Masoretic Matthew: The Problems With Q with Solutions in Hebrew Matthew

Masoretic Matthew Table of Contents:

All Masoretic Matthew documents were updated 3/23/2024 to reflect the current state of my research and correct typos and errors.

In another post I explained why modern textual critics have embraced what’s often called The Two Source Hypothesis to solve the Synoptic Problem. The Two Source Hypothesis says that Matthew and Luke each drew from Mark and a hypothetical gospel called “Q.” This explains the similarities where the three Synoptics are the same, while also allowing that there are definitely differences between them.

There is one glaring problem with the Q part of this hypothesis, though: no one has ever seen the Q Gospel. I once defined a conspiracy theory as a theory that takes absence of evidence as further evidence that the overall theory is correct. Sometimes, when I read scholars and their defense of Q, I get this kind of feeling. The idea goes that it had to have been there, because of the evidence that I explained before. When they don’t find any quotes from Church Fathers or opponents to the church that match a hypothetical Q Gospel, they double down that there are other gospels that we do know existed and know a little about, so Q must have been suppressed even more than those. This doesn’t seem to be the case to me. We know that there were Church Fathers such as Jerome and Origin that were actively interested in the origins of the gospels, to the point that they compared the canonical gospels to other ancient gospels. Jerome actively talks about the Gospel of the Hebrews, even going so far as to tell us that it provides additional information about Christ’s life not found in the canonical Gospels. The Infancy Gospel of James was regarded as historical but not canonical by many early Christians. For example, Origen used the information in the Gospel of James in his Commentary on Matthew Book X Chapter 17 to determine that Jesus’s brothers are actually Joseph’s children by a previous marriage. Yet in all the early church fathers wrote and all they examined, they never make a comment such as, “And this gospel we have heard from reliable sources duplicates the sayings of Jesus as we find them in Matthew and Luke, carefully avoiding many of those sections which are known to be in Mark.” Such a curiosity would have been explained differently by them than by modern critics, but it would have fired their imagination anyway. Modern amateur critics take this as evidence that the church was able to suppress Q before the middle of the second century because of its heterodox teachings. Most professional scholars and critics don’t give this theory a lot of weight, though, because the early church couldn’t suppress The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Infancy Gospel of James, The Gospel of Judas Iscariot, The Gospel of Peter, The Gospel of the Hebrews, or any of the other various gospels that were known to exist in the middle of the second and beginning of the third century. Heck, there’s a bunch of them that you can still find today. The faith that these amateur critics have in the early church’s ability to suppress things never ceases to amaze me, especially in light of all the things they failed to suppress. The evidence we have seems to indicate that they were either unable to or uninterested in suppressing competing narratives.

The problems with Q get even stickier when you start getting into some of the particulars. I showed how the Olivet Discourse compared in the Greek editions of the three Synoptics. It’s striking how many places the any two of the three gospels line up with identical wording. Too much to be a coincidence. That makes sense if Matthew and Luke both drew that material from Mark. Except, there are times when Matthew and Luke line up but Mark doesn’t. Does that mean that Q had a version of the Olivet Discourse in it? If so, since Luke goes its own way more often than the other two, does that mean that Luke was copying more strictly from Q and not from Mark? If that’s so, why does Luke then fade back into Mark? And why does Matthew only rarely abandon Mark in favor of Q? Why is it that in cases where Matthew and Luke have the same story it’s nearly word-for-word, but when they share a story with Mark it is Luke that has a unique way of wording the story? It’s been famously asserted that questions are not arguments, but these questions sure feel like arguments. They represent parts of the theory that don’t fit very well. Q is supposed to explain those places where Matthew and Luke agree but Mark doesn’t, yet sometimes those places overlap very closely. Q theory fails to explain why Luke paraphrases Mark but matches Matthew word for word, and fails to explain why Matthew and Mark often agree word-for-word against Luke. It looks like Luke would have had to copy Q nearly word for word, but paraphrase Mark.

So this makes it harder to positively identify what is and what is not Q. It could be that Luke paraphrases both Mark and not Q, and that leaves us with a whole lot of unknowns about what Q actually says. It could be that Luke prefers Q but uses Mark when there is no matching section in Q. It could be that Matthew follows his sources, both Mark and Q, very closely when he uses them, but Luke only follows Q that closely.

