luke is then close to Matthew, but "for repentance" and "Holy" is omitted in some mss. Mt 3:12 and Lk 3:17 are essentially the same.
The NET Bible comments (emphasis added):
With the Holy Spirit and fire. There are differing interpretations for this phrase regarding the number of baptisms and their nature. (1) Some see one baptism here, and this can be divided further into two options. (a) The baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire could refer to the cleansing, purifying work of the Spirit in the individual believer through salvation and sanctification, or (b) it could refer to two different results of Christ’s ministry: Some accept Christ and are baptized with the Holy Spirit, but some reject him and receive judgment.
(2) Other interpreters see two baptisms here: The baptism of the Holy Spirit refers to the salvation Jesus brings at his first advent, in which believers receive the Holy Spirit, and the baptism of fire refers to the judgment Jesus will bring upon the world at his second coming. One must take into account both the image of fire and whether individual or corporate baptism is in view. A decision is not easy on either issue. The image of fire is used to refer to both eternal judgment (e.g., Matt 25:41) and the power of the Lord’s presence to purge and cleanse his people (e.g., Isa 4:4-5). The pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost, a fulfillment of this prophecy no matter which interpretation is taken, had both individual and corporate dimensions. It is possible that since Holy Spirit and fire are governed by a single preposition in Greek, the one-baptism view may be more likely, but this is not certain. Simply put, there is no consensus view in scholarship at this time on the best interpretation of this passage.
There is a lot of equivocation here: "Some see"... "could refer"..."It is possible"..."may be more likely"...."there is no consensus." As neither John nor Mark have any parallels to Mt 3:12 and Lk 3:17 only these two verses (and possibly the "fire" references at the end of Mt 3:11 and Lk 3:16) should (on the Mark-Q hypothesis) be considered to be in Q. However, in "The Sayings Gospel Q in English Translation" from "Fortress Press 2001" (and using the same English translation here) the IQP notes this as present in Q: "Q 3:16b-17 John and the One to Come … (Mt 3:11-12)" and gives the corresponding Q text as:
16b I baptize you in water, but the one to come after me is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to ·take off‚ He will baptize you in holy Spirit and fire.
In 'A Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels Vol. 1 Matthew,' Wieland Willker quotes Kloppenborg (commenting on the IQP's choices here) as follows (also emphasized):
Q 3:16 is one of the Q-Mark overlap texts. It seems clear that Q's text read at least PURI. The problem is whether it also read PNEUMATI or PNEUMATI AGIW, in agreement with Mark, or whether the latter phrase in Matt and Luke is due to both conflating Mark (PNEUMATI AGIW) and Q (AGIW). The variants #9-10 are present because there is in the body of discussion of the reconstruction of Q those who have argued that Mark and Q had different formulations, and that Matthew and Luke have conflated them (even though the IQP itself decided that Q probably had both spirit and fire). Thus the variant simply signals that there is a *potential* problem that reconstruction has to deal with. The reason for the [[ ]] around AGIW has to do with the argument, commonly found in the literature that PNEUMATI KAI PURI is a hendiadys, referring to divine judgment and might well have been what was in Q, with Mark supplying AGIW (And Matt and Luke taking it over from Mark). Again, in the end the IQP decided that AGIW was in Q, but with less certainty than PNEUMATI.
This appears to be dubious (or at least convoluted) logic: Re-writing:
The reason for the [[ ]] around HOLY has to do with the argument, commonly found in the literature that SPIRIT AND WITH FIRE is a hendiadys [so just SPIRIT AND FIRE], referring to divine judgment and might well have been what was in Q, with Mark supplying HOLY (And Matt and Luke taking it over from Mark). Again, in the end the IQP decided that HOLY was in Q, but with less certainty than FIRE.
From the immediately above it is clear that the only text in Lk 3:16 that the IQP considered is NOT in Q is the very beginning of Lk 3:16 "John answered, saying to them all," so being just 16a, with 16b (as above from Kloppenborg) forming the great majority of the Q verse. This is despite the fact that the only portion of Q 3:16 that does not have a parallel in Mark is the reference to fire (PURI) at the very end, and even that is not in Q (because it is not in Matthew) in the majority of Greek mss. On this last point see Matthew 3:11 in the Byzantine text by James Snapp, Jr., in which he considers that:
A textual variant in Matthew 3:11 presents an interesting puzzle. Although Western and Alexandrian witnesses generally include the words “and fire” (Greek και πυρι) at the end of the verse, the Byzantine Text – the text found in the majority of Greek manuscripts – does not. Thus a simple question arises: did the original text of Matthew 3:11 state that John the Baptist said that the Messiah would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire,” or merely that the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit?
Essentially, it is only Mt 3:12 / Lk 3:17 that could potentially be in Q, but as the text in these verses requires the preceding verses to make any sense they cannot exist alone as DT text, and so must instead be considered as variants at the end of the preceding TT text. FWIW, there is no corresponding 'extension' to Jn 1:26-27, so making Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn all close parallels - apart from the fire/chaff words, which can only have come from somewhere else, e.g. Isaiah 66:24 or Jer 17:27.
It is only these references that are DT, so not Mt 3:11 / Lk 3:16 because of the existence of Mk 1:7-8 (and Jn 1:26-27). Despite this, the IQP nevertheless chose to include virtually all of Mt 3:11-12 // Lk 3:16-17 in Q because otherwise they would have a reference to the fire at the end of Lk 3:16 (see above) with no context. Even though the text "and with fire" is only present in Matthew (and only in a minority of the mss) and Luke, it has no meaning on it's own and should not be considered to be part of Q. Essentially, Mk 1:7-8b / Mt 3:11-12 / Lk 3:16-17 must be considered as a whole and so treated as a TT passage, not a DT one. On this basis it is not at all surprising that these verses are not in Mcg, even though the IQP decided (incorrectly, IMHO) to include them in Q.
Q/Lk 3:21-22: The baptism
As indicated in Luke 3:1 - 4:15, 4:31a: "Epiphanius states that Mcg did not have “the genealogy and the subject of the baptism...” and that "All this he took out and turned his back on ..." Also: "Here we have Ac 1:1 stating that Luke (“The former treatise”) began with Jesus’ actions (“all that Jesus began to do and teach”), with no mention of Jesus' origins, his birth, his early life, or his baptism, which, from the information given above, is how Mcg began."
Q/Lk 4
As this author states in Capernaum or Nazareth First?:
In all three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) Jesus is baptized by John, is tempted, and then enters Galilee (Mk 1:14, Mt 4:12, Lk 4:14). In Mark Jesus goes to the sea of Galilee (Mk 1:16) and afterward enters Capernaum (Mk 1:21), while in Matthew he enters Capernaum first (Mt 4:13), later goes to the sea of Galilee (Mt 4:18), and returns to Capernaum sometime later (Mt 8:5). Later still (Mk 6:1 and Mt 13:54) Jesus enters the synagogue in Nazareth, but in Luke this sequence is quite different, with Jesus going to Nazareth first, then Capernaum, and lastly the Sea of Galilee.
In both Mark and Matthew the first details of Jesus' ministry describe events in Capernaum, and it is only later that we read of Jesus entering the synagogue in Nazareth, in Mk 6:1-6 and Mt 13:54-57 respectively. In Luke this same episode is described in Lk 4:16-30, immediately before Jesus' visit to Capernaum in Lk 4:31-41. However, in Lk 4:23 the words: "What we have heard that you did in Capernaum, do here in your hometown too" make it clear that Jesus' works in Capernaum are by then already known in Nazareth. Also, note that in Codex Bezae Lk 4:31 reads:
And came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, [Lk 4:31a] near the sea, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim, and taught them on the sabbaths. [Lk 4:31b].
Here we see a much more detailed introduction to Capernaum, very closely matching the parallel at Mt 4:13b, which marks the first mention of Capernaum in Matthew. It is usually considered that Mt 4:13 / Lk 4:16a are parallels, and that neither have a parallel in Mark, so being part of the Double Tradition. Logically this makes sense, because Mt 4:1-11 / Lk 4:1-13 are clear parallels and have no parallel in Mark, and Mt 4:12b / Lk 4:14a are also parallels, although they do also have a parallel at Mk 1:14b, with Jesus entering Galilee in all three gospels. However, Lk 4:14b appears to be parallel to Mt 4:24a, and Lk 4:15 has no parallel.
Also note:
There is clearly a disconnect here, because in Matthew Jesus is leaving Nazareth, while in Luke he is entering it. Although the two verses ‘fit’ in a logical sense, narratively they do not. Nevertheless, despite this the supporters of Q include Q 4:16a in their text, with the Matthean parallel at Mt 4:13a, even though they appear unclear as to what the text of Q 4:16a might have been other than it referring to Nazareth.
It should also be noted that in Lk 4:38 Jesus enters Simon's house before he has even met Simon in Lk 5:1-11. It seems that at some point the events in Capernaum and Nazareth occurred in a different order in Luke (as they do in Bezae) or in a predecessor such as Mcg, with this author concluding:
With Lk 4:14b-15 in its current position, by the time we get to Lk 4:43 it appears that Jesus has forgotten that he had already taught in the synagogues of “the region round about” Galilee, and so has to preach throughout Galilee all over again! This repetition makes no sense, and appears to have been added purely to allow something (unspecified) to have happened in Capernaum that could later be referred to in Nazareth. In addition, because Jesus had to have met Simon before healing his mother-in-law there would have had to be an early parallel to Mk 1:16-20 before entering Capernaum...
With the Capernaum and Nazareth episodes in Luke in their original positions ..., not only would Lk 4:14b-15 be redundant (in particular with Lk 4:14b at this point located only three verses after what we see as Lk 4:37), but the version of Lk 4:31a seen in Bezae then makes perfect sense, as not only does it introduce Capernaum, but Mt 4:12b-13b closely parallels Lk 4:14a,31a, and is probably dependent on these verses. It should also be noted that with this early order (without Lk 4:14b-15), the variant ‘Galilee’ in Lk 4:44 is the obvious original, as Lk 4:14a and Lk 4:44 then neatly ‘bracket’ the Capernaum and Nazareth teachings.
There is ample proof, both from inconsistencies in the Lukan narrative that we see today and the other synoptic gospels, that at some point in the development of Luke Jesus taught in Capernaum before he did so in Nazareth. This should come as no surprise, as this is the order we see in both Mark and Matthew. The surprise is that this order was ever changed to what we see today in Luke.
See also Well Known in Galilee - Twice
Q/Lk 4:2-7: The temptation
(See also The Temptation: Mark 1:12-13 in Is Mcg (Marcion's Gospel) Based on Mark? )
In using material from Q Luke supposedly kept exactly to the Q order (so Matthew obviously didn't) - except in one specific place (at least, according to the IQP) - The Temptations. Here the IQP's Q has the Matthean order (Mt 4:1-4, 8-10, 5-7, 11-12), and therefore here (according to the IQP) it is Luke that changes the order he saw in Q - contrary to what he supposedly did in the rest of Q.
On the Mark-Q hypothesis neither Luke nor Matthew knew the other's gospel, while both knew Q. Because both have The Temptations (Mt 4:2-9, Lk 4:2-7) then on the assumption of Q both knew a version from another source, or potentially (but less likely) each knew a version that the other did not. However, if these verses were in Q then there are differences that show that one or other (or both) altered the Q text:
In Matthew the devil is mentioned before the forty days and nights, while in Luke the nights are not mentioned, and the devil is mentioned after the forty days;
Fasting for forty days and nights is only mentioned in Matthew, with Luke just referring to not eating;
In Matthew the devil asks the Son of God to command that stones (plural) should be turned into bread. In Luke it is only one stone;
In Matthew the devil take Jesus up a very high mountain, while in Luke many mss omit the reference to the mountain, having the devil just "taking him up;"
In both My 4:10a and Lk 4:8a "get behind me Satan" is either missing or different in many mss, with the phrase in Mt shorter in NA28 (i.e. the critical text);
In Mt 4:5 the devil refers to "the holy city", while in Lk 4:9 it is "Jerusalem;"
For what in the IQP's Q (and so in Luke) is ordered as vv. 4:5, 6a, 6b, 7, Matthew has 4:8a, 9a, 8b, 8b' instead;
There is a doublet in Matthew at Mk 8:33a / Mt 16:23a // 4:10a / Lk 4:8a, with variants in both Mt 4:10a and Lk 4:8a that suggest that "behind me" is not original;
"Get thee behind me Satan" is not secure in either Mt 4:10a or Lk/Q 4:8a, with in NA28 (i.e. the critical text) the phrase not being present in Luke, and shorter in Mt.
Although these are each only minor differences, the issue is that that there are so many and they ARE minor that makes it relevant here. Assuming Q, whatever the order or the slightly different words used in copying from what is supposedly the same source, why are these differences actually present? One possible reason is that almost without exception the text in these verses has parallels in the Old Testament (In Lukan order: 1 Kg 19:8, Ex 34:28a, Deut 9:9b, Ex 34:28b, Deut 9:9c-10a, 8:3b, Eze 40:2, 2 Chron 7:3, Deu 10:20, Psa 91:11-12, Deut 6:16a) , and of course both Matthew and Luke could have seen Mk 1:12-13, so making Mk 1:12-13a/ Mt 4:1-2a / Lk 4:1b-2 triple tradition text.
Finally, on the assumption that both Matthew and Luke were drawing from a single common source there does not seem any reason why they would have the temptations in a different order, but if they had multiple sources it would be perfectly reasonable for them to have chosen different orders. For example, on the Semler hypothesis there would be what was essentially an 'early (or proto) Luke from which to draw text.
Q/Lk 4:14b-14, 44: Capernaum and Nazareth 'swapped'
In Luke Jesus preaches in Nazareth before Capernaum (see Q/Lk 4 above), while in both Mark and Matthew the reverse is the case. Given the evidence of both Mark and Matthew and the inconsistencies in Luke, e.g. with Jesus in Lk 4:13 referring to things he had done in Capernaum before (according to the narrative) he had ever been there, it is highly likely that in eLk Jesus also preached in Capernaum before Nazareth. See also Capernaum or Nazareth First?
There is plenty of evidence that in Luke (also perhaps in an earlier form of Luke) Capernaum originally came before Nazareth, so therefore at that time Lk 4:14b-15 would have served no purpose, and would not have been in Luke (and indeed were not in Mcg - see Lk 4 – Capernaum First ...). Instead, this text was only added later, when Capernaum and Nazareth were swapped (so occupying the positions in which we see them today), in order to suggest that Jesus could have preached in Capernaum before Nazareth, so following Matthew and Luke in that respect. However, this does not necessarily mean that the Nazareth and Capernaum passages were ‘swapped’ wholesale. Instead, as in Adv. Haer. IV.23 Irenaeus reports that the reading from Isaiah in Lk 4:17 originally occurred in Capernaum instead of Nazareth, it seems possible that just the names of the locations may have been reversed in Luke, and not the actions themselves.
There is a variant at the end of Lk 4:44 (See Luke 4:40-44), which in the NET reads “Judea,” but most mss read “Galilee.” However, the assessment of which variant is likely to be original is wrong, as it is based on the (incorrect) assumption that the original order of the verses in Luke 3-4 was the same as we see today. However, when it is acknowledged that in what we now see in Luke Capernaum most likely originally came before Nazareth then it is easy to see that “Galilee” is the original reading in Luke, following the parallel at Mark 1:39a.
The other two readings (“Judea” and "of the Jews”) then only came about later, after Capernaum and Nazareth were swapped (so occupying the positions in which we see them today) and Lk 4:14b-15 had been added, in order to avoid the implication that Jesus had simply gone back to Galilee again to preach, and that he had ignored everywhere else.
Q/Lk 4:15-11:28: There is no evidence of any other difference between Q/Lk and Mcg in this long central section of Luke.
For details of the following see Is Mcg (Marcion's Gospel) Based on Mark?
The Leper and the Lord: Mk 1:40 / Mt 8:2 / Lk 5:12: "In the majority of mss the leper in Mk 1:40 does not call Jesus ‘Lord,’ whereas in both Mt 8:2 and Lk 5:12 he does, and the lack of ‘Lord’ results in a minor agreement of Matthew and Luke against Mark."
His mother and his brothers: Mk 3:31-35 / Mt 12:46-50 / Lk 8:19-21: "It instead possible that Mk 3:31 is a later addition to this passage, as there are unusual variants that involve swapping mother and brothers. As Mk 3:31, Mt 12:46, and Lk 8:19 are all slightly different it is possible for Luke to here be derived from Matthew, not Mark, and so the shorter text in Mcg is not a problem. It is also possible that aEv knew and used the version we see in Thomas 99, which has parallels to Lk 8:20-21, but not Lk 8:19."
The 3rd Passion Prediction: Mk 10:32-34 / Mt: 20:17b-19 / Lk 18:31-34: "... various other mss omit Jesus being “spitefully entreated,” and some omit him being spat on, neither of which are mentioned by Epiphanius. This and the fact that being spat on is not mentioned in Lk 22-23 or in Mcg suggest that Jesus being “spitefully entreated and spitted on” could be later additions."
Entering Jerusalem: Mk 1:1-17 / Mt 21:1-13 / Lk 19:29-46: "Ev did not contain Lk 19:29-36, 41-46, and possibly also vv. 37-40. Given that all three synoptics contain versions of this passage, how could Mcg not contain it if it preceded Luke, or why would aMcg exclude it if Mcg followed Luke? ...... If Lk 19:29 originally did not have “his” then it is likely to be based on Mt 21:1, and the addition of “his” is an assimilation to Mk 11:1, with the addition of “Bethany” possibly occurring at the same time. Assuming this to be the case, then there is no need for an early Luke to have included Mk 11:1, or any of the verses in Mark that contain parallels to the omissions from Mcg mentioned by Epiphanius."
Q/Lk 11:29-30: The sign of Jonah/Jonas
The sign of Jonah/Jonas is mentioned only once in Luke, at Lk 11:29-30, but at two places in Matthew: Mt 16:2-4a and 12:38-40, so having a doublet in Matthew. Mt 16:2a, 4a have a parallel in Mk 8:12 but no parallel in Luke, with NA 28 and several mss omitting Mt 16:2b-3, leaving just Mt 16:2a: "He answered and said unto them" which leads directly into Mt 16:4a (the generation seeking a sign) and excluding v. 16:4b: "And he left them, and departed," which is a typical 'scene switch' device and has no parallel in Luke.
In contrast Mt 12:38-42 appear to have a close parallel in Lk 11:29-32 but no parallel in Mark, so at an initial glance appearing to be double tradition text. However, Mt 12:38 has no parallel in Luke, and while Mt 12:39 / Lk 11:29 are parallels Mt 12:40 / Lk 11:30 are not, with the reference to Jonah being all they share, but in Lk 11:29 with Jonah not referred to as the prophet in the majority of mss. Instead, while both connect Jonah to "the son of man," Mt 12:40 explains how Jonah relates to Jesus (whale vs. earth), while Lk 11:30 refers to a connection (so shall also ...) but without stating what the connection is.
