Originally Posted by JNGNM

(6) Goodacre proposes a feature which he calls “editorial fatigue.”117 In such a phenomenon, a writer begins a passage by imposing an intended change on his source, but before he finishes he lapses into original elements of that source, thereby creating an inconsistency or contradiction between earlier and later parts. In other words, the copying writer fails to sustain his own changes. For example, Matthew in 8:1-4 has Jesus, while being “followed by a great crowd,” cure a leper, to whom he then says: “Tell no one.” This is a pointless admonition given the presence of the crowd. But in his source, which is Mark 1:40-45, no crowd has been introduced and the admonition makes better sense. In determining to keep Mark’s latter words even in the context of a crowd, Matthew seems to have overlooked or ignored the contradiction he has created.

Does Luke do the same in any of his passages and thereby betray a lapse into a source in Matthew? Such things are not so clear as in the example given above. In that example we know that the source is in fact Mark, whereas a Lukan source in Matthew is the very thing that must be determined. Thus the examples offered for the latter need to be particularly evident.

We can look at Goodacre’s two principal examples of alleged Lukan editorial fatigue when using Matthew.

Matthew 10:11-14 presents Jesus instructing his apostles when they “enter a town” to stay in the house of some worthy citizen. He then tells them when they “leave that house or town…shake the dust from your feet.” Luke, in 9:4-5, has no initial words about entering a town, but begins by talking about entering a house; later he tells them “as you leave the town, shake the dust from your feet.” Goodacre points out that Luke’s reference to leaving the town is lacking any antecedent, since he has not mentioned a town at the opening, and this is taken to indicate that the concluding “town” is derived from Matthew’s version. But this is surely reading too much into the situation. Whether Luke has mentioned a town initially or not, it can certainly be the case that such a thing has been assumed. Luke need not be drawing from Matthew to introduce the leaving of a town, since he could simply have the assumption in mind that the house was located in a town, something that would be quite natural.

In Luke’s Parable of the Pounds (19:11-27), a departing nobleman gives ten servants each a pound, urging them to trade it wisely. When he returns, he finds that one servant has made a profit of tenfold, a second a profit of fivefold, while a third stored his pound and made no profit at all, incurring the master’s wrath. Itemizing the actions of only three servants would seem to be inconsistent with the initial statement of giving money to ten. In Matthew’s version of the parable, however, only three servants are mentioned at the beginning as recipients, so that the attention given to only three at the master’s return is consistent. Goodacre takes this as indicating that Luke, after starting out with ten servants, has lapsed into Matthew’s version (his supposed source) with only three.

Yet this seems problematic in itself. First of all, one might wonder why Luke would change Matthew’s three servants into ten to begin with. He would surely not be intending to go through ten servants’ results upon the master’s return, creating an utterly unwieldy parable. (If he did, perhaps it was “fatigue” that caused him to stop at three!) Second, the Greek in referring to the third servant is “ho heteros,” which is not “the third” but “the other,” and some translations (RSV, NASB, NIV, KJV) render it “another,” with no necessary implication that it is the third and final. Thus we need not assume that Luke has lapsed into envisioning only three servants and is thereby betraying a source in Matthew.

In fact, the likely explanation is that Luke introduced ten servants to better symbolize the meaning of his version of the parable: that Christians left behind at Jesus’ departure (at his death) are charged with spreading the faith and enlarging its membership, but he only intended to deal with three such disciples on Jesus’ return (at the Parousia) as representative examples. Understanding it this way is no doubt why some translators and commentators render “ho heteros” as “an-other,” despite the definite article—which in any case some manuscripts lack. (The Englishman’s Greek New Testament, for example, omits the article “ho” from its Greek text and translates “heteros” as “another,” pointing out that the article is added only in some manuscripts.) Besides, to think that over the course of only a few verses Luke could have forgotten that he was intending to deal with the results of ten servants’ investments would require him to have been brain-dead rather than merely fatigued.

Originally Posted by Adam

This narrative portion, if in Q, would also reasonably be regarded as from a later stage of Q. After all, a scribe can write down what someone says while it is being said, but writing about events that have happened necessarily comes later.

Originally Posted by Adam

Q is mostly sayings, so when I say there may also be narrative, it's the narrative that's most likely a later addition.

Originally Posted by Adam

To me it seems that those who deny the Q Hypothesis have a preset agenda for strict orthodoxy or radical anti-orthodoxy.