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Streeter's ‘Other’ Synoptic Solution: The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2016

Alan Garrow
Alan Garrow*
Affiliation:
Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (SIIBS), The University of Sheffield, Jessop West, Upper Hanover Street, Sheffield S3 7RA, United Kingdom. Email: alan.garrow@gmail.com
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Abstract

B. H. Streeter's Four Gospels has had a critical influence on the study of the Synoptic Problem. Unfortunately, this seminal work rests on two fundamental errors. When these are corrected, however, Streeter points to a fully satisfying solution to the Synoptic Problem: Mark wrote first, Luke used Mark and other sources and, at a later date, Matthew conflated Mark, Luke and other sources – including some also used by Luke.

Keywords

Synoptic ProblemQMatthean Posteriority
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 207 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

1. Streeter's legacy

In the history of scholarship, as in history more generally, small turning points sometimes give rise to extraordinary consequences. In the case of the study of the Synoptic Problem a single page of argumentation, published more than ninety years ago, has provided a foundation for a very substantial edifice. The page, from B. H. Streeter's The Four Gospels, addresses the question of how Matthew and Luke came to share an extensive body of material (the Double Tradition) that does not also appear in Mark:

How are we to account for this common matter [The Double Tradition]? The obvious suggestion that Luke knew Matthew's Gospel (or vice versa) and derived from it some of his materials breaks down for two reasons:

1. … subsequent to the Temptation story, there is not a single case in which Matthew and Luke agree in inserting the same saying at the same point in the Marcan outline. If then Luke derived this material from Matthew, he must have gone through both Matthew and Mark so as to discriminate with meticulous precision between Marcan and non-Marcan material; he must then have proceeded with the utmost care to tear every little piece of non-Marcan material he desired to use from the context of Mark in which it appeared in Matthew – in spite of the fact that contexts in Matthew are always exceedingly appropriate – in order to re-insert it into a different context of Mark having no special appropriateness. A theory that would make an author capable of such a proceeding would only be tenable if, on other grounds, we had reason to believe he was a crank.

2. Sometimes it is Matthew, sometimes it is Luke, who gives a saying in what is clearly the more original form. This is explicable if both are drawing from the same source, each making slight modifications of his own; it is not so if either is dependent on the other.Footnote 1

Having concluded, on this basis, that neither Matthew nor Luke copied the other, Streeter goes on to deduce that both Evangelists must have independently copied the Double Tradition material from another source. Herein lies the logic for positing the hypothetical document Q, and for roughly equating its contents with the extent of the Double Tradition. In 1983 the established respectability of this position was underlined by the launch of the International Q Project (IQP) in which scores of scholars have laboured, and continue to labour, to evaluate nearly 200 years’ worth of scholarly opinion regarding the reconstruction of Q.Footnote 2 At the base of this extraordinary edifice, however, lie two critical flaws:

(i) The Streeter Fallacy

A piece of faulty logic, which might be called the Streeter Fallacy, is contained in the following element of Streeter's reasoning:

Sometimes it is Matthew, sometimes it is Luke, who gives a saying in what is clearly the more original form. This is explicable if both are drawing from the same source, each making slight modifications of his own; it is not so if either is dependent on the other.Footnote 3

The phenomenon of ‘alternating primitivity’ does indeed suggest the presence of a shared earlier source.Footnote 4 Streeter's mistake, however, was additionally to claim that the presence of such a source comprises evidence for the independent use of that source. If this were indeed the case, then the fact that sometimes Tatian's Diatessaron, and sometimes Luke, preserves the more original form of Mark would show that Tatian could not have known Luke. This is plainly nonsense. There is no reason why Tatian could not have known Luke simply because he, and Luke, also knew Mark. The same applies here. There is no reason why Matthew could not have known Luke (or vice versa) simply because they both also knew Mark, Q or any other shared source. Despite this error, the Streeter Fallacy is often repeated:

The implication of [Alternating Primitivity] is pointedly set out by B. H. Streeter: ‘Sometimes it is Matthew, sometimes it is Luke, who gives a saying in what is clearly the more original form. This is explicable if both are drawing from the same source, each making slight modifications of his own; it is not so if either is dependent on the other.’ The more such discoveries pile up, the less sustainable is the notion that Luke used Matthew [and by inference, that Matthew used Luke].Footnote 5

Sometimes Matthew, sometimes Luke, seems to be the more original at different points. This, it is said, tells heavily against any theory of direct dependence of Luke on Matthew since in that case we should expect Luke to have the secondary form of the tradition at every point.Footnote 6

The frequent repetition of this argument greatly increases the impression of its validity. It remains the case, however, that this impression is entirely false. Instances of Alternating Primitivity, even if very numerous, only suggest the use of a shared source or sources – the presence of which does not preclude the further possibility that Matthew also used Luke, or vice versa.

(ii) Streeter's unfinished argument

Streeter's second error was his failure to close off an explanation for the Double Tradition that he himself describes as ‘obvious’:

How are we to account for this common matter [the Double Tradition]? The obvious suggestion that Luke knew Matthew's Gospel (or vice versa) and derived from it some of his materials breaks down for two reasons …Footnote 7

The two reasons he offers are:

  1. (1) An argument against Luke's use of Matthew;

  2. (2) Alternating Primitivity.

As already noted, Alternating Primitivity has no bearing on the independence of Matthew and Luke, it only serves to suggest that they shared a common source, or sources. As regards the argument from order (point ‘1’ in Streeter's discussion), this does suggest that Luke did not know Matthew. The same does not apply, however, in reverse. Matthew's behaviour is not that of a ‘crank’ who tears apart and scatters his source material. Rather, he is someone who carefully gathers and combines related passages and sayings from various sources to create extended discourses – such as the Sermon on the Mount.

Streeter's failure to close off the possibility that Matthew knew Luke has been compounded in virtually all subsequent discussion:

For various reasons … Matthean dependence on Luke is hardly ever advocated, though one sometimes wonders why given the tendency of many to believe that Luke's version is very often more original.Footnote 8

The theory that Matthew has read Luke … is rarely put forward by sensible scholars and will not be considered here.Footnote 9

Revising Streeter's legacy

Correcting for these two errors, Streeter makes three valid observations:

  1. 1. There are substantial obstacles to Luke's use of Matthew;

  2. 2. Matthew's use of Luke is an ‘obvious’ explanation for the Double Tradition;

  3. 3. Alternating Primitivity implies the presence of a source, or sources, shared by Matthew and Luke.