The only way that Mt 12:40 and Lk 11:30 are 'parallels' is that they both mention Jonas, and while Mt 12:41-42 are clear parallels to Lk 11:31-32 one pair is reversed vs. the other: In Luke the queen of the south precedes the men of Nineveh, while in Matthew Nineveh precedes the queen of the south. Even though Mt 12:40-42 and Lk 11:30-32 have no parallels in Mark they should not be considered to be a Double Tradition passage because there would be no reason to change the order absent some other factor not found in Matthew and Luke. Also, codex Bezae (D,d) omits Lk 11:32, and Epiphanius records this verse as not being present in Mcg, stating:
"The saying about Jonah the prophet has been falsified; Marcion had, ‘This generation, no sign shall be given it," and "he did not have the passages about Nineveh, the queen of the south, and Solomon."
Wieland Willker also comments re. Lk 11:32 and Bezae:
Mt has the same verse in identical wording. But the interesting fact is that Lk has the two verses reversed. Mt has the more logical order because in the preceding verses Jonah is the topic. It would be natural to end with "something greater than Jonah is here!" and then go on with the queen of the south. It is possible that the omission by D is original and that some early scribe added the verse as a harmonization to Mt, but added it at the wrong place. But this is rather improbable.
On the other hand it is possible that in an ancestor of D the verse has been labeled for omission and transfer before verse 31. This lead accidentally to complete omission.
There are many unusual aspects to this passage: The doublet in Mt 16:2-4a // 12:38-40; the lack of Mt 16:2b-3 in a number of mss; the lack of a parallel to Mt 12:38 in Luke; the fact that Mt 12:40 and Lk 11:30 are not parallels; the fact that Jonah is not a prophet in most mss of Lk 11:29; the fact that Lk 11:31-32 are swapped when compared to Mt 12:41-42, and the lack of Lk 11:32 in codex Bezae, all of which work against the view that Q 11:30-32 ever existed. Also, under the heading: 'Luke 11:29-32 – An Evil Generation' Luke 11 contains the following:
As Tertullian does not suggest that Mcg omitted any verses here, it appears that the text was as he expected, even though it was shorter than we see it. However, much later Epiphanius expected to see the longer version, and hence he commented that Marcion had falsified these verses. Epiphanius’ reference to Jonah being “the prophet” shows that he knew the Byzantine addition to this verse, which is not found in P45, P75, Bezae, and many other mss. Uniquely, Bezae also does not contain Lk 11:32, suggesting the possibility that it is a ‘transition’ text between that of Mcg and canonical Luke.
Given the very close relationship between Mk 8:12 and the text in Mcg as reported by both Tertullian and Epiphanius, it is perhaps surprising that in Elenchus 25 Epiphanius maintains that it was Marcion who altered this text, suggesting either that Epiphanius was not aware of this similarity, or perhaps that he was, but chose to ignore it and blame Marcion instead. However, the reality is that the similarity points strongly to Mark being the origin of this text in Mcg, and that it was not a change wrought by Marcion. On this basis it appears that the original text of Lk 11:29 was the same that as seen by Tertullian and Epiphanius in Mcg, in other words very similar to that in Mk 8:12.
Lk 11:30-32 certainly exists, but there are so many differences between it and Mt 12:40-42, together with the differences in the preceding verses, that it seems highly unlikely that Mt 12:40-42 is an edited version of Q 11:30-32. Given how close the text of Mt 12:40-42 is to Lk 11:30,32,31 (in that order) it seems most likely that there was an unknown 'intermediate' text that derived from Jonah, 1 Kg 10, and 2 Chron 9. On that basis it is not surprising that what we see as Lk 11:30-32 was not in Mcg because it contains no reference to Jesus, and on the same basis is unlikely to have been in Q.
Q/Lk 4:38-39: Simon's Mother-in-Law (From Is Mcg (Marcion's Gospel?) Based on Mark?
In Mk 1:29-31 Jesus leaves the synagogue and enters Simon’s house. He heals Simon’s mother-in-law’s fever, and she then ministers to them. This passage has close parallels at Mt 8:14-15 and Lk 4:38-39, except that Matthew does not have Jesus leaving the synagogue first, nor is there any mention of anyone entering the house with him. There is nothing in Luke that requires aLuke to have seen this passage in Mcg, nor anything in Mark that requires this passage to have been present in Mcg. As with the choices made by aMatthew and aLuke regarding material in Mark, aEv could have either not known this passage, or simply have chosen to not use it.
Q/Lk 11:47-48: Woes Against the Lawyers
There is no question that Lk 11:47-48 had parallels in Mcg, so they are discussed here as a 'preface' to Lk 11:49-51. Both Tertullian and Epiphanius refer to the "Woe" on the lawyers for building the sepulchres of the prophets despite their fathers killing them, but what is interesting here is the difference in how it is said in Luke in comparison to Matthew:
Lk 11:47: Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.
Mt 23:29-30: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
From the above it is clear that these are mostly not parallels, but despite their significant differences they are regarded as parallels in Q, or, at least, they are so regarded by the IQP, with their Q 11:47 being essentially the same as Lk 11:47:
Q 11:47 Woe to you, for you built the tombs of the prophets, but your «fore»fathers killed them.
For whatever reason the IQP chose the version in Lk 11:47 over the much longer (x3) version in Mt 23:29-30 rather than attempting to 'merge' the two. This author agrees that in a situation such as this merging two very different versions is not a good option, but there is instead always the option of saying that where there is such a large difference Q cannot be the source of both, i.e. that here there is no Q 11:47, also unlikely for there to be a Q 11:48 (because it depends on Q 11:47) and, given the existence of Mt 23:32-33 (with no parallels in Luke) and the differences between Mt 23:34-36 and Lk 11:49-51, most likely no Q 11:49-51 either. On this see also 'Luke 11:45-48 – And Let’s Not Forget the Lawyers' in Luke-11, in which this author states that:
There is no direct evidence that Tertullian saw either Mcg 11:45 or 48, but as Lk 11:45 simply introduces the lawyers, and Lk 11:48 re-states Lk 11:47, their presence or absence has no effect on the meaning of the passage. It is also worth noting that in the parallel passage in Mt 23:13-36 there is no equivalent of Lk 11:45, and so this may be an indication that this verse was also a later addition. However, as neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius make any note of these verses, and in the absence of more direct evidence, we should assume that these verses were in Mcg.
Q/Lk 11:49-51: Wisdom’s Judgment on This Generation
Both Tertullian and Epiphanius state that Mcg had parallels to Lk 11:46-47 (neither refer to Lk 11:48), after which Epiphanius (but not Tertullian) states that "He" (meaning Marcion):
... did not have: “Therefore said the wisdom of God, I send unto them prophets,” and the statement that the blood of Zacharias, Abel and the prophets will be required of this generation.
Under the heading Luke 11:49-54 – The Blood of the Prophets in Luke-11 this author writes:
From Mcg 11:47 Tertullian jumps straight to Mcg 11:52, without referring to any of the intervening or following verses, while in his Scholion 28 Epiphanius explicitly states that Mcg 11:49-51 did not exist:
He did not have, “Therefore said the wisdom of God, I send unto them prophets,” and the statement that the blood of Zacharias, Abel and the prophets will be required of this generation.
Tertullian does not note the absence of Mcg 11:49-51, so it is possible that these verses were not in his copy of Luke. Neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius mention Mcg 11:53-54, and while Lk 11:49-52 have parallels in Mt 23:13-36, Lk 11:53-54 do not, so they may have not been in Mcg. However, different variants of both verses do both exist in P75 and other mss: ...
Then, with regard to the following Lukan Sondergut verses (11:53-54) this author comments on variants in both:
Also, Bezae, the Old Latin, the Syriac, and a few other mss begin Lk 11:53 with “And as He said these things unto them in front of all the people,” and read: “seeking an opportunity to get something from him, that they might accuse him” in Lk 11:54.
The existence of these variants suggests that these verses may have been a late addition to Luke, so we cannot be sure of what form they took in Mcg. However, given Epiphanius’ lack of comment, it is likely that they followed the variants in P75 .
That still leaves the issue of why both Mt 23:34-36 and their parallels Lk 11:49-51 exist when according to Epiphanius (Tertullian has no comment) there are no equivalents in Mcg. It is certainly possible that the source of at least Mt 23:35b / Lk 11:51a is Gen 4:8, and that the differences between Mt 23:34-35a and Lk 11:49-50 (e.g. the reference to scourging in Mt 23:34) suggest another source.
This is also possibly the case with "for ye have shut up the kingdom of heaven against men" (Mt 23:13) vs. "for ye have taken away the key of knowledge" (Lk/Q 11-52). In contrast to the earlier verses Epiphanius has no comment here while Tertullian comments on the "key of knowledge" that we see only in Lk 11:52, so suggesting that here there are two different sources rather than one being derived from the other. One source gives this explanation:
The "key of knowledge" is a biblical metaphor from Luke 11:52, used by Jesus to describe the essential spiritual understanding that unlocks God's kingdom, which religious leaders of his day had hoarded by distorting scripture and traditions, preventing both themselves and others from entering salvation. It represents true insight into God's word and will, often linked to faith, revelation, the person of Jesus Christ, and the authority to teach spiritual truths, contrasting with mere human wisdom or legalism.
The idea of the "key of knowledge" comes from Isaiah 7:9: "Unless you believe, you will not understand," though the Hebrew text reads more like "If you do not believe, you shall not be established," i.e. that faith can (or may) precede true understanding. As this appears to be quite a distance from the scribes and Pharisees "shutting up the kingdom of heaven against men" (as against just hindering them) it appears unlikely that Mt 23:13 and Lk 11:52 have a particular source (such as Q) in common.
Q/Lk 12:6-7: More Precious than Many Sparrows
From Ernest Evans on Adv. Marcion IV: Appendix 2: In ch. 12 he retains verse 5, whom ye shall fear, making it refer to the Creator, but omits vv. 6 and 7 [five sparrows and the hairs of your head], and in verse 8 reads before God instead of before the angels of God: he omits verse 28 [the grass in the field], and in vv. 30 and 32 reads the Father [omitting your]: and in verse 38 reads at the evening watch].
See also Luke-12, from which the following is an extract:
Tertullian does not mention Mcg 12:3, 6-7, and Epiphanius also makes no mention of Mcg 12:3. However, Lk 12:2-7 have direct parallels at Mt 10:26-31, and because these parallel verses include a parallel of Mcg 12:3 it is likely that this verse was present in Mcg. Epiphanius refers to Mcg 12:4, 6 as follows:
I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body. Fear him, which after he hath killed, hath authority to cast into hell. But he did not have, “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” (Scholion 29)
Sense comments:
Epiphanius points out that verse 6, "Are not five sparrows," etc., was not in the Marcionite Gospel (Sch. and Ref., 29); but he says nothing of the following verse, which, however, is closely dependent on verse 6, and would be unintelligible without it. I infer that verse 7 did not exist in the Canonical Gospel of his time, but was subsequently added. Both these verses were hence interpolations.
Sense here ties the quotes by Epiphanius to specific verses, whereas, as we know, Epiphanius did not see our verse divisions. Therefore, as Tertullian refers to what we see as Lk 12:4-5, it is likely that Epiphanius saw the same text, and his quotation from Mcg 12:4 should be taken to cover both these verses. Similarly, his reference to Mcg 12:6 should be taken to include Mcg 12:7. Based on the above information, it is reasonable to suppose that vv. 12:2-5 were in Mcg, but that vv. 12:6-7 were not.
Q/LK 12:28a: If God so cloth the grass ...
Also in Luke-12, this author comments on Lk 12:22-28:
Most reconstructions of Mcg omit the whole of Mcg 12:28. For example: “He omits verse 28 [the grass in the field]” (Evans); and “He seems to have left out the whole 28th verse” (Lardner). These comments are based on Epiphanius, who wrote::
He does not have, “God so clothe the grass” (Scholion 31).
Based on his behavior elsewhere, it is reasonable to assume that Epiphanius means that some text beginning with “God so clothe the grass” was not in Mcg. However, both Evans and Lardner go too far in assuming that this includes the whole of Mcg 12:28, as we do not know what additional text division Epiphanius may be including. Because Tertullian refers to the end of Mcg 12:28 it is likely that Epiphanius was not referring to the whole of this verse, so that Mcg 12:27-28 may have read:
Consider the lilies and grass: they toil not, nor spin, and yet are clothed. I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these; [12:27] If so, how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith? [12:28b]
Even if Tertullian did see this shorter form in Mcg, there appears to be no reason for Marcion to have made such a change.
Q/Lk 13:30: The Reversal of the Last and the First
Tertullian quotes a shorter version of Q/Lk 13:28, with Epiphanius also referring to a different version of Q/Lk 13:29-30, with both apparently not seeing exactly the same text as we see in Lk 28-30. In particular, Epiphanius reports the same variants in Mcg 13:28, but he also notes this as a difference from Luke. In Luke 13 this author notes:
Again, he falsified, "Then shall ye see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God.” In place of this he put, “When ye see all the righteous in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust” -- but he put “kept” -- “out.” There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Scholion 40).
Also:
It is notable that the text in Mt 8:11-12 is significantly different to that in Luke, in particular having an order equivalent to Lk 13:29a, 28b, 29b, 28c, 28a (ending with: “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”), and not having: “and from the north, and from the south.” Epiphanius also has this omission, and his quote: “The last shall be first” appears to match Mt 19:30 more closely than Lk 13:30. However, as Epiphanius tends to quote from just the beginning of a passage when noting an omission, it is perhaps more likely that this latter instead is a slight mis-quote of Lk 13:30.
It is not possible to be 100% sure of what either Tertullian or Epiphanius saw in Mcg here. We do know that "The righteous" replaced the list of people we see in Lk 13:28b, and some text (e.g. coming from the north and south) was not present, so it is certain that a version of these verses did exist in Mcg.
Q/Lk 13:34-35 : The lament over Jerusalem
Tertullian has no comment on any of these verses, but Epiphanius clearly tells us that Lk 13:34-35 were not in what he saw of Mcg:
[Again he falsified] “The Pharisees come saying, Get thee out and depart, for Herod will kill thee,” Also, “He said, go ye and tell that fox,” till the words, “It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem,” and “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent,” “Often would I have gathered, as a hen, thy children,” “Your house is left unto you desolate,” and “Ye shall not see me until ye shall say, Blessed.” (Scholion 41b)
However, Epiphanius quotes: “Your house is left unto you desolate,” showing that he at least knew the addition “desolate,” as found in Bezae and other Western mss, but not in P45, P75 and the Alexandrian mss in general... Lardner comments that:
Marcion would not have omitted verses such as Lk 13:34, because: “These contain strong denunciations of the Jews by Jesus Christ.” In other words, they could not have been present in whatever Marcion used as the basis of Mcg. The lack of comment by Tertullian suggests that vv. 13:31-35 were not in his copy of Luke either.
As Epiphanius also quotes "Ye shall not see me until ye shall say, Blessed" it is highly likely that here he is quoting Psa 118:26.
Q/Lk text not in Mcg?
In the Mark-Q hypothesis Q is the source of ALL the Double Tradition (DT) text. Typically, Q is hypothesized as a single document and is reconstructed on the basis. However, it should be obvious that Q COULD be more than one document, with the single requirement being that together they contain the whole of the DT, so that (for example) Q could be one large document and one or more smaller pieces of other documents or texts, for example as found in the Old Testament or in other known gospels.
In Adv. Marcion IV Tertullian does not typically note text that he saw in Luke but not in Mcg (because he was ONLY interested in Mcg in so far as how Jesus' actions and speech were represented in it), except to comment on the differences. In contrast, Epiphanius does specifically note all (according to him) text in Luke that was missing or different in Mcg, specifically what we know as Q: 3:7-9, 3:16b-17, 11:30-32, 11:49-51, 12:6-7, 13:30 and 13:34-35, none of which is attested (by either Tertullian or Epiphanius) as having been present in Mcg. This does mean that Mcg could not contain ALL of the text of Q, but instead does raise the question of whether Mcg could contain the great majority of Q (so essentially BEING the great majority of Q), with the remaining Q verses (as just identified above) having parallels in other non-synoptic sources (such as the gospel of Thomas) or, more obviously the Old Testament (for example in Isaiah and Jeremiah).
As it stands Mcg (using the information provided by both Tertullian and Epiphanius) contained all but 32 (12%) of the 268 verses in the IQP's Q: 8 verses from Q3 (John and the baptism), 12.5 from Q4 (The Temptations), and 11.5 from Q11, 12, and 13. In other words, almost 95% of Q has parallels in Mcg. However, there is evidence (See Isaiah 4:2-6 and the Baptism with the Holy Spirit) that much of the baptism is paralleled in the Old Testament, and for example that The Temptations also go back to the Old Testament, with parallels at (In Lukan order) 1 Kg 19:8, Ex 34:28a, Deut 9:9b, Ex 34:28b, Deut 9:9c-10a, 8:3b, Eze 40:2, 2 Chron 7:3, Deu 10:20, Psa 91:11-12, and Deut 6:16a, so leaving less than 5% of Q with unknown parallels.
There is also the Book of Jonah, which is most likely the inspiration for Q/Lk 11:30-32, and even the sparrows are referenced in the Old Testament, at Ps 84:3. Isa 44:6 is likely to be the inspiration for Q/Lk 13:30, with Q/Lk 11:49-51 referring to King Solomon's request for wisdom in 1 Kg 3, and Psa 118:26 perhaps being the inspiration of Q/Lk 13:34-35, the lament over Jerusalem. Even if some of these 'connections' in the Old Testament were not the inspiration for the Q/Luke verses referred to here, there is really no reason to doubt that these small (5% total) portions of Q/Lk text could be references to known Old Testament material. However, this does not prevent there from having been other sources, of which that suggested in the Semler hypothesis (essentially an 'early Luke') seems the most viable, in which case the author of Matthew could have seen and used other versions of this Old Testament material in his parallels of the above text.
Tertullian and Epiphanius agreed that Mcg 'omitted' (more accurately: did not contain in comparison with Luke) any text of or parallels to Lk 1-2; began with the equivalent of Lk 3:1a; 'omitted' much of Lk 3-4 (e.g. having no parallels to Lk/Q 3:7-9, 17 and the Temptation), then continued with Nazareth at Lk 4:16, and with Capernaum following later. The importance of this lies with the (very) small portions of Double Tradition text that both indicate had no parallel in Mcg, so that Mcg on its own could not be the source of ALL the Double Tradition text (as Q is DEFINED to contain), but only around 95% of it.
There is NOTHING in the Mark-Q hypothesis that prevents Q from having been more than one physical document (despite what the IQP state regarding its origin - See Appendix 1 below), and on that basis Mcg could have been the great majority of what we call Q. All that would mean is that other non-synoptic sources (at least some of which exist in the Old Testament) would have supplied the (very few) portions of what we see as double tradition text that are not attested as being in Mcg, as described above. Certainly, it is currently (Jan 2, 2026) the closest we know of to being the whole of Q.
