Introduction
As an ‘eternal’ question of New Testament research,Footnote 1 the Synoptic problem constantly generates numerous publications almost each and every year. Like their forerunners in the nineteenth century and before, present New Testament scholars need to address simultaneously multiple literary phenomena if they wish to create a helpful proposal regarding synoptic relationships or to defend an older one convincingly. Although never boring,Footnote 2 at times such attempts may lead to moments of frustrationFootnote 3 because no hypothesis regarding the Synoptic problem answers all tantalising questions in a satisfactory way.Footnote 4 In a certain respect, the synoptic ‘maze’ bears even a Hydraean characteristic:Footnote 5 if a proposed hypothesis allows one to contextualise a particular feature of the synoptic data, two other features remain without an equally convincing explanation.
The present article focuses on one such fascinating phenomenon, the so-called ‘doublets’,Footnote 6 and traces its impact on synoptic studies across the sometimes fiercely contested boundaries of different synoptic hypotheses. It does not provide a complete history of scholarship but analyses the most important doublet-based arguments in order to foster a more nuanced and methodologically sound treatment of doublets in synoptic research. Because the assessment of Luke's redactional strategies is one of the most important issues at stake in the debate between advocates of the two-source or two-document hypothesis (still ‘the most widely held and accepted solution’)Footnote 7 and proponents of the Farrer hypothesis (‘the current major rival proposal to the two-source theory’),Footnote 8 special focus will be laid on the presence of doublets in the Gospel of Luke.
1. Conjoined Twins? Doublets and the Q-Hypothesis
Christian Gottlob Wilke (1788–1854)Footnote 9 and Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–66),Footnote 10 in their landmark studies both published in 1838, argued for Markan priority and thus challenged the traditional view which regarded the Gospel of Matthew as the oldest of the three Synoptic GospelsFootnote 11 but disagreed on the origin of the so-called double-tradition material shared (only) by Matthew and Luke.
Wilke explained the presence of the double-tradition material by Matthew's dependency on Mark and Luke.Footnote 12 Although this Matthean posteriority solution never became a major player in the field of synoptic studies, it has recently witnessed some sort of revival thanks to detailed monographs published by Alan GarrowFootnote 13 and Robert MacEwen.Footnote 14 Weisse, however, attributed the double-tradition material to a second source (independently used by Matthew and Luke alongside Mark) and pointed to ‘a new kind of evidence’, i.e. the doublets (‘Doubletten’).Footnote 15 This proposal contained all of the crucial elements of what was later labelled the ‘two-document hypothesis’. In a later work, Weisse defined doublets as ‘the appearance of one and the same pithy saying at different places in one and the same Gospel’ and produced a list of doublets in the Synoptic Gospels.Footnote 16 Although many such lists have been compiled since Weisse,Footnote 17 no definitive list of doublets exists.Footnote 18 Most scholars, however, agree on the approximate numbers of doublets in the Synoptic Gospels (about twenty in Matthew, about ten in Luke, one or two in Mark).