These insights, taken together with the well-rehearsed case for Markan priority, combine to create what might be called Streeter's ‘other’ hypothesis, here given the name the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis (MCH) and illustrated in Fig. 1.Footnote 10 The resolving power of this hypothesis may now be tested against two well-known alternatives: the Two Document Hypothesis (2DH) and the Farrer Hypothesis (FH).Footnote 11

Figure 1. The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis (MCH)

2. Testing the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis (MCH)

To qualify as a convincing hypothesis, the MCH must account for various individual pieces of data within a consistent overarching story. To illustrate this requirement the situation may be compared to a multi-vehicle traffic accident. Investigators seeking to reconstruct such an event will begin by examining various individual pieces of data, for example, skid-marks on the road, damage to street furniture and the condition of the paint and bodywork of the vehicles involved. Taken on their own, these individual features may be open to more than one interpretation. Taken together, however, they are likely to support only one overall reconstruction.

When it comes to the Synoptic Gospels the individual pieces of data are phenomena such as: Matthew and Luke sometimes extensively agree verbatim in the Double Tradition; Matthew and Luke sometimes agree in minor ways against Mark; Matthew and Luke ‘never’ agree in the placement of the Double Tradition; and so on. Before attempting to resolve all this information within one overarching narrative, each piece of data must be examined individually.

3. Data to be resolved

(i) Matthew and Luke sometimes extensively agree verbatim in the Double Tradition

A striking feature of the relationship between Matthew and Luke, the significance of which is sometimes passed over, is that some passages of the Double Tradition exhibit very high levels of verbatim agreement (hereafter, High DT passages), while others, despite their treatment of the same subject, agree in wording hardly at all (hereafter, Low DT passages). The focus, in this section, is on High DT passages: those where a very high percentage of the words in question fall within Strings of Verbatim Agreement of four words or more (SVA ≥ 4).Footnote 12 Examples include: On Serving Two Masters (Matt 6.24 // Luke 16.13) SVA ≥ 4 = 96 per cent; John's Messianic Preaching (Matt 3.12 // Luke 3.17) SVA ≥ 4 = 88 per cent; and Jesus' Lament over Jerusalem (Matt 23.37–9 // Luke 13.34–5) SVA ≥ 4 = 86 per cent. Additional examples of Double Tradition passages with SVA ≥ 4 scores of more than 50 per cent include: John's Preaching of Repentance (Matt 3.7–10 // Luke 3.7–9); The Return of the Evil Spirit (Matt 12.43–5 // Luke 11.24–6); Jesus' Thanksgiving to the Father (Matt 11.25–7 // Luke 10.21–2); The Good and Wicked Servant (Matt 24.45–51 // Luke 12.41–6); The Sound Eye (Matt 6.22–3 // Luke 11.34–6); God's Answering of Prayer (Matt 7.7–11 // Luke 11.9–13); elements of the Beelzebul Controversy (Matt 12.22–30 // Luke 11.14–23); elements of The Sign of Jonah (Matt 12.38–42 // Luke 11.16, 29–32); and The Parable of the Yeast (Matt 13.33 // Luke 13.20–1).Footnote 13

These passages present a considerable challenge to the classic Q hypothesis because they require extraordinarily high levels of faithfulness to Q by both Matthew and Luke. As John Kloppenborg notes:

Were Matthew and Luke using Q (or Mark) as Diodorus, Josephus, 1QapGen ar or Ps-Philo used their sources, we should expect almost no verbatim agreement, since both would sometimes paraphrase generously and, because they would have done so independently, the likelihood of coincidental agreement in not changing Q would be exceedingly low.Footnote 14

This observation becomes sharply relevant when considering the degree to which Matthew and Luke exhibit compound faithfulness to material supplied by Mark. Strikingly, they never achieve the same levels of compound faithfulness to Mark that, according to the 2DH, they often achieve in relation to Q. Specifically, the highest levels of compound faithfulness to Mark occur in: The Parable of the Fig Tree (Matt 24.32–6 // Mark 13.28–32 // Luke 21.29–33), where 37 per cent of the 86 words fall within SVA ≥ 4; and, ‘If any man would come after me …’ (Matt 16.24–8 // Mark 8.34–9.1 // Luke 9.23–7), where 29 per cent of the 110 words fall within SVA ≥ 4. No other such passages achieve SVA ≥ 4 of more than 20 per cent.

This poverty of instances in which Luke and Matthew are both exceptionally faithful to Mark suggests that High DT passages are most likely the product of direct, rather than indirect, copying. The question outstanding, therefore, is whether Luke directly copied Matthew, or Matthew directly copied Luke.Footnote 15

(ii) Matthew and Luke sometimes barely agree verbatim in the Double Tradition

A crude, but nonetheless critical, distinction should be made when describing the Double Tradition. Alongside passages where Matthew and Luke agree extensively (High DT passages), there are also significant sections where, despite addressing the same subject, levels of verbatim agreement are extremely low (Low DT passages). For example, in On Retaliation and Love of One's Enemies (Matt 5.38–48 // Luke 6.27–36), a passage 135 // 150 words in length, only 8 words fall within SVA ≥ 4. Similarly in Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees (Matt 23.23–36 // Luke 11.39–51), a passage 261 // 185 words in length, only 16 words fall within SVA ≥ 4 and there are also differences in the ordering of these sayings.Footnote 16

The presence of Low DT, as well as High DT, passages requires some form of explanation.Footnote 17 The distinct difference between the two means that they are unlikely to have been created in identical circumstances. This is a problem for simple versions of the 2DH and the FH, inasmuch as they see both Low DT and High DT passages as arising from the same operation; Matthew and Luke's independent use of Q (in the case of the 2DH) and Luke's direct use of Matthew (in the case of the FH). This invites the adoption of more complex versions of these hypotheses, such as those including a role for oral traditionFootnote 18 and/or multiple versions of Q.Footnote 19 The question remains, however, as to why such factors might apply at some times, but not others.