Note: For further detail, see also Omissions and Differences, covering the following topics:
Ev up to Luke 5:13: What do Tertullian and Epiphanius tell us about the early chapters of Mcg?
Epiphanius: Omissions After v. 5:13: The 25 places where Mcg did not contain text that Epiphanius saw in Luke. From the conclusions of this page:
The information above from Epiphanius regarding omissions in Mcg shows us that the majority of the text from Luke 5-24 that he states was not present in Mcg occurs in the area of this travel narrative. Not only are more than half (60) of the 110 ‘omitted’ verses (none of which have a parallel in Mark) part of the travel narrative, but more importantly, 84% of them also have no parallel in Matthew, and so are unique to Luke. If we were to assume that Marcion did in fact see these verses in Luke and chose to omit them, then the great majority of the material he deliberately removed from the travel narrative was material that had been created by the author of Luke, and none of it was material that originated in Mark.
Although individually each instance of ‘absence of evidence’ (lack of comment from Tertullian at a place where Epiphanius notes an omission by Marcion) should not be considered significant, the fact that this phenomenon occurs at all 25 such places noted above is statistically significant. Consequently, in these instances we can infer that Tertullian has either no comment because the text supposedly omitted by Marcion was not known to him, or that it was simply text in which that he was not interested.
Epiphanius: Differences After v. 5:13: The 12 places where Mcg contained text different to that seen in Luke by Epiphanius.
Tertullian: Omissions and Differences: The 7 other places where Mcg contained text different to that expected by Tertullian.
Other Differences: 17 places where Tertullian quotes text in Mcg that he does not note as a difference, but is different to what we see in Luke.
Tertullian vs. Epiphanius: How much of Luke was not present in Mcg? The differences between what Tertullian and Epiphanius report.
A Final Point:
When anyone considers the content of Q it is likely that it is equated with the Double Tradition (DT), because of course Q only exists as one or more (as shown above) hypothetical source document(s) that contained the whole of the double tradition. However, that doesn't mean it could ONLY contain DT material, and in reality in addition it could have contained portions of Lukan Sondergut, Matthean Sondergut, and Triple Tradition text -- and still function as Q.
As long as it (and some small portions of the Old Testament - see above) includes all of what we know as the DT material, it could be Q. Of course, once you allow Q to include text with a Markan parallel in one place then you have no valid argument against allowing other "Q" material to also have a Markan parallel, and so you end up with your Q including the whole of the Triple Tradition. The DT then still exists and is still in Q, but now so does the whole of the TT, so leaving you just with Q and the Sonderguts as sources, with Q then the source of all of everything in Matthew and Luke except the Sonderguts. Minimizing the amount of non-DT material in Q should therefore be the aim, but not requiring that Q must ONLY contain DT text.
Summary
One of the key characteristics of the Mark-Q hypothesis is the assumed (i.e. on the basis of no ms or other evidence) independence of Matthew and Luke, with the hypothetical Q (and possibly very small portions of the OT) therefore required to contain all the material common to Matthew and Luke but not Mark (the Double Tradition, or DT). However, it is this very assumption that leads directly to the major problem with this hypothesis, which is how to explain the agreement of Matthew and Luke against Mark in material otherwise deemed to have been obtained from Mark. The solution to this problem actually modifies the Mark-Q hypothesis (although it is not couched in those terms) by allowing Mark and Q to have some material in common: the so-called Mark-Q overlaps. This 'solution' in turn implies either that aMark knew Q but used only a small portion of its text, or that the author(s) of Q used just a small portion of Mark. Given that Q (as usually defined) contains mainly non-Markan sayings material, then (unless Q actually was multiple documents, or there were multiple versions or layers) having the author of Q know and use Mark seems more likely. Depending on how much of Q was material sourced from Mark, and how much of Luke is material sourced from Q, it is not then hard to see that Q could perhaps be considered to be either a development of Mark or an early version of Luke.
Note: In comparison with the Mark-Q hypothesis the Mark-Mcg hypothesis makes the above possibility explicit by replacing Q by a more extensive source (Mcg), but also avoids the need for this source to contain ALL all the common Matthew-Luke material by allowing aLuke to have used Matthew in addition to Mcg (As shown below in Appendix 2 Mcg contained virtually ALL of the material hypothesized to have been in Q). This then begs the question: Is it even possible for both Q and Mcg to co-exist in the same synoptic hypothesis? Depending on the hypothesis, either both Q and Mcg would be (almost identical) sources for Matthew and Luke, or someone following Matthew and Luke would have added a gospel (Mcg) that included virtually all of the Double Tradition, a very close copy of which already existed in the form of Q.
Unlike the Mark-Q hypothesis, the MwQH / Farrer Hypothesis includes an explicit link between Matthew and Luke by having aLuke use Matthew as one of his sources. However, there is no corresponding path by which aMatthew could use any of Luke as one of his sources. Consequently, the MwQH has no ready explanation for the phenomenon of alternating (or better: bi-directional) primitivity between Matthew and Luke, so requiring adherents of the hypothesis to ‘explain it away’ as being simply due to different interpretations of the text. Unfortunately, the doublets in Matthew cannot be similarly explained away, and as on the MwQH Matthew has only one source (Mark) this is a problem, requiring aMatthew to basically have created the all doublets by writing two versions of several pieces of text (Note: some small Matthean 'doublets' are just repeated short phrases). The Mark-Ev hypothesis solves this problem by the expedient of adding what was essentially an early version of Luke (Ev) that was known to aMatthew, so providing a ready explanation for doublets in both Matthew and Luke, and also bi-directional primitivity between Matthew and Luke (due to Matthew knowing Mcg).
For those who hold to Matthean posteriority as the best explanation for the difference in order between Matthew and Luke, the Mark-Mcg hypothesis allows aMatthew to have seen and used what was essentially a shorter, earlier, version of Luke (Mcg), while still allowing Luke as we know it to contain material that originated in Matthew. This avoids the problem with which hypotheses such as the MCH are faced when trying to explain why so much of Luke was ignored by aMatthew, by specifying that the infancy narrative; much of the resurrection narrative; and other parts of the Sondergut Luke material were not in the early version of Luke (Mcg). In addition, and referring back to a previous quote from Kloppenborg:
Nor is it safe to assume that the text of the sayings gospel Q used by Matthew was either the same as that produced by the authors of Q, or that used by Luke.
The same would apply equally to Mcg and any other potential gospel source. Although we have "quotes" of Mcg text from both Tertullian and Epiphanius we do not know (cannot know) whether what differences we see between the two (roughly 200 years apart) reflect differences in the underlying text in Mcg or not. While Epiphanius appears to quote much of the time, Tertullian's comments are typically just that - comments -, rather than quotes. Nevertheless, they do at least tell us the 'contours' of the text in Mcg, typically allowing us to identify the source text to a significant degree.
As previously indicated, any 'second source' such as an early form of Luke occupies the same ‘synoptic space’ as a late Mark (with the only differentiating factor being how close the text is to either canonical Mark or Luke), and there is at least one earlier synoptic hypothesis that includes a later form of Mark, as Carlson notes on his Two Source Hypothesis web-page:
Under Markan priority, the triple tradition is derived from a narrative source that resembles Mark and that both Matthew and Luke used. In the present form of the 2SH, that source is Mark 1:1-16:8. Variations of this source include the supposition of an early form of Mark called Uk-Markus or proto-Mark, a revised form of Mark, deutero-Mark, or both, but these possibilities are only supported by a handful of active scholars.
and:
Stlle [sic] other scholars feel that the character of the minor agreements suggest that they are due to a revision of our Mark, called deutero-Mark. In this case, both Matthew and Luke are dependent on deutero-Mark, which did not survive the ages.
Carlson then concludes the same page by stating:
The hypothesis of a deutero-Mark within the framework of a four-source hypothesis (Mark, Q, L and M) is extremely sensible. It is the most economic theory that explains all we know. Why has it not been accepted more widely?
Carlson sees that including a deutero-Mark (a source logically similar to an Early Luke) in a synoptic hypothesis makes a lot of sense, and in his suggestion Matthew and Luke then have three possible common sources (Mark, deutero-Mark/Early Luke, and Q). However, as shown here in the Mark-Ev hypothesis, by the same token the addition of a deutero-Mark/Early Luke is also an "extremely sensible" change to the MwQH, so that Matthew has two 'synoptic' sources (Mark and Mcg), and Luke has three (Mark, Mcg, and Matthew).
Perhaps the most interesting point that can be made regarding the synoptic problem is that, after more than two centuries of effort by many eminent minds we still have no agreed solution. However, Kloppenborg does not appear to view this as a problem, as he states: “Every Synoptic theory has to accommodate anomalous data.” If by this Kloppenborg is suggesting that it doesn’t matter if a hypothesis cannot explain everything, then I disagree. If instead he is just indicating that no currently accepted hypothesis is capable of explaining all the data, and therefore is not a complete solution to the synoptic problem, then I agree.
And yet, it is plainly obvious that there is a solution, because the problem is rooted in reality: The synoptic gospels do exist, and anyone who so chooses can read them, or at least, can read what we assume them to have contained at the time of their formation. And there perhaps is the nub of the problem: we are trying to find a solution without having all the information to hand, based on what we think was the text of the synoptics at the time of the interactions among them, because we do not know what it was, or how many ‘drafts’ or earlier versions of one of the gospels might possibly have been seen by the author of another. Consequently, we cannot easily allow for potentially significant variants for which we lack extant manuscript evidence, or (for the most part) for there to have been earlier or otherwise different editions or versions of any or all of the synoptics.
Nevertheless, there have been various suggested solutions to the synoptic problem that have found favor over the decades, and until very recently the Mark-Q hypothesis seemed close to being the ‘winner.’ However, the notion of the solution being dependent on a totally hypothetical document (Q) for which no evidence has ever been found, and was 'invented' purely to try to solve the synoptic problem, was (and still is) too much for some people to stomach. In addition, as described above, the problem of the Mark-Q overlaps highlights a fatal flaw in the Mark-Q hypothesis, since once it is allowed that Mark and Q overlapped at some points, then the whole basis on which the independence of Mark and Q depends falls apart, and it then becomes impossible to define what Q contained.
As a result of problems with the Mark-Q hypothesis a strong defense of the Farrer Theory / MwQH was mounted (with Mark Goodacre featuring prominently, as witnessed by the number of references to his work here), leading to the current position in which the Mark-Q hypothesis and the MwQH can be regarded as joint front-runners. Even so, this does not on its own mean that either hypothesis is necessarily the solution, or even the basis of the solution. As Foster writes in the conclusions of ‘Is it Possible to Dispense with Q?’:
Goodacre is the latest in a line of scholars who posit a solution to the synoptic problem that holds to Markan priority, but refutes the existence of Q. The examination of the theory, as he formulates it, has been shown to fail to answer many of the objections of scholars who hold to the Two Source Theory. Rather than reiterate those arguments, two issues are raised which might help to generate further discussion and clarify the objectives of various scholars who propose competing solutions to the synoptic problem.
First, it would be helpful if supporters of the Farrer theory could explain why Lukan dependence on Matthew is so much more appealing than the theory of Matthean posteriority. Such an explanation would assist in clarifying important methodological issues. Second, it would be beneficial if proponents of the Farrer theory could tell those who believe in Q what evidence they would require to be convinced of that document's existence.
Perhaps they would require the discovery of an extant manuscript, but maybe such a requirement would be a little unfair. It would be similar to those who do not think the Farrer-Goulder theory is plausible saying that they would only accept this alternative if a document was discovered written by Luke that explicitly acknowledged dependence on Matthew (or a Matthean document acknowledging Lukan dependence, if Huggins' theory was correct). Instead, probably most proponents of the Two Source theory would be more likely to adopt one of the alternative positions if clear evidence of Matthean redactional material was present in Luke's account, or Lukan redaction in Matthew, if the latter were drawing on Luke as a source.
Moreover, those who hold to the Two Source theory would be grateful for a more plausible account of the literary activity of Luke in removing the non-Markan material from Matthew's gospel, instead of the cacophony of voices that propose that Luke was critical of Matthew, either for theological, narratival or pastoral reasons [Which are tantamount to Get Out Of Jail Free cards. Ed]. So, in conclusion, an open question is addressed to the defenders of "Markan priority, non-Q" type solutions to the synoptic problem: Is there any level of evidence that is internal to the literary accounts of the gospels that would be considered plausible in showing that a document which is no longer extant stood behind Matthew and Luke as a common source?
Supporters of each hypothesis see problems with the others. For example, the agreements (both major and minor) between Matthew and Luke against Mark cause problems for the Mark-Q hypothesis, and the ‘re-ordering’ of the text of Matthew by aLuke, and the alternating primitivity between Matthew and Luke, cause problems for the MwQH. Although both sides can explain away these issues, to do so involves invoking what are seen as dubious (even fatal) arguments by the other side: for example, the need for ‘Mark-Q Overlaps’ to complete the Mark-Q hypothesis; or the idea that alternating primitivity depends on a ‘value judgment’ and does not really exist, and so on the MwQH does not need to be explained. As it stands, the current position looks like a stalemate. However, the two apparently quite different hypotheses are not as far apart as they might at first sight appear.
As initially stated above:
The Mark-Ev hypothesis ... can be thought of as a combination of the MwQH and the Mark-Q hypotheses, and is also a particular 'instance' of the Mark and Second Source (MaSS hypothesis). It assumes Markan priority, has two sources common to Matthew and Luke: Mark and a second source (in this case Early Luke instead of Q), but also has aLuke knowing Matthew.
Evaluating a combination of the Mark-Ev and Mark-Q hypotheses seems so obvious and un-controversial that it is perhaps surprising that no in-depth assessment of such a hypothesis appears to have been undertaken before (although similar hypotheses have been touched on in passing). It appears that this may simply be due to the entrenched positions of the defenders of both Q and a link from Matthew to Luke as an explanation for the DT, who perhaps see any encroachment from the other hypothesis as attacking their territory. Instead, the reality is that as shown both above, and below in Appendix 2, the combination of the two hypothesis simply builds on both, especially when it is realized that Q (as defined in the Mark-Q hypothesis), could contain parallels to large portions of (perhaps most of) Mark without affecting the validity of the hypothesis itself.
In comparison with the Mark-Q hypothesis (assuming the link between Mark and Q implied by the Mark-Q overlaps) the Mark-Ev hypothesis adds a link from Matthew to Luke (so allowing DT text), and in comparison with the MwQH it adds a second source (Ev) for both Matthew and Luke that has Mark as a source. By doing so the Mark-Ev hypothesis combines the explanatory power of both the Mark-Q hypothesis and the MwQH in a way that overcomes the objections to both by positing Mcg as the “document which is no longer extant [that] stood behind Matthew and Luke as a common source.” (Foster)
That the Mark-Ev hypothesis is similar to the 3SH or Mark-Q-Matthew hypothesis should not be a surprise. The difference is that the Mark-Ev hypothesis explicitly recognizes that by allowing Matthew to be a source for Luke the ‘Q’ in the 3SH is no longer Q. Bird calls it ‘Q-lite,’ but this is only to distinguish it from Q. In reality the removal of the restrictions on the text of this source imposed by the need for Matthew and Luke to be independent allows much greater flexibility in the definition of this second source, to the point where it is valid to see it as the text associated with Marcion (whether he actually knew the text or not), sometimes referred to as The Gospel of the Lord (the Evangelion) or, as here, Mcg. (For an in-depth examination of this point see The Synoptic Gospels and Marcion.)
The fact that Q and Mcg overlap so much (As shown in Appendix 2) has been largely overlooked, even though both can be viewed either as essentially 'cut down' versions of Luke, or the source of much of the text in Luke. However they are viewed it is undeniable that not only is the text of Luke largely paralleled in both Q (by design) and Mcg, but also in both Q and Mcg those Lukan parallels are almost entirely in Lukan order.
However, while Q begins with Luke 3 and (with the exception of Lk 22:30) ends half way through Luke 9, Mcg has very little prior to Lk 4:16 and ends at Lk 24:26. Also, Mcg has parallels to the last 2/3rds of Lk 4, much of Lk 5, the first 1/3 of Lk 6, Luke 8 and 9, and Luke 18-24 that Q does not. Both largely feature DT text, and while Q does include some Lukan sondergut, Mcg contains considerably more. Although in theory Q should not contain any text unique to Mark the IQP's Q does so with Q3 (in order to make it a 'stand-alone' text), while Mcg does have a few small portions of TT text. While the text of Q (at least, that of the IQP's Q) contains no other Markan Sondergut, there is no actual 'barrier' to Mcg containing some, although there is no evidence that it did. Finally, because neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius (nor any other source) are required to comment on everything they see in Mcg, various 'Q' (and other Lukan) verses are not attested by either Tertullian or Epiphanius, while there are some that one or the other attests as NOT being present in Mcg.
The IQP's Q was designed to be the minimum necessary text to 1) be the source of all of the DT text and 2) be able to exist as a stand-alone document. Any addition to that is superfluous. The result is a text that cannot be 'pruned' to make it smaller and still be a viable 'stand-alone' source of the Double Tradition, but can instead be expanded to include large amounts of the additional text that we see in Matthew and/or Luke (including other text attested to have been in Mcg) without preventing it from still being the source of the Double Tradition, i.e., it is still Q. The great advantage that this affords Q supporters over other synoptic hypotheses is that they don't have to provide an explanation for this additional Matthean and Lukan text, simply by defining all of it as not being present in Q and instead present in either Matthew or Luke (but not both).
This is essentially a "Get Out of Jail Free" card which can be played any time that someone proposes a "Q+" text, i.e. containing more than just the DT. However, the perhaps 'dirty little secret' is that the IQP's Q already DOES contain more than just the DT, as shown below in Appendix 2. For example, by requiring a proper 'beginning' to Q (to make it a complete stand-alone text) the IQP had to add Jesus' baptism, and there are small portions of Lukan Sondergut (such as Q 12:11-12: Hearings before Synagogues) that are unnecessary (from the point of view of the Mark-Q hypothesis), but had to be included to prevent 'jarring' jumps from one piece of text to another.
However, once you add any of this 'unnecessary' text to Q (i.e. not double tradition text) you cannot then arbitrarily dismiss the inclusion of more 'unnecessary' text that detracts from the hypothesis. For example, the more Lukan text (e.g. what we see as Lukan Sondergut) that you add to Q the more you are defining that Lukan text as originating in Q, rather than the author of Luke either creating it or taking it from somewhere else. The same applies to any text in Q that we see also in Matthew: The author of Matthew either created it or took it from another source. The IQP minimized such text but were not able to avoid it completely, leading to the fact that the 'upper bound' on text in Q is essentially the whole of both Matthew and Luke, a problem that is discussed in What Exactly is Q?