Closely linked to the ‘birth’ of the two-source hypothesis, the argument from doublets has remained a classical argument for the existence of Q ever since,Footnote 19 and has even been called ‘the decisive evidence for the existence of a common, written source of Matthew and Luke’.Footnote 20 More recently, however, prominent Q-scholars have articulated hesitations about the force of the argument from doublets. According to Paul Foster, it ‘is certainly true that by themselves the doublets are incapable of providing definitive proof of either the existence of Q, or the veracity of the two-source theory’.Footnote 21 Christopher Tuckett even calls the argument from doublets ‘perhaps one of the weakest arguments for the existence of a Q source’.Footnote 22 Maybe this ‘radical shift’Footnote 23 in the study of doublets is best illustrated by a comparison of two of the most influential books on the two-document hypothesis: while in Paul Wernle's classic Die synoptische Frage from 1899 (credited with giving the two-document hypothesis its final shape) doublets are regarded as ‘main argument’ (‘Hauptargument’) for the two-document hypothesis,Footnote 24 John Kloppenborg Verbin's Excavating Q from 2000 (probably the most detailed and balanced defence of the two-document hypothesis ever published) mentions the argument from doublets only in a single footnote and describes it ‘as an instructive subset of the argument from order’.Footnote 25
Nevertheless, such an important study as Harry T. Fleddermann's reconstruction of and commentary on Q still uses the doublets as one out of four basic arguments for the existence of Q.Footnote 26 Other adherents of the two-source hypothesis, especially German-speaking scholars such as Martin Ebner,Footnote 27 Udo SchnelleFootnote 28 and Markus Tiwald,Footnote 29 express similar convictions. Even some scholars who remain unconvinced by the postulate of Luke's and Matthew's complete independence stop short of dispensing with Q precisely because of the doublets.Footnote 30 Paul Foster, too, complements his statement quoted above with an assessment clearly in favour of the two-document hypothesis: ‘However, on balance, it appears that the two-source theory explains the presence of doublets in the synoptic tradition in the most plausible manner.’Footnote 31 Robert Morgenthaler formulates the doublets’ role within competing synoptic hypotheses in a much less diplomatic way: ‘Any comprehensive and detailed analysis of the phenomenon of doublets is given a wide berth by opponents of the Q-hypothesis (Butler, Farrer, Farmer). They do have good reasons for doing so.’Footnote 32
2. Doublets and the Farrer Hypothesis
Morgenthaler's statement is provocative indeed. But is it true? Obviously, the three scholars mentioned by Morgenthaler (Butler, Farrer, Farmer) represent very different synoptic hypotheses which were received very differently within most recent research.
Basil Christopher Butler's defence of the so-called Augustinian hypothesis (Mark used Matthew, Luke used both of them) did not convince many New Testament scholars,Footnote 33 and even the much more influential revival of the Griesbach hypothesis (Luke used Matthew while Mark used both Matthew and Luke) by William Farmer and his followers has clearly passed its prime.Footnote 34 Therefore only one rival of the Q hypothesis – the solution proposed by Austin FarrerFootnote 35 – seems to be alive and well.Footnote 36
However, doublets have received surprisingly little attention in the camp of the Farrer hypothesis. In his ground-breaking The Case Against Q, Mark Goodacre mentions the argument from doublets only in a footnote and states that it ‘does not appear to be used as an argument for Q in any of the recent literature’.Footnote 37 This non-discussion seems to be echoed in the most important collected volumes on the Farrer hypothesis,Footnote 38 as well as in Francis Watson's seminal study on the development of gospel literature.Footnote 39 Thus, one has to go back to Michael Goulder's Luke to find a substantial treatment of doublets by an advocate of Lukan posteriority.
2.1 Michael Goulder and the Argument from Doublets
Goulder, who opens his impressive Farrer-style reading of Luke's Gospel with a 68-pages-long argument against Q (‘a house built on sand’), dedicates only one and a half page to the discussion of doublets.Footnote 40 Drawing on Hawkins’ Horae Synopticae, Goulder points out that Hawkins explains six of his twenty-two Matthean doublets as duplications of Markan material. Seven more of Hawkins’ Matthean doublets, Goulder adds, bear identical or closely similar marks of Matthean redaction in both of their halves (e.g. ἔξελε αὐτὸν καὶ βάλε ἀπὸ σοῦ in Matt 5.29 and 18.9 or the mention of πορνεία in both Matt 5.32 and 19.9). After stressing what he sees as the methodological flaw behind the argument from doublets (‘a simple circle’),Footnote 41 Goulder concludes: ‘Matthew may well have used a Marcan logion a second time and adapted it; and Luke (who in the Q-passages is eschewing Mark as a source) will have copied in the Matthean adaptation.’Footnote 42
This remark perfectly illustrates how the phenomenon of doublets is to be explained in the perspective of the Farrer hypothesis in its pure form: all of Matthew's doublets are the product of ‘a rather didactic writer’,Footnote 43 while the doublets in Luke witness the use of two sources – but not of Mark and Q, as the two source hypothesis would have it, but of Mark and Matthew. Both of these assumptions have been challenged by defenders of the Q hypothesis and it is worth taking a closer look at two arguments against the Farrer hypothesis that make explicit use of the doublets.