The MCH proposes that variations in levels of agreement within the Double Tradition are a product of Matthew's conflationary activity. That is to say, when Matthew copies Luke without distraction he produces High DT passages. When, however, Matthew knows differing versions of the same event he conflates them – resulting in a Low DT passage. It is not possible to establish the virtue of this proposal, relative to the alternatives, without further information. This deficit is made good, however, in the forthcoming companion article, ‘An Extant Instance of “Q”’, which offers a concrete example of how, on one occasion at least, Matthew's conflation of Luke with Luke's own source generates a Low DT passage.Footnote 20

(iii) Sometimes Matthew, sometimes Luke, preserves a saying in its more original form

As Streeter famously observed, ‘Sometimes it is Matthew, sometimes it is Luke, who gives a saying in what is clearly the more original form. This is explicable if both are drawing from the same source, each making slight modifications of his own.’Footnote 21 If the additional significance that Streeter erroneously attributes to this phenomenon is discounted (see discussion above), then his general point is sound. To this extent, the phenomenon of Alternating Primitivity supports the 2DH and presents a challenge to any hypothesis that attempts to account for the Double Tradition simply on the basis of Luke copying Matthew or Matthew copying Luke.

The 2DH is not, however, the only hypothesis capable of accounting for Alternating Primitivity. According to the MCH, it is to be expected that Luke will usually be more primitive than Matthew, as is indeed commonly observed.Footnote 22 The challenge for a hypothesis in which Matthew uses Luke, however, is to explain how it is possible for Matthew, on occasion, to be more primitive than Luke even while also using Luke. The MCH proposes that this phenomenon may occur when Matthew conflates Luke with Luke's own source. Thus, as Matthew switches from Luke to Luke's source he may preserve that source more faithfully than Luke does.Footnote 23

(iv) Two schools of scribal activity are both observable

A successful solution to the Synoptic Problem must allow each Evangelist to act within the conventions and constraints of contemporary scribal practice.Footnote 24 Ancient authors, when working with scrolls, faced a number of practical restrictions. First, scrolls were commonly balanced on the knee or thigh making it difficult to maintain sustained eye contact with, and thereby achieve verbatim copying of, a source document.Footnote 25 Second, the physical labour involved in accessing different parts of a single scroll meant that, unless doing so from memory, scroll users tended not to deviate from the order of events provided by their source material.Footnote 26 Third, the cumbersome nature of scrolls also encouraged the use of one source for a sustained period before switching to a second source, as opposed to rapidly switching between, or conflating, two sources.Footnote 27 Josephus' Antiquities provides a good example of the outworking of these constraints. Josephus works, in order, through a block of one source, paraphrasing as he goes, before switching to another source, and so on.Footnote 28 Luke, in his use of Mark, follows a very similar pattern.Footnote 29

Against this background it is intriguing that additional, more complex, scribal operations are unavoidable under every conceivable solution to the Synoptic Problem.Footnote 30 This heightens the challenge of finding a reconstruction that, nonetheless, allows each Evangelist to behave with consistency and credibility.Footnote 31

This challenge presents a particular difficulty for the FH, according to which Luke treats Mark entirely conventionally, after the manner exemplified by Josephus, but is then required to treat Matthew in a way that is entirely unconventional. That is to say, Luke is required to copy Matthew with remarkable exactness, while also radically reordering Matthew, while also engaging in the extraordinary practice of ‘unpicking’ Matthew's non-Markan material from its Markan context.Footnote 32 It is difficult to conceive of a credible motive for this latter activity, let alone a believable reconstruction of how it could physically have been achieved.Footnote 33 The dramatic inconsistency in Luke's behaviour seriously undermines the credibility of the FH.Footnote 34

The 2DH generates a different type of puzzle. Here, Matthew is consistently unlike Josephus in his treatment of Mark and, most particularly, Q. As Derrenbacker notes, ‘The [2DH] needs to explain how Matthew would have been able to rework the order of Q (and of Mark for that matter) … the [2DH] is weakest not in the Minor Agreements, but in the section where the evangelist is evidently conflating Mark and Q.’Footnote 35

This situation provokes Derrenbacker to make a striking proposal. Rather than seeing Matthew as a scroll user like Josephus, he states that ‘one is compelled to imagine Matthew's Q in the form of a codex’.Footnote 36 Indeed, the ‘random access’ property of codices, combined with their reduced bulk, would have made the processes of reordering, closely copying and conflation much easier than would have been the case with scrolls. The explanatory power of this arrangement causes Derrenbacker to venture the further possibility that Matthew's, less dramatic, manipulations of Mark could have been achieved by the same means.Footnote 37 This is an important suggestion inasmuch as it provides a credible explanation for Matthew's unconventional scribal feats which, given Markan priority, cannot be avoided. Having surmounted this hurdle it may seem, in relative terms at least, that ‘Luke's use of his sources is straightforward and uncomplicated’.Footnote 38 This is, however, an over-generous assessment. It is not the case, as Derrenbacker states, that ‘[the] “principle” of “one source at a time” is seen in Luke's use of Mark and Q’.Footnote 39 Instead, under the 2DH, Luke is constantly required to switch rapidly between Q and his Sondergut ‘L’. For example, in Luke 11.1–53, such switches occur as many as a dozen times, while in Luke 8.4–56, a passage of comparable length, Luke does not depart from Mark at all.Footnote 40 Herein lies an unresolved question for the 2DH: why does Luke conform to the conventions and limitations of scroll use when dealing with Mark, but not when using Q and ‘L’?

Under the MCH, Luke and Matthew consistently align with two distinctly different types of behaviour. On the one hand, there is nothing to suggest that Luke did not always treat his sources in the conventional manner with which he also treated Mark.Footnote 41 The scribal feats achieved by Matthew, on the other hand, fall into an altogether different category. According to the MCH, Matthew was capable of: reordering and closely copying certain elements of Mark; reordering and closely copying substantial elements of Luke; and closely conflating Mark with Luke and other sources. Derrenbacker's observation that such operations may have been achievable using the technology of the codex opens up the possibility that Matthew worked from codices of both his major sources: Luke and Mark.Footnote 42

A rudimentary test for this conjecture can be set up by comparing Matthew's scribal achievements with those of Tatian in the creation of the Diatessaron.Footnote 43 Tatian, faced with at least four divergent versions of the life and teaching of Jesus, indicates what is possible using codices.Footnote 44 His reverence for the text means that when he comes across a passage that is unique to a given Gospel he records it more or less verbatim;Footnote 45 when he finds overlapping accounts of the same event or saying he works with great care to conflate the alternatives;Footnote 46 when he finds events that occur in a different order in different accounts he reorders the supplementary source.Footnote 47 Matthew's parallel achievements are not always as detailed or as sustained as those found in the Diatessaron, but their comparable character supports the idea that Matthew was an early beneficiary of the technology of the codex.Footnote 48

