The Two Source Hypothesis explains material that exists in the Gospels of Mark, Mathew and Luke and other material that exists in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark as pointing to the existence of an earlier lost document, labeled Q. Matthew and Luke are each supposed to have two sources: Mark and Q. This hypothesis does not explain why Matthew and Luke both have material that is unique to each. Some scholars propose further lost sources M and L to explain that.
My own opinion is that there is no need for Q or M or L. Matthew used Mark as a basis and added new material to serve his agenda. Luke used Mark and Matthew as a basis and added new material to serve his agenda. But Luke’s agenda was to counteract certain features of Matthew that he found problematic. Luke incorporated themes from Matthew but turned them upside down to undo Matthew’s agenda.
As I see it…
Matthew’s purpose in writing his Gospel was to identify his community as Law-observant Jewish Christians, distinguishing them from both Jesus-accepting but Law-abrogating Pauline Christianity and Law-observant but Jesus-rejecting rabbinic Judaism. Matthew saw Jewish Christianity as the next phase of Judaism in a post-Temple era and Jesus as the New Moses bringing a new covenant. As part of the traditional view of the Messiah, Jesus was the true King of the Jews as opposed to the fake Rome appointed Herod. That this had definite earthly overtones can be seen in the ending of Matthew 19, where the Apostles will rule over the tribes of Israel and the followers of Jesus will receive much worldly benefits.
Luke’s purpose in writing his Gospel was to counteract certain aspects of Matthew that Luke saw as objectionable. This included Matthew’s requirement of observing Jewish Law in detail, contrary to Pauline Christianity, and Matthew’s focus on Jesus as Kingly Messiah with its potential reminder of the terrible First Jewish War. Luke set out to refocus Matthew, replacing the most problematic parts of Matthew with new versions reversing Matthew’s intentions.
Areas where Luke reversed Matthew include:
Genealogy
Nativity
Sermon on the Mount
Galilee-centrism
Miscellaneous other points
Since each of these areas require a lengthy explanation, the immediate focus of this thread will be on the two genealogies.
Matthew began his Gospel with an elaborate genealogy for Jesus beginning with Abraham and proceeding through David and the line of kings down to Joseph. This established the thoroughly Jewish and kingly roots of Jesus and his descent from David as necessary for a Messiah claimant, part of his elaborate program establishing Jesus as definitely the Jewish Messiah. Luke also includes a genealogy, the only other NT writer to do so. But Luke’s version is very different from Matthew’s and is clearly aimed at undoing Matthew’s implications of a totally Jewish Jesus and a Kingly Messiah.
Placement
Matthew places the genealogy of Jesus at the very beginning of his Gospel. This is a logical place for a genealogy and also allows Matthew to introduce his theme of Jesus as the Messiah and the Jesus movement as the true Judaism right up front. Luke puts the genealogy well into the story, after the baptism of the adult Jesus, back in chapter 3.
Matthew introduces this genealogy dramatically, “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham”. Luke merely says, “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph”. “So it was thought”? First Luke pushes it back ‘off the front page’ so to speak. Now he emphasizes that this is not the biological genealogy of Jesus. Why does Luke mention a genealogy at all if he is going to downplay its importance like that? Because Matthew had one. Because Luke wants to remind the reader of Matthew to underscore that Luke is telling the story a different way.
Direction
Matthew’s genealogy runs from Abraham, father to son, unfolding to its inevitable climax in Jesus. Jesus is therefore the culmination of Jewish history, justifying the Jesus movement as the true and unique heir of Judaism. Luke runs it backwards from son to father, undoing that sense of inevitable historic momentum and thereby separating Jesus from that strong sense of being exclusively Jewish.
Matthew uses the form of the genealogies in the Jewish scriptures, imbuing his list with a sense of authority, e.g., ‘Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat Judas and his brothers’ and so on, occasionally broken by side comments. Luke (going backward) does it in a very simple way. After ‘son of Joseph’, he merely puts ‘of Heli of Matthat of Levi of Melki’ (which is what the Greek really says) and so on, in an almost comical manner. Having already indicated in two ways that he does not consider the genealogy important, perhaps Luke is making fun of Matthew.