The point immediately above means that it is perfectly reasonable to look for written sources other than Q that contain more (possibly much more) than just the DT, and one such candidate is what is commonly know as Marcion's Gospel of the Lord (here Mcg). From the information we have this was essentially a 'cut down' version of Luke, beginning with Jesus entering Capernaum (with Nazareth later) and ending with him having risen. Both Tertullian and Epiphanius comment on the text of Mcg, but both were making their own points regarding Marcion (supposedly the author of Mcg), and consequently neither were obliged to write a complete narrative. Nevertheless, from their comments enough is known of the text of Mcg that we can say that it matches the text of almost 95% of Q (with the remainder being derived from text we see in the Old Testament). It also 'fills in' various large 'gaps' in Q, so that we know significant portions of the Lukan text of Mcg that have no equivalent in Q, with that spread across all of Luke 4-24, as can be seen in the table below.
In the Mark-Q hypothesis the only 'job' that Q has is to be the source of the DT. However, there is NOTHING to prevent Q from also containing any amount of what we see as Lukan or Matthean Sondergut (and the IQPs Q does include a small amount of Lukan Sondergut). At the other end of the scale in the Mark-Mcg hypothesis Mcg is basically the source of the Lukan Sondergut, but also includes almost all of what we see as the Double Tradition. Because Tertullian and Epiphanius do not identify everything in Mcg we only know some of the Mcg text that we see either as Lukan Sondergut or Double Tradition (see Appendix 2 below), but we can obviously hypothesize more, including that Mcg contained much more of the Lukan text. We can also obviously hypothesize a Q that includes much more Lukan Sondergut, to the point where Mcg and Q are almost identical.
We have essentially been 'conned' (unwittingly perhaps) by the Q supporters into always thinking of Q as the smallest possible source of DT text (i.e. with as little other material as possible), whereas because Q is entirely hypothetical we could add as much Sondergut Luke as we wanted and it would still be Q, up to the point where Q and Mcg really ARE the same thing. However, by DEFINING Q as a document containing the DT plus just the minimum text needed to turn it into a gospel in its own right the relationship between Q and Mcg (with Mcg basically an expanded Q) is almost totally obscured.
What we therefore have is the full text of a purely hypothetical document (Q) containing all of the DT, plus a document (Mcg) that is known to have existed, has parallels to large portions of all of Lk 3-24, and around 70% of which can be directly reconstructed from the comments of Tertullian and Epiphanius. On this basis Mcg should have at least an equal standing with Q regarding being source material used by both Matthew and Luke, because they essentially cover the same text. However, while Mcg did exist, Q both did not and (by definition) cannot:
1) Q is defined as a hypothetical document the contents of which are undefined other than that it MUST include all the Double Tradition (DT) text, except for that small portion (around 5%) of the DT that could be reasonably accounted for as having the OT as its source (e.g. The Temptations);
2) Mcg is a document known to have existed and is sometimes referred to as "Marcion's gospel," even though there is no evidence that this attribution is correct. Evidence of its content comes primarily from Tertullian and Epiphanius.
3) From what we know of the content of both Q and Mcg there is a high probability (at least 95% by my estimation) that Mcg is the physical manifestation of Q.
At the very least, Mcg is a plausible source for large portions of Luke, and in that sense it is the same as Q. However, while Q is a very strange 'gospel,' containing only the Double Tradition and as little of Luke as is required to turn it into a coherent document, Mcg does the same job as Q AND has parallels in the whole of Lk 3-24. While Q is DEFINED as a hypothetical source of some of Luke, and so preceded Luke, Mcg has long been assumed to have been a 'cut down' Luke - based largely on what is known of the Christology of the person who supposedly wrote it (Marcion), who believed that Jesus was the fully-grown son of the God of the New Testament, and not that of the Old Testament. However, as Tertullian shows with his final words in Adversus Marcionem IV, "Marcion's" Jesus (i.e. as in Mcg) is exactly the same as his:
"Misereor tui, Marcion, frustra laborasti. Christus enim Iesus in evangelio tuo meus est."
(Marcion, I pity you; your labour has been in vain. For the Jesus Christ who appears in your Gospel is mine).
This may appear to be the end, but there are some final points worth noting:
Why is there so little of the Lukan travel narrative in Mcg (at most one verse each from Lk 9, 10, 11, 12, two from Lk 13 and 17, then Lk 18:15-30, 35-43 and 19:27-28, 37-48 (A few verses not attested for Mcg);
Why does the Double Tradition in Mcg finish at the end of the Travel Narrative?
If Mcg post-dated Luke, what on earth was the author trying to do, whether or not he knew Q? And, if he did know Q, why create a gospel that is basically Q with the Lukan Sondergut added?
There is a simple answer to these questions:
This author uses "The IQP's Q" (as being perhaps the most heavily researched Q) in the comparison with Mcg, but because the ONLY constraint on the content of Q is that it must include the whole of the Double Tradition (DT) then it should be obvious that in general Q can contain text outside the bounds of the IQP's definition of Q. Also, and crucially, there is NOTHING that restricts Q to being a single document. Simply put: By definition Q must include the whole of the DT, but there is nothing that restricts it to being a continuous text.
So, for example, the small pieces of Q prior to The Beatitudes (that we see as small pieces of Lk3 and The Temptations) may well have different sources to the first continuous 'block' of Q at Q 6:20 - 7:35, and that block can have a different source to the next 'block' at Q 9:57b - 19:26, and lastly also that at Q 22:28-30.
All these 'sections' of Q can have different sources, and with the Lukan Travel Narrative covering Lk 9:51-19:48 it is highly likely that Q 9:57b - 19:26 and the Travel Narrative are the same thing, or, to put it another way, the source of the Travel Narrative is simply one part of Q, with what we refer to as Q actually being more than one source, with one (most likely 'the') major portion being Mcg.
Addendum
The massive overlap between Q and Mcg begs the question: Are they two terms for the same thing? As long as the general opinion (for that is all it is) is that Mcg was later than Luke it will not be considered to be 'part' of the Synoptic Problem, but once it is generally realized just how close Q and Mcg are, (with Mcg essentially being an expanded Q), and that Luke depends on Mcg (just as it depends on Q in the Mark-Q hypothesis), then perhaps Mcg will be recognized as one of Luke's "many" sources (Lk 1:1-2) and also as, to all intents and purposes, the 'real' manifestation of Q, and hence the source of all but a very few verses of the Double Tradition, with the remainder derived from the OT or other know minor sources. (See the table in Appendix 2 for specifics).
As noted above in the conclusion, in comparison with the Mark-Q hypothesis the Mark-Ev hypothesis makes it easy to see that Q / Mcg could be considered to be either a development of Mark or (more likely) an early version of what became Luke, but avoids the need to accommodate ALL the common Matthew-Luke material (as required on the Mark-Q Hypothesis) in Mcg by allowing aLuke to have also known Matthew. As shown in detail below in Appendix 2, Mcg contained virtually ALL of the material hypothesized to have been in Q, so begging the question: Is it even possible for Q and Mcg to co-exist in the same synoptic hypothesis?
Depending on when Mcg was written, either both Q and Mcg would be sources for both Matthew and Luke (with Mcg including virtually all of Q), or someone following Matthew and Luke would have had to have written a later gospel (Mcg), a very large portion of which (Q) already existed and had previously been used by the authors of both Matthew and Luke. The notion that, either before or after Luke, two gospels with a great deal of identical text (Q and Mcg) essentially co-existed without this co-existence being known, is, for this author at least, a coincidence that has been stretched way past it's limit, essentially being "a bridge too far."
If Q existed it had to have been prior to both Matthew and Luke to allow the Mark-Q hypothesis to even exist (!), and given that the vast majority of Q is contained within Mcg (so that Mcg is essentially an expanded Q) it is unlikely that Q and Mcg could both have existed prior to Matthew and Luke. Consequently, on the Mark-Q hypothesis Mcg MUST have been later than both Matthew and Luke, while on Farrer / MwQH Mcg COULD have been earlier than both Matthew and Luke because on that hypothesis Q does not exist.
Assuming Q, then as Q has to be earlier than both Matthew and Luke the issue is whether it is plausible for Mcg to be later than Matthew and Luke. Suppose that Mcg was post-Luke, and its author knew of the synoptics and Q (given that we are here assuming Q this is a reasonable supposition). Why then would someone write a gospel (Mcg) that contained virtually all of Q but only some Lukan Sondergut and Triple Tradition text, when Luke already existed?
If the author of Mcg knew Q he could prioritize Q text in Mcg over the rest of Luke, but then why would he even go to the trouble of 'pruning' the non-Q portions of Luke? Conversely, if instead he didn't know Q then would he have even be able to identify the text that Matthew and Luke had in common that Mark did not and prioritize that, i.e. by keeping the Double Tradition text and removing text that the author of Luke had added, or that was common to all three synoptic gospels?
Appendix 1 - Preface to the International Q Project's 'Sayings Gospel' Q
The preface is quoted below in order to show exactly what the IQP were aiming to create. It is not just a repository of the Double Tradition (although it does include the whole of the Double Tradition), but the IQP chose to make it also "the Gospel of Jewish Christianity," "an archaic collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus." To this end not only does it include material (e.g. a baptism narrative) not required to make this gospel be the Q as specified in the Mark-Q hypothesis, but it also excludes material (e.g. what we see in only one synoptic gospel) for which Q could have been the source:
"The Sayings Gospel Q is an archaic collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus, even older than the Gospels in the New Testament. In fact, it is the oldest Gospel of Christianity. Yet it is not in the New Testament itself. Rather, it was known to, and used by, the Evangelists of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and then lost from sight. After all, Q is the Gospel of Jewish Christianity, which continued in Galilee to proclaim Jesus' sayings, but the New Testament is the book preserving the ancient sources of Gentile Christianity, the oldest being the letters of Paul, for whom Jesus' cross and resurrection, not his sayings, were central to the Christian message.
This is clearest in the case of Matthew. For this Gospel is oriented in Matt 3-11 primarily to vindicating the Jesus of Q, but then in Matt 12-28 simply copies out Mark, the Gentile Gospel. For the Q movement, limited to a mission to Jews, gradually died out, and its Sayings Gospel survived only as incorporated into the Gospel culminating in the Great Commission to evangelize of Gentiles.
During the second century, when the canonizing process was taking place, scribes did not make new copies of Q, since the canonizing process involved choosing what should and what should not be used in the church service. Hence they preferred to make copies of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, where the sayings of Jesus from Q were rephrased to avoid misunderstandings, and to fit their own situations and their understanding of what Jesus had really meant.
This validated the Narrative Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but not Sayings Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas and Q. Indeed the Apostle's Creed, which had been formulated in Rome during the second century as a baptismal confession, bypassed completely the sayings of Jesus, and hence provided no basis for canonizing Sayings Gospels, such as Q and the Gospel of Thomas.
The Sayings Gospel Q contains some of the most memorable of Jesus's sayings. It is thanks to Q 11:2b-4 that we know the Lord's Prayer. Q presents it in a more original form than what we use in our liturgy today. (We use Matthes's revision of the Q Prayer: Matt 6:9-13). Q also preserves for us the certainty of the answer to prayer (ask, search, knock, for a caring Father does provide, Q 11:9-13), the beatitudes (Q 6:20-23), the love of enemies (Q 6:27-28, 35c-d), turning the other cheek, giving the shirt off one's back, going the second mile, giving, expecting nothing in return (Q 6:29-30), the golden rule (Q 6:31), the tree known by its fruit (Q 6:43-45), indeed most of what we think of as the Sermon on the Mount and more: storing up treasures in heaven (Q 12:33-34), free from anxiety like ravens and lilies (Q 12:22b-31), taking one's cross (Q 114:27), losing one's life to save it (Q 17:33), parables of the mustard seed Q 13:18-19), the yeast (Q 13:20), the invited dinner guests (Q 14:16-23), the lost sheep (Q 15:4-7), the lost coin (Q 15:8-10), the entrusted money (Q 19:12-26).
Particularly the first part of Q (Q 3-7) seems carefully structured, to prove the case that Jesus is the 'one to come' prophecied by John (Q 3:16b-17). For in Q 7:18-23 John sends a delegation to ask if Jesus is indeed that 'One to Come,' which Jesus promptly answers in the affirmative (Q 7:22), by listing his healings (for which reason the healing of the Centurion's Boy immediately precedes in Q 7:1-10), climaxing in his giving good news to the poor (referring back to Q's early draft of the Sermon on the Mount in Q 6:20-49).
Although Jesus' mother tongue would seem to have been Aramaic, his sayings were very early on translated into Greek and collected into small clusters, which were brought together into the Sayings Gospel Q. For the high degree of verbal identity in the Q sayings of Matthew and Luke make it apparent they were working from a shared Greek text. Each could not have translated from Aramaic to Greek, independently of the other, into such highly similar, often identical, Greek language. This Greek text of Q, as shared by Matthew and Luke, dates from around the time of the war with Rome (since Q 13:34-35 seems to envisage the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.).
At one place (Q 12:27) the fact of a written Greek text of Q is strikingly attested by the presence of a Greek scribal error: Whereas both Matthew and Luke (Matt 6:28b par. Luke 12:27), and hence Q, list as the three tasks that ravens and lilies do not perform, as role models for humans free of anxiety. But in the case of the lilies, 'how they grow: They do not work nor do they spin,' the first is neither a negative statement, nor a verb naming a task in the process of making clothing. But a very slight change in the Greek lettering produces the meaning: They do not card, nor do they work, nor do they spin, with the formulation 'not card' faintly attested in an ancient manuscript of Matt 6:28b preserved at Mt. Sinai, and in the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 36.
The Sayings Gospel Q, though on the surface only reporting about Jesus, also reveals almost all we know about the Jewish Christianity of the first generation. For the New Testament, as we have it, is a collection of primary texts from Gentile Christianity, in which there are occasional passing references to Jewish Christianity. Paul gained acceptance for his non-Jewish mission from the 'pillars' of the Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem (James, Cephas/Peter and John, Gal 2:1-10), though this amicable division of labor soon broke down (Gal 2:11-21), when the Jewish Christians sought to 'judaize' Gentile Christians (Gal 2:14) . Paul withstood the claims of any other 'Gospel' than his own (Gal 1:6-12), meaning no doubt the Jewish Christian preference for proclaiming sayings of Jesus.
Actually, the Jewish Christians of the Q movement do not seem to have been these Jewish Christian leaders stationed in Jerusalem, since they are not mentioned in Q, nor does Q make any reference to the problem of circumcision, which was the touchstone of that debate with Paul. The followers of Jesus who transmitted his sayings that were brought together into the Sayings Gospel Q would seem to be composed of those left behind in Galilee. They were largely overlooked in the Acts of the Apostles. For the description of the mission 'from Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth' (Acts 1:8), simply bypasses Galilee, with only one passing reference later in Acts (9:31) to a church in Galilee being built up. Nor can one find in Acts any attestation for a variety of religious experience consisting primarily of re-proclaiming Jesus' sayings. The Sayings Gospel Q thus supplements in a very important way what we know of the first generation of Christianity from the book of Acts."
Appendix 2 - What does a comparison of Q vs. Lk vs. Mcg Tell Us?
As given in Appendix 1 (Above) the IQP characterize Q as follows: "The Sayings Gospel Q is an archaic collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus, even older than the Gospels in the New Testament." This is simply their supposition, but by definition Q preceded both Matthew and Luke, being essentially just the Double Tradition plus John and the baptism (the minimum necessary for Q to be a 'stand-alone' gospel). However, Q COULD have contained much more than this, depending on what material the author(s) of Q included that either or both the authors of Matthew and Luke saw in Q but chose NOT to include in their respective gospels. Essentially, the IQP's Q represents the 'lower limit' of the text that Q must include to be both the source of the DT and a coherent document, with there being no upper limit to the text in Q because the authors of Matthew and Luke could have both excluded any amount of other text they saw in Q.
Without Q itself we cannot know what Q material did NOT get included in Matthew and Luke, and therefore the text of Q cannot be arbitrarily restricted to, for example, just that in the IQP's version of Q. However, much of Mcg is known, so including some Triple Tradition text and Lukan Sondergut in addition to mainly DT material, but not anything regarding John, the baptism and the temptation (a portion of which is triple-tradition text included in Q by the IQP and so not required by the Mark-Q hypothesis), nor the following verses, all of which are referred to in the Old Testament:
Lk 11:30-32, 49-51 Jonas, Queen of the South, Nineveh, The Blood of the Prophets, This generation (which some mss omit).
Lk 12:6-7, 28a Sparrows, If God so clothe the grass.
Lk 13:30, 34-35. First and last, O Jerusalem
Note: Lk 11:32 is not present in mss D, d, Lk 11:51 has significant variants and is different from the Q version, Lk 12:27, 13:27 are different in mss D, d, and Lk 13:35 is different in D, d and Byz in general, with the differences suggesting that Mcg had a "Western" text. Although there are other Q verses that are simply unattested in Mcg, it is clear that Mcg is VERY close to actually BEING Q, or at least the great majority of Q given that Q is not required to be a single document, but simply one or more sources used by Matthew and Luke but not Mark.
Essentially, Q is that portion of Mcg that is DT, plus the minimum text necessary to turn Q into a coherent source (mostly a truncated version of the Lukan baptism narrative). However, as some of the baptism narrative (which does not exist in Mcg) in Q is DT text (Q3:7-9, 3:16b-17), there would need to have been a separate baptism narrative, plus a small number of DT verses with no parallel in Ev (Q/Lk 11:30-32, 49-51, 12:6-7, 13:34-35) in a different source or sources. As baptism is referred to (some times obliquely) in the OT and Paul (e.g. Gen 22, Ex 14, 1 Cor), also Jn 1:28 it is reasonable to suppose that the DT baptism material came from another source, and that the 'missing' sayings have their roots in other OT material (e.g. Jonah, Gen 4:8, Ps 84.3, 102.7, 118.26), or Thomas (e.g. Th 4 and 36), none of which are suggested as sources in the Mark-Q hypothesis because everything needed is subsumed into Q, the 'catch-all' source.
The main sources of the text of Mcg are Tertullian and Epiphanius. Tertullian's only purpose in Adv Marcion IV was to determine whether "Marcion's" Jesus was the same as his, and so he did not comment on text in Mcg (which he believed to be Marcion's gospel) unless it featured Jesus or his interactions with others. Consequently, at most lack of comment by Tertullian simply indicates that he was not interested in that text, and nothing else. In contrast, Epiphanius' purpose was to note all the differences between Luke and Mcg, so in his 77 Scholia Epiphanius categorizes Mcg's text as either different to that in Luke, or not present in comparison with Luke (e.g. "he did not have ..."), therefore without further information we should take any lack of comment from Epiphanius regarding text in Mcg as simply meaning he didn't see any difference between Mcg and Lk at that point. However, as Epiphanius lived 200 years later than Tertullian it is unlikely that their copies of Luke were exactly the same, and in particular Epiphanius' comments suggest that he was using a 'Western' (and possibly Latin) text.