Of the hypotheses in view, only the MCH meets the challenge of allowing each Evangelist to behave consistently and within the limitations of contemporary scribal practice. Here Luke may act as a consistent scroll user and Matthew as a consistent codex user. As well as meeting the challenge in hand, this arrangement coheres with another requirement of the MCH: that Matthew was written later than Luke.Footnote 49

(v) Matthew and Luke ‘never’ agree in their placement of the Double Tradition

Streeter famously observed that, ‘subsequent to the Temptation story, there is not a single case in which Matthew and Luke agree in inserting the same saying at the same point in the Marcan outline’.Footnote 50 Similarly, Kloppenborg notes that there is ‘practically no agreement in the placement of [Double Tradition] sayings relative to Mark’.Footnote 51 This ‘fact’ is commonly seen as critical (alongside Alternating Primitivity) to the contention that Matthew and Luke had no direct contact with one another.Footnote 52

When it comes to arguing for Luke's ignorance of Matthew this observation is persuasive. Matthew's practice of drawing together related material from different sources has the effect of creating numerous occasions where he directly juxtaposes Markan and Double Tradition material. Luke's tendency to copy his sources in blocks means that, if using Matthew, he could be expected to reproduce several such instances of Matthew's combination of Mark and Double Tradition. The fact that this does not happen favours the conclusion that Luke did not copy Matthew.

This argument is less effective, however, when it comes to claiming Matthew's ignorance of Luke. Luke's tendency to copy sources in blocks means that material from Mark rarely adjoins his use of Double Tradition.Footnote 53 At the same time, Matthew's practice of selecting and combining related material means that he is only likely to reproduce Luke's combination of Mark and Double Tradition when Luke happens to combine material in a way that is already attractive to Matthew.

Given the small number of opportunities to reproduce Luke's combinations, and given the limited circumstances under which Matthew might be motivated to do so, it would not be surprising if (after the Temptations) Matthew never agreed with Luke in this regard. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Matthew does appear to reproduce Luke's arrangement of Mark and Double Tradition on one particular occasion.

The relevant passage of Luke occurs in the preamble to the Sermon on the Plain. Luke 5.12–6.19 follows a block of Mark (1.40–3.19) in an entirely conventional manner, with one exceptional element. Rather than following the sequence of Mark throughout this block, Luke reverses the order of the final two elements (the Healing of the Multitudes and the Appointment of the Twelve). Luke then uses Mark's Healing of the Multitudes as the context for his Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6.20–49).

Matthew's reproduction of this arrangement becomes apparent when events are followed from his point of view, as outlined below.

Matthew 3.1–4.22 follows Mark 1.2–20 in sequence up until Mark's Call of the First Disciples (1.16–20). At this point Matthew identifies the immediately following incident, Jesus' Preaching in the Synagogue at Capernaum (Mark 1.21), as an opportunity to insert his first great Discourse – this is evident inasmuch as the crowd's reaction to the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 7.28–9) is the same as their reaction to the sermon at Capernaum (Mark 1.22). Matthew elects to replace Mark's unrecorded sermon with an augmented version of Luke's Sermon on the Plain. This provides him with two options for the context of the Sermon. On the one hand he has Mark's setting of the synagogue in Capernaum, and on the other Luke's setting of The Healing of the Multitudes (Luke 6.17–19). In the event he chooses the latter. The scale and importance of this Sermon means that Matthew augments Luke's context with various additional details drawn from elsewhere in Mark (Mark 1.39; 3.7, 8, 13a). It remains the case, however, that Luke's arrangement of Mark to create a context for his Sermon on the Plain credibly influenced Matthew's rearrangement of Mark to create a context for his Sermon on the Mount.Footnote 54

Viewed from the perspective of Matthew's use of Luke, therefore, Streeter's statement that ‘subsequent to the Temptation story, there is not a single case in which Matthew and Luke agree in inserting the same saying at the same point in the Marcan outline’ is not true. This turns the tables entirely. Instead of providing one of the essential planks of the 2DH, the so-called ‘argument from order’ points towards Matthew's direct knowledge of Luke.

(vi) Overlapping versions of the same event are commonly conflated by Matthew

Occasions when Mark and Luke record different versions of the same event include: The Temptations of Jesus (Matt 4.1–11 // Mk 1.12–13 // Luke 4.1–13); the Beelzebul Controversy (Matt 12.22–30 // Mark 3.22–7 // Luke 11.14–23); The Sign of Jonah (Matt 12.38–42 // Mark 8.11–12 // Luke 11.16, 29–32); The Mustard Seed (where Luke adds The Yeast) (Matt 13.31–2, 33 // Mark 4.30–2 // Luke 13.18–19, 20–1); and False Christs (Matt 24.23–8 // Mark 13.21–3 // Luke 17.23–4, 37b). In each example Matthew combines (sometimes with high levels of verbatim exactness) elements from both versions.

These passages, sometimes referred to as ‘Mark–Q overlaps’, generate very real difficulties for any hypothesis that sees Luke as dependent on Matthew. This is because, as Tuckett notes, they require that ‘Luke must have decided to use only those parts of Matthew which Matthew added to Mark and to exclude all the elements where Matthew has used Mark directly’.Footnote 55 Standard discussions of the Synoptic Problem assume that the only possible alternative to Luke's ‘unpicking’ of Matthew is Matthew's and Luke's independent use of Q. Thus, Tuckett notes that, in contrast to the difficulties faced by the FH, ‘a more reasonable scenario emerges on the [2DH]. Mark and Q overlapped in a few instances. Luke then decided to follow one of these sources (usually Q). Matthew adopted a policy of running the two sources together.’Footnote 56 He goes on to conclude: ‘Consideration of these “overlap” passages is thus probably one of the strongest arguments in favour of a form of the [2DH].’Footnote 57

The flaw in Tuckett's conclusion is that it fails to look beyond the two standard alternatives. If the additional possibility that Matthew knew Luke is taken into consideration, then another credible explanation must be reckoned with: that Mark's and Luke's differing accounts of the same event were directly conflated together by Matthew. When the legitimacy of this option is recognised its explanatory power is obvious.

