LUKE, GOSPEL ACCORDIXG TO
LUKE, GOSPEL ACCORDIXG TO 87
cularly incredible here. But if St. JIark has misplaced it. he has misplaced also some other sections which adhere to it. And although we cannot with any confidence decide at which par- ticular visit to Jerusalem each of the recorded events happened, it is an enormous gain to the historian to be at liberty to distribute them.
2. Second Source — St. Matthew's Logia. — When Papias wrote that ' St. Matthew compiled the Logia (or Utterances of our Lord) in the Hebrew dialect, and each man interpreted them as he was able." he cannot, as the traditionalists .suppose, be alluding to our First Gospel, which was written (at Alexandria ?) in Greek. Critical opinion is fast coming round to the view that St. Matthew com- piled, not a formal Gospel, but a collection of our Lord's L'tterances. which was incorporated into our First Gospel, and formed so distinctive a feature of it. that the whole book was with some justice called ' the Gospel according to St. Matthew." And if this collection was originally oral, as many who deny an oral Mark are ready to admit, there is nothing strange in our contention that St. Luke used it, when it was much shorter : in fact, he used a proto-^Iatthew. In that way we explain his omissions, which are more glaring even than his omissions from St. Mark.
The question of order, which was complex in the case of the first Source, is simple here. For St. Luke's order is entirely different from St. ^latthew's. Except on the rare occasions when St. Mark furnishes a clue, as he does in the account of the Baptist and of the Temptation, St. Luke arranges the Lofjin in one wa}-, St. Matthew in another. Which, then, of these arrangements is to be preferred ? Which Evangelist reproduced St. Matthew's order ? Not the redactor of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, for he has massed most of the Logia into five huge Dis- courses, which are impressive for Church reading, liut can hardly correspond to any actual Sermons. Many critics, however, incline to believe that St. Luke has preserved the original order, because he has so scrupulously followed the order of the proto- Mark. Even if he has done so. we must not assume that he is anj^ nearer the truth, for we have no right to suppose that St. Matthew, any more than St. Mark, had regard to anjrthing else in arrangement than convenience in Church teach- ing. It seems to us, however, that there is con- siderable evidence to show that originally the Logia were piled one upon another in confused disorder, as they are in the Oxyrhynchus fragment, with no other prefaces than 'Jesus said' or 'John said.' Their arrangement into speeches was the work of later hands (Synopsis, xxv). If so. this was done by the art of contlation, which consists in picking out all the Utterances which dealt with one subject and arranging them into an artificial speech on that subject. Such speeches, of which the Sermon on the Momit is a typical example, do not corre- spond to any Sermon that was ever preached, but are compiled for the simplification of teaching, and for the preservation of important Utterances which were in danger of being lost. St. Matthew prefers long conflations. One of these covers three chapters (Mt 5-7), another two (24. 25). and three more one each (10. 13. 23). St. Luke's conflations are shorter, never filling one chapter. They are therefore more numerous (we reckon nineteen of them) and more compact; for, whereas it is diSicult to say what is the subject of the Sermon on the Mount or of the Charge to the Twelve, there is no such difliculty with St. Luke. In St. Matthew's Eschatological Discourses (24. 25) the prophecies respecting the destruction of JeiTisalem and those respecting the Second Coming of the Son of Man are inextricably blended together, as though the
redactor regarded the two events as synchronous, whereas St. Luke separates them (Lk 17-'*'-^ 21*^), and it may well be that our Lord habitually did so.
The hj^pothesis of conflations may come as a shock to those who have been brought up in the belief that the Sermon on the ]Mount is a single discourse. We credit the Evangelists with some audacity. Their literary morality must not be judged by the standard of this century They were composing Gospels and not formal histories. They were providing for the need of an age which lived in daily expectation of the return of their Lord. The work was done wisely and well, for it has stood the test of time ; but we must under- stand its limitations if we really care to attain to the truth.
That the art of conflation was a real thing, actually practised by the Evangelists, can be fully proved only by a detailed examination into all the conflations ; and for that we have no space now ; but it may help to remove prejudice if we compare St. Matthew's Sermon on the ^Mount (Mt. 5-7) with St. Luke's Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6-^?). Both begin with Beatitudes, and both end with the same Warning. We conclude, therefore, that the source contained the nucleus of a senuon. But the proto- ^latthseus had only three short and one long Beatitude, for St. Luke gives no more. In St. ]\Iatthew five others have been added by the deutero-Matthaeus. St. Luke's Beatitudes, short and long, are all expressed in the second person, owing to an editorial change made by him for the purpose of securing literary uniformity. In St. Luke. Woes follow the Blessings. St. Matthew contains Woes, but not here. Either, therefore, St. Ltike borrowed these Woes from another source unknown to us, or they are mere editorial work to enhance the Blessings. Their close uniformity to the Blessings favours the latter view. The word- ing of the Warning, with which the Sermons end, has been slightly altered in .St. Luke to suit the comprehension of readers who did not live in Pales- tine, and would not know the action of winter torrents on a wady. Between the Beatitudes and the Warning the Source must have contained some Utterances setting forth the Law of Love. Besides these, St. ^latthew has collected much material, St. Luke comparatively little ; for St. 3Iatthew's Ser- mon contains 107 verses, St. Luke's only 30. Yet we cannot regard St. Luke's Sermon as an abbre- viation of St. Matthew's. True, he reproduces 26 out of St. Matthew's 107 verses ; but he repro- duces 32 more of them in other parts of his Gospel, spreading them over no fewer than seven chapters. Again, he gives in his Sermon four passages (Lk 62^i6. 27. 34. 351 37. 36) -which are not found in St. Mat- thew at all, and theiefore do not come from the Logia. He adds two (6-®-^) which are given by St. ISIatthew in a different context. We are justified, therefore, in regarding the Sermons as in large part independent conflations. St. Luke's subject, as u.sual, is precise, being simply the statement of the Law of Love ; but the most that we can say for St. Matthew is that he seems here to be setting forth the duty of Christian laj^men, while in the charge to the Twelve he gives our Lord's teaching about the duty of the clergj'.