As shown in Appendix 3 immediately below Q (or at least, the IQP's Q) has a clear 'block' structure in Luke, containing the following 'blocks' of largely Matthew / Luke (DT) parallels interspersed with much smaller amounts of Lukan Sondergut (SLk), i.e. with no DT.
Lk 1:1 - 3:2a (No DT)
Q Section 1: Lk 3:2b - 4:16a: John, the baptism, the genealogy, the temptations, and the name "Nazara."
Lk 4:16b - 6:19 (No DT)
Q Section 2: Lk 6:20 - 7:35: Beatitudes and woes, the law of Love, judging others, wise and foolish builders, centurion's servant, the widows son, the tribute to John.
Lk 7:36 - 9:57a (No DT) Note the "great omission" of parallels to Mk 6:46-8:26 that would 'fit' between Lk 9:18 and 19
Q Section 3: Lk 9:57b - 17:37: located entirely within the Lukan 'great insertion' / 'travel narrative' at Lk 9:51-19:47
Lk 17:38 - 19:11 (No DT)
Q Section 4: Lk 19:12-26: The Parable of the Entrusted Money (also in the 'travel narrative')
Lk 19:27 - 22:27 (No DT)
Q Section 5: Lk 22:28-30: Judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel
Lk 22:31 - 24:53 (No DT)
Note the very large 'gaps' in Q at vv. 4:16b-6:19, vv. 7:36-9:57a, 17:38-19:11, and 19:27-22:27, so highlighting the complete lack of Double Tradition text (i.e. text with only parallels in Matthew) in these sections of Luke, with Triple Tradition text predominating.
In Is Q a Juggernaut? Michael D. Goulder commented that "Luke adopted a policy of using his sources in blocks; and whatever theory is held, the presence of blocks is a fact." However, Goulder's blocks are not quite the same as those above: "From Luke 4:31 to 6:19 (with small, irrelevant exceptions), Luke follows Mark as his source, and again from 8:4 to 9:50, and (with more considerable insertions) from 18:14 on: the remaining blocks contain occasional echoes of Mark, but the source being followed is non-Markan." The difference between these blocks and those above is not surprising given the inclusion here of Mcg as a possible source, but it is clear that the blocks do exist, although their exact extent depends on the sources being considered.
This is not meant to suggest that all the verses in the blocks are Matthew / Luke parallels (so Q verses) (there are a significant number of Lukan Sondergut verses), but instead that BETWEEN the blocks there are NO Q verses (no DT). The question then is: Why? What are the criteria that led to all the DT text being confined to these five blocks of Luke? Does this suggest that Luke was created by concatenating a number of pieces of text from other sources, and/or 'inserting' blocks of text into existing source material?
Appendix 3 - Q vs. Lk vs. Mcg, Using Lukan Pericopes
In the table below the International Q Project (IQP)'s Q (see the Preface in Appendix 1 above) is compared with both Luke and Marcion's Gospel (Mcg) on a pericope-by-pericope basis, except that Lk 1 and 2 are excluded from this analysis because neither Q nor Mcg contain any parallels to the first two chapters of Luke. The intent is to show just how much Q and Mcg have in common, and in particular how much of Luke is in neither Q nor Mcg. In particular, the first Lukan verse with a parallel in both Q and Mcg is Lk 6:20 (The Beatitudes), with the last being Lk 19:26 (Just before going to Jerusalem).
Verses in the IQP's Q (by definition having a parallel in Luke) are identified as ('Q') on the left hand side, with the verses in Luke but not in Q (so 'Lk') interspersed with the Q verses but indented slightly. The parallels of the Lukan verses attested by Tertullian and/or Epiphanius to have been present in Mcg (But not always providing the full text of a verse) are identified by ('Mcg') on the right. The 'type' of the verses: Triple Tradition (TT), Double Tradition (DT) or Lukan Sondergut (SLk), is also noted. Multiple Lk-Mcg pericopes with no intervening Q verses (e.g. as in Luke 5) are identified as such. Parallels in Mark and Matthew are also identified, as also those portions of Q that have no parallel in Matthew, i.e. that we see as Sondergut Luke.
Verses in the IQP's Q with Lukan parallels are identified as "Q x:y" and Lukan verses with no Q parallels are identified as "Lk x:y." Verses are also color-coded, as follows:
Red denotes Q verses attested by Tertullian and/or Epiphanius as not present in Mcg.
Orange denotes Q verses with no attestation by either Tertullian or Epiphanius, and so may or may not have been in Mcg. However, as both do identify many verses (almost all Lukan) as not present in Mcg, and Epiphanius also identifies verses in Mcg that differ from Luke, a reasonable assumption (as above) is that verses not mentioned by either Tertullian or Epiphanius were in Mcg but simply did not contain anything on which either wished to comment. Also, as can be easily seen in the table below Q has no parallels to Lk 7:36 - 9:59a and so these verses are not marked Orange.
Green denotes Q verses attested by Tertullian and/or Epiphanius as being in Mcg, OR that must have been in Mcg to make sense of their respective comments regarding adjacent verses.
Lukan verses not in Q are identified as 'Lk' and are not color coded using Red, Orange, or Green as above. However:
Blue verses denote Lukan Sondergut so that (for example) it is easy to see how much Sondergut there is in each chapter. It also highlights the fact that the IQP chose to include a small number of SLk verses in their Q, arguably none of which are strictly required, but are present to suggest that this 'version' of Q could have been a complete gospel. Other hypothesized sources of Luke could have contained more of what we see as SLk, e.g. as in Mcg.
As indicated above a lack of attestation by both Tertullian and Epiphanius ("Not attested" in the table below) simply means that neither Tertullian not Epiphanius had any comment on that text or those verses.
The Notes column is used to identify various relevant and/or interesting points, for example where there is a parable (P), one half of a doublet in Luke ( // ) (so a Mark-Q overlap), where Epiphanius (E:) records a difference, or where there is a variant.
For comments on the beginning of Mcg (parallels to Lk 3:1a and 4:31 followed by Nazareth) see Mcg up to Luke 5:13
For lists of the Lukan text not in Mcg and other differences between Luke and Mcg see Summary: Omissions and Differences.
For a verse-by-verse analysis of the comments by Tertullian and Epiphanius click the "MCG ANALYSIS: SEE ..." links in the body of the table.
TYPE MK MT Other Mcg Notes
Lk 1 and 2 No parallels either in Q or Mcg. FOR DETAILS SEE Luke 1 and 2 and Mcg up to Luke 5:13 N/A
--------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE Luke 3:1-4:15, 4:31a
Q 3:0 Incipit‚ ??
Lk 3:1a In the 15th year of Caesar SLk --- --- --- Mcg 3:1a E: "and so on ..." then 5:14
****************** Block 1 of the IQP's Q begins at Lk 3:2b and ends with 'Nazara' at Lk 4:16a *******************
Q 3:2b, 3 The Introduction of John TT 1:4 3:1b --- N/A D, it differ
Lk 3:4 Crying in the wilderness TT 1:2-3 3:3 Isa 40:3 N/A Overlap // Lk 7:27
Lk 3:5-6 Valleys, mountains, all flesh SLk --- --- Isa 40:4-5 N/A
Q 3:7-9 John's Announcement of Judgment DT --- 3:7-10 Jer 11:16 N/A D, it differ
Lk 3:10-15 What shall we do to be saved? Is he it? SLk --- --- N/A D differs
Lk 3:16 John and the one to come. TT 1:7-8 3:11 Jn 1:26-27 N/A D differs
Q 3:17 Burning the chaff with unquenchable fire DT [9:48] 3:11-12 Isa 66:24 IQP wrong here Jer 17:27
Lk 3:18-20 SLk --- --- N/A // Lk 9:7-9
Q 3:21-22 The Baptism of Jesus TT 1:9-10 3:16-17 N/A D, it differ
Lk 3:23-38 The Genealogy SLk --- --- N/A
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE Luke 4 -Capernaum First, Luke 4:31b, 17-21, 32 - Why Were They astonished?
Luke 4:16. 22-30 - and Nazareth Second , Luke 4:33-39 , Luke 4:40-44
Lk 4:1 TT 1:12-13a 4:1 IQP wrong here?
Q 4:2-4, 9-12, 5-8, 13 The Temptations (In Mt order) DT --- 4:2b-4, 5-7, 8-10, 11 Not in Mcg
Lk 4:14-15 Popular teaching SLk (1:14b) (4:12b) Not in Mcg // Lk 4:37
Q 4:16a Nazara? SLk --- --- Mcg 4:16a D differs
***************** The IQP's Q has no parallels to Lk 4:16b - 6:19 *******************
Lk 4:16b-17 Entering the synagogue in Nazareth SLk --- --- Mcg 4:16b-17 Probably only v. 16a
Lk 4:18-24 No new preaching SLk --- (Not 13:54-58) Th.31 Mcg 4:18-24 Probably only vv. 23-24
Lk 4:25-30 Widows, many lepers, Jesus rejected SLk --- --- Mcg 4:25-30 Probably only vv. 28-30
Lk 4:31-32 Teaching in Capernaum TT 1:21b-22 7:28-29 Mcg 4:31-32 D differs
Lk 4:33-36 The man with the unclean spirit TT 1:23-27 8:1-4 Mcg 4:33-36 D differs
Lk 4:37 Jesus' fame spreads TT 1:28 9:26 Not attested D differs Lk 4:14b //
Lk 4:38-39 Peter's mother-in-law TT 1:29-31 8:14-15 Not attested (Before meeting Peter! Different in D.it )
Lk 4:40-43 Healing those with various diseases TT 1:32-38 8:16-7 Mcg 4:40-43
Lk 4:44 Preaching in the synagogues TT 1:39a 4:23a Not attested // Lk 13:22
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE Luke 5 and Epiphanius: Omissions After Luke 5:13
Lk 5:1-3
Lk 5:4-8 Jesus and Simon TT? (1:16b-20 4:18b-22) Not attested D differs
Lk 5:9-11 From now you will catch men ... SLk --- --- Mcg 9:11 D differs
Lk 5:12-14 The Leper TT 1:30-44 8:1-4 Mcg 5:12-14 E: D 5:14 different
Lk 5:15-16 Jesus' fame spreads - again Mk-Lk 2:1b-2 --- Not attested
Lk 5:17 It came to pass ... [generic healings] SLk --- --- Not attested D differs
Lk 5:18-26 The man with the palsy TT 2:3-12 9:2-8 Mcg 5:18-26 // Lk 7:48-49, 11:17a E: 5:24, D,d omit 5:26a
Lk 5:27-32 Publicans and sinners TT 2:14-17 9:9-13 Mcg 5:27-32 // Lk 7:34
Lk 5:33-35 The controversy over fasting TT 2:18-20 9:14-15 Th.104 Mcg 5:33-35 P D,d omit end of 5:33
--- Note: The first mention of John in Mcg is in v. 5:33
Lk 5:36-39 New v.s old TT 2:21-22 9:16-17 Th.104 Mcg 5:36-39 P 5:38-9 D differs
----------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE Luke 6
Lk 6:1-4 Plucking grain on the sabbath TT 2:23-26 12:1-4 Mcg 6:4 E: 6:3-4 D differs
Lk 6:5 Who is the sabbath for? TT 2:27-28 12:5-8 Mcg 6:5 E: 6:5 D addition (after 6:10?)
Lk 6:6-11 The man with the withered hand TT 3:1-6 12:9-14 Mcg 6:6-11 // Lk 14:2-4 D differs
Lk 6:12-16 Choosing the apostles TT 3:13-19 10:1-4 Mcg 6:12-16 E: 6:16 D differs in 14-16
Lk 6:17-19 A great multitude TT 3:7-10 4:25, 12:15 Mch 6:17-19 E: 6:17, 19 D differs in 17-18
****************** Block 2 of the IQP's Q begins at Lk 6:20 and ends at Lk 7:35 *******************
Q 6:20-21 The Beatitudes for the Poor, Hungry, and Mourning DT --- 5:2-4 Th.54 Mcg 6:20-21 E: 6:20 D differs in 21
Q 6:22-23 The Beatitudes for the Persecuted. DT --- 5:11-12 Th.68-69 Mcg 6:22-23
Lk 6:24-26 Woes SLk --- --- Mcg 6:24-26
Q 6:27-28, 35c-d Love Your Enemies DT --- 5:44-45ab Th 95 Mcg 6:27-28, 35bc
Q 6:29-30 Renouncing One's Own Rights (incl SMt 5:41) DT --- 5:39b-42 Th.95 Mcg 6:29-30
Q 6:31 The Golden Rule DT --- 7:12 Th.6 Mcg 6:31
Q 6:32, 34 Impartial Love DT --- 5:46-47 Th.95 Mcg 6:32,34
Lk 6:33, 35 Do good, love Enemies SLk --- -- Th.95 Mcg 6:33(?), 35
Q 6:36 Being Full of Pity like Your Father DT --- 5:48 Th.95 Mcg 6:36
Q 6:37,38b Not Judging (The measure) DT / TT ?? 7:1-2 Th.26 Mcg 6:37-38 // Lk 12:31b
Q 6:39 The Blind Leading the Blind DT --- 15:14 Th.34 Mcg 6:39
Q 6:40 The Disciple and the Teacher DT --- 10:24a, 25a Th.26 Mcg 6:40
Q 6:41-42 The Speck and the Beam DT --- 7:3-5 Th.26 Mcg 6:41-42 Lk harmonized to Mt
Q 6:43-45 The Tree Is Known by its Fruit DT --- 7:18,16,12:35,34b Th.43,5 Mcg 6:43-45
Q 6:46 Not Just Saying Master, Master DT --- 7:21 Mcg 6:46
Q 6:47-49 The Wise and Foolish Builders DT --- 7:24-27 Not attested Byz. Some omit 6:48
--------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE Luke 7
Q 7:1-3 The Centurion's Faith in Jesus' Word (1) DT --- 8:5-6 Mcg 7:2-3
Lk 7:4-5 Seeking Jesus SLk --- --- Not attested
Q 7:6b-10 The Centurion's Faith in Jesus' Word (2) DT --- 8:7-10,13 Mcg 7:7-9 // Lk 8:49
Lk 7:11-17 Raising the widow's son SLk --- --- Mcg 7:11-17
Q 7:19-23 John's Inquiry about the One to Come DT --- 11:2-6 Mcg 7:18-23 E: Reference to John
Q 7:24-28 John — More than a Prophet DT --- 11:7-11 Th.46,78 Mcg 7:24-28 Lk 3:4 //
Q 7:29-30 For and Against John SLk --- --- Th.46 78 Not attested
Q 7:31-35 This Generation and the Children of Wisdom DT --- 11:16-19 Not attested Lk 5:29b-30 // Latin variants
****************** The IQP's Q has no parallels to Lk 7:36 - 9:57a *******************
Lk 7:36-38 The Alabaster Box (1) TT 14:3-9 26:6-13 Mcg 7:36-38 Variants
Lk 7:39-43 The Two Debtors SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 7:44-50 The Alabaster Box (2) SLk --- --- Mcg 7:44-50 Lk 5:20-21 //
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE Luke 8
Lk 8:1 General travel SLk --- --- Not attested // Lk 9:6
Lk 8:2-3 Healed women named SLk --- --- Ev 8:2-3
Lk 8:4-8 The parable of the sower TT 4:1-9 13:1-9 Th.9 Not attested
Lk 8:9-10 The mysteries of the kingdom TT 4:10-12 13:10-15 Th.62 Not attested
Lk 8:11-15 The meaning of the parable TT 4:13-20 13:18-23 Th.9 Mcg 8:11-15
Lk 8:16-18 Candle under a bushel TT 4:21-25 13:12 Th.5.2,6,33,41 Mcg 8:16-18 // Lk 11:33, 12:2-3, 19:26
Lk 8:19 The family of Jesus outside TT 3:31 12:46 Th.99 Not in Mcg Not his mother etc.