One of the things to watch here is that I’m not ready to abandon the idea of Q completely. I’m calling the nature of Q into question, not the existence of Q. Even if the material between Matthew and Luke isn’t as close as we’re imagining, it’s still telling the same stories and sermons. There are still a lot of instances where Matthew, Mark, and Luke have elements that point to a common source, such as similar parenthetical additions to the story. The most obvious example of this can be seen even through translation in Matthew 9:6, Mark 2:10, and Luke 5:24. In all three Synoptics, a very similar parenthetical is added to the middle of Jesus’s speech, showing that he turns to the sick man to speak the healing words. We see something similar in Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, and Luke 20-26. Christ’s enemies try to trip Jesus up with a question about taxes, but Jesus concludes by saying, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s.” But if you read the passages in parallel, they follow nearly identical structures. First, Christ’s enemies ask if it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Second, Christ detects the trap. Third, Christ asks why they are tempting him. Forth, Christ asks for a coin. Fifth, they bring a coin. Sixth, Christ asks whose image is on the coin. Seventh, the enemies answer. Eighth, Christ gives the final word as I mentioned above. Never a beat is missed. (Except Luke skips beat five.) When you look at the Greek text of these side by side, once again you can see that Greek Matthew mostly follows Mark, but at times it once again matches Luke against Mark.

Hebrew Matthew 22:15-21	Greek Matthew 22:15-21	Mark 12:13-17	Luke 20:20-26
אָז הָלְכוּ הַפְּרוֹשִים וַיִּוָּעֲצוּ לִלְכֹּדוֹ עַל־זֶה הַדָּבָר ׃ וַיִּשְׁלְחוּ אֵלָיו תַּלְמִידֵיהֶם עִם עַבְדֵי־הוֹרוֹדוֹס לֵאמֹר רַבִּי יָדַעְנוּ כִי־אִישׁ אֱמוּנִים אַתָּה וְדֶרֶךְ הָאֱלֹהִים בֶּאֱמֶת תִּלְמַד וְאִין עָלֶיךָ עִנְייַן כֹּל אָדָם כִּי־לֹא־תַּבִּיט פְּנֵי־הָאָדָם ׃ וְעַל כֵּן אָמוֹר לָנוּ מַה נִרְאָה לְךָ הַמּוּתָּר לָתֶת מַס לְקֵיסָר אוֹ לֹא־׃	Τότε πορευθέντες οἱ Φαρισαῖοι συμβούλιον ἔλαβον ὅπως αὐτὸν παγιδεύσωσιν ἐν λόγῳ. Καὶ ἀποστέλλουσιν αὐτῷ τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτῶν μετὰ τῶν Ἡρῳδιανῶν, λέγοντες, Διδάσκαλε, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀληθὴς εἶ, καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ διδάσκεις, καὶ οὐ μέλει σοι περὶ οὐδενός· οὐ γὰρ βλέπεις εἰς πρόσωπον ἀνθρώπων. Εἰπὲ οὖν ἡμῖν, τί σοι δοκεῖ; Ἔξεστιν δοῦναι κῆνσον Καίσαρι, ἢ οὔ;	Καὶ ἀποστέλλουσιν πρὸς αὐτόν τινας τῶν Φαρισαίων καὶ τῶν Ἡρῳδιανῶν, ἵνα αὐτὸν ἀγρεύσωσιν λόγῳ. Οἱ δὲ ἐλθόντες λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, Διδάσκαλε, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀληθὴς εἶ, καὶ οὐ μέλει σοι περὶ οὐδενός· οὐ γὰρ βλέπεις εἰς πρόσωπον ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλ’ ἐπ’ ἀληθείας τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ θεοῦ διδάσκεις. Ἔξεστιν κῆνσον Καίσαρι δοῦναι, ἢ οὔ; Δῶμεν, ἢ μὴ δῶμεν;	Καὶ παρατηρήσαντες ἀπέστειλαν ἐγκαθέτους, ὑποκρινομένους ἑαυτοὺς δικαίους εἶναι, ἵνα ἐπιλάβωνται αὐτοῦ λόγου, εἰς τὸ παραδοῦναι αὐτὸν τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τοῦ ἡγεμόνος. Καὶ ἐπηρώτησαν αὐτόν, λέγοντες, Διδάσκαλε, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ὀρθῶς λέγεις καὶ διδάσκεις· καὶ οὐ λαμβάνεις πρόσωπον, ἀλλ’ ἐπ’ ἀληθείας τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ θεοῦ διδάσκεις. Ἔξεστιν ἡμῖν Καίσαρι φόρον δοῦναι, ἢ οὔ;
וַיָּדַע יֵשׁוּ רוֹעַ לְבָבָם וַיֹּאמֶר	Γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν πονηρίαν αὐτῶν εἶπεν,	Ὁ δὲ εἰδὼς αὐτῶν τὴν ὑπόκρισιν εἶπεν αὐτοῖς,	Κατανοήσας δὲ αὐτῶν τὴν πανουργίαν, εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτούς,
לָהֶם הָחֲנֵפִים לָמָה תְנַסּוּנִי ׃	Τί με πειράζετε, ὑποκριταί;	Τί με πειράζετε;	Τί με πειράζετε;
הַרְאוּנִי אֶת־מַטְבֵּעַ־הַמַּס	Ἐπιδείξατέ μοι τὸ νόμισμα τοῦ κήνσου.	Φέρετέ μοι δηνάριον, ἵνα ἴδω.	Ἐπιδείξατέ μοι δηνάριον·
וְהֵם הִגִּישׁוּ לוֹ זוֹז אֶחָד ׃	Οἱ δὲ προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ δηνάριον.	Οἱ δὲ ἤνεγκαν.
וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם לְמִי הַצֶּלֶם הַזֶּה וְהַכְּתִיבָה הַזֹּאת ׃	Καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Τίνος ἡ εἰκὼν αὕτη καὶ ἡ ἐπιγραφή;	Καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Τίνος ἡ εἰκὼν αὕτη καὶ ἡ ἐπιγραφή;	τίνος ἔχει εἰκόνα καὶ ἐπιγραφήν;
וַיַּעֲנוּ לוֹ וַיֹּאמְרוּ לְקֵיסָר	Λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, Καίσαρος.	Οἱ δὲ εἶπον αὐτῷ, Καίσαρος.	Ἀποκριθέντες δὲ εἶπον, Καίσαρος.
אָז אָמַר אֲלֵיהֶם לָכֵן תְּנוּ לְקֵיסָר אֶת־אֲשֶׁר לְקֵיסָר וּלֵאלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר הֵם לֵאלֹהִים ׃	Τότε λέγει αὐτοῖς, Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι, καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ.	Καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Ἀπόδοτε τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι, καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ.	Ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Ἀπόδοτε τοίνυν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι, καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ.