2.2 Luke's ‘Elimination’ of Doublets as a Challenge to the Farrer Hypothesis
Michael Bird's study on gospel origins provides us with a first illustrative example. Bird challenges the Farrer hypothesis by stating that ‘if Luke used Matthew, then we are wondering why Luke kept four of these Matthean doublets, eliminated five by dropping the Markan version, and then created five more by augmenting units he had inherited from Matthew and Mark’,Footnote 44 and judging that ‘Luke's dual elimination and formulation of doublets’ is not the most convincing explanation of the data.Footnote 45
This argument may be countered from the perspective of the Farrer hypothesis in a twofold way. To begin with, the surprisingly low number of doublets in Bird's argument – only nine doublets in Matthew compared to twenty-two in Hawkins’ list – reveals that Bird deals only with those doublets which constitute of a ‘Markan half’ and a ‘double tradition half’ but completely ignores the bigger part of Matthew's doublets that seem to contain material from one and the same tradition. In Matthew, we find doublets of Markan material (e.g. Mark 1.15 in Matt 4.17b, but also in Matt 3.2b), of double-tradition material (e.g. Matt 3.7b parallels Luke 3.7b but reappears in Matt 23.33; Matt 3.10b parallels Luke 3.9b but reappears in Matt 7.19) and even of Sondergut material (e.g. Matt 9.13a // 12.7a; Matt 16.19 // 18.18). In other words, Bird's argument rests on a flawed set of data (i.e. only a small part of the evidence) and betrays a logical error – only doublets which are identified as source doublets from the outset are used in support of a certain source hypothesis. However, this petitio principii is not uncommon in discussions of the Synoptic problem: it is visible in Joel Marcus’ case against the Griesbach hypothesis,Footnote 46 it is the formative principle behind Harry T. Fleddermann's lists of doublets,Footnote 47 and it is evident in Paul Foster's argument that ‘the doublets, especially those examples that have been labelled as source doublets (and in particular “the double doublets”), are an important aspect of the cumulative evidence in favour of the two-source theory’.Footnote 48 On a methodological level this argumentative fuzziness points to a crucial aspect of any discussion of the phenomenon of doublets: in order to clarify the synoptic relationships, it is extremely desirable to distinguish ‘source doublets’ from ‘redactional doublets’ – but it is very difficult to draw this distinction without implicitly presupposing a certain solution to the Synoptic problem.
Yet another problem of Bird's argument emerges if one takes a closer look at Luke's redactional activity and especially at those five doublets which Farrer's Luke, according to Bird, ‘eliminated … by dropping the Markan version’:
(a) Matt 9.34 // 12.24 – The Leader of the Demons
(b) Matt 12.38–42 // 16.1–2 – Demand for a Sign
(c) Matt 5.32 // 19.9 – On Divorce
(d) Matt 19.30 // 20.16 – The First and the Last
(e) Matt 17.19–20 // 21.21 – On Faith
In the case of (b), the Markan parallel (Mark 8.11–12 // Matt 16.1–2) is part of the so-called ‘great omission’ (Mark 6.45–8.26 is missing in Luke), while in the case of (c), the Markan parallel (Mark 10.11–12 // Matt 19.9) is part of the so-called ‘smaller omission’ (Mark 9.41–10.12). If one does not want to argue that Luke made both relatively extensive omissions exactly because he wanted to avoid these doublets,Footnote 49 then the ‘elimination’ of these doublets (or better: of their Markan half) is just a corollary of Luke's major compositional strategies.