Lk 8:20-21 The family of Jesus TT 3:32-35 12:47-50 Th.99 Mcg 8:19-21 // Lk 11:28 E: Thy mother and brethren
Lk 8:22-25 Rebuking the water TT 4:35-41 8:23-27 Mcg 8:22-25
Lk 8:26 General travel TT 5:1 8:28a Not attested // Lk 11:33
Lk 8:27-33 The man who had legion TT 5:2-13 8:28b-32 Mcg 8:28b,30-32
Lk 8:34-39 The reaction from the people TT 5:14-20 8:33-34 Not attested // Lk 12:28b
Lk 8:40 General travel TT 5:21 9:1 Not attested
Lk 8:41-42 The daughter of Jairus (1) TT 5:22-24 9:18-19 Mcg 8:42b attested
Lk 8:43-48 The woman with the flow of blood TT 5:25-34 9:20-22 Mcg 8:43-46.48 attested E: 8:45-46
Lk 8:49-56 The daughter of Jairus (2) TT 5:35-43 9:23-25 Not attested Lk 7:6 //
--------------------- MVG ANALYSIS: SEE Luke 9
Lk 9:1 Jesus calls 12 and gives them power TT 6:7 10:1 Th.14 Mcg 9:1
Lk 9:2 ... to preach the kingdom of God SLk --- --- Mcg 9:2 Overlap // Lk 10:9b
Lk 9:3 ... and to take nothing for the trip Mk-Lk 6:8-9 --- Not attested Overlap // Lk 10:4-9a 12/70 Missions
Lk 9:4 Stay in one place before leaving TT 6:10 10:11 Not attested Overlap // Lk 10:4-9a Ditto
Lk 9:5 Shake off the dust ... TT 6:11 10:14 Mcg 9:5 Overalp // Lk 10:10 Ditto
--- Sodom and Gomorrha Mk-Mt 6:11b 10:15 ---
Llk 9:6 Travelling,.. TT 6:12-13 4:23 Not attested Overlap // Lk 8:1
Lk 9:7 Herod wants to see Jesus TT 6:14 14:1-2 Mcg 9:7 Lk 3:19 // Overlap
Lk 9:8-9a Herod asks who Jesus is Mk-Lk 6:15-16 --- Mcg 9:8 Lk 3:20 // Ditto
Lk 9:9b, Herod wants to see Jesus SLk --- --- Not attested Ditto
Lk 9:10-11 The apostles return and tell Jesus. People follow TT 6:30-34 14:12b-13 Mcg 9:11 D differs
Lk 9:12-17 Feeding the five thousand TT 6:35-45 14:15-22 Mcg 9:12-13, 16-17 attested
********* THE "GREAT OMISSION" (of parallels to Mk 6:46-8:26) IN LUKE 'FITS' HERE **********
Lk 9:18c-22 Questionning of the disciples TT 8:27-31 16:13-16, 20-21 Th.13 Mcg 9:16c-22 Overlap // Lk 17:25 D differs in 20
Lk 9:23 Take up the cross TT 8:34 16:24 Th. 55 Not attested Overlap // Lk 14:27
Lk 9:24 Losing and saving life TT 8:35 16:25 Th.55 Mcg 9:24 Overlap // Lk 17:33
Lk 9:25 How is a man advantaged TT 8:36-37 16:26 Th.101 Not attested
Lk 9:26a For whosever shall be ashamed Mk-Lk 8:38a --- Th.101 Mcg 9:26a Overlap // Lk 12:8-9
Lk 9:26b-27 Some here will not die till they see the kingdom TT 8:38b-9:1 16:27-28 Th.101 Not attested D differs
Lk 9:28-30 Moses and Elias in glory talking with Jesus TT 9:2-4 17:1-3 Mcg 9:28b, 30 attested
Lk 9:31-32 Peter and the others woke and saw them SLk --- --- Mcg 9:31-32
Lk 9:33-36 The voice out of the cloud TT 9:5-8 17:4-5,8-9 Mcg 9:33, 35 D differs in 33
Lk 9:37 Next day many people met them Mk-Lk 9:14-15 --- Not attested
Lk 9:38-39 The lunatik son TT 9:16-18a 17:14-15 Not attested
Lk 9:40-41 The disciples could not cast out the demon TT 9:18b-19 17:16-17 Mcg 9:40-41 E: 9:40-41
Lk 9:42a The spirit/devil Mk-Lk 9:20a --- Not attested
Lk 9:42b Jesus rebuked the spiritand healed the boy TT 9:21-28 17:18-19 Not attested
Lk 9:43 They were all amazed at God's power SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 9:44 The Son of man shall be delivered TT 9:31` 17:22-23 Mcg 9:44
Lk 9:45 The disciples did not understand Mk-Lk 9:32 --- Not attested Overlap // Lk 18:34 D differs
Lk 9:46 Who will be the greatest? TT 9:34 18:1 Th.22 Not attested Overlap // Lk 22:24 D differs
Lk 9:47-48 Receiving children TT 9:35-37 18:2-4 Th.22 Mcg 9:47-48 Overlap // Lk 10-16
Lk 9:49-50 Forbid him not Mk-Lk 9:38-40 --- Not attested Overlap // Lk 11:23
********* START OF LUKE’S GREAT INSERTION / TRAVEL NARRATIVE (Lk 9:51 - 19:48) **********
Lk 9:51-56 Jesus sends messengers ahead SLk --- --- Mcg 9:51-56 Some v. 53 not attested
Lk 9:57a It came to pass (Generic travel) TT 6:45 8:18 Th.86 Not attested
****************** Block 3 of the IQP's Q begins at Lk 9:57b and ends at Lk 17:37 *******************
Q 9:57b-60 Confronting Potential Followers DT --- 8:19-22 Th.86 Mcg 9:57b-60
Lk 9:61-62 I will follow you, but first I have to ... SLk --- --- Th.86 Mcg 9:61-62 D differs in 62
--------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 10
Lk 10:1 Jesus appoints the 70/72 SLk --- --- Mcg 10:1
Q 10:2 Workers for the Harvest DT --- 9:37-38 Th.73,14 Not attested
Q 10:3 Sheep among Wolves DT --- 10:16a Th.73,14 Not attested
Q 10:4 No Provisions DT --- 10:9-10ab Th.73,14 Mcg 10:4 Lk 9:3-4 // Overlap Missions of 12/70
Q 10:5-9 What to Do in Houses and Towns DT --- 10:12,13,10c,11,8,7 Th14.4 Mcg 10:5,7-9 Lk 9:2 // Overlap Ditto
Lk 10:10-11 Response to a Town's Rejection SLk --- --- Mcg 10:10-11 Lk 9:5 // Overlap Ditto
Q 10:12 More tolerable for Sodom ... DT --- 11:24 Mcg 10:12 Ditto D differs
Q 10:13-15 Woes against Galilean Towns DT --- 11:21-23 Not attested Variants in P45, D, Byz
Q 10:16 Whoever Takes You in Takes Me in DT --- 11:40 Mcg 10:16 Lk 9:48 // Overlap (Western addition at end)
Lk 10:17-20 The 70/72 return SLk --- --- Th.3 Mcg 10:17-20
Q 10:21 Thanksgiving that God Reveals Only to Children DT 11:25-26 Th.4,61 Mcg 10:21 (E omits Father (multiple variants)
Lk 10:22a He turned and said ... SLk --- --- Th 61 Not attested 22a not in Byz
Q 10:22b Knowing the Father through the Son DT 11:27 Mcg 10:22b
Q 10:23-24 The Beatitude for the Eyes that See DT 13:16-17 Th.17,38 Mcg 10:23b-24 23a not in D
Lk 10:25-26 A lawyer tempts Jesus SLk --- --- Mcg 10:25-26 Overlap // Lk 18:18
Lk 10:27 Jesus responds TT 12:30-31 22:37-39 Mcg 10:27
Lk 10:28 You are correct SLk --- --- Mcg 10:28
Lk 10:29-37 The man who fell among thieves SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 10:38-42 Martha and Mary SLk --- --- Not attested 10:41b-42a differ in D
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 11
Lk 11:1 Teach us to pray SLk --- --- Th.14? Mcg 11:1
Lk 11:2a When you stand praying ... TT 11:25a 6:9a Th.6 Not attested D differs
Q 11:2b-4 The Lord’s Prayer DT --- 6:9b-12 Th.6 Mcg 11:2b-4 Overlap // Lk 22:42
Lk 5-8 A friend at midnight SLk --- --- Mcg 11:5-8
Q 11:9-13 The Certainty of the Answer to Prayer DT (SLk 11:12) 7:7-11 Th. 2,92,94 Mcg 9-13 E: 11:11-13 10
Q 11:14 Refuting the Beelzebul Accusation (1) DT (SLk 11:15b) 9:32-34: Mcg 11:14 11:11-15
Q 11:15a Casting out devils TT 3:22 9:34 Mcg 11:15a
Lk 11:15b How can Satan cast out Satan? Mk/Lk 3:23 --- Not attested
Q 11:16 Seeking a sign DT --- 12:38 Not attested
Q 11:17a He knew their thoughts and said ... DT --- 12:25a Not attested Lk 5:22 // Overlap
Q 11:17b-20 Refuting the Beelzebul Accusation (2) TT 3:24-26 12:25b-28 Mcg 11:17b-20 Lk 10:25 SLk 11:18b
Q 11:21-22 The Strong Man SLk/TT? 3:27 12:29 Th.21,35 Mcg 11:21-22
Q 11:23 The One not with Me DT --- 12:30 Not attested Lk 9:50b // Overlap Variants in Sy-S, P45
Q 11:24-26 The Return of the Unclean Spirit DT --- 12:43-45 Not attested Variant in Byz
Q 11:27-28 Hearing and Keeping God’s Word? SLk --- --- Th.79 Mcg 11:27-28 Lk 8:21b // Overlap
Q 11:29 An evil generation - no sign given DT --- 12:39a Mcg 11:29 (E - no sign of Jonas
Q 11:30-32 The Sign of Jonah for This Generation DT --- 12:40-41 Jh 1-4 Not in Mcg D differs 31-31, 32 not in D (prob h.t.)
Q 11:33 The Light on the Lampstand DT --- 5:15 Th.24 Mcg 11:33 Lk 8:16 // Overlap
Q 11:34-35 The Jaundiced Eye Darkens the Body's Light DT --- 6:22-23 Th.24 Not attested
Lk 11:36-38 The Pharisee who invited Jesus SLk --- --- Mcg 11 36-38 11:36 not in D
Q 11:39-44 Woes against the Pharisees DT --- 23:25-26b,23,6-7,,27 Th.89 Mcg 11:39-44 D different Lk 20:46 //
Lk 11:45-46a Woe to you lawyers SLk --- --- Not attested
Q 11:46b-48 Woes against the Exegetes of the Law DT --- 23:4, 29-31 Mcg 11:46b-48
Q 11:49-51 Wisdom’s Judgment on This Generation DT --- 23:34-36 Not in Mcg (E: not present
Q 11:52 Not in IQP's Q DT --- 23:13 Th.39,102 Mcg 11:52
Lk 11:53-54 Scribes and pharisees try to trap Jesus SLk --- --- Not attested
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 12
Lk 12:1 Large crowds gather. The leaven SLk --- --- Mcg 12:1
Q 12:2-3 Proclaiming What Was Whispered DT --- 10:26-27 Th.5,33 Mcg 12:2-3 Lk 8:17-18a // Overlap
Q 12:4-5 Not Fearing the Body’s Death DT --- 10:28 Mcg 12:4-5 (E:
Q 12:6-7 More Precious than Many Sparrows DT --- 10:29-31 Not in Ev (E: not present
Q 12:8-9 Confessing or Denying DT --- 10:32-33 Mcg 12:8-9 Lk 9:26 // Overlap (E: Variant
Q 12:10 Speaking against the Holy Spirit DT --- 12:32 Th.44 Mcg 12:10
Q 12:11-12 Hearings before Synagogues TT 13:11 10:19-20 Mcg 12:11-12 Overlap // Lk 21:21:15
Lk 12:13-21 Parable: Laying up treasures SLk --- 12:13-21 Th.63,72,88 Mcg 12:13-21 12:19b, 21 Not in D
Q 12:22b-27 Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies (1) DT --- 6:25-33 Th.36 Mcg 12:22b-27 12:27b different in D
Q 12:28a If God so cloth the grass ... SLk --- 6:30a Th.36 Not in Ev (E: not present
Q 12:28b-31 Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies (2) DT --- 6:30b-33 Th.21 Mcg 12:28b-31 (E: not 12:29?a?
Lk 12:32 Fear not little flock DT --- 6:34 Mcg 12:32 (E:
Q 12:33-34 Storing up Treasures in Heaven DT --- 19:21,6:20-21 Th.76 Not attested
Lk 12:35-38 The parable of the wakeful servants SLk -- ---- Mcg 12:25-28 Lk 8:35a // (Overlap (E:
Q 12:39-40 The thief in the night DT --- 24:43-44 Th.103 Mcg 12:39-40 Overlap // Lk 21:36 Wst-non, not f1
Lk 12:41 Is that for us, or all? SLk --- --- Mcg 12:41 D differs
Q 12:42-46 The Faithful or Unfaithful Slave DT --- 24:45-51 Mcg 12:42-46
Lk 12:47-48 The servant who knew his mater's will SLk --- --- Mcg 12:47-48
Lk 12:49-50 Fire on earth SLk --- --- Th.10 Mcg 12:49-50
Q 12:51-53 Children against Parents DT (52 SLk) 10:34-35 Th.16 Ncg 12:51-53 Overlap // Lk 21:16
Q 12:54-56‚ Judging the Time (Dubious: Several MT mss omit) DT --- 16:2-3 Th.91 Mcg 12:56 only
Lk 12:57 Even you don't judge what is right SLk --- --- Mcg 12:57
Q 12:58-59 Settling out of Court DT --- 5:25-26 Mcg 12:58-59
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 13
Lk 13:1-9 The Gaileans and those in Siloam SLk --- --- Not in Mcg (E:
Lk 13:10-17 Jesis heals on the Sabbeth SLk --- --- Mcg 13:10-17
Q 13:18-19 The Parable of the Mustard Seed TT 4:30-32 13:31-32 Th.20 Mcg 13:18-19 Overlap
Q 13:20-21 The Parable of the Yeast DT --- 13:33 Th.96 Mcg 13:20-21
Lk 13:22 Travel - going through cities and villages DT 6:6b? 9:35 Th.36 Not attested Lk 4:44 // Overlap
Lk 13:23 Can only few be saved? DT --- --- Th.36 Not attested
Q 13:24 The Straight Gate DT --- 7:13-14 Th.36 Not attested
Q 13:25-27 The Master of the Huse DT 7:22-23 Th.36 Mcg 13:25-27
Q 13:28-29 Replaced by People from East and West DT 8:12, 11 Th.36 Different in Mcg (E: Scholion 41a
Q 13:30 The Reversal of the Last and the First‚ DT 20:16 Th.4 Different in Mcg (E: Scholion 41a Overlap
Lk 13:31-33 It can't be that I die outside outside Jerusalem SLk --- --- Not in Mcg (E: Scholion 41b
Q 13:34-35 Lament over Jerusalem DT 23:37-39 Not in Mcg (E: Scholion 41b
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 14
Lk 14:1-4 The animal in the pit SLk --- --- Not attested Lk 6:6b-11 // Overlap
Lk 14:5 Ditto DT --- 12:11 Not attested
Lk 14:6-10 Highest and lowest rooms SLk --- --- Not attested
Q 14:11 The Exalted Humbled and the Humble Exalted‚ DT --- 23:12 Not attested
Lk 14:12-15 The resurrection of the just SLk --- --- Th.64 Mcg 14:12-15
Q 14:16-21, 23 Invited Dinner Guests DT --- 22:1-5, 8-10 Th.64 Mcg 14:16-21,22(?),23 Parable
Lk 14:24-25 SLk --- --- Th.64 Not attested
Q 14:26 Hating One’s Family DT --- 10:37 Th.55 Not attested Overlap // Lk 18:29b
Q 14:27 Taking One’s Cross DT --- 10:38 Th.55 Mcg 14:27 Lk 9:23b // Overlap
Lk 14:28-33 Building a tower, waring king SLk --- --- Th.55,98 Not attested
Q 14:34-35 Insipid Salt DT 5:13bc Th.8 Not attested Overlap
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 15
Lk 15:1-2 Publicans and sinners SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 15:3 ... and he said SLk --- --- Th.107 Not attested
Q 15:4-7 The Lost Sheep DT --- 18:12-13 Th.107 Mcg 15:4-7
Q 15:8-10 The Lost Coin SLk --- --- Mcg 15:8-10
Lk 15:11-32 The prodigal son (Parable) SLk --- --- Not in Mcg (E: Scholion 42
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 16
Lk 16:1-8 The unrighteous steward SLk --- --- Mcg 16:1-8
Lk 16:9-12 The mammon of unrighteousness SLk --- --- Th.47 Mcg 16:9-12 T: v. 12 Different?
Q 16:13 God or Mammon DT --- 6:24 Th.47 Mcg 16:13 Only some?
