Adding GTh, pt. 7

Let’s look at the GTh parallels in Luke/Marcion.  Again, they are

        3:3a    Lk 17:21b
        10    Lk 12:49
        63    Lk 12:16-21
        72    Lk 12:13-14
        79    Lk 11:27-28
        113    Lk 17:20-21



Again, except for saying 113, the logia are found in Luke/Marcion in the reverse order that they are found in GTh, suggesting that someone was combing through a source backwards, looking for suitable sayings to use.  At first we thought that this source was GTh, but on closer inspection it seems this source was the Q source after all, for.echoes of the Marcionic/Lukan versions of the middle four of these sayings are found in GMt, in the Sermon on the Mount.  So it looks like these formed a unit, or were found in the order above in a section of the Q gospel.  Marcion/Luke placed them into his Great Interpolation, whereas Matthew interwove them into another section of the Q gospel while crafting the Sermon on the Mount.  But they both kept the original order they were found in Q.

It would seem, then, that the author who was combing backwards through GTh looking for material was not Marcion, or Luke, or Matthew; it was the Q author.

What's also interesting is that these sayings seem to embody Marcion’s mission.  (This is BTW independent evidence that Marcion’s gospel indeed predated Luke’s.)  What seems to going on in this section is that Marcion is taking Q sayings and interleaving his own material into them.  This could explain the occasionally odd, disjointed nature of the sayings and parables in this section of the Lukan gospel.  It's largely the doing of Marcion.

• Logion 79 at first seems a typically Lukan saying, echoing directly the nativity narrative of Lk 2.  But I disagree; the sayings is clearly non-Lukan.  Luke, the author of Luke 2, goes to great lengths to convince the reader that Jesus’ mother is indeed blessed.  The turnabout of Lk 11:27 stands quite in contradiction of these efforts.  But because we know Lk 11:27 stands in Luke, and it stood in Marcion, it can’t be a Marcionite insertion into Luke.  Therefore Luke must have inherited it from another source.  Marcion is the obvious candidate for this source, and indeed the HSH presumes that Marcion predated Luke.  Luke would have found the passage in Marcion, retained it, but also expanded it into the nativity story of Luke 2.  (The fact that he didn’t leave it out altogether was perhaps because Luke was still interested in emphasizing obedience to the moral law over ethnic descent.) 
• Logion 72 also emphasizes Marcionite themes.  Marcion perhaps knew quite well what life as the heir of a rich father was like.  Placing an emphasis on giving wealth away (rather than, for example, donating it to the Roman church) Marcion wanted to emphasize that Christ was not, after all, a fair divider of wealth among the numerous churches.
• As for Logion 63, Marcion’s gospel emphasized prodigality, exemplified by his attempt at donating to the Roman church. (See, for example, the follow-up in Lk 12:32-34.)  Despite the rejection of that gift, he still wanted to emphasize the role of giving alms.  Indeed, since his followers were to have been celibate, they may not have had any offspring to transfer their wealth to, and so may have emphasized almsgiving as an outlet for their wealth and as a sign of holiness.  And perhaps also the slowly-growing wealth of the Roman church would have offended Marcion.
• And when it comes to logion 10, Marcion knows that his church is divisive, but he won’t have it any other way.  He wants to portray Jesus as a source of conflict, to justify his stubborn stance against the Roman church.  So he includes this one as well.

Lk 17 is a complicated but fascinating illustration of the way in which the gospels were constructed, and will shed some light on how the HSH operates, so I'll give that its own post.  So far, however, the evidence from the GTh parallels supports my hypothesis.  The uniquely Lukan uses of GTh are all items that Marcion would have favored, but that Matthew would not have favored.  Whereas the uniquely Matthean uses of GTh are all items that Matthew would have favored, but that Marcion would not have favored.  This strongly implies that they were all found in a source shared by Matthew and Marcion, namely the Q source.

All this lets us drop the direct link between GTh and Mc, giving us the simpler scenario that we have been looking for: ETA: I have edited the diagram below from its original version..

I've also cleaned up a few things:

• Accepted the direct link between canonical GMk and GMt, and canonical GMk and Mc (subject to further revision of course)

• Clarified that GEbi and GNaz were both referred to as the "Gospel of the Hebrews" (there being no actual GHeb besides these two gospels)  

• Eliminated the direct link between GMt and GLk as being unnecessary (subject to further revision of course)

All in all, this has been a successful investigation.

One note I'd like to add about GTh is that in my diagram, "GTh" most likely represents the Greek version of that gospel.  The basis for this is the close resemblance between logion 26 and Mt 7:5b=Lk 6:42, which is exceedingly unlikely if the Coptic or an Aramaic/Syriac version of GTh lay behind the Q saying.

Also I am aware of Perrin and his theories about GTh and the Diatessaron.  Personally I think he is correct to identify a Syriac GTh lying behind the Coptic, though I don't think he is right about a relationship with Tatian and the Diatessaron.  If I find the time I'll try to outline my reasons for this skepticism, but they are mostly covered by his reviewers, conveniently listed by Michael Bird here (including a link to Mark Goodacre's blog, which is where I learned about the nearly word-for-word connection between logion 26 and Q.)

And in a subsequent post sometime I'll go into more detail about how the HSH is a parsimonious solution, more so than either the Two-Source Hypothesis or the Farrar-Goulder Hypothesis.  This parsimony is obvious once the apocryphal gospels are taken into account--hence my attention to them.