[1] Arguments against these conclusions have been raised by Butler, B. C., The Originality of St. Matthew (Cambridge, 1951)Google Scholar; Stonehouse, N. B., Origins of the Synoptic Gospels (London, 1963)Google Scholar; and Farmer, W. R., The Synoptic Problem (New York, 1964).Google Scholar A recent and (I think) fair comment on this debate is that of R. H. Fuller, who concludes that ‘it is now generally accepted … that both Mt. & Lk. have used Mk’ and that ‘The Q hypothesis … still seems the most reasonable account of the phenomena it seeks to explain.’ A Critical Introduction to the New Testament (Duckworth, 1974) 70, 72.Google Scholar

[2] One must except letters specifically addressed to particular churches and delivered to them by special carriers, like those named by I Clement and Polycarp and often by Ignatius and Paul.

[3] I have clearly in mind written sources, rather than oral tradition. I by no means wish to downgrade oral tradition. Indeed, the way Jesus put so many of his teachings into verse or parables suggests a deliberate intention to make them easy for the illiterate to remember. But it does not follow that, as some have supposed, want of both literacy and interest prevented the earliest Christians from making any written records of Jesus until Mark wrote his gospel. On the contrary, this idea conflicts with (a) the obviously respectable literacy of the milieu in which Jesus taught the parable of the Unjust Steward; (b) the personal literacy without which, for example, Matthew the tax-collector could never have kept his accounts; (c) the quotations in Pauline letters taken from works unknown to us (e.g. Eph 5. 14; 1 Tim 3. 16; 2 Tim 2. 11, 12); (d) the amount of personal data about Jesus from birth through baptism and temptation to death and resurrection which is scattered through Paul's letters and Hebrews and which bespeaks an obvious interest in biographical fact (e.g. Rom 1. 1; Gal 4. 4; Heb 7. 14; 4. 16; 1. 5; 5. 5; 1 Cor 11. 23–25; 15. 5–8); also (e) those who accept 2 Tim 4 as genuinely Pauline will recall ‘the books and especially the parchments’, which he wished Timothy to bring and to which he may be referring in 1 Cor 7. 10–16, where he so clearly distinguishes the Lord's teaching from his own; further, (f) it is the common habit of literate persons in every age to make written notes of things they wish to remember; and are we really to believe that none among all the hundreds who flocked to Jesus' teaching ever heard him say any thing they considered worth writing down? Finally, (g) I see no reason for disbelieving Luke 1.1.

[4] I Apol. 26.

[5] So today, in Canada's capital city of Ottawa, candidates in local elections have to print their posters in three languages - French for voters whose ancestors emigrated three and a half centuries ago; English for those whose ancestors came two centuries ago; and Italian for others who arrived in this century.

[6] Sat. III, 62.

[7] Manson, T. W., The Sayings of Jesus (London, 1954) 16.Google Scholar

[8] Jeremias, Joachim, Unknown Sayings of Jesus. Translated by Fuller, Reginald H., 2nd English ed. (London, 1964) 63, n. 5.Google Scholar

[9] Sanday, W., The Gospels in the Second Century (London, 1876) 136.Google Scholar

[10] Manson, , Sayings, 175–6.Google Scholar Note that the reading of Matthew 7. 15, as preserved in our only independent authority for Justin's text, the MS Paris. 450, written in 1364, is partially erroneous. For Matthew's words οἵτινες ἕρχονται πρòς ὑμς ν νδὑμασι προβάτων ἓσωθεν δ είσιν λὐκοι ἂρπαγες this MS substitutes the phrasing of (b). But no N.T. MSS support this reading; therefore in Paris. 450 it may be regarded as a copyist's mistake of a familiar and all too easily made kind.

[11] Manson, , The Sayings of Jesus, 78.Google Scholar

[12] My reasons for holding this view are given in my article ‘The Didache's Quotations and the Synoptic Gospels’, New Testament Studies, 1958–1959, 12–29.Google Scholar For similar conclusions independently reached, see Audet's, J-P.La Didaché; Instructions des Apôtres (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar, especially 166 ff.; and Brown, J. Pairman; ‘The Form of “Q” known to St. Matthew’, N.T.S., vol. 8, 1961–1962, 27–42.Google Scholar For an opposing view, see Butler, B. C., ‘The Literary Relations of Didache Ch. XVI’, Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 11 (n.s.) 1960, 265–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[13] My reasons for this opinion are given on p. 27 of my article cited above.