These similarities came from somewhere. It’s all well and good to just hand-wave it away saying, “The Holy Spirit did it,” but it’s been my experience that generally the Holy Spirit works through normal means. I know we all want to see Princess Leia fly through the ether, rescued from death by a glow, holding in her hands the three Synoptics whole and complete, but in my experience that’s the realm of George Lucas, not the Holy Spirit. So if there are word-for-word matches between Mark and Greek Matthew, and there are word-for-word matches between Luke and Greek Matthew, I’m going to be much more interested in knowing how the Holy Spirit did that through human agents than I am in unquestioned hand waving in the general direction of the Holy Spirit.

On top of this, I’m not ready to dismiss Markan Priority. As keen as I am to point out the dozens of places where Hebrew Matthew has word plays that work best in Hebrew, there are a few places where he copies Mark, and those sometimes have similar structures that work best in Greek. One very clear example is Matthew 24:36 compared against Mark 13:32.

Hebrew Matthew 24:36	Greek Matthew 24:36	Mark 13:32
עַד הַיּוֹם הַהוּא וְעַל הַשָּׁעָה הַהִיא לֹא־יִהְיֶה אִישׁ יוֹדֵעַ לֹא־מַלְאָכִים בַּשָּׁמָיִם כִּי־אִם אָבִי לְבַדּוֹ ׃	Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τῶν οὐρανῶν, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ μου μόνος.	Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ἢ ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι οἱ ἐν οὐρανῷ, οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ.
ad hayom hahu vad hasha’ah hahiy lo yihyeh ish yode lo malakim bashanayim ki im avi lbado	Peri de tes emeras ekeines kai Oras Oudeis Oiden, Oude Oi Angeloi ton Ouranon ei me o pater Mou Monos	Peri de tes emeras ekeines e Oras Oudeis Oiden, Oude O Uios, ei me o pater

