The Unforgiable Sin Logion, pt. 4

Let's get back to the Matthean version.  Tuckett also thinks (in agreement with most scholars) that there was a Q version of this saying.  Most scholars think that it began "He who speaks against the son will be forgiven..." in parallel with GTh.  But notice...

...that both Matthew and Luke begin their versions (Mt 12:31//Lk 12:10) with either PASA (GMt) or PAS (GLk).  The parallel is even more direct in GMt, for he writes PASA AMARTIA AFEQHSETAI where the Didache writes PASA GAR AMARTIA AFEQHSETAI.  Tuckett suggests that Didache derives from GMt here.

But what if...the Didache preceded GMt?  Indeed, why would Matthew use PASA, and Luke PAS, instead of Markan PANTA?  It would seem on the face of it...that both Luke and Matthew are drawing from a single source, one that was somehow related to the Didache, and that contained the Didachean statement PASA (GAR) AMARTIA AFEQHSETAI.



Tuckett states "It is almost universally agreed that the Q version of the saying has "whoever/everyone who speaks a word against the Son of man" in the first half.  He goes on to say "and has nothing equivalent to PASA AMARTIA...which is amost certainly MattR of Mark's PANTA TA AMARTHMATA".  However, he is clearly wrong, since the critical edition of Q specifically proposes Lukan "PAS" as one alternative beginning, with substantial (though admittedly not majority) scholarly support.  To summarize the debate from the pages of Documenta Q:

• Matthew did use PASA just before, in Mt 12:25, so perhaps he just repeats the word in v. 31.  But v. 25 is itself a Q-saying, "PASA BASILEIA...PASA POLIS"...the first half of which is shared in GLk.  So...it's just as likely that the Q gospel was the one that used PASA again, in the Unforgivable Sin logion.  

• As for Luke, he does use PAS frequently in general, so his own use of it in Lk 12:10 could also be an insertion, as several suggest.  But why would Luke and Matthew independently choose to replace Markan PANTA with PASA/PAS?  Surely the natural assumption should be that PASA/PAS was found in Q, because we find it in both Matthew and Luke.

• And see Fledderman 1995, 66 and Meyer 1967, 39 for both grammatical and theological arguments that PAS was indeed original to Q here (along with others listed in the Documenta Q volume on Q 12:8-12, p. 531).  The best efforts of Neyrinck 1995, p. 275-276 against this are weak and hypothetical at best ("The preceding saying...may have influenced Luke's editing") and other scholars merely repeat the inadequate argument that since Luke is fond of using PAS, he must be using it here solely out of habit.  None of them respond adequately to Fledderman and Meyer's arguments, so the majority position here is just due to scholarly inertia.  Nor can I understand why we should imagine that the previous saying, Q 12:8-9, did begin with PAS, but that this saying could not have.

Indeed, without a Q version containing PASA/PAS, why would both Luke(/Marcion) and Matthew choose to replace Markan PANTA with PASA/PAS at all?  I can imagine one or the other choosing to do so, but both at the same time?  If the Q version begain "whoever" (OS [E]AN or whatever it may have been), why would they have changed this to "every/everyone" (PASA/PAS OS) if Markan PANTA was the only alternative they knew?  Matthew and Luke cannot plausibly have just happened to have worked independently of each other to produce PASA/PAS here.  Either the scholar must accept the Farrer-Goulder explanation here, or accept a Q version that began with PASA/PAS.



I should also add that the traditional Q version also seems to begin with KAI, "and", for both Mt 12:31 and Lk 12:10 begin with KAI (and indeed, the critical edition begins with KAI, too).  But why woud both Matthew and Luke decide to introduce it this way?  It suggests that a Q version was actually the second part of a longer version, one with an introductory clause coming just before KAI.  What could that clause have been?  The best and easiest candidate is just the introductory Matthean version, PASA AMARTIA...AFEQHSETAI.   

So it looks like the Q version actually contained two clauses about forgiveness; one that began with PAS/PASA, "every/everyone", and a second that began with ON EAN (or some equivalent), "he who".  The latter is from GTh, logion 44.  But the former must have been something very much like, if not identical to, PASA AMARTIA AFEQHSETAI.  My bet is that the original Q version read something like

Every sin will be forgiven
And whoever speaks a word against the son of man will be forgiven
But whoever speaks a word against the spirit will not be forgiven

Notice that this first phrase precisely the part that most closely resembles the Didachean version, PASA GAR AMARTIA AFQHSETIA.  We've established that the Q-author used GTh logia to construct his gospel, and here he used logion 44, "He who speaks against the son..."  But the grammatical parallel here (albeit in Coptic) is between "he who" and "whoever", not "everyone".  So "every/everyone" can't be from GTh.  The obvious candidate for the source of this first phrase is...the Didache.