Lk 16:14-15 You are an abomination SLk --- --- Mcg 16:14-15
Q 16:16 The law and the prophets DT --- 11:12-13 Th.11,111 Mcg 16:16
Q 16:17 One tittle of the Law to Fall DT --- 5:18 Th.11,111 Mcg 16:17 Overlap // Lk 21:33
Q 16:18 Divorce Leading to Adultery DT --- 5:32 Mcg 16:18 Overlap
Lk 16:19-31 The rich man and lazarus SLk --- --- Mcg 16:19-31 (E: Scholion 46
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 17, 4:27
Lk 17:1-2 Wow to him through whom offenses occur TT 9:42 18:7, 6 Mcg 17:2 Overlap
Q 17:3-4 Forgiving a Sinning Brother Repeatedly DT --- 18:15, 21-22 Mcg 17:3-4
Q 17:5-6 Faith Like a Mustard Seed DT --- 17:20 Th.48,106 Not attested Overlap
Lk 17:7-9 The parable of the unforgiving servant SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 17:10 The parable of the unforgiving servant SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E: Scholion 47
Lk 17:11-19 The healing of the ten lepers SLk --- --- Mcg 17:11-19 Overlap // Lk 18:42 (E: Scholion 48 Different
Q 17:20-21 The Kingdom of God within You‚ SLk --- --- Th.3,51,113 Mcg 17:20-21
Lk 17:22 The days will come ... SLk --- --- Th.38 Mcg 17:22
Q 17:23-24 The Son of Humanity Like Lightning DT --- 24:26-27 Th.113 Not attested (Multiple variants) Overlap
Lk 17:25 He must suffer many things and be rejected DT 17:23 Th.101 Mcg 17:25 Lk 9:22 // Overlap
Q 17:26-27, ?28-29 (SLk)?, 30 As in the Days of Noah DT 24:37-39 Th.101 Mcg 17:26-29
Lk 17:31-32 No going back TT 13:15-16 24:17-18 Th.101 Mcg 17:32 Overlap // Lk 21:21
Q 17:33 Saving and Losing Life DT 10:39 Th.101 Not attested Lk 9:24 // Overlap
Q 17:34-35, ?36? One Taken, One Left DT 24:41,40 Not attested (17:36 likely not original)
Q 17:37 Vultures around a Corpse DT 24:28 Th.56,80 Not attested
****************** Block 3 of the IQP's Q ends at Lk 17:37 *******************
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 18
Lk 18:1-19 The unrighteous Judge SLk --- --- Mcg 18:1-9
Lk 18:10-14 Pharisee and Tax Collector SLk --- --- Mcg 18:10-14
Lk 18:15-22 Suffer the little children TT 10:13-21 19:13-21 Th.22,46 Mcg 18:15-22 Lk 10:25 // Overlap (E: Different
Lk 18:23-25 Camels and rich men TT 10:22-25 19:22-24 Th. 81 Not attested
Lk 18:26-30 Who can be saved? TT 10:26-31 19:22-30 Mcg 18:26-30 Lk 14:26 // Overlap (18:27 attested)
Lk 18:31-34 The 3rd passion prediction TT 10:32-34 20:17-19 Not in Mcg Lk 9:45 // Overlap (E)
Lk 18:35-43 The blind man healed TT 10:46-47 20:29-34 Mcg 35b-43 Lk 17:17 // Overlap
****************** Block 4 of the IQP's Q is at Lk 19:12-26 *******************
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 19
Lk 19:1-11 The conversion of Zacchaeus SLk --- --- Mcg 19:1-11
Q 19:12-13 The Parable of the Entrusted Money (Pt 1) DT --- 25:14 Mcg 19:12-13
Lk 19:14 The citizens hated him SLk --- --- Not attested
Q 19:15-24, 26 The Parable of the Entrusted Money (Pt 2a) DT --- 25:19-26 Mcg 19:15-24 19:24-25 not in D
Lk 19:25 He has ten pounds SLk --- --- Not attested
Q 19:26 The Parable of the Entrusted Money (Pt 2b) DT --- 25:19-28 Th.41 Mcg 19:26 Lk 8:18b // Overlap
****************** The IQP's Q ends here, except for Lk 22:28-30 *******************
Lk 19:27-28 My enemies, Going up to Jerusalem DT --- 25:30 Not attested D different
Lk 19:29-36 The triumphal entry (Pt1) TT 11:1-8 21:1-8 Not in Mcg (E: 19:32-33 not in D
Lk 19:37-40 The triumphal entry (Pt2) TT 11:9-10 21:9 Not attested Many variants in 19:38
Lk 19:41-44 Weeping over Jerusalem SLk --- --- Not in Mcg Overlap // Lk 21:6 (E:
Lk 19:45-46 The moneychangers TT 11:5b-17 21:12-13 Not in Mcg (E:
Lk 19:47-48 Teaching in the temple TT 11:18 21:14-16 Not attested
********* END OF LUKE’S GREAT INSERTION / TRAVEL NARRATIVE (Lk 9:51 - 19:48) **********
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 20
Lk 20:1-8 Jesus' authority challenged TT 11:27-33 21:23-27 Mcg 20:1-8
Lk 20:9-18 The parable of the husbandmen TT 12:1-11 21:33-44 Th.65-66 Not in Mcg (E: Scholion 55
Lk 20:19-26 The tribute to Caesar TT 12:12-17 22:15-22 Th.100 In Mcg D different Lk 17:31-22 // Overlap
Lk 20:27-36 Sadducees and the resurrection TT 12:18-25 22:23-30 Th.13 In Mcg
Lk 20:37-38 Now, that the dead are raised ... TT 12:26-27 22:31-34 Not in Mcg (E: Scholia 56,57
Lk 20:39-40 Well said Mk-Lk 12:32-34 --- In Mcg
Lk 20:41-44 The question about David's son TT 12:35-37 22:41-45 In Mcg
Lk 20:45-47 Chief seats and upper rooms TT 12:38-40 23:1, 5-7,14 Not attested Lk 11:4b,43 // Overlap
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 21
Lk 21:1-4 The Widow's offering Mk-Lk 12:41-44 --- Not attested
Lk 21:5-11 Signs of the end times TT 13:1-8 24:1-9: In Mcg Lk 19:43-44 // Overlap
Lk 21:12-17 Delivered up TT 13:9-13a 10:17-22 In Mcg Lk 12:11-12 // (E: Not 22:16
Lk 21:18 ...not one hair of your head ... SLk --- --- Not in Mcg (E: Scholion 58
Lk 21:19-20 The abomination of desolation TT 13:13b-14a 24:15 In Mcg Lk 12:53 // Overlap
Lk 21:21-22 The days of vengeance TT 13:14b-16 24:16-18 Not in Mcg (E: Scholion 59
Lk 21:23-24 ... all things fulfilled ... TT 13:17-20 24:19-22 Not in Mcg Lk 9:46 // Overlap (E: Scholion 59
Lk 21:25-28 False Christs, signs of the end TT 13:24-27 24:24-31 In Mcg (E: Not 25-27
Lk 21:29-33 The fig tree TT 13:28-31 24:32-35 Th.11,111 In Mcg Lk 16:17 // Overlap
Lk 21:34-35 The day and the hour SLk --- --- Th.28 In Mcg
Lk 21:36 Watch therefore TT 13:35-37 25:13 Th.28 Not attested Lk 12:40 // Overlap
Lk 21:37-38 Teaching in the temple SLk --- --- In Mcg
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 22
Lk 22:1-6 The plot to kill Jesus TT 14:1-11 26:2-5,14-16 In Mcg D different
Lk 22:7-14 The passover TT 14:12-17 26:17-20 In Mcg (E:
Lk 22:15 I desire to eat passover with you SLk --- --- In Mcg
Lk 22:16 Ditto SLk --- --- Not in Mcg (E:
Lk 22:17-20 Bread and cup TT 14:22-25 26:26-29 In Mcg 19b-20 Not in D
Lk 22:21-23 One of you will betray me TT 14:20-22 26:23-25 In Mcg D different Lk 11:2b, 17:1 // Overlap
Lk 22:24-27 Who will be the greatest? TT 10:42-44 20:25-27 Th.12 Not attested Lk 9:46 //
****************** The IQP's Q ends here with Lk 22:28-30 *******************
Q 22:28-30 You Will Judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel DT --- 19:28 Not attested D different Lk 9:12a // Overlap
Lk 22:31-34 Simon and Satan. Simon protests SLk --- --- In Mcg
Lk 22:35-38 Two swords SLk --- --- Not in Mcg (E:
Lk 22:39 Gethsemane TT 14:26 26:30 Not attested
Lk 22:40 Gethsemane SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 22:41-42 Jesus prays TT 14:35-36 26:29 In Mcg
Lk 22:43-44 The angel, sweat like blood (Not in P69,75) SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 22:45-46 Jesus wakes up the disciples TT 14:37-38 26:40-41 Not attested Lk 11:4b // Overlap
Lk 22:47-48 Betrayed with a kiss TT 14:43-45 26:47,49-50 In Mcg
Lk 22:49-50 Cutting off the servants ear TT 14:47 26:51 Not in Mcg (E:
Lk 22:51 Healing the servants ear (in some mss) DT --- 26:52 Not in Mcg (E:
Lk 22:52-55 Peter at the fire TT 14:48-54 26:55-58 Not attested
Lk 22:56-57 Peter's denial TT 14:66-68a 26:69-70 In Mcg
Lk 22:58-62 The cock crow TT 14:69-72 26:71-75 Not attested 22:62 Not in D, it
Lk 22:63-71 Jesus before Pontius Pilate TT 14:60-65 26:62-68 In Mcg
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 23
Lk 23:1 Jesus taken to Pilate TT 15:1 27:1-2 In Mcg
Lk 23:2 Jesus accused SLk --- --- In Mcg (E:
Lk 23:3 Are you the king of the Jews? TT 15:2 27:11 In Mcg
Lk 23:4-8 Jesus taken to Herod SLk --- --- In Mcg D different
Lk 23:9 Herod questions Jesus, who says nothing TT 15:3-5 27:12-14 In Mcg
Lk 23:10 The priests and scribes accuse Jesus SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 23:11-16 Jesus sent back to Pilate SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 23:17 ... but Pilate must relase someone TT 15:6 27:15 Not attested
Lk 23:18-25 Pilate releases Barabbas instead of Jesus TT 15:11-15 27:22-26 In Mcg
Lk 23:26 Simon carries Jesus' cross TT 15:20-21 27:31-32 Not attested
Lk 23:27-31 The lamenting women SLk --- --- Th.79 Not attested
Lk 23:32-35 Jesus and the others are crucfied TT 15:22-24 27:33-36 In Mcg
Lk 23:36-38 They mocked him TT 15:25,28 27:48,37 Not attested
Lk 23:39a They railed on Jesus TT --- --- Not attested
Lk 23:39b-42 The repentant thief SLk --- --- Not attested D different
Lk 23:43 Jesus speaks to the thief SLk --- -- Not in Mcg (E:
Lk 23:44-46 The death of Jesus TT 15:33-37 27:45-50 In Mcg (E:
--- The zombie pericope --- --- 27:51b-53 ---
Lk 23:47-49 The centurion and the women followers TT 15:39-41 27:54-56 Not attested
Lk 23:50-53 Joseph requests the body of Jesus TT 15:43-46 27:57b-60 In Mcg (E:
Lk 23:54-56 The women came, then returned and rested TT 15:47 27:61 In Mcg (E: D different
-------------------- MCG ANALYSIS: SEE LUKE 24
Lk 24:1 On the first day of the week ... TT 16:2-3 28:1b In Mcg
Lk 24:2-4a they came to the sepulchre ... Mk-Lk 16:4-5a --- In Mcg 24:3b Not in D
Lk 24:4b-6 two men stood there ... saying he is risen TT 16:5cd 28:3-6 In Mcg 24:6a Not in D
Lk 24:7 The SoM must be delivered and rise again Mt-Lk --- 28:7c In Mcg (E: D different
Lk 24:8-9 They remembered the words and returned TT 16:8 28:8 Not attested 24:9 (middle) Not in D
Lk 24:10-11 The apostles did not believe them Mk-Lk 16:10-11 --- Not attested
Lk 24:12 Peter came saw the clothes SLk --- --- In Mcg 24:12 Not in D, it
Lk 24:13-14 Two of them went to Emmaus SLk --- --- In Mcg
Lk 24:15 Jesus came and went with them TT 16:12a 28:9a In Mcg
Lk 24:16-26 They talked with to Jesus SLk --- --- In Mcg D different
Lk 24:27-31 From Moses he told them all about himself SLk --- --- In Mcg Lk 9:12a // Overlap (E:
Lk 24:32-35 They returnd to Jerusalem SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 24:36-37 Jesus appeared and blessed them DT --- 28:17 In Mcg 24:36b Not in D, it
Lk 24:38-45 Why are you troubled? It's me. I told you. SLk --- --- In Mcg 24:40 Not in D, it
Lk 24:46-49a You are all witnesses to these things TT 16:16 28:18-19 In Mcg D different
Lk 24;49b-50 Tell people. Begin at Jerusalem SLk --- --- Not attested D different
Lk 24:51-53 Jesus was carried up, and they worshiped him. Mk-Lk 16:19-20 --- Not attested 23:51-52a Not in D, it
Verses in the IQP's Q known to have not been in Mcg, but with OT predecessors
TYPE MK MT Th Notes
Q 3:2b, 3 The Introduction of John TT 1:4 3:1b
Q 3:7-9 John's Announcement of Judgment DT --- 3:7-10 D different in 7
Q 3:16b-17 John and the One to Come DT --- 3:11-12 D different in 16b
Q 3:21-22 The Baptism of Jesus TT 1:9-10 3:16-17 D different in 22
(8 verses - 3%)
Q 4:1-2a, 3-4, 9-12, 5-8,13 The Temptations (In Mt order) DT --- 4:1-4, 5-7, 8-10, 11
(12.5 verses - 4.6%)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q 11:30-32 The Sign of Jonah for This Generation DT --- 12:40-41 D different in 30. 32 not in D (prob h.t.)
Q 11:49-51 Wisdom’s Judgment on This Generation DT --- 23:34-36 (E: not present
Q 12:6-7 More Precious than Many Sparrows DT --- 10:29-31 (E: not present
Q 12:28a If God so cloth the grass ... SLk --- 6:30a Th 36 (E: not present
Q 13:30 The Reversal of the Last and the First‚ DT 20:16 Th 4 (E: not present
Q 13:34-35 Lament over Jerusalem DT 23:37-39 Psa 118:26
(11.5 verses - 4.3%)
Lukan Sondergut Pericopes
TYPE MK MT Other MCG Notes
Lk 3:5-6 Valleys, mountains, all flesh SLk --- --- Isa 40:4-5 N/A
Lk 3:10-15 What shall we do to be saved? Is he it? SLk --- --- N/A D differs
Lk 3:18-20 SLk --- --- N/A // Lk 9:7-9
Lk 3:23-38 The Genealogy SLk --- --- N/A
Lk 4:14-15 Popular teaching SLk (1:14b) (4:12b) Not in Ev // Lk 4:37
Lk 4:16b-17 Entering the synagogue in Nazareth SLk --- --- Ev 4:16b-17 Probably only v. 16a
Lk 4:18-24 No new preaching SLk --- (Not 13:54-58) Th.31 Ev 4:18-24 Probably only vv. 23-24
Lk 4:25-30 Widows, many lepers, Jesus rejected SLk --- --- Ev 4:25-30 Probably only vv. 28-30
Lk 5:1-3 It came to pass ... SLk? (1:16a 4:18a) Ev 5:1-3
Lk 5:9-11 From now you will catch men ... SLk --- --- Ev 9:11 D differs
Lk 5:17 It came to pass ... [generic healings] SLk --- --- Not attested D differs
Lk 6:24-26 Woes SLk --- --- Ev 6:24-26
Lk 6:33, 35 Do good, love Enemies SLk --- -- Th.95 Ev 6:33(?), 35
Lk 7:39-43 The Two Debtors SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 7:44-50 The Alabaster Box (2) SLk --- --- Ev 7:44-50 Lk 5:20-21 //
Lk 8:1 General travel SLk --- --- Not attested // Lk 9:6
Lk 8:2-3 Healed women named SLk --- --- Ev 8:2-3
Lk 9:2 ... to preach the kingdom of God SLk --- --- Ev 9:2 // Lk 10:9b
Lk 9:9b, Herod wants to see Jesus SLk --- --- Not attested Ditto
Lk 9:31-32 Peter and the others woke and saw them SLk --- --- Ev 9:31-32
Lk 9:51-56 Jesus sends messengers ahead SLk --- --- Ev 9:51-56 Some v. 53 not attested
Lk 9:61-62 I will follow you, but first I have to ... SLk --- --- Th.86 Ev 9:61-62 D differs in 62
Lk 10:1 Jesus appoints the 70/72 SLk --- --- Ev 10:1
Lk 10:10-11 Response to a Town's Rejection SLk --- --- Ev 10:10-11 Lk 9:5 // Ditto
Lk 10:17-20 The 70/72 return SLk --- --- Th.3 Ev 10:17-20
Lk 10:22a He turned and said ... SLk --- --- Th 61 Not attested 22a not in Byz
Lk 10:25-26 A lawyer tempts Jesus SLk --- --- Ev 10:25-26 // Lk 18:18
Lk 10:28 You are correct SLk --- --- Ev 10:28
Lk 10:29-37 The man who fell among thieves SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 10:38-42 Martha and Mary SLk --- --- Not attested 10:41b-42a differ in D
Lk 11:1 Teach us to pray SLk --- --- Th.14? Ev 11:1
Lk 5-8 A friend at midnight SLk --- --- Ev 11:5-8
Lk 11:36-38 The Pharisee who invited Jesus SLk --- --- Ev 11 36-38 11:36 not in D
Lk 11:45-46a Woe to you lawyers SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 11:53-54 Scribes and pharisees try to trap Jesus SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 12:1 Large crowds gather. The leaven SLk --- --- Ev 12:1
Lk 12:13-21 Parable: Laying up treasures SLk --- 12:13-21 Th.63,72,88 Ev 12:13-21 12:19b, 21 Not in D
Lk 12:35-38 The parable of the wakeful servants SLk -- ---- Ev 12:25-28 Lk 8:35a // (E:
Lk 12:41 Is that for us, or all? SLk --- --- Ev 12:41 D differs
Lk 12:47-48 The servant who knew his mater's will SLk --- --- Ev 12:47-48
Lk 12:49-50 Fire on earth SLk --- --- Th.10 Ev 12:49-50
Lk 12:57 Even you don't judge what is right SLk --- --- Ev 12:57
Lk 13:1-9 The Gaileans and those in Siloam SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E:
Lk 13:10-17 Jesis heals on the Sabbeth SLk --- --- Ev 13:10-17
Lk 13:31-33 It can't be that I die outside outside Jerusalem SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E: Scholion 41b
Lk 14:1-4 The animal in the pit SLk --- --- Not attested Lk 6:6b-11 //
Lk 14:6-10 Highest and lowest rooms SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 14:12-15 The resurrection of the just SLk --- --- Th.64 Ev 14:12-15
Lk 14:24-25 SLk --- --- Th.64 Not attested
Lk 14:28-33 Building a tower, waring king SLk --- --- Th.55,98 Not attested
Lk 15:1-2 Publicans and sinners SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 15:3 ... and he said SLk --- --- Th.107 Not attested
Lk 15:11-32 The prodigal son (Parable) SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E: Scholion 42
Lk 16:1-8 The unrighteous steward SLk --- --- Ev 16:1-8
Lk 16:9-12 The mammon of unrighteousness SLk --- --- Th.47 Ev 16:9-12 T: v. 12 Different?
Lk 16:14-15 You are an abomination SLk --- --- Ev 16:14-15
Lk 16:19-31 The rich man and lazarus SLk --- --- Ev 16:19-31 (E: Scholion 46
Lk 17:7-9 The parable of the unforgiving servant SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 17:10 The parable of the unforgiving servant SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E: Scholion 47
Lk 17:11-19 The healing of the ten lepers SLk --- --- Ev 17:11-19 // Lk 18:42 (E: Scholion 48 Different
Lk 17:22 The days will come ... SLk --- --- Th.38 Ev 17:22
Lk 18:1-19 The unrighteous Judge SLk --- --- Ev 18:1-9
Lk 18:10-14 Pharisee and Tax Collector SLk --- --- Ev 18:10-14
Lk 19:1-11 The conversion of Zacchaeus SLk --- --- Ev 19:1-11
Lk 19:14 The citizens hated him SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 19:25 He has ten pounds SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 21:18 ...not one hair of your head ... SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E: Scholion 58
Lk 21:34-35 The day and the hour SLk --- --- Th.28 In Ev
Lk 21:37-38 Teaching in the temple SLk --- --- In Ev
Lk 22:15 I desire to eat passover with you SLk --- --- In Ev
Lk 22:16 Ditto SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E:
Lk 22:31-34 Simon and Satan. Simon protests SLk --- --- In Ev
Lk 22:35-38 Two swords SLk --- --- Not in Ev (E:
Lk 22:40 Gethsemane SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 22:43-44 The angel, sweat like blood (Not in P69,75) SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 23:2 Jesus accused SLk --- --- In Ev (E:
Lk 23:4-8 Jesus taken to Herod SLk --- --- In Ev D different
Lk 23:10 The priests and scribes accuse Jesus SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 23:11-16 Jesus sent back to Pilate SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 23:27-31 The lamenting women SLk --- --- Th.79 Not attested
Lk 23:39b-42 The repentant thief SLk --- --- Not attested D different
Lk 23:43 Jesus speaks to the thief SLk --- -- Not in Ev (E:
Lk 24:12 Peter came saw the clothes SLk --- --- In Ev 24:12 Not in D, it
Lk 24:13-14 Two of them went to Emmaus SLk --- --- In Ev
Lk 24:16-26 They talked with to Jesus SLk --- --- In Ev D different
Lk 24:27-31 From Moses he told them all about himself SLk --- --- In Ev Lk 9:12a // (E:
Lk 24:32-35 They returnd to Jerusalem SLk --- --- Not attested
Lk 24:38-45 Why are you troubled? It's me. I told you. SLk --- --- In Ev 24:40 Not in D, it
Lk 24;49b-50 Tell people. Begin at Jerusalem SLk --- --- Not attested D different
Q Pericopes, Per the IQP
****************** Section 1 of Q (per the IQP) begins at Lk 3:2b and ends at Lk 4:16a *******************
Q 3:0 Incipit‚ ??