You can clearly see that this saying has a rather extended alliteration in Greek that is not mirrored in the Hebrew. In fact, it looks to me like the one that translated Matthew from Hebrew to Greek improved on Mark’s just a little by adding another little alliteration at the end. It would hardly be noticeable, if you didn’t have a version of the saying right there next to it to compare and see that Mark missed that opportunity. You can also see that the Hebrew of this verse doesn’t capture any similar linguistic elements. If you watch, you can almost see the development of the phrase. Mark captured it first in Greek, and then Matthew captured it from Mark in a form that was more in line with Hebrew style because he was writing in Hebrew. In particular, he added “my Father” instead of “the Father.” Then the translator from Hebrew to Greek saw that by carefully arranging the words and using the statement they know from Mark, they could make something even better than the original.

In the previous post, I compared a number of passages in the synoptic gospels. I included the Hebrew of the Paris Manuscript alongside the Greek even though it was not relevant to the points made there. However, it does come into play here. There are times when the Greek of Matthew follows the Greek of either Mark or Luke, and in a few of them the Hebrew does not follow the text as closely. In contrast, in the areas where Matthew is independent the text of the Hebrew and the Greek is generally very close. This starts right at the beginning of the Olivet Discourse. For example, in Matthew 24:4, the very word of Jesus’s speech, Βλέπετε, is shared across all three texts in Greek. However, in Hebrew, the closest word to match it in context is יִהְיֶה. The Greek word translates as “see,” and the Hebrew is “will be.” So the first phrase in Greek comes across as something like “See that you aren’t deceived” whereas the Hebrew is more like “Don’t let any deceive you.” While the two ideas are certainly close enough that we can see why someone translating from Hebrew to Greek would feel comfortable borrowing the words from Mark and Luke, it’s not clear why someone translating from Greek to Hebrew wouldn’t prefer “רְאוּ פֶּן־יַתְעֶה אֶתְכֶם אִישׁ” like we see in the translation made by Franz Delitzsch. That would be a way to express it that would actually follow the Greek text. This pattern continues in several other places, but one of the more obvious is ending verse 20 and beginning verse 21. Greek Matthew follows Mark: “οὐδ’ μηδὲ σαββάτῳ. Ἔσται γὰρ…” The Paris Manuscript has “אוֹ בַשַּׁבָּת ׃ כִּי־אָז תִּהְיֶה.” This adds an extra “then” to the beginning of verse 21. At the end of verse 21, the Greek has γένηται, where the Hebrew has אַחֲרֵיכֶן. So in the Greek reads something like, “nor shall ever be,” and the Hebrew reads more like “won’t be after you.” And again, we can understand why the translator from Greek to Hebrew would borrow from Mark. The meaning isn’t terribly different. The thing that doesn’t make sense is why a Hebrew translator would change it.

So let’s throw a few ideas against the wall. One idea is that Q isn’t actually a written document, that it’s just the tradition of the Apostles telling and retelling the stories and sermons of Jesus until they reach a final, mostly standardized form. This fails to explain why Greek Matthew and Luke match word for word, though. It’s a lot easier for Luke to match a written document in front of him word-for-word than an oral tradition. Still, it’s possible, so we will leave it as an active option. It could be that Q was written in Aramaic. This would explain why Luke follows it so closely. It fails to explain why Matthew and Luke were able to translate it exactly the same sometimes. It could be that Q is actually two documents: one in Aramaic and one in Greek. Luke was translating an Aramaic version of the Olivet Discourse, etc. That makes it awfully coincidental that everywhere Matthew and Luke match up it’s from Greek Q and not Aramaic Q, and that Aramaic Q only happens where Luke is alone or where the three traditions line up. It’s possible that Q is actually Hebrew Matthew.

