Thursday, September 24, 2009

Matthew's Use of Luke

Mark Goodacre and James McGrath both talk about the possibility of Matthew's usage of Luke (with varying view points!). Interestingly Martin Hengel (The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, 68-70) took this view. He wrote: "[W]e must reckon that the later Matthew knew the earlier Luke, took over parts which seemed to him appropriate, i.e. the content of which was promising, and in the process of course also altered his theological wishes accordingly. This is already indicated by the fact that as a rule the more original version is attributed to Q-Luke as opposed to Q-Matthew. In addition - and here Papias can put us on the right road - there were certainly also one or more 'Logia collections'. But - as I have already said - we can no longer reconstruct these adequately, especially as we cannot know what the evangelists changed or omitted in the sources, unknown to us, which they probably had in more abundance than we suppose."

1 comment:

Mark Goodacre said...

Thanks for providing the quotation, Mike. I think Hengel's early Luke is in part a consequence of his earlier developed conservative stance on Acts. But his "as a rule" on greater primitivity in Luke is no rule. If you work through the Critical Edition of Q and the volumes of Documenta Q, it's pretty much 50/50 in terms of alternating primitivity, hence the term. I don't see any evidence in Hengel's Gospels work that he has worked through the issues connected with the Synoptic Problem carefully.