With (a) and (e) the situation is similar. Mark 3.22 (// Matt 9.34), the Markan parallel of (a), is located at a position where Luke leaves Mark's sequence (after Luke 6.12–16 // Mark 3.13–19). After the integration of non-Markan material in Luke 6.20–8.3 (the so-called ‘smaller insertion’; Luke 6.17–19 is just relocated material from Mark 3.7–12) Luke joins Mark again in Luke 8.4–15 // Mark 4.1–20. From the Markan material after Mark 3.20 and before Mark 4.1, only a softened version of Mark 3.31–5 reappears a bit later in Luke (cf. Luke 8.19–21) while its bigger part (Mark 3.20–30) is not taken over by Luke. In view of this omission of Mark 3.20–30 in the context of Luke's compositional rearrangement, it seems unnecessary to look for a special explanation for the ‘elimination’ of Mark 3.22 in Luke. The Markan parallel to (e), Mark 11.22–3 // Matt 21.21, fits into the same scheme, as Luke 19 displays some rearrangement of the Markan narrative leading not only to a relocation of the cursing of the fig tree (as in Matthew: cf. Matt 21.18–21) but to the elimination of this puzzling story (Mark 11.12–14, 20–5). Hence, four out of five ‘eliminated’ Matthean doublets do not appear in Luke simply because their Markan context was not taken over by Luke – for whatever reasons. Doublet (d) seems to be the exception that proves the rule, because Luke takes over Mark 10.28–31 but omits the last verse (Mark 10.31), which is the Markan parallel to Matthew's doublet (// Matt 19.30). However, the significant reshaping of the Markan material by Luke should not be overlooked: Luke omits Mark's καὶ ἀγροῦς (Mark 10.29) but adds ἢ γυναῖκα (Luke 18.29) to complete the elements of the οἶκος.Footnote 50 Luke further drops the Markan constraint μετὰ διωγμῶν (Mark 10.30).Footnote 51 Finally, Mark's concrete list of the coming rewards (Mark 10.30) is substituted by the abstract πολλαπλασίονα. Thus, the avoidance of a doublet is hardly the decisive factor behind the omission of Mark 10.31 after Luke 18.30.Footnote 52
To sum up, Bird's argument, that ‘Luke's dual elimination and formulation of doublets’ seems difficult to explain on the Farrer hypothesis, raises two objections. First, Bird treats only a sub-group of doublets (so-called ‘source doublets’), which leads to circular reasoning. Second, even if Bird's starting point is accepted, Luke's elimination of some of Matthew's doublets is not that awkward once Luke's redaction of Mark is taken into account.
2.3 Luke's Reception of Matthew's Non-Markan Doublet Halves as a Challenge to the Farrer Hypothesis
No less than four decades before Bird's study an even more extensive argument against the Farrer hypothesis (and its explanation of doublets in Matthew and Luke) was developed by Morgenthaler in his already quoted Statistische Synopse. After a detailed discussion of every single doublet in the Synoptic Gospels (twenty-eight pages!) and the creation of three (although not identical!) lists of doublets,Footnote 53 Morgenthaler presents a series of objections against the Farrer hypothesis based on the phenomenon of doublets.
Like Goulder on the other side of the debate, Morgenthaler starts with the observation that most of Matthew's doublets appear to be products of Matthew's ‘redactional’ duplication. In contrast to Goulder, however, who assumed it to be ‘perfectly believable that what he [i.e. Matthew] has done eight times with total repetitions, and seven times with partial ones, is an indication of his general manner in writing the rest’,Footnote 54 Morgenthaler insists that eight of Matthew's doublets do not fit into this scheme that easily (the ‘Markan half’ is given first):
(a) Matt 13.12 // 25.29 – To One Who Has Will be Given
(b) Matt 16.24b // 10.38 – The Cross Saying
(c) Matt 16.25 // 10.39 – Losing One's Life
(d) Matt 16.27 // 10.33 – Jesus and the Son of Man
(e) Matt 18.5 // 10.40 – On Accepting
(f) Matt 19.9 // 5.32 – On Divorce
(g) Matt 19.30 // 20.16 – The First and the Last
(h) Matt 21.21b // 17.20 – On Faith
According to Morgenthaler, these eight doublets share the following three characteristics: (1) one half of the doublet has a close parallel in Mark and appears in Matthew in a similar context as that parallel (‘Markan half’); (2) the other half of the doublet shows a certain degree of difference from the ‘Markan half’; (3) this non-Markan half has a (relatively) close parallel in Luke.