(vii) Sometimes Luke and Matthew agree in minor ways against Mark

Occasions when Luke and Matthew agree in small ways against Mark in Markan contexts, the so-called Minor Agreements, have long been a minor but real embarrassment to the 2DH.Footnote 58 Particularly striking examples include: The Healing of the Woman with a Haemorrhage (Matt 9.20 // Mark 5.27 // Luke 8.44), where Luke and Matthew agree that she ‘approached’ Jesus from behind and touched the ‘fringe’ of his garment;Footnote 59 The Healing of the Paralytic (Matt 9.7–8 // Mark 2.12 // Luke 5.25–6), where Luke and Matthew agree that the man got up ‘and went home’; and The Trial of Jesus (Matt 26.67–8 // Mark 14.65 // Luke 22.63–5), where Luke and Matthew agree in including the soldiers' question ‘Who was it that struck you?’Footnote 60

In The Four Gospels, Streeter goes to some lengths to explain away these agreements as the product, for example, of coincidental editing and later scribal emendation.Footnote 61 While it is not improbable that such events happened on occasion, the requirement that they explain every Minor Agreement places an uncomfortably comprehensive demand on factors that essentially rely on chance.

The headache that the Minor Agreements generate for the 2DH is well known. It is less commonly noted that they also sit uncomfortably under the FH. This is the case because the non-accidental creation of Minor Agreements is, in effect, a low-level form of conflation. This counts against the FH inasmuch as there is little evidence, elsewhere, that Luke is interested in conflation. Indeed, according to the FH, Luke is more concerned to unpick his sources than he is to run them together. Under the MCH, however, Minor Agreements are to be expected. As Matthew searches Luke for material with which to supplement Mark, it is unsurprising that he sometimes recalls distinctive Lukan phrases or details and elects to include them.

(viii) Some elements of Luke do not also appear in Matthew

Why, if Matthew knew Luke, did he not make more complete use of the resources Luke has to offer? More specifically, why did he not, for example, include more of Luke's Nativity and Resurrection Narratives? Why did he not include episodes such as the Raising of the Widow's Son at Nain, or parables such as The Rich Fool, The Good Samaritan or The Prodigal Son?

Here, finally, is evidence against Matthew's use of Luke and, correspondingly, in favour of the 2DH and FH. At least, this is the case so long as it may be argued that Matthew must use such elements when he encounters them. In reality, however, Matthew is under no such constraint.Footnote 62 Further, there are credible reasons why he might elect not to use every element of Luke. For example, financial considerations could have exerted pressure to omit non-essential passages.Footnote 63 As supporters of Matthew's use of Luke have also shown, there are a range of additional explanations for Matthew’ omissions.Footnote 64 For example, in the case of the Rich Fool (Luke 12.13–21) they point to Matthew's relatively accommodating attitude towards the rich.Footnote 65 This could account for his omission of Lukan parables in which the rich are apparently condemned simply because of their wealth. On the basis of these types of consideration MacEwen justly concludes: ‘for many of the omitted parables, it can be plausibly argued that Matthew would have found them uncongenial to his redactional aims, too difficult to be useable, or similar to other versions of these parables that Matthew preferred to use instead’.Footnote 66

While such reasoning makes credible sense of many of Matthew's omissions, this does not fully explain the way he treats Luke's Nativity and Resurrection Narratives. Here additional factors appear to be at work.

According to the MCH, Matthew is often motivated to conflate related material from different sources. It is possible, therefore, that Matthew's Birth Narrative is a combination of Luke's Nativity with one drawn from elsewhere.Footnote 67 If this were the case, then it might be expected that Matthew would retain only those details, from either text, that were most conducive to his project. This would explain why, where they differ, Matthew's version consistently favours the dignity of Jesus and his claim to Messiahship.Footnote 68 This arrangement would also explain how, despite their differences, the two accounts nonetheless share twelve points of similarity, including the virginal conception, birth at Bethlehem, and Joseph's Davidic descent.Footnote 69

A final puzzle concerns Matthew's omission of Luke's Resurrection Appearances (Luke 24.1–52). At first sight it may seem strange that Matthew omits episodes that confirm the reality of the Resurrection. On closer inspection, however, the disjunction between Luke's focus on Jerusalem and Mark's focus on Galilee presents a significant difficulty to a conflator.Footnote 70 When faced with similar factual conflicts compilers such as Arrian, Josephus and Plutarch sometimes opt to omit one source altogether.Footnote 71 It is credible that Matthew, in this instance, elects to do the same.Footnote 72

The evidence ‘Some elements of Luke do not appear in Matthew’ is, as the above survey has attempted to illustrate, capable of being explained under the MCH, as well as the 2DH and FH. To decide which explanation is most likely to be correct, therefore, this feature must be subjected, along with all the others discussed above, to the ultimate test: which hypothesis accounts for all the individual pieces of evidence within one coherent overarching narrative?

4. The overarching narrative

With reference to the mainstream hypotheses, John Kloppenborg candidly observes: ‘No hypothesis is without its difficulties, and for any of the existing Synoptic hypotheses there are sets of data which the hypothesis does not explain very well.’Footnote 73 The Minor Agreements are usually seen as the main weakness in the 2DH. However, the preceding analysis highlights three additional problems: very high levels of verbatim agreement between Luke and Matthew in the High DT passages; Matthew's reproduction of Luke's arrangement of Mark relative to the Sermon on the Plain/Mount; and the inconsistent scribal practices required of Luke. The difficulties for the FH are still more severe inasmuch as, beyond more minor problems, this hypothesis requires Luke to behave entirely conventionally when dealing with Mark, but with extraordinary and impractical unconventionality when dealing with Matthew. In both cases, therefore, there are problems that militate against the construction of an overarching narrative in which each party behaves with believable consistency.

These difficulties do not apply, however, under the MCH. Here, Mark writes first using unknown sources. Luke writes second, usually treating his sources (Mark and others) one at a time – in the manner of scroll users such as Josephus. Still later, Matthew draws together, and sometimes conflates, related material from Mark, Luke and other sources (including some of Luke's own sources) – using techniques exhibited and developed by codex users such as Tatian.

