St. Luke's Debt to St. Matthew

Abstract

The argument pursued in these pages is based, substantially, not on theories of Christian development to which it has been sought to bring the literary data into conformity, but on a direct application to those data of general principles of comparative documentary criticism. It may be worth while to state some of those principles in their generalized form:1. Where two or more documents correspond in contents, order and language beyond the degree that is necessitated by their subject or probably explicable by accidental coincidence, there is a presumption that, unless inter-dependent, they share (immediately or mediately) a common written or oral source.2. Where these correspondences or identities attain a certain degree of minuteness the balance is tilted against the hypothesis of merely oral connection.3. Unless external considerations urge, it is unscientific to conjecture hypothetical documents to explain correspondences for which a theory of direct inter-dependence is sufficient.4. In determining the direction of dependence (i.e. whether document A depends on document B, or vice versa) weight must be given to the internal coherence of subject-matter on the one hand, and to the employment of merely external links in combining material on the other hand. We may also be helped by a knowledge of the literary methods and the psychology of one or both authors, and especially by evidence of an author's deviation from his habitual style or vocabulary under the influence of a source.