To take one example, ‘The Cross Saying’ appears (1) in Matt 16.24b (ɛἴ τις θέλɛι ὀπίσω μου ἐλθɛῖν, ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀράτω τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθɛίτω μοι) in a version almost identical with Mark 8.34 (ɛἴ τις θέλɛι ὀπίσω μου ἀκολουθɛῖν, ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀράτω τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθɛίτω μοι). Moreover, it can be found (2) in a slightly different version in Matt 10.38 (καὶ ὃς οὐ λαμβάνɛι τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθɛῖ ὀπίσω μου, οὐκ ἔστιν μου ἄξιος). For this non-Markan version of the saying, Luke 14.27 offers (3) a parallel (ὅστις οὐ βαστάζɛι τὸν σταυρὸν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἔρχɛται ὀπίσω μου, οὐ δύναται ɛἶναί μου μαθητής).Footnote 55
Regarding the second characteristic (‘certain degree of difference’ between the doublet halves) Morgenthaler notes that none of Matthew's doublets with high verbatim agreement between both halves can be found in Luke and calls it ‘improbable’ that Luke, on the Farrer hypothesis, would have eliminated every single one of these doublets with high verbatim agreement.Footnote 56 As for the third characteristic (‘non-Markan half with parallel in Luke’), Morgenthaler emphasises that these non-Markan halves ‘never’ appear in the same context as in Matthew, that all of them can be found within the great insertion Luke 9.51–18.14 (with the sole exception of Luke 19.26) and that all of them fit snugly within their immediate contexts. Taken together, these observations form an impressive pattern leading to the conclusion that the non-Markan halves of these eight doublets stem from a common source (‘Q’)Footnote 57 used by Matthew and Luke besides Mark. According to Morgenthaler, ‘no other explanation makes sense’.Footnote 58
However, Morgenthaler's arguments require careful scrutiny. To begin with, his observation that Matthew's doublets with high verbatim agreement are missing in Luke while eight Matthean doublets with more different halves are included into the third Gospel gives the impression of a compelling argument indeed: how should it be explained that Luke consistently avoided a certain category of Matthean doublets but just as consistently took over another category of doublets? Did Luke check the tradition-historical background of Matthew's doublets to separate them like Cinderella's lentils? Of course, this would be absurd. But Morgenthaler's own assessment of Luke's attitude towards doublets unwillingly points to an alternative solution: ‘No, Luke is not afraid of doublets. He rather wants to be a witness. He is avoiding the twofold incorporation of one and the same incident or the duplication of one and the same element of tradition. If, however, he found a logion both in Q and in Mark, yet in different context and in different form, he was happy to include both versions of it.’Footnote 59 If one simply changes ‘Q’ to ‘Matthew’, Morgenthaler's statement leads to a plausible Farrer-based explanation of the evidence.
Similarly, the argument from the placement of non-Markan doublet halves in Luke loses some of its force if one studies the individual texts carefully. For Morgenthaler, the appearance of all of Luke's non-Markan doublet halves (except Luke 19.26) in Luke 9.51–18.14 is ‘the most strange piece of evidence’.Footnote 60 But it can hardly be called ‘strange’ to find certain elements of the double tradition precisely at that place where most of the double tradition in Luke's Gospel appears. On the Farrer hypothesis, Luke makes use of non-Markan material he finds in Matthew's discourses to build up his central section. One can certainly challenge this concept in general – but it is not surprising at all that Farrer's Luke moves Matthew's non-Markan doublet halves to Luke 9.51–18.14.
For the very same reason, Morgenthaler's claim that these non-Markan doublet halves ‘never’ appear in the same context as in Matthew does not lead to an independent argument against Luke's redaction of Matthew: in most cases the ‘Matthean’ context simply does not exist in Luke's framework. This is most evident with regard to the four doublet halves in Matt 10.33, 38, 39, 40 (see items (b)–(e) in the list above). Matthew's mission discourse (Matt 10) has no equivalent in Luke, who, on the Farrer hypothesis, integrated Mark's mission discourse in Luke 9 but used some of Matthew's additions to build his second mission discourse in Luke 10 and moved yet other of Matthew's additions to other places of his Gospel.