Organization
Matthew points out that the genealogy he presents is organized in three groups of fourteen. “Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.” Why fourteen? It turns out that the Hebrew Gematria value of the name David is 14. Daled Vav Daled = 4 + 6 + 4 = 14. According to scripture, the Messiah must be a descendant of David. The whole genealogy of Jesus shouts “David! David! David!”. Also note that David gets counted twice in the list. He is the last of the first group of 14 and also the first in the second group of 14. Matthew even points this out in his ‘fourteen’ description quoted above.
Luke does not attempt to organize his genealogy. In fact, he adds back names that appear in the genealogy list in 1 Chronicles that Matthew omitted, thereby breaking Matthew’s 14 based organization.
Content
In addition to restoring omitted names as mentioned above, Luke gives a totally different ancestry of Joseph following David. In particular he has Joseph descended from Nathan, an obscure son of David, and not from Solomon, the great and famous king. This separation of Jesus from Matthew’s ‘King’ meme also shows up in other facets of Luke’s program, and serves to separate Jesus from being strictly Jewish and also from the bloody Revolt.
Notice that Luke inserts one of his ‘joke’ references to Matthew in the genealogy as he does elsewhere in his Gospel. Matthew inserts names following the Chronicle list to make that portion of his list come to 14 names. In Luke’s equivalent portion, he suddenly copies a pair of names from Matthew: Salathiel and Zorobabel. Luke is once again making sure the reader knows he is aware of Matthew and writing against him. (Before anyone argues that Matthew really says Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, be aware that in the Greek Matthew and Luke use identical names. Translators like to use the Hebrew based form of the names in Matthew (possibly to block recognition of Luke’s joke?)
Scope
Matthew begins his genealogy with Abraham. Luke, who runs his list backwards, goes all the way to Adam and then to God, calling Adam “the son of God”. The term “Son of God” appears frequently in all the Gospels in reference to Jesus. Why should Luke use it in reference to Adam? The answer lies in the passage immediately preceding Luke’s genealogy list.
Luke 3
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Luke has God calling Jesus his Son and having Adam, father of all, also being called “son of God”. And note that this happens when Jesus gets baptized just like “all the people”. This makes everyone metaphorically a child of God and linking Jesus, another child of God, to everyone. Jesus is universal and not just Jewish. (If anyone hears echoes of Paul, so do I.)
***
Luke created a genealogy that was opposite to that of Matthew for the purpose of refocusing Jesus away from Matthew’s totally Jewish, Kingly Messiah to a universal figure without Kingly overtones to remind the reader of the Revolt.
Before you rush along into your discussion there are some assumptions you’re making that seem to me to be worth examining.
1.How do you know Luke responded to Matthew and that it wasn’t the other way round?
2.We have no access to the motivations of these ancient writers absent their comments about them. Any hypothesis predicted on such access is a non-starter. You can’t base an argument on what Luke “intended” because you have no idea what that was. In his introduction all Luke says is that other accounts existed and he is trying to write as complete an account as he can. Completely consistent with the idea of independence from Matthew, knowledge of Mark and Q and his own special sources.
Stephen said
Before you rush along into your discussion there are some assumptions you’re making that seem to me to be worth examining.1.How do you know Luke responded to Matthew and that it wasn’t the other way round?
2.We have no access to the motivations of these ancient writers absent their comments about them. Any hypothesis predicted on such access is a non-starter. You can’t base an argument on what Luke “intended” because you have no idea what that was. In his introduction all Luke says is that other accounts existed and he is trying to write as complete an account as he can. Completely consistent with the idea of independence from Matthew, knowledge of Mark and Q and his own special sources.
1 Matthew’s genealogy is very serious and an essential part of his argument that Jesus was the Messiah. As was the style in biographies of illustrious persons in that era, it begins with an illustrious genealogy. This genealogy includes the line of kings, Jesus as the Kingly Messiah being a major theme of Matthew. The style Matthew uses is that of 1 Chronicles, a descending line, with occasional side references.
Luke presents his biography as almost a throwaway (‘so it was thought’) that negates the purpose of Matthew’s genealogy – patrilineal descent from David. Instead of starting off with a genealogy, it is buried well into the story. Why would he bother presenting a genealogy at all? Luke’s genealogy omits the post-Davidic kings, making it much less illustrious than Matthew’s and negating the Kingly Messiah meme. Luke’s style (“of ___ of ____ of ___”) is almost flippant and totally unlike any other genealogy around.
