Mark Is Capable of
Combining His Sources
In the last passage
(Luke 7:18-35), the only verse in Luke also found in Mark is Luke 7:27. This
verse is a unique conflation of Mal. 3:1 and Ex. 23:20. Because this unique
combination of these two Old Testament passages is found in three synoptic
Gospels, it is instructive to compare them carefully and in detail.
Behold, I will send my
messenger before your face,
who shall prepare your way before you.—Matt 11:10
Behold, [I] will send
my messenger before your face,
who shall prepare your way before you.—Luke 7:27
Behold, [I] will send
my messenger before your face,
who shall prepare your way.—Mark 1:2
This unique
conflation of the texts of Mal. 3:1 and Ex. 23:20 is exactly the same in all
three Gospels with two exceptions. First, there is no pronoun in the Greek text
of Luke and Mark standing behind the English pronoun “I” in the above translation,
while there is in Matthew. This pronoun is unnecessary in Greek, since the
ending of the Greek verb apostello (“I will send”) informs the reader
that the subject is the first person singular. The English pronoun “I” has been
placed in brackets in Luke and Mark to indicate this difference between their
texts in Greek and the Greek text of Matthew. The second exception is the absence
of the phrase “before you” in the text of Mark. If Matthew and Luke have
independently copied Mark, how can one account for the presence of the phrase “before
you” in both Matthew and Luke because this phrase is not present in the text of
Mark? This is one of the famous agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark. IT
clearly stands in the way of accepting the view that Matthew and Luke had
independently copied Mark.
Based on the
Two-Source Hypothesis, one might first think that Matthew and Luke have
independently copied Mark, despite the difficulty of this agreement against
Mark. But this agreement against Mark is not the only difficulty. It seems unlikely,
even without this difficulty, that Matthew and Luke, independently,
would both take this verse from the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and independently
place it into a text from their respective copies of Q where it fit perfectly
like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
It would seem less
implausible to argue that these words were already in the text of Q and that
Mark and Q overlap at this point. But even this explanation will hardly work
because of the unusual character of this verse. How could we explain that this
unique blending of Mal. 3:1 and Ex. 23:20 present in Q has been so closely
preserved in Mark? This close agreement is better explained by a theory that
permits a direct literary relationship among these three Gospels.
Assuming the validity
of the Two-Source Hypothesis, no satisfactory evidence explains how Mark’s text
could be so close to the nearly identical texts of Matt. 11:10 and Luke 7:27
without positing that the evangelist Mark himself has gone to his copy of the Q
source and abstracted this particular conflated text of Malachi and Exodus and
jointed it to a citation from Isa. 40:1 in another story concerning John the
Baptist. It follows that Mark, based on the Two-Source Hypothesis, is
definitely capable of combining material from different sources.
It is not
unreasonable to think that in composing a text about John the Baptist where he
follows a tradition that identifies John in relation to a text from Isaiah,
Mark—if he knew a Q source where John is again identified in relation to Old
Testament prophecy—would have decided to bring this second citation of
scripture together with the text from Isaiah. In so-called Q the source of this
conflated text id identified simply as coming from scripture without specifying
its author. Because most Christian prophecies are attributed to Isaiah, Mark
can be forgiven for including this unidentified prophecy from the same prophet
Isaiah. This is the way to explain the mistake Mark has made in attributing
this citation from Malachi-Exodus to the prophet Isaiah.
In answering the question
“What is the Two-Gospel Hypothesis?” the third point to note is that adherents
of this hypothesis have no difficulty in accepting evidence that Mark is
capable of combining his sources. In fact, they are prepared to regard this
point as crucial for understanding the synoptic problem. (William R. Farmer, The
Gospel of Jesus: The Pastoral Relevance of the Synoptic Problem [Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994], 29-30)