The situation is similar in Matt 5.32 (see item (f)) and Matt 20.16 (see item (g)) – neither the Sermon on the Mount nor the parable of the workers in the vineyard (note the inclusion Matt 19.30; 20.16) is part of Luke's Gospel.
In Matt 17.20 (see item (h)) things are a bit more complicated: Matthew answers the disciples’ question about their incompetence as exorcists (Matt 17.19: ‘Why where we not able to cast him out?’; cf. Mark 9.28) with the saying ‘On Faith’. If the disciples had faith ὡς κόκκον σινάπɛως, the Matthean Jesus explains, they would be able to dislocate mountains and surely every demon would listen to them (Matt 17.20: οὐδὲν ἀδυνατήσɛι ὑμῖν; cf. Mark 9.23). Luke, however, tightens the Markan sequence (transfiguration (Mark 9.2–8) | Schweigegebot (Mark 9.9–10) | request about Elijah (Mark 9.11–13) | healing of a demon-possessed boy (Mark 9.14–27) | request about (in)competence as exorcists (Mark 9.28–9) | second passion prediction (Mark 9.30–2)) significantly. Not only does he drop the Schweigegebot, the request about Elijah and the secret journey through Galilee (Mark 9.30) during which the second passion prediction takes place in Mark, he also omits the disciples’ question about spiritual powers (Mark 9.28–9; diff. Matt 17.19–20) and by doing so eliminates the context of Matt 17.20.
If we turn to Matt 25.29 (see item (a)), speaking of a different context is highly problematic for another reason. Advocates of the Farrer hypothesis have tried to read Luke 19.11–27 as Luke's reworking of Matthew 25.14–30.Footnote 61 But a majority even of Q-scholars assess Matthew 25.14–30 and Luke 19.11–27 as two variations of the same tradition (possibly pointing to a predecessor in Q).Footnote 62 In any case, it is unconvincing to emphasise the ‘different context’ of Luke 19.26 compared to Matt 25.29.Footnote 63
If neither the fact that Luke's non-Markan doublet halves all appear within the great insertion (Luke 9.51–18.14) nor the separation of these doublet halves from their Matthean context can be called ‘strange’ or surprising, we are left with Morgenthaler's last trump card, i.e. his claim ‘that within the central section (as well as in the case of Luke 19.26) all of the Lukan doublet halves are integral parts of a pericope and none of them appears as an isolated logion’.Footnote 64 Following the lead of Heinz Schürmann's influential articles on doublets in Luke,Footnote 65 Morgenthaler obviously assumes that this observation should best be explained as evidence for Luke preserving the original (Q-)context of the respective sayings.
Besides the general question of whether Luke's well-woven narrative contains any ‘isolated logion’, this argument too is not particularly strong. The sayings in Luke 14.27 (see item (b)), 12.9 (see item (d)) and Luke 17.6 (see item (h)) all received a narrative introduction by Luke (cf. Luke 14.25; 12.1; 17.5),Footnote 66 while the saying in Luke 17.33 (see item (c)) is not seen as appearing in its Q-context even by advocates of the two-document hypothesis. Moreover, Luke 13.23–9 would be perfectly understandable without Luke 13.30 (see item (g)) attached at its end; similarly, Luke 10.16 (see item (e)) forms a fitting – yet hardly indispensable – conclusion to Luke 10.2–15. Perhaps the much-discussed saying ‘On Divorce’ in Luke 16.18 (see item (f)) approximates an ‘isolated saying’ as scholars struggle to understand the intention behind the arrangement of sayings in Luke 16.14–18.Footnote 67 Only Luke 19.26 (see item (a)) is definitely essential within Luke 19.11–27 – but this is a text that was heavily formed by Lukan redaction also in the perspective of Q-scholars. Thus the claim that non-Markan doublet halves of Matthew's doublets appear in Luke as ‘encapsulated’ (‘eingemauert(e)’)Footnote 68 elements of their surrounding pericopae remains unconvincing too.