A critical strength of this narrative is that diverse, and perhaps seemingly unrelated, elements of data are all understood as arising from the spectrum of Matthew's conflationary activity. So, for example, when Matthew finds that Luke has substantial unique material with which to supplement Mark's account he inserts it almost verbatim, thereby creating High DT passages such as the Temptations. When he encounters two different, but compatible, accounts of the same event he loosely interleaves them, thereby creating so-called Overlap passages such as the Beelzebul Controversy. Faced with closely related sets of sayings in Luke and Luke's own source, he tightly interleaves them, thereby generating Low DT passages with Alternating Primitivity such as On Retaliation and Love of Enemies.Footnote 74 Matthew's interest in Luke's capacity to augment Mark's account means that he sometimes takes the opportunity to insert more minor Lukan details, thereby creating Minor Agreements such as the Woman with a Haemorrhage. Sometimes, however, when Luke's additional material is repetitive, unwelcome or impractical Matthew elects not to use it, thereby creating Omissions such as that of the Parable of the Rich Fool.

As noted at the outset, a convincing hypothesis, like a good accident reconstruction, is one that accounts for the major sets of data within a coherent overarching story – one in which each participant behaves believably and consistently. The MCH, or Streeter's ‘other’ solution, achieves this goal.

5. Revisiting Streeter's legacy

The preceding discussion supports the suggestion that, when Streeter's two logical errors are corrected, his other observations hold true: there are substantial obstacles to Luke's use of Matthew; Matthew's use of Luke is indeed an ‘obvious’ explanation for the Double Tradition; and the phenomenon of Alternating Primitivity does suggest the presence of an additional source or sources, ‘Q’,Footnote 75 used by both Luke and Matthew.

Under the MCH, however, the shape and content of ‘Q’ is fundamentally altered. According to this hypothesis, a role for this type of source only occurs in a very limited number of Low DT passages. This means that, rather than being the single document of approximately 4,500 words proposed by the IQP, the total combined length of any ‘Q’ sources is likely to be somewhat less than 450 words. This radical reappraisal of ‘Q’ introduces an intriguing possibility: that extant instances of ‘Q’ might, after all, be extant.

Footnotes

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A video presentation of this article may be found at www.alangarrow.com/mch.html.

References

1 B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins. Treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, and Dates (London: Macmillan, 1924) 183.

2 The output of the IQP includes J. M. Robinson, P. Hoffmann and J. S. Kloppenborg, The Critical Edition of Q (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), and twelve volumes of the Documenta Q database (Leuven: Peeters, 1996–). This database is projected to include thirty-one volumes – with a combined total of well over 10,000 pages.

3 Streeter, Four Gospels, 183.

4 The assessment of relative primitivity depends on subjective judgement. Such judgements are rarely clear-cut – as the many volumes of the Documenta Q database testify. Taken in overview, however, the proposal that Luke is always more primitive than Matthew, or vice versa, is not convincing. This means that the phenomenon of alternating primitivity requires some form of explanation. The most robust proposal to date is that, as Streeter proposes, Matthew and Luke share access to an earlier source. For another perspective on Alternating Primitivity, see F. Watson, Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014) 162.

5 D. R. Catchpole, The Quest for Q (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993) 6.

6 C. M. Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity: Studies on Q (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996) 10. Similarly, W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew 1–7 (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988) 116; and R. H. Stein, Studying the Synoptic Gospels: Origin and Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 20012) 112.

7 Streeter, Four Gospels, 183.

8 Tuckett, Q, 4. The ‘various reasons’ to which Tuckett refers are not articulated. Similarly, Stein, Synoptic Gospels, 76, states that Matthew's use of Luke faces ‘insurmountable problems’. Instead of stating what these are, Stein hedges with, ‘[Matthew's use of Luke] is seldom argued today and will not be discussed at length’ (p. 99). Ultimately, only the (irrelevant) occurrence of Alternating Primitivity is cited before Stein concludes: ‘when all the arguments are considered together, the conclusion seems reasonably certain that Matthew and Luke did not know each other’ (p. 121).

9 M. Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze (London: T. & T. Clark International, 2001) 108. A helpful digest of fourteen scholars, sensible or otherwise, who explore the case for Matthew's use of Luke is provided by R. K. MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority: An exploration of Matthew's use of Mark and Luke as a solution to the Synoptic Problem (LNTS; London: Bloomsbury, 2015) 7–24. Of particular interest are: West, H. P. Jr, ‘A Primitive Version of Luke in the Composition of Matthew’, NTS 14 (1967–8) 75–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huggins, R. V., ‘Matthean Posteriority: A Preliminary Proposal’ NT 34 (1992) 1–22 Google Scholar; M. Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Collection and Origin of the Canonical Gospels (Harrisburg: Trinity, 2000); and E. Powell, The Myth of the Lost Gospel (Las Vegas: Symposium, 2006).

10 Hengel, Four Gospels, 171, outlines the essential elements of this arrangement: ‘Certainly the existence of “Q”, whatever is to be understood by that, cannot be ruled out from the start. Even if we can be certain that Matthew as a rule follows Mark and has largely used him, and we conjecture with good reason that he also took over material from Luke, the sum total of his sources remains as unknown to us as the πολλοί in Luke 1.1.’ A similar arrangement is advocated by von Dobschütz, E., ‘Matthäus als Rabbi und Katechet’, ZNW 27 (1928) 338–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Aurelius, E., ‘Gottesvolk und Außenseiter: Eine geheime Beziehung Lukas–Matthäus’, NTS 47 (2001) 428–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 According to Streeter and supporters of the 2DH, Matthew and Luke drew independently on Mark and Q. According to the FH, Matthew used Mark, and then Luke used both Matthew and Mark. Because of the well-established and convincing arguments for Markan priority the Griesbach Hypothesis (GH) is not considered here. Arguments against the FH will, however, also apply to the GH inasmuch as both propose Luke's use of Matthew.

12 MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority, 51, advocates SVA≥4 as a measure preferable to ‘word to word’ agreement because it takes account of word order, as well as word selection.

13 J. S. Kloppenborg, Q the Earliest Gospel: An Introduction to the Original Stories and Sayings of Jesus (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2008) 51 notes that Matthew and Luke agree verbatim for slightly more than 50 per cent of their Q words.

14 Kloppenborg, J. S., ‘Variation in the Reproduction of the Double Tradition and an Oral Q?’, ETL 83 (2007) 73–4Google Scholar (emphasis original). Kloppenborg makes this point in support of a written, rather than an oral, Q. However, as MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority, 64, notes, this data may prove more than Kloppenborg intends. The puzzle posed by high-agreement passages is also noted, in passing, by Downing, F. G., ‘Redaction Criticism: Josephus' Antiquities and the Synoptic Gospels (ii)’, JSNT 9 (1980) 29–48, esp. 33Google Scholar.