[14] Though I leave Justin at this point, I should warn readers that I have not here attempted an exhaustive examination of all his quotations that deviate from the gospels; that would be a long task for an article. My aim is simply to produce evidence bearing on the particular points discussed in this paper.

[15] For examples from the New Testament, see John 13. 34; 14. 15; 15. 10; 1 Cor 14. 37; 1 John 2, 3–4 and 3. 24; 2 John, 6; in the early fathers the same usage is found in I Clem. XIII, 3; in Ignatius, Eph. IX, 2 and the preface to Romans; in the Didache, I, 5 and IV, 13, XIII, 5, 7; in Poly-carp, Phil. II. 2 and IV. 1; and in II Clem. III, 4; VIII, 4 and XVII, 6.

[16] Though I do not find in I Clement good evidence for his knowing our gospels of Matthew and Luke, I see no reason to doubt his knowledge of Mark. In fact it could be odd indeed if he were not familiar with a gospel written in his own city of Rome some years before he wrote there himself; and in XXIV, 4–5, he is surely quoting the words ξλθεν σπείρων from Mark 4. 4.

[17] Eusebius, , Eccl. Hist., 3, xxxix, 15.Google Scholar

[18] This remark of course raises the familiar question of whether Q, which appears to have been a collection of sayings, contained an account of the Baptism; and that question cannot be definitely answered. What we can say is that, if Q did not describe the Baptism, then the author of Hebrews, Justin and, very possibly, Luke had another work which did describe it and gave the words Jesus heard in this form.

[19] Manson, , Sayings of Jesus, 20.Google Scholar

[20] Smyrnaeans, III. I should perhaps add that his letters also contain some phrases reminiscent of John and others that have been regarded as echoes of Matthew. But on the last we face a riddle. We have both (a) Jerome's positive word for it that the saying quoted here comes from the Gospel according to the Hebrews; and (b) the verdict of other ancient authors that this lost gospel was very close to Matthew. So what are we to make of Ignatius' apparent echoes of Matthew - do they show that he did indeed possess this canonical gospel? Or are they, on the contrary, evidence of the correctness of the verdict that Matthew and Hebrews were very similar? In our present state of knowledge these questions are more easily asked than answered.

[21] Eusebius, , Eccl. Hist., 3, xxxix, 16.Google Scholar

[22] Manson, , Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester, 1962) 77.Google Scholar In what follows 1 owe much to T. W. Manson.

[23] Ibid., 82.

[24] Papias' ‘Eβραδι διαλέκτψ’ need not mean the Hebrew of Jewish scholars, but the ordinary spoken language of the Hebrew people which was Aramaic; and I take the other fathers cited below to have this meaning too. Manson cites ‘Dalman's Grammatik ² 1’ for examples of the use of ‘Hebrew’ where ‘Aramaic’ is meant. Sayings of Jesus, 17, n. 2.Google Scholar

[25] Manson, , Studies, 82.Google Scholar

[26] Manson, ibid., 83, citing Lawlor and Oulton's translation of Eusebius' quotation, Eccl. Hist., 5, viii, 2.Google Scholar

[27] I base this dating on the assumption that the ‘new Judean coinage [which] begins in the fifth year of Nero’ (Cadbury, H. J., The Book of Acts in History, London, 1955, 10Google Scholar) does mark the coming of Festus to succeed Felix as procurator. If so, Festus, and Agrippa, will have given Paul his hearing in 59 A.D. Paul's voyage to Rome will have begun that autumn, and, after wintering in Malta where he was shipwrecked, he will have reached Rome in the spring of 60 A.D. Some, however, would prefer a rather earlier date; see Jack, Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Princeton, N.J., 1964) 322–5.Google Scholar

[28] Eusebius, , Eccl. Hist., 5, x, 3.Google Scholar

[29] Manson, , Studies, 83–4.Google Scholar See also Origen's Commentary on John, Ante-Nicene Christian Library (New York, 1897) 277Google Scholar, and his Commentary on Matthew, cited by Eusebius, , Eccl. Hist., 6, xxv, 4.Google Scholar

[30] Manson, , Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, 49Google Scholar, gives the translation here cited.

