THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO SOURCES OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS BY CARL S. PATTON FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH COLUMBUS, OHIO A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & C

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to give some account of the investigations recently made in the Synoptic Problem, and the present status of scholarly opinion concerning it; secondly, upon the basis of such established results, to push the inquiry into certain items a step farther. The first part of the work, including pages 3-120, tho largely occupied with results reached by many different scholars, and bringing the matter up to where the writer adds his own more personal contributi

THE DEPENDENCE OF MATTHEW AND LUKE UPON MARK The one universally accepted result of modern study of the synoptic problem is the dependence of Matthew and Luke upon the Gospel of Mark. Tho it is no longer necessary to demonstrate this use of Mark by Matthew and Luke, the relation among the three Gospels is not to be dismissed with a simple statement of this dependence. The Gospel of Mark is the one document possessed by us in substantially the same form in which it was used by Matthew and Luke. A

THE ORDER OF MARK’S GOSPEL COMPARED WITH THAT OF MATTHEW AND THAT OF LUKE In the treatment of the framework of the Synoptics, something has been said of the way in which Matthew and Luke treat the order of the material which they have taken from Mark. The subject, however, calls for a more careful analysis. At the opening of the 3d chapters of Matthew and Luke, these writers begin their use of Marcan material. Thru the story of John the Baptist, the baptism and temptation of Jesus, and his first

THE OMISSIONS OF MATTHEW AND LUKE IN THE MARCAN NARRATIVE [10] OMISSIONS MADE BY BOTH MATTHEW AND LUKE The omission of the stories of the healing of the deaf-and-dumb man and the blind man (Mk vii, 31-37; viii, 22-26), is sufficiently accounted for by the character of those accounts. The crassness of the means used and the apparent difficulty of the cures offended the growing sense of the dignity of Jesus. The exceedingly patronizing answer of the scribe to Jesus in Mk xii, 32-34 is probably omi

THE CHANGES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE IN THE NARRATIVE OF MARK [21] THE BAPTISM OF JESUS (Mk i, 9-11; Mt iii, 13-17; Lk iii, 21-22) Matthew adds to Mark’s account the conversation in which John objects to baptizing Jesus, and Jesus quiets his scruples (Mt iii, 14-15). This reflects the later time, when the superiority of Jesus to John had been historically demonstrated, and when the baptism might have given offense by seeming to imply a need of forgiveness. The item approaches the point of view of the

HAVE WE THE GOSPEL OF MARK IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM? The number of instances in which Matthew and Luke agree in their changes of Mark has given rise to the theory that Matthew and Luke did not use our Mark but an earlier form. A certain number of such agreements might be passed over as merely accidental. A certain number more might be assigned to assimilation. But if the agreements of Matthew and Luke in their corrections of Mark are so numerous and so striking as to be quite beyond accounting for i

USE OF A COMMON DOCUMENT BY MATTHEW AND LUKE The document used by Matthew and Luke as the source of their common non-Marcan material was for some time generally identified with the “Logia” which Papias says Matthew, the disciple of the Lord, wrote in Hebrew, undoubtedly meaning Aramaic. Until some sufficient justification for this identification has been given, it seems better to refer to the common non-Marcan source of Matthew and Luke under the more colorless symbol Q. The common non-Marcan tr

THE EXISTENCE AND CONTENT OF Q Coming back to the theory that Matthew and Luke used a common document for their sayings-material, we have next to determine what the content of that document was. A reasonable degree of unanimity prevails among scholars as to this content, or at least as to a considerable part of it. Where students differ is as to the sayings which are not very closely parallel in the two Gospels, or as to sayings that are contained in only one of the two. As to the sayings which

THE ANALYSIS OF Q Q ORIGINALLY AN ARAMAIC DOCUMENT, USED IN GREEK TRANSLATIONS BY MATTHEW AND LUKE The starting-point of a further determination of the content of Q is the fact that Matthew and Luke seem to have taken their duplicate matter from a Greek document, but that this Greek document was a translation from the Aramaic. If Matthew and Luke had been independently translating from an Aramaic document, they could not have hit so generally upon the same order of words, especially where many o

Q, QMt , AND QLk IN THE DOUBLE TRADITION OF MATTHEW AND LUKE THE PREACHING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST (Mt iii, 7 b -10; Lk iii, 7 b -9) This section is universally ascribed to Q. In Matthew’s Gospel it contains sixty-three words; in Luke’s sixty-four. These are identical in the two Gospels, except for Luke’s addition of καὶ at the beginning of his 9th verse, his plural (καρποὺς) where Matthew has the singular, and his substitution of ἄρξησθε for Matthew’s δόξητε. The parallelism begins in the middle of

Q IN THE SINGLE TRADITION OF MATTHEW ( QMt ) Thus far, examination has been made of only such material as is somewhat closely duplicated in Matthew and Luke. Examination will now be made of the sayings that are found in Matthew, unduplicated in Luke, to see whether any of these may also be assigned, with any great probability, to Q. In this unduplicated material no data are at hand for distinguishing QMt from simple Q; but since QMt is the symbol for the copy of Q used by Matthew, that symbol wi

Q IN THE SINGLE TRADITION OF LUKE ( QLk ) The single tradition of Luke will now be examined with reference to possible Q material unparalleled in Matthew. Narrative material will not be considered. As Luke has omitted much more of Mark than Matthew has, and as he has a much larger amount of non-Marcan material which obviously bears no sign of having stood in any form of Q, it is natural to expect the additions to our total of Q matter to be much less in the single tradition of Luke than of Matth

REVIEW OF Q MATERIAL IN MATTHEW, LUKE, AND MARK The accompanying tables of contents of Q material in Matthew, Luke, and Mark are prepared to facilitate comparison between the evangelists as to the amount and character of their Q material. They will help to determine whether QMt and QLk have enough in common, and of such a sort, as to entitle them still to be regarded as recensions of the same original. They will also help us toward a determination of the original order of Q. The division into se

DID MARK ALSO USE Q? In the introduction to his Beginnings of Gospel History , Bacon remarks that the “dependence of Mark upon Q can be demonstrated.” Wellhausen says that “independence [between Mark and Q] is not to be thot of.” Streeter, in Oxford Studies , has made the most recent and thoro study of the relation of Mark and Q, and some of his results have already been utilized and acknowledged. Even Dr. Sanday, in the introduction to Oxford Studies , confesses himself an unwilling convert to

THE ORIGINAL ORDER OF Q The following tables are intended to throw light upon the probable original order of Q. They will also facilitate comparison of the Q material in the two tables of contents given on pp. 222-25. The section numbers at the left are those in the tables for Matthew and Luke respectively on those pages. Table VII gives the sections in the order in which they come in Matthew, with the numbers of the corresponding sections as they occur in Luke; Table VIII, the sections as they

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The positions reached in this study may be gathered up in a few brief statements: 1. Matthew and Luke depend for the structure of their Gospels, and for practically all of their narrative material, upon Mark. 2. In the order of Marcan material, Matthew and Luke have made such changes as were desirable from the use to which they wished to put this matter. Matthew has made fewer omissions, Luke fewer transpositions. 3. The changes which Matthew and Luke have made in the sub