15 This is also the implication of the very detailed statistical study, A. Abakuks, The Synoptic Problem and Statistics (London: Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2014).

16 J. S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000) 63 summarises Morgenthaler's data to show agreement of more than 60 per cent for 41 per cent of the Double Tradition, and of less than 19 per cent for a further 8.2 per cent.

17 This is not to suggest an absence of ‘Mid DT passages’. The immediate challenge, however, is to explain the most extreme phenomena. Success here should contribute mechanisms for explaining more intermediate examples.

18 So, Dunn, J. D. G., ‘Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition’, NTS 49 (2003) 139–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 163–5. Also, S. E. Young, Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers (WUNT2 311; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 34, 134–9.

19 For example, U. Luz, ‘Sermon on the Mount/Plain: Reconstruction of Qmt and Qlk’, SBL 1983 Seminar Papers (ed. K. H. Richards; SBLASP 22; Chicago: Scholars Press, 1983) 473–9. See also Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating, 104–11, esp. 109. Cf. also texts listed and discussed in Hengel, Four Gospels, 305–6 n. 671.

20 Synopses 2 and 3, and my accompanying discussion in ‘An Extant Instance of “Q”’, scheduled for publication in NTS 62.3 (July 2016).

21 Streeter, Four Gospels, 183.

22 Tuckett, Q, 4, as quoted above.

23 A concrete example of this phenomenon is provided in the companion article, ‘An Extant Instance of “Q”’ (Synopses 2 and 3, accompanied by n. 45).

24 This point is made with force by R. A. Derrenbacker, Jr, Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic Problem (BETL 186; Leuven: Peeters, 2005).

25 R. A. Derrenbacker, Jr, ‘The “External and Psychological Conditions under Which the Synoptic Gospels were Written”: Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic Problem’, New Studies in the Synoptic Problem: Oxford Conference, April 2008. Essays in Honour of Christopher M. Tuckett (ed. P. Foster, A. Gregory, J. S. Kloppenborg, J. Verheyden; Leuven: Peeters, 2011) 435–58, esp. 437. Cf. also Downing, F. G., ‘Redaction Criticism: Josephus' Antiquities and the Synoptic Gospels (i)’, JSNT 8 (1980) 46–65, esp. 48, 49Google Scholar.

26 Derrenbacker, ‘External Conditions’, 441.

27 Derrenbacker, ‘External Conditions’, 440–1.

28 Derrenbacker, ‘External Conditions’, 440 lists various exemplars alongside Josephus including Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Arrian of Nicomedia. Downing, ‘Josephus (ii)’, 30 notes that Josephus acts along the lines of accepted convention.

29 Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 213, notes that, ‘Luke follows a procedure much like that of Josephus', cf. also Downing, ‘Josephus (ii)’, 29. On the apparent counter-example of the so-called Lukan transpositions, see Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 214–15.

30 The complexities required of the hypotheses in view are considered below. See also Derrenbacker, ‘External Conditions’, 444.

31 The ‘accident reconstruction’ model for evaluating competing hypotheses is one that tends to favour consistency over inconsistency. That is to say, a reconstruction that allows a given player to act similarly in response to similar situations is generally favoured over one that requires that player to react differently in similar situations.

32 Compelling presentations of the problem of ‘unpicking’ are offered by Downing, F. G., ‘Towards the Rehabilitation of Q’, NTS 11 (1965) 169–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Downing, F. G., ‘Compositional Conventions and the Synoptic Problem’, JBL 107 (1988) 69–85 Google Scholar; and Downing, ‘Josephus (i)’ and ‘Josephus (ii)’. The problem of ‘unpicking’ is recognised, but unconvincingly dealt with, by A. M. Farrer, ‘On Dispensing with Q’, Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot (ed. D. E. Nineham; Oxford: Blackwell, 1957) 55–88, esp. 66–85.

33 Watson, Gospel Writing, 163–216 attempts to show, by contrast, that Luke's use of Matthew is ‘simple and intelligible’ (p. 163). There are, however, three particular problems with Watson's approach. First, there is too little explanation of why Luke's proposed (complex) treatment of Matthew is so very unlike his use of Mark. Second, those who oppose Luke's use of Matthew are characterised as suggesting that Luke's order is ‘chaos’, ‘rubble’ or a ‘confused miscellany’ (pp. 170, 173, 215). This is not the case. What is claimed is that if Luke was using Matthew then his handling of Matthean material is implausibly complex. Third, Watson's conscious decision not to consider Matthew's use of Luke (p. 137) leaves his position vulnerable to the possibility that Matthew's gathering of dispersed Lukan material might be more plausible than the reverse.

34 For a sustained examination of the FH, see Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 190–203.

35 Derrenbacker ‘External Conditions’, 443.

36 Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 253.

37 Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 254.

38 Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 255.

39 Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 213 (emphasis added).

40 The contrast between Luke's treatment of Mark and Q + ‘L’ is downplayed in Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional, 212–15. However, Derrenbacker, ‘External Conditions’, 444 is more straightforward in noting that, under the 2DH, Luke is sometimes required to act as a conflator.

41 How Luke actually treats sources other than Mark is not, according to the MCH, open to scrutiny. What may be said, however, is that the MCH, unlike the 2DH, does not require Luke to treat his additional sources in a way that is inconsistent with his treatment of Mark.

42 Strictly speaking, it is not necessary to speculate about how Matthew achieved his compositional feats. All that is required is to note that his compositional techniques are consistent, and consistently different from Luke's conventional use of Mark.

43 Diatessaronic studies are very complex, a point illustrated with clarity and candour by W. L. Petersen, Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (Vigiliae Christianae Supplements 25; Atlanta: SBL, 1994) esp. 442–4. Illustrations derived from the Diatessaron must, therefore, be treated with appropriate caution.

44 Petersen, Tatian, 420, 427 argues that, in addition to the four canonical Gospels, Tatian also worked with Justin's harmony and extra-canonical traditions.

45 Given the difficulties associated with establishing the original language and wording of text, precision is not possible here. However, the broad observation of Petersen, Tatian, 369 is relevant: ‘Large portions of the Diatessaron's original text agreed verbatim with the text now found in the principal gospel manuscripts.’