It makes no sense to think Matthew copied Luke. It makes no sense to think that Luke would include his genealogy for any reason other than to oppose Matthew, which he does in almost every possibly way: placement, direction, organization, content and scope.
2 Of course we can understand what a writer intended to be understood. All it takes is reading it as a whole without chopping it up into itty bitty scholarly pieces or assuming it means what you have been told it means. Luke’s consistent use of themes from Matthew that point to ‘Jewish only Christianity’ or an earthly king with its reminder of the disastrous Jewish Revolt but turning them on their heads has a very clear intent – oppose those aspects of Matthew.
It makes no sense to think Matthew copied Luke. It makes no sense to think that Luke would include his genealogy for any reason other than to oppose Matthew, which he does in almost every possibly way: placement, direction, organization, content and scope.
It makes no sense? As I suspected you have a nice sounding hypothesis but no real evidence. Do you understand what would constitute evidence in a case like this? We know both Matthew and Luke knew Mark because they both quote vast swaths of his material. We know they both knew another source consisting largely of sayings which they both used in interestingly different ways. Doesn’t it give you pause that Luke never uses any of Matthew’s special sources? To demonstrate that Luke knew Matthew you need him to quote material he couldn’t have derived independently from Mark or hypothetical “Q”.
Note I’m not saying you are wrong. Just that in the face of a lack of evidence you have no basis for your confidence. None of the dependency hypotheses are without problems. It’s just that the two-source hypothesis has the least amount of problems.
Stephen said
It makes no sense to think Matthew copied Luke. It makes no sense to think that Luke would include his genealogy for any reason other than to oppose Matthew, which he does in almost every possibly way: placement, direction, organization, content and scope.It makes no sense? As I suspected you have a nice sounding hypothesis but no real evidence. Do you understand what would constitute evidence in a case like this? We know both Matthew and Luke knew Mark because they both quote vast swaths of his material. We know they both knew another source consisting largely of sayings which they both used in interestingly different ways. Doesn’t it give you pause that Luke never uses any of Matthew’s special sources? To demonstrate that Luke knew Matthew you need him to quote material he couldn’t have derived independently from Mark or hypothetical “Q”.
Note I’m not saying you are wrong. Just that in the face of a lack of evidence you have no basis for your confidence. None of the dependency hypotheses are without problems. It’s just that the two-source hypothesis has the least amount of problems.
The two source hypothesis does not stop at two. It needs L and M. Neither Q nor L nor M have any evidence for their existence other than the desire to have all the Gospels somehow be rooted in historical events and avoid the issue of the Gospel writers having invented much of their stories for their own purposes.
But I see no one wants to actually engage any of my arguments, just rely on what others say. I do not believe I will be renewing my membership.
OldDogNewTricks said
The two source hypothesis does not stop at two. It needs L and M. Neither Q nor L nor M have any evidence for their existence other than the desire to have all the Gospels somehow be rooted in historical events and avoid the issue of the Gospel writers having invented much of their stories for their own purposes.
But I see no one wants to actually engage any of my arguments, just rely on what others say. I do not believe I will be renewing my membership.
Neither Q nor L nor M have any evidence for their existence …
Other than the fact that the material exists and came from somewhere! Are you claiming that special M and L were inventions of the writers and not drawn from older sources? Ok but there are issues with this view. What about Q? Matthew invented Q? Once again there are issues with this view.
I am trying to engage you but so far you haven’t made any actual arguments. Merely asserting this point of view is not enough.
OldDogNewTricks said
The two source hypothesis does not stop at two. It needs L and M. Neither Q nor L nor M have any evidence for their existence other than the desire to have all the Gospels somehow be rooted in historical events and avoid the issue of the Gospel writers having invented much of their stories for their own purposes.
(…)
The single most effective arguments against Q as a Matthean expansion of Mark seems to me to be these:
a. It requires that Luke realized that Matthew had expanded Mark. How could he know?
b. Having identified all the expansions into a pseudo-Q , Luke made a new gospel producing a mixture of Mark and this pseudo-Q. How likely is that?
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