Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §7.5
But disagreement about Q's compositional/redactional history makes further clarification
of Q's Sitz im Leben more difficult. What does emerge, however, is some
sense of tradition history, of the process by which these traditions were transmitted.
This is a process which Catchpole and Allison, for example, would suggest
began with Jesus himself, 97 which indeed is probably the case, though the fact that
they think of that process in terms of literary editing (rather than of oral transmission)
is a further example of a blind spot which still needlessly restricts contemporary
perspective on the earliest stages of the history of the Jesus tradition.
7.5. Matthew and Luke
For the sake of completeness we should remember that not only Mark and Q are
sources for the Jesus tradition, but also Matthew and Luke. 98 And not just for the
fact that they provide proof of the two-source hypothesis and for the way they
used Mark and Q," but also for the traditions which are peculiar to Matthew and
Luke (usually designated 'M' and 'L'). 100 Since these latter attest tradition quite
as substantial in quantity as Mark or Q themselves, the status of that material can
hardly be ignored. We need only think of the Matthean and Lukan birth narratives
(Matthew 1-2; Luke 1-2), of Matt. 10.5 and 23, or of the familiar Lukan
parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son (Luke 10.30-37; 15.11-32)
to realise how much is at stake here. The status of such singly attested traditions
is a question we will have to take up at various points in what follows. 101 For the
present two points are worth making.
pothesis to a withering critique: 'sociologically, the hypothesis is theoretically vacuous' (9); 'it
is not normally grounded in a careful investigation of the social realia of the period' (72); 'the
texts ... do not evince itineracy until one has assumed itineracy' (69, 91-95); the Q people were
probably 'village scribes involved in the administration of formerly autonomous village life',
who alone would have the ability to write such a document (170-72); the metaphor and rhetoric
of uprootedness has been mistaken (183-93).
97. Catchpole, Quest 188; Allison, Jesus Tradition 60-62.
98. As already noted, both Gospels are usually dated in the period 80-95; see, e.g.,
Schnelle, History 222, 243; Brown, Introduction 216-17, 273-74; W. D. Davies and D. C.
Allison, Matthew (ICC, 3 vols.; Edinburgh: Clark, 1988, 1991, 1997) 1.127-38; J. A. Fitzmyer,
Luke (AB 28A, two vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1981, 1985) 53-57. I shall, of course, look
more closely later on at both the processes of tradition accumulation, organisation, and editing
which lie behind these Gospels (vol. 2) and the Gospels in their own right (vol. 3).
99. See, e.g., G. N. Stanton, 'Matthew as a Creative Interpreter of the Sayings of Jesus'
(1982), in P. Stuhlmacher, ed., The Gospel and the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991)
257-72.
100. These are listed by Streeter, Four Gospels 198.
101. See further below, particularly §§11.1 and 13.7.
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