46 Petersen, Tatian, 26–7 states that ‘the Diatessaron appears to have been a very subtle, word-by-word harmonization’. On pp. 398–401 he discusses the ‘very complex harmonization’ of Matt 28.1–7, Mark 16.1–7, Luke 24.1–9 and John 20.11–12.

47 A. A. Hobson, ‘The Diatessaron of Tatian and the Synoptic Problem’ (PhD Dissertation: University of Chicago, 1904) does not engage with the textual problems associated with the Diatessaron. However, as a broad observation, he is justified in noting that ‘the remoteness of the conflated elements from each other in the written sources, are practically unlimited’ (p. 262).

48 C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (Oxford: OUP, 1983) 60 suggest that ‘if the first work to be written on a papyrus codex was a Gospel, it is easy to understand that the codex rapidly became the sole format for the Christian scriptures, given the authority that a Gospel would carry’.

49 Identifying Matthew as a consistent codex user does not necessarily imply a second-century date for this Gospel. Roberts and Skeat, The Birth, 45 note that ‘so universal is the Christian use of the codex in the second century that its introduction must date well before ad 100’. Matthew's use of codices does indicate, nonetheless, a late date relative to Luke. Hengel, Four Gospels, 186–205 further supports a late date for Matthew relative to Luke.

50 Streeter, Four Gospels, 183, see also 161.

51 Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating, 29 (emphasis original).

52 For example, Davies and Allison, Matthew 1–7, 116 and Stein, Synoptic Gospels, 104, 112.

53 Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority’, 6 notes just five occasions.

54 This example is treated extensively by Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority’, 5–9. Kloppenborg, Excavating, 29 also uses the example of Matthew's and Luke's placement of the makarisms to illustrate his (contrasting) point. His example is flawed, however, in that it requires Matthew's makarisms to begin immediately after Matt 4.22 or 4.23, when in fact they occur after Matt 4.25. Watson, Gospel Writing, 148–54, explores the significance of Luke's Markan context for the Sermon from the point of view of Luke's use of Matthew.

55 Tuckett, Q, 32 (emphasis original). Similarly, Downing, ‘Towards Rehabilitation’, 175, and cf. n. 32 above.

56 Tuckett, Q, 33.

57 Tuckett, Q, 34.

58 This much is admitted by Downing, ‘Josephus (ii)’, 42. Stein, Synoptic Gospels, 126, 142 and Kloppenborg, Earliest Gospel, 36 are similarly candid.

59 Kloppenborg, Earliest Gospel, 36 describes this example as particularly problematic for the 2DH. He concludes: ‘None of the explanations offered for this coincidence is particularly compelling.’

60 The problem is not restricted to these much-discussed examples. E. P. Sanders and M. Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM, 1989) 67 note that ‘[t]here are virtually no triple tradition pericopes without such agreements’.

61 Streeter, Four Gospels, 295–331. See also, in still more exhaustive detail, F. Nierynck, The Minor Agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark (Leuven: University Press, 1974).

62 Stein, Synoptic Gospels, 112 recognises that, for this reason, omissions are a relatively weak argument for suggesting that one text did not use another. He references the advice of Nineham, D. E., ‘Eyewitness Testimony and the Gospel Tradition’, JTS 9 (1958) 247Google Scholar, that ‘arguments from what we should have done to what they [the Evangelists] “must” have done have always to be treated with the greatest caution’.

63 Derrenbacker, ‘External Conditions’, 440: ‘the abbreviation/abridgement of original writings was related to [the] perceived burden that lengthy works placed upon the reader (and presumably the “publisher” and bookseller) … abbreviated works tended to eventually win the favor of the literary public, with the original texts fading into oblivion’. Matthew's frequent removal of detail from Mark's narratives suggests that he did indeed value concision (cf. MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority, 116).

64 For example, West, ‘Primitive Version’, 79–88; Powell, Myth, 50–7; Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority’, 14–15; and MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority, 103–17.

65 MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority, 110 cites Davies and Allison, Matthew 1–7, 405 in confirmation of this point.

66 Matthean Posteriority, 186.

67 If Matthew is acting according to the conventions employed by Josephus, then he is unlikely to have invented events without reference to some form of source. Cf. Downing, ‘Josephus (i)’, 55–6.

68 These motives may also explain Matthew's reworking of Luke's Genealogy to make Jesus’ line of descent run through Solomon rather than Nathan (cf. Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority’, 19). Downing ‘Josephus (ii)’, 34 indicates that such improvement is not unprecedented, ‘Josephus can vary his own genealogical lists; even if Luke received one, he might have done his own “research” to improve it’. Hengel, Four Gospels, 200–1 sees Matthew's account as being in deliberate opposition to Luke. See also Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority’, 17–21.

69 Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority’, 17 n. 38 lists all twelve parallels.

70 Tatian also struggled with these conflicting accounts. Petersen, Tatian, 60 writes: ‘According to bar Salibi, it appears that Tatian … despaired of harmonising the discrepancies among the resurrection accounts; this recalls Theodore bar Koni's remark … that Tatian stopped harmonising when he reached the resurrection accounts. This need not mean that Tatian abandoned creating the Diatessaron at that point; rather … that he ceased his harmonising, and presumably switched to presenting the accounts seriatim.’

71 Derrenbacker, ‘External Conditions’, 438: ‘in the case of Arrian, when an author is bringing two sources together, he will follow the accounts of both where they both agree. “But where they differ” Arrian states that he will “select the version [he] regard[s] as more trustworthy (πιστότερα) and also better worth telling (ἀξιαφηγητότερα)”’. See also Downing, ‘Josephus (i)’, 62: ‘If his sources conflict in a fairly straightforward fashion over some major matter, Josephus follows the older and fuller source.’ For Plutarch's similar practice see, Downing, ‘Compositional Conventions’, 81.

72 On the Resurrection Appearances, see also Huggins, ‘Matthean Posteriority’, 21–2.

73 Kloppenborg, Earliest Gospel, 21.

74 A concrete example of Matthew's conflation of Luke with Luke's own source to create a Low DT passage with Alternating Primitivity is provided in the companion article ‘An Extant Instance of “Q”’.

75 ‘Q’, with the addition of quotation marks, indicates any entity (other than Mark) that is shared by both Luke and Matthew. This is as distinct from Q, without quotation marks, used to denote the full reconstruction attempted by the International Q Project (IQP).

Figure 0

Figure 1. The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis (MCH)