Matthew, Mark and Luke are all very similar. You may have noticed. These three Gospels are known as the Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic comes from the Greek and means seen together. Of the 661 verses in Mark, 606 of those are reflected somehow in Matthew. There are also about 350 of Mark’s 661 verses that are found in some fashion in Luke. In fact, there are only 31 verses in Mark that do not parallel anything in Matthew or Luke. This has led many scholars to believe that Mark was the first Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke used it as reference when writing theirs’ except there is one problem. This theory does not explain the 250 verses that Matthew and Luke share, but not Mark. It would be simple to say that Luke was just the last author and that he used both Matthew and Mark, but we can’t say that for one big reason. In Luke 1:1-4, he says that he intended to investigate carefully, so why would he leave out the extra 300 verses that are specific only to Matthew. Are you confused yet?
The basic idea is that the Gospel writers probably used sources in order to write their Gospels, otherwise they chance forgetting stuff. These sources could have been written, oral, divinely-inspired and their own memory. Mark seems to be the first Gospel written since almost all of it is incorporated into the other two Gospels. While Matthew and Luke have quite a few similarities, they also have huge chunks that are totally unique to themselves. So the question is where they got those 250 verses that they have in common? One of the proposed answers is Q.
It is very coincidental that the verses that Matthew and Luke have in common are mostly sayings of Jesus. Many scholars think that the first and third Gospels used Mark’s Gospel as a reference, but also a document that listed sayings of Jesus, which has become nicknamed Q. There is no archaeological evidence that Q (short for German quelle meaning source) ever existed. There is only one potential reference in all of ancient literature and it is very weak. A 4th century historian named Eusebius quotes a very early church father named Papias who live from about 80 to 155 AD. Papias said “Matthew composed the logia (translated sayings or Gospel?) in the hebraidi (translated Hebrew or Aramaic?) dialect.” Some people think that this reference is to Matthew’s Gospel which was possibly written in Aramaic or Hebrew. Others think that this is a reference to a compilation of sayings written in Aramaic.
It would be logical for the early church to have a compilation of Jesus’ sayings for a few reasons. Q would have been good material to give to new converts for memorization. If Jesus wanted His words remembered He probably spoke poetically just like the Old Testament prophets. And many of the sayings that are similar in Matthew and Luke are written poetically. While some of the sayings are nearly verbatim between the two Gospels, there are others that only resemble each other, such as the Beatitudes. However Matthew, a Jew, would have used an Aramaic version of Q whilst Luke, a Greek, would have used the Greek translation.
While it is not impossible for Q to exist, remember that not only has there never been a manuscript found, but it is never definitively referenced by any ancient author. If you are still concerned with Matthew and Luke sharing these 250 verses, you might seek other solutions with other hypotheses. While I might appear confident that Mark was the first Gospel, until the 17th century it was universally held that Matthew was the first.
There are a huge amount of other theories that should be considered, but I won’t address them here since I’m already confused. You might start by investing in a book with the four Gospels parallel to each other.
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