Summing up the discussion of our second example of a doublet-based case against the Farrer hypothesis, it should be emphasised that Morgenthaler's Statistische Synopse is packed with valuable philological observations on the Synoptic problem in general and on the doublets in particular. It remains an indispensable tool for the student of synoptic relationships and is rightly referred to in every recent publication on doublets in Matthew and Luke. Exactly because of the lasting influence of Morgenthaler's monograph, however, it is very important to recognise that his attempt to create a decisive argument against the Farrer hypothesis based on the phenomenon of doublets is hardly convincing.
3 Conclusion
For obvious reasons, the history of research on doublets in the Synoptic Gospels is closely tied to the emergence of the two-document hypothesis. From Weisse onwards, a long tradition of scholarship has used the doublets as a classical argument for the existence of Q, culminating in the judgement of a very influential introduction to the New Testament that doublets provide ‘the decisive evidence for the existence of a common, written source of Matthew and Luke’.Footnote 69 Present scholarship on Q, however, is divided on the issue: while some scholars (e.g. Ebner, Fleddermann, Foster, Schnelle, Tiwald) still consider the doublets a strong or even decisive argument for the existence of Q, others (e.g. Kloppenborg, Tuckett) are more hesitant on this point.
Since according the Farrer hypothesis Luke made use of Matthew and Mark, proponents of this solution to the Synoptic problem have no need of ‘theoretical contortions’Footnote 70 to account for Luke's different list of doublets compared to Matthew's. On the one hand, Luke's redaction of Mark naturally leads to the elimination of some of Matthew's doublets, while, on the other hand, Farrer's Luke treats doublet material in just the same way as he treats double-tradition material in general. Therefore the argument from doublets is not to be considered an independent argument in favour of Q and against the Farrer hypothesis but more (1) ‘an instructive subset of the argument from order’Footnote 71 and (2) an easily understandable illustration of Matthew's and Luke's redactional activity on the assumption of Q.
The present author aims not to ally with one or the other side of the debate. Just as the two-document hypothesis needs to make Matthew's redaction of Q plausible,Footnote 72 the crucial challenge for the hypothesis of Lukan posteriority is to explain Luke's redaction of Matthew in a convincing way. It is important, however, to understand that doublets are a part of that very challenge and not an independent proof that Luke's second source besides Mark could not have been Matthew. In any case, the doublets are worthy of studying more thoroughly by adherents of the Farrer hypothesis given that proponents of Q keep using them as an important argument in their favour.
These methodological considerations already allude to what is maybe the most important task for further research on the doublets. Because of its close connection to the development of the Q-hypothesis, research on doublets is partly Q-biased both in its terminology and its argumentation (for examples, see § 2.2 above), which sometimes leads to circular reasoning. It goes without saying that scholars should avoid terminology that presupposes a certain solution to the Synoptic problem (e.g. ‘Q half’ of a doublet) while they are arguing which solution is the right one. Furthermore, any discussion of the doublets should take into account all of the evidence; starting from reduced lists of doublets that contain only supposed ‘source’ doublets may lead to flawed results. In particular, it should never be forgotten that even on the Q-hypothesis most doublets in Matthew and Luke do not result from overlap of two sources (see the lists of Hawkins, Morgenthaler). Finally, the common distinction between ‘source doublets’ (both halves are taken over from different sources) and ‘redactional doublets’ (one half of the doublet is the evangelist's reduplication of the other half) is a desirable analytical tool. Drawing this distinction without implicitly presupposing a certain solution to the Synoptic problem remains, however, a daunting task.
Matthew's and Luke's rather different usage of doublets was evident throughout this article. This suggests that doublets illustrate different redactional interests and even different theological agendas.Footnote 73 Exploring this connection is beyond the scope of this article with its focus on source-critical considerations but is a much needed endeavour indeed. Foster correctly states that ‘the doublets repay close attention since they cast light not only on source-critical questions, but perhaps more importantly on the compositional practices of the evangelists’.Footnote 74 Seen from this perspective, Fleddermann's imperative is certainly to be followed: ‘No one should underestimate the importance of the doublets.’Footnote 75
Acknowledgements
I am very thankful to R. Matthew Calhoun for his invaluable help in improving the English style of this contribution as well as to Iveta Adams for her careful copy-editing and many helpful suggestions.
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