Q 3:2b, 3 The Introduction of John TT 1:4 3:1b --- N/A D, it differ
Q 3:7-9 John's Announcement of Judgment DT --- 3:7-10 Jer 11:16 N/A D, it differ
Q 3:17 Burning the chaff with unquenchable fire DT [9:48] 3:11-12 Isa 66:24 IQP wrong here Jer 17:27
Q 3:21-22 The Baptism of Jesus TT 1:9-10 3:16-17 N/A D, it differ
Q 4:2-4, 9-12, 5-8, 13 The Temptations (In Mt order) DT --- 4:2b-4, 5-7, 8-10, 11 Not in Mcg
Q 4:16a Nazara? SLk --- --- Mcg 4:16a D differs
***************** The IQP's Q has no parallels to Lk 4:16b - 6:19 *******************
****************** Section 2 of the IQP's Q begins at Lk 6:20 and ends at Lk 7:35 *******************
Q 6:20-21 The Beatitudes for the Poor, Hungry, and Mourning DT --- 5:2-4 Th.54 Mcg 6:20-21 E: 6:20 D differs in 21
Q 6:22-23 The Beatitudes for the Persecuted. DT --- 5:11-12 Th.68-69 Mcg 6:22-23
Q 6:27-28, 35c-d Love Your Enemies DT --- 5:44-45ab Th 95 Mcg 6:27-28, 35bc
Q 6:29-30 Renouncing One's Own Rights (incl SMt 5:41) DT --- 5:39b-42 Th.95 Mcg 6:29-30
Q 6:31 The Golden Rule DT --- 7:12 Th.6 Mcg 6:31
Q 6:32, 34 Impartial Love DT --- 5:46-47 Th.95 Mcg 6:32,34
Q 6:36 Being Full of Pity like Your Father DT --- 5:48 Th.95 Mcg 6:36
Q 6:37,38b Not Judging (The measure) DT / TT ?? 7:1-2 Th.26 Mcg 6:37-38 // Lk 12:31b
Q 6:39 The Blind Leading the Blind DT --- 15:14 Th.34 Mcg 6:39
Q 6:40 The Disciple and the Teacher DT --- 10:24a, 25a Th.26 Mcg 6:40
Q 6:41-42 The Speck and the Beam DT --- 7:3-5 Th.26 Mcg 6:41-42 Lk harmonized to Mt
Q 6:43-45 The Tree Is Known by its Fruit DT --- 7:18,16,12:35,34b Th.43,5 Mcg 6:43-45
Q 6:46 Not Just Saying Master, Master DT --- 7:21 Mcg 6:46
Q 6:47-49 The Wise and Foolish Builders DT --- 7:24-27 Not attested Byz. Some omit 6:48
Q 7:1-3 The Centurion's Faith in Jesus' Word (1) DT --- 8:5-6 Mcg 7:2-3
Q 7:6b-10 The Centurion's Faith in Jesus' Word (2) DT --- 8:7-10,13 Mcg 7:7-9 // Lk 8:49
Q 7:19-23 John's Inquiry about the One to Come DT --- 11:2-6 Mcg 7:18-23 E: Reference to John
Q 7:24-28 John — More than a Prophet DT --- 11:7-11 Th.46,78 Mcg 7:24-28 Lk 3:4 //
Q 7:29-30 For and Against John SLk --- --- Th.46 78 Not attested
Q 7:31-35 This Generation and the Children of Wisdom DT --- 11:16-19 Not attested Lk 5:29b-30 // Latin variants
****************** The IQP's Q has no parallels to Lk 7:36 - 9:57a *******************
********* START OF LUKE’S GREAT INSERTION / TRAVEL NARRATIVE (Lk 9:51 - 19:48) **********
****************** Section 3 of the IQP's Q begins at Lk 9:57b and ends at Lk 17:37 *******************
Q 9:57b-60 Confronting Potential Followers DT --- 8:19-22 Th.86 Mcg 9:57b-60
Q 10:2 Workers for the Harvest DT --- 9:37-38 Th.73,14 Not attested
Q 10:3 Sheep among Wolves DT --- 10:16a Th.73,14 Not attested
Q 10:4 No Provisions DT --- 10:9-10ab Th.73,14 Mcg 10:4 Lk 9:3-4 // Overlap Missions of 12/70
Q 10:5-9 What to Do in Houses and Towns DT --- 10:12,13,10c,11,8,7 Th14.4 Mcg 10:5,7-9 Lk 9:2 // Overlap Ditto
Q 10:12 More tolerable for Sodom ... DT --- 11:24 Mcg 10:12 Ditto D differs
Q 10:13-15 Woes against Galilean Towns DT --- 11:21-23 Not attested Variants in P45, D, Byz
Q 10:16 Whoever Takes You in Takes Me in DT --- 11:40 Mcg 10:16 Lk 9:48 // Overlap (Western addition at end)
Q 10:21 Thanksgiving that God Reveals Only to Children DT 11:25-26 Th.4,61 Mcg 10:21 (E omits Father (multiple variants)
Q 10:22b Knowing the Father through the Son DT 11:27 Mcg 10:22b
Q 10:23-24 The Beatitude for the Eyes that See DT 13:16-17 Th.17,38 Mcg 10:23b-24 23a not in D
Q 11:2b-4 The Lord’s Prayer DT --- 6:9b-12 Th.6 Mcg 11:2b-4 Overlap // Lk 22:42
Q 11:9-13 The Certainty of the Answer to Prayer DT (SLk 11:12) 7:7-11 Th. 2,92,94 Mcg 9-13 E: 11:11-13 10
Q 11:14 Refuting the Beelzebul Accusation (1) DT (SLk 11:15b) 9:32-34: Mcg 11:14 11:11-15
Q 11:15a Casting out devils TT 3:22 9:34 Mcg 11:15a
Q 11:16 Seeking a sign DT --- 12:38 Not attested
Q 11:17a He knew their thoughts and said ... DT --- 12:25a Not attested Lk 5:22 // Overlap
Q 11:17b-20 Refuting the Beelzebul Accusation (2) TT 3:24-26 12:25b-28 Mcg 11:17b-20 Lk 10:25 SLk 11:18b
Q 11:21-22 The Strong Man SLk/TT? 3:27 12:29 Th.21,35 Mcg 11:21-22
Q 11:23 The One not with Me DT --- 12:30 Not attested Lk 9:50b // Overlap Variants in Sy-S, P45
Q 11:24-26 The Return of the Unclean Spirit DT --- 12:43-45 Not attested Variant in Byz
Q 11:27-28 Hearing and Keeping God’s Word? SLk --- --- Th.79 Mcg 11:27-28 Lk 8:21b // Overlap
Q 11:29 An evil generation - no sign given DT --- 12:39a Mcg 11:29 (E - no sign of Jonas
Q 11:30-32 The Sign of Jonah for This Generation DT --- 12:40-41 Jh 1-4 Not in Mcg D differs 31-31, 32 not in D (prob h.t.)
Q 11:33 The Light on the Lampstand DT --- 5:15 Th.24 Mcg 11:33 Lk 8:16 // Overlap
Q 11:34-35 The Jaundiced Eye Darkens the Body's Light DT --- 6:22-23 Th.24 Not attested
Q 11:39-44 Woes against the Pharisees DT --- 23:25-26b,23,6-7,,27 Th.89 Mcg 11:39-44 D different Lk 20:46 //
Q 11:46b-48 Woes against the Exegetes of the Law DT --- 23:4, 29-31 Mcg 11:46b-48
Q 11:49-51 Wisdom’s Judgment on This Generation DT --- 23:34-36 Not in Mcg (E: not present
Q 12:2-3 Proclaiming What Was Whispered DT --- 10:26-27 Th.5,33 Mcg 12:2-3 Lk 8:17-18a // Overlap
Q 12:4-5 Not Fearing the Body’s Death DT --- 10:28 Mcg 12:4-5 (E:
Q 12:6-7 More Precious than Many Sparrows DT --- 10:29-31 Not in Ev (E: not present
Q 12:8-9 Confessing or Denying DT --- 10:32-33 Mcg 12:8-9 Lk 9:26 // Overlap (E: Variant
Q 12:10 Speaking against the Holy Spirit DT --- 12:32 Th.44 Mcg 12:10
Q 12:11-12 Hearings before Synagogues TT 13:11 10:19-20 Mcg 12:11-12 Overlap // Lk 21:21:15
Q 12:22b-27 Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies (1) DT --- 6:25-33 Th.36 Mcg 12:22b-27 12:27b different in D
Q 12:28a If God so cloth the grass ... SLk --- 6:30a Th.36 Not in Ev (E: not present
Q 12:28b-31 Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies (2) DT --- 6:30b-33 Th.21 Mcg 12:28b-31 (E: not 12:29?a?
Q 12:33-34 Storing up Treasures in Heaven DT --- 19:21,6:20-21 Th.76 Not attested
Q 12:39-40 The thief in the night DT --- 24:43-44 Th.103 Mcg 12:39-40 Overlap // Lk 21:36 Wst-non, not f1
Q 12:42-46 The Faithful or Unfaithful Slave DT --- 24:45-51 Mcg 12:42-46
Q 12:51-53 Children against Parents DT (52 SLk) 10:34-35 Th.16 Ncg 12:51-53 Overlap // Lk 21:16
Q 12:54-56‚ Judging the Time (Dubious: Several MT mss omit) DT --- 16:2-3 Th.91 Mcg 12:56 only
Q 12:58-59 Settling out of Court DT --- 5:25-26 Mcg 12:58-59
Q 13:18-19 The Parable of the Mustard Seed TT 4:30-32 13:31-32 Th.20 Mcg 13:18-19 Overlap
Q 13:20-21 The Parable of the Yeast DT --- 13:33 Th.96 Mcg 13:20-21
Q 13:24 The Straight Gate DT --- 7:13-14 Th.36 Not attested
Q 13:25-27 The Master of the Huse DT 7:22-23 Th.36 Mcg 13:25-27
Q 13:28-29 Replaced by People from East and West DT 8:12, 11 Th.36 Different in Mcg (E: Scholion 41a
Q 13:30 The Reversal of the Last and the First‚ DT 20:16 Th.4 Different in Mcg (E: Scholion 41a Overlap
Q 13:34-35 Lament over Jerusalem DT 23:37-39 Not in Mcg (E: Scholion 41b
Q 14:11 The Exalted Humbled and the Humble Exalted‚ DT --- 23:12 Not attested
Q 14:16-21, 23 Invited Dinner Guests DT --- 22:1-5, 8-10 Th.64 Mcg 14:16-21,22(?),23 Parable
Q 14:26 Hating One’s Family DT --- 10:37 Th.55 Not attested Overlap // Lk 18:29b
Q 14:27 Taking One’s Cross DT --- 10:38 Th.55 Mcg 14:27 Lk 9:23b // Overlap
Q 14:34-35 Insipid Salt DT 5:13bc Th.8 Not attested Overlap
Q 15:4-7 The Lost Sheep DT --- 18:12-13 Th.107 Mcg 15:4-7
Q 15:8-10 The Lost Coin SLk --- --- Mcg 15:8-10
Q 16:13 God or Mammon DT --- 6:24 Th.47 Mcg 16:13 Only some?
Q 16:16 The law and the prophets DT --- 11:12-13 Th.11,111 Mcg 16:16
Q 16:17 One tittle of the Law to Fall DT --- 5:18 Th.11,111 Mcg 16:17 Overlap // Lk 21:33
Q 16:18 Divorce Leading to Adultery DT --- 5:32 Mcg 16:18 Overlap
Q 17:3-4 Forgiving a Sinning Brother Repeatedly DT --- 18:15, 21-22 Mcg 17:3-4
Q 17:5-6 Faith Like a Mustard Seed DT --- 17:20 Th.48,106 Not attested Overlap
Q 17:20-21 The Kingdom of God within You‚ SLk --- --- Th.3,51,113 Mcg 17:20-21
Q 17:23-24 The Son of Humanity Like Lightning DT --- 24:26-27 Th.113 Not attested (Multiple variants) Overlap
Q 17:26-27, ?28-29 (SLk)?, 30 As in the Days of Noah DT 24:37-39 Th.101 Mcg 17:26-29
Lk 17:31-32 No going back TT 13:15-16 24:17-18 Th.101 Mcg 17:32 Overlap // Lk 21:21
Q 17:33 Saving and Losing Life DT 10:39 Th.101 Not attested Lk 9:24 // Overlap
Q 17:34-35, ?36? One Taken, One Left DT 24:41,40 Not attested (17:36 likely not original)
Q 17:37 Vultures around a Corpse DT 24:28 Th.56,80 Not attested
****************** Section 3 of the IQP's Q ends at Lk 17:37 *******************
****************** Section 4 of the IQP's Q is at Lk 19:12-26 *******************
Q 19:12-13 The Parable of the Entrusted Money (Pt 1) DT --- 25:14 Mcg 19:12-13
Q 19:15-24, 26 The Parable of the Entrusted Money (Pt 2a) DT --- 25:19-26 Mcg 19:15-24 19:24-25 not in D
Q 19:26 The Parable of the Entrusted Money (Pt 2b) DT --- 25:19-28 Th.41 Mcg 19:26 Lk 8:18b // Overlap
****************** The IQP's Q ends here, except for Lk 22:28-30 *******************
********* END OF LUKE’S GREAT INSERTION / TRAVEL NARRATIVE (Lk 9:51 - 19:48) **********
****************** The IQP's Q ends here with Lk 22:28-30 *******************
Q 22:28-30 You Will Judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel DT --- 19:28 Not attested D different Lk 9:12a // Overla
Abakuks, Andris: The synoptic problem and statistics, September 2006
BeDuhn, Jason David: The Myth of Marcion asRedactor: The Evidence of "Marcion's" Gospel Against an Assumed Marcionite Redaction, Marcion's Gospel and the New Testament: Catalyst or Consequence?, New studies of marcion's evangelion, The First New Testament. Marcion's Scriptural Canon
Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com: Gospel of the Hebrews / Marcion parallels
Bigg, Howard C: The Present State of the Q Hypothesis, 1988
Bird, Michael F: The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus and The Holtzmann-Gundry Solution to the Synoptic Problem (Three Source Hypothesis). Also Goodacre, Mark: Mike Bird on Luke's use of Matthew and Q
Bratcher, Dennis: The Gospels and The Synoptic Problem: The Literary Relationship of Matthew, Mark, and Luke
Brooks, E Bruce: The Luke A/B/C model
Burkett, Delbert Royce: Rethinking the Gospel Sources: Volume 2: The unity or plurality of Q, SBL, 2009
Carlson, Stephen C: The Synoptic Problem Website
Cassels, Walter Richard: Supernatural Religion: The Synoptic gospels (continued). The Fourth gospel
Couchoud, Paul-Louis: Is Marcion’s Gospel One of the Synoptics, Hibbert Journal 1935
Davidson, Paul: From ‘Is That in the Bible?’: Did Luke Know and Use Matthew? The Parable of the Talents/Pounds as a Test Case, and Jesus and the Beelzebul Controversy: A Devilish Synoptic Puzzle
Derrenbacker, Robert A, Jr, and Kloppenborg Verbin, John S: Self-Contradiction in the IQP? A Reply to Michael Goulder, 2001
The Didache
Downing, F. G.: Towards the Rehabilitation of Q. New Testament Studies, 11, pp 169-181, 1965
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Early Christian Writings.com: The Existence of Q
Eilers, Marco: The Problem with Mark-Q Overlap
Farmer, William R: The Present State Of The Synoptic Problem, 1998
Foster, Paul: Is It Possible to Dispense with Q? , 2003
Friedrichsen, Timothy A.: Critical Observations on a Team Effort: Beyond the Q Impasse – Luke’s Use of Matthew
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See also Mark Q Overlaps I: Terminology, II: Major Agreements Between Matthew and Luke, III: Minor Agreements between Mark and Luke, IV: Back to the Continuum, V: the degree of verbatim agreement, VI: The Direction of Dependence
The Gospel of Q at The Nazarene Way
Goulder, Michael: Luke: A New Paradigm
Gundry, Robert Horton: Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution, Second Edition, 1994
Hawkins, John C: Horae Synopticae: Contributions to the Study of the Synoptic Problem, Second edition, 1899
Head, Peter M: Textual Criticism and the Synoptic Problem, New Studies in the Synoptic Problem, Oxford Conference, Part 1, April 2008
Head, Peter M. and Williams P.J: Q Review, Tyndale Bulletin 54.1, 2003
Heisey, Nancy R: The Current State of Q, TIC TALK 39, 1997
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Hogan’s Blog: A Critique of the approach and evidence of the Q theory in light of the Synoptic Gospels. MA assignment, 2012
Huggins, Ronald V: Matthean Posteriority: A Preliminary Proposal, 1992
Just, Felix: The Synoptic Problem
Kelhoffer, James A: Miracle and Mission: The Authentication of Missionaries and Their Message in the Longer Ending of Mark, 2000
Kirby, Peter, The Existence of Q
Klinghardt, Matthias: The Marcionite Gospel and the Synoptic Problem: A New Suggestion, Novum Testamentum 50 (2008)
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Kok, Michael J.: Euangelion Kata Markon, The Case For and Against Q
Lieu Judith: Marcion and the Ideology of Texts Comments on Dieter Roth’s ‘The Text of Marcion’s Gospel,’ 2015
Lindemann, Andreas (Ed): The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus, 2001
Mattila, Sharon Lea: A Problem Still Clouded: Yet Again – Statistics and “Q”
McNicol, Allan J, (Ed) with Dungan, David L., and Peabody, David B: Beyond the Q Impasse: Luke’s Use of Matthew, 1996
Milavec, Aaron: Synoptic Tradition in the Didache Revisited, Center for the Study of Religion and Society University of Victoria
Neirynck, F: IQP and the Critical Edition of Q - The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus, Andreas Lindemann (Ed)
NET: The New English Translation
Parker, D.C: The Living Text of the Gospels, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 115
Peterson, Jeffrey: Order in the Double Tradition and the Existence of Q, Austin School of Theology
Poirier, John C. and Peterson, Jeffrey (Ed): Marcan Priority Without Q: Explorations in the Farrer Hypothesis , 2015
Powell, Mark Allen: What are They Saying about Luke?, 1989
Powers, B. Ward: The Progressive Publication of Matthew, An Explanation of the Writing of the Synoptic Gospels, 2010 (Also in dissertation form)
Robinson, James M, Kloppenborg John S, Hoffmann, Paul: The Sayings Gospel Q in Greek and English with Parallels from the Gospels of Mark and Thomas (2002)
Roth, Dieter T: Marcion's Gospel and Luke: The History of Research in Current Debate (2008), Towards a New Reconstruction of the Text of Marcion’s Gospel: History of Research, Sources, Methodology, and the Testimony of Tertullian (2009), and The Text of Marcion’s Gospel (2015).
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Smith, Barry D: The Synoptic Problem, Crandall University
Smith, Ben: Doublets in the synoptic tradition
Smith, Daniel A: The Trouble with Q, 2012
Smith, Mahlon H: The Canonical Status of Q, 1998
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Theopedia.com: The Synoptic Problem
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Turner, Cuthbert Hamilton: The study of the New Testament, 1883 and 1920
Turton, Michael: Is Mark Q?
Vinzent, Markus: Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (Studia Patristica Supplements), 2014
Wallace, Daniel B: The Synoptic Problem
Waltz, Robert: The Encyclopedia of New Testament Criticism (online) or in PDF form
Watson, Francis: Q as Hypothesis: A Study in Methodology
West, H. Philip Jr.: A Primitive Version of Luke in the Composition of Matthew, 1967
Wikipedia.com: Synoptic Gospels
Willker, Wieland: A Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels: Vol. 2b The various endings of Mk, and the Western Non-interpolations
The Gospel of Q
[Page created Feb 11 2014.]
