The problem with determining relationships is that, even when there is clear use of a written source, none of these authors is likely to have encountered the majority of the stories and sayings for the first time when they read the written work in question. (That Matthew and Luke seem not to have known how Mark\u2019s Gospel would have continued beyond Mark 16:8 is a remarkable exception to this rule that merits a separate treatment on some other occasion. Remind me to return to it someday). These authors had heard the sayings, been told the stories, and prayed the prayers. The versions they encountered would have diverged through conscious reworking as well as simply through the natural processes of oral transmission. Since the authors would have had this separate fund of knowledge to draw on as well, not every difference will be due to redaction of a source. In some cases, the difference will simply show that the author knew a story so well already in one form that the different written version in front of him could not supplant it.<\/p>\n
I digress. My point about the differences between Matthew and Luke providing evidence for Q did not have in mind simply their failure to overlap. It is the cases of genuine incompatibility<\/em> that are the biggest obstacle to making the case that one drew on the other directly.<\/p>\n And so, Christmas comes early this year \u2013 at least as a subject on this blog. The infancy narratives provide significant evidence of the point I was seeking to make.<\/p>\n We may quickly dispense with the genealogies. Their apparent incompatibility has been noticed since the days of the early Church Fathers. The proposed solutions \u2013 such as successive levirate marriages \u2013 are not more persuasive than the view that these authors did not draw directly on one another.<\/p>\n Let me acknowledge outright that I can <\/em>imagine some possible changes that one of the authors might have made to the other. For instance, I can understand why Matthew would change Luke\u2019s genealogy to make Jesus more directly the heir to the royal line. I can also understand why Luke would have changed Matthew\u2019s, to avoid the problem of Jeremiah\u2019s pronouncement that no descendant of Jehoiachin\u2019s would sit on the throne (Jeremiah 22:28-30<\/a>). But neither of these changes explains why they did not keep more of the names the same. The more recent lineage \u2013 particularly the name of Joseph\u2019s father, which some who were still alive might have actually remembered \u2013 could have been left as it was. Indeed, Luke\u2019s list of names would have provided Matthew with enough additional names to make his last group of 14 actually add up to 14 (which, alas, as it now stands, it does not).<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-2717610517001453083?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")
<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"