[31] Manson, , Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge, 1955) 28Google Scholar gives a table showing that Q has 10.7% ‘Polemical Utterances’, Mark 23.5%, M 25.3% and L 38.5%. The greater severity of Luke is interesting; it recalls the Anti-Marcionite Prologue's statement that he was ‘a Syrian of Antioch’ and, as such, our only non-Jewish evangelist.

[32] I am not convinced that Papias or Pantaenus did make this mistake; but such a mistaken shift of title would scarcely seem hard to make in early days when the church was much beset by heretics with strange creeds supported by such documents as we now know from the Nag Hammadi recoveries. For the church based its defence on possessing the written records of genuine apostles -and a great deal of the gospel of ‘Matthew’ does indeed come from Q which Matthew the apostle wrote. It is noteworthy that Mark seems to have been in danger of a similar transfer of title. At any rate, in Trypho, 106, Justin refers to ‘Peter's Memoirs’ the story of Jesus nicknaming the sons of Zebedee ‘Boanerges’, which occurs only in Mark 3. 16, 17.

[33] Irenaeus had, of course, read Papias; but here he gives information that is not to be found in our fragments of Papias, and he had no lack of other sources - notably Polycarp; and, one may fairly suspect, the early traditions of Rome, which he had visited in 177 A.D. Pantaenus' story, cited by Eusebius, is as personal a report as one could ask of what he found in India. Origen explicitly credits his story to ‘tradition’; and tells it consistently in two different books. Finally, although the author of the Anti-Marcionite Prologues may echo Papias on Mark (‘iste interpres fuit Petri’), he too certainly had access to information from other sources unknown to us; see Manson, , Studies, 50–3.Google Scholar

[34] Josephus, , Antiquities, 20.Google Scholar

[35] Eusebius, , Eccl. Hist. 2, xxiii, 2.Google Scholar Cf. John XVIII, 31, which this passage, and the subsequent punishment of the High Priest, Ananas, confirm.

[36] Ibid. II, xxiii, 9.

[37] I think that the patristic evidence for Mark's having written after Peter's death is too strong for an earlier date to be acceptable. Clement of Alexandria indeed dates his gospel in Peter's lifetime, but not until after Peter had publicly preached in Rome. Irenaeus also associates the gospel with Peter's preaching in Rome, but definitely dates it after that preaching had ended in Peter's martyrdom - i.e. after 64 A.D. The tenses used by Papias support this dating - after Peter's death, as the language of the Anti-Marcionite Prologue also appears to do. Mark 13. 5 ff. and 14 (as R. H. Fuller notes) indicate ‘knowledge of events up to the Jewish War (66–70) but no clear knowledge of the fall of Jerusalem’ and hence a date of ca. 68 A.D. (Critical Introduction to the New Testament, Duckworth, 1974, 106).Google Scholar

[38] Theoph. IV, 12.

[39] Even though it may seem somewhat peripheral to my subject, I would not like to end without a word on the question so often asked about Q - namely, how did the church ever come to lose something which we would value so much as this primitive collection of teachings of Jesus recorded in the actual language in which he gave them? I would reply with another question - ‘How much of Q have we really lost?’ And far the most probable answer must be ‘Precious little’. It has been observed that nine-tenths of Mark is included in ‘Matthew's’ gospel. Yet Mark was not an apostle; as Tertullian put it (Adv. Marc. 4, 2Google Scholar), he was only a follower of the apostles. And if ‘Matthew’ includes all but one tenth of the work of a mere follower of the apostles, who can suppose he would preserve less of the work of a real apostle? Further, for any Q material he did omit, he is likely to have substituted an equivalent version from M (as may be the case in Excerpt III); or where Luke omitted a ‘Q’ saying, he is likely to have replaced it with an alternative from L; and either of them might prefer Mark on occasions where he and Q overlap. What incentive, then, would lead a scribe to make new copies, in a language that ever fewer understood, of sayings already available in languages which every Christian understood?