Such are the data we have to discuss, and in dealing with them in relation to St. uke’s sources two general considerations are clear—(1) that St. Luke must have had some source or sources not used by St. Matthew and St. Mark, and that, as the above references show, not merely for one part of our Lord’s ministry, but affecting the whole of it. It is clear also that this source preserved
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both narrative and teaching: (2) that ‘both St. Matthew and St. Luke, and especially St. Luke, have so ‘* worked over’’ the sources they employed that they frequently represent to us the substance rather than the words of the original documents‘ (Hawkins, 1.6. p. 92). This fact obyiously increases the difficulty of tracing the sources.
It will only be possible here to state, in a very summary way, the relation of St. Luke (a) to St. Mark, (Ὁ) to St. Matthew, (6) to St. John, and then (d) to consider this special source or sources.
(a) St. Mark and St. Luke are mentioned as at Rome together (Col 4%", Philem?!, cf. 2 Ti 41'), and, moreoyer,it is generally agreed that St. Mark’s Gospel represents, in the main, the earliest form of the Gospel narrative, and may, therefore, have existed in substance before St. Luke. Weiss, in his Markus-Evangelium, established the fact of a relationship between them; and now ‘it is un- necessary to prove anew that Luke used Mark’ (Harnack, Chronologie, p. 652), for ‘ the use of Mark as one of Luke’s sources is a generally-established fact of Gospel criticism’ (Feine, Line vorcanonische Ueberlieferung, etc. p. 4). At the same time, the following points require explanation. Things are omitted by St. Matthew and St. Luke which are recorded by St. Mark, e.g. Mk 476 92m or omitted by St. Luke which are recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark, e.g. 6%, and we ask, why, if St. Mark was used by St. Gake, were these omitted ? Again, we find instances in which St. Matthew and St. Luke agree agaiist St. Mark, and frequent cases where St. Mark and St. Luke are independent in regard to details. A suflicient explanation of these facts would be that St. Luke used not St. Mark as we have it, but the source which underlies St. Mark, an Ur-Markus, which, by additions and alterations made after St. Luke used it, became our canonical St. Mark. Weiss, however, maintains strongly that it was our St. Mark which St. Luke used, and Sir J. Hawkins explains away the difficulties which have just been urged (1) by showing that many of the omissions from St. Mark, which St. Matthew and St. Luke make (generally independently), may well have been made by them with St. Mark before them, and that ‘the results are largely in favour of the view that the Petrine source used by the two later Synoptists was not an Ur-Markus, but St. Mark’s Gospel almost as we have it now’ (1.6. p. 122) ; (2) by suggesting that the agreements of St. Matthew and St. Luke against St. Mark, so far as they imply a common source, were first made in one of these two later Gospels, and then were carried across, intentionally or unconsciously, to the other, either by scribes or more probably in the course of oral transmission (1.6. p. 176).
(b) St. Matthew and St. Luke have a great deal in common which is not found in St. Mark, and of this very much is occupied with our Lord’s dis- courses. This general resemblance in material not found in St. Mark may be explained on the hypothesis of Simons, Holtzmann, Wendt, and others, that St. Luke used the Gospel of St. Matthew, or by supposing that both used a com- mon written source, such as the Λόγια might have been, or a common oral tradition. It is difficult to believe that St. Luke had St. Matthew’s Gospel before him, when we consider their great independ- ence, amounting sometimes to divergence, as in regard to chs. 1 and 2, and the genealogy, or in reference to details of fact as in 18% 244, We may accept Weiss’ statement (Introduction to the NT, ii. 294) that ‘Luke’s acquaintance with and use of the apostolic source of the first Gospel is just as certain as his want of acquaintance with the Gospel itself.” Zahn, indeed, maintains (Hin. ii. 402 ff.) not only that St. Luke did not use St.
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Matthew, but also that their resemblances in parts where they are not both dependent on St. Mark are sufficiently explained by the use of a common oral tradition. But such close verbal agreement as we find in Mt 64 = Lk 1018 and Mt 627 = Lk 126 seems to require the use of a common written Greek source (Feine, 1.6. pp. 10, 11) and not (as Resch) different Greek translations of an Aramaic original. It is probable that they had collections of our Lord’s sayings in several forms and in different connexions, ‘The use of some such sources will explain on the one hand how it is that che peculiarities of St. Luke’s style are most rare in reports of discourses common to him and St. clatthew, showing the fidelity with which he has reproduced them, while on the other hand it will explain the differences both in expression and context which exist in the two Gospels. We see how it may have been possible for St. Matthew to bring together all the sayings, as in the Sermon on the Mount, which St. Luke has scattered over many parts of his Gospel. We get also on this hypothesis an explanation of the ‘doublets,’ and see why ‘the original form is preserved sometimes in the first, sometimes in the third Gospel’ (Weiss), while the original context also seems to be kept sometimes in St. Luke, sometimes in St. Matthew (Weiss, 1.6. p. 292 ff.).