Of these, the only two I’m apt to discount is the idea that there are two Q documents and that Hebrew Matthew is Q. I’ll invoke Occam’s Razor for the first: with two Q documents it’s not only one document that the early church suppressed so completely that it isn’t mentioned, it’s two of them. For the idea that Hebrew Matthew is Q, it remains unexplained why Luke changes the settings for everything matching Matthew but not those things matching Mark. However, I find both the idea that Q was in Aramaic and the idea that Q was an oral tradition to fit the available data without multiplying unexplained phenomena unnecessarily. The only thing this leaves unexplained is why the text of the Greek Gospels of Matthew and Luke match so precisely at times. I think this can be explained if the original Gospel of Matthew was in Hebrew, and the Greek edition was translated by someone familiar with Mark and Luke already. Anyone who tells you that I’m wrong because they reject Occam’s Razor, well, it’s a guideline and not a rule and sometimes I disregard it as well. I haven’t yet reached the level of hypocrite where I’m going to say that Occam’s Razor proves anything, but I am sufficiently hypocritical that I’ll invoke it when it helps my beliefs that are already established on other grounds. On that note, since I like both the idea that Q is an oral document and that it’s in Aramaic so much, I’m going to combine them. I think that what we have is the oral, Aramaic teachings of the Apostles behind Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I think that they told the stories until they were standardized. Then when Matthew wrote his Gospel down, he wrote it in Hebrew with a copy of Mark in hand. Mark and Luke don’t quite always agree, because Mark was Peter’s translator and translated Peter’s Aramaic thoughts into Greek. Luke wrote his Gospel mostly if not completely unaware of Matthew’s, but with Mark’s in hand and aware of the same stories and teaching tradition. Luke was willing to help Mark’s Greek and style along instead of always copying verbatim leading to a paraphrase of Mark’s material. Then when the early church arranged for Matthew’s Gospel to be translated into Greek, it was done by someone who was already familiar with Mark and Luke, with Luke and Mark still ringing in their ears, whenever it was prudent they translated the text to match. The Hebrew edition of Matthew was then preserved, although in ever dwindling numbers until what remained of it was concentrated into a small number of manuscripts. The best of the SDM family is the Paris Manuscript, although it is not beyond correction. This explanation takes all the data into consideration: early testimony, linguistic patterns, parallel text, textual differences, and the similarities between the SDM family of manuscripts and the Old Syriac Gospel of Matthew. No other theory that I’ve encountered establishes all of these points. The standard two-source hypothesis has to discount the testimony of the Early Church Fathers, even though they have been found to be reliable and honest in their transmission of most of the details they have preserved. The traditional telling preferred by a lot of King James Onlyists has the problem of discounting the similarities between the Synoptics, even though these are more than what chance or inspiration alone seems to account for. The idea that the SDM family originates in the middle ages ignores the otherwise unexplained similarities between that family and the Old Syriac Gospels from the fifth century.

There are some data points that New Testament text critics might not like. The manuscripts of the SDM family are late by New Testament standards, however it’s worth noting that by Hebrew standards they aren’t all that late. Our Hebrew Manuscripts of Matthew are not much younger than our oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts of Esther, Nehemiah, or other Old Testament books. There’s very few manuscripts in the SDM family, so few in fact that we would need to count individual manuscripts of Shem Tov in order to approach a dozen. I’m not particularly worried about this, though: I would no more suggest that text critics ignore the wealth of Greek manuscripts for Matthew than I would suggest that they ignore the wealth of Latin manuscripts for Mark or Luke or John when reconstructing possible early Greek readings. In fact, when adding the qure readings to my Masoretic Matthew (which I’m taking to be my final authority on what the Spirit inspired until I am presented with something better) I used the Greek text as an arbiter between conflicting Hebrew readings. Since the goal of textual criticism is to restore the earliest possible form of the text, and I have shown why it’s logical to conclude that the earliest form of Matthew was in Hebrew, then text critics should consider the text of Greek witnesses to reconstruct the Hebrew form, just as they use the text of Latin witnesses of John to reconstruct Greek readings. Further, text-critics such as Westcott and Hort had no difficulty in putting aside the vast majority of Greek Manuscripts and preferring the readings of only a select few that were regarded as authoritative, nor do text-critics on the other end of the spectrum show any remorse at dismissing the unique readings of these early texts to prefer a late reading that is widely supported but only in later manuscripts. So I’m not really doing anything different than they are, except that I’m preferring a different set of manuscripts for Matthew in a different language.

Masoretic Matthew: The Problems With Q with Solutions in Hebrew Matthew

Published by Shaun C. Kennedy

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Published by Shaun C. Kennedy

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