INTRODUCTION

Under the strict rules of source criticism this was not a difficult source to define. Scholars detected that Luke's Gospel contained verses which were not found in the Gospel of Mark and could not be detected in Matthew's Gospel. So material found only in the Gospel of Luke was dubbed "L" material ie material peculiar to Luke.

Clearly it is one thing to identify this information but quite another to assume that these verses in the gospel ever constituted a single written source. Logical the stories could have come from more than one source. We cannot be sure that the information was ever written down before Luke included it in his work.

IDENTIFICATION OF L MATERIAL

What follows is taken from a list that was produced originally by Dr Vincent Taylor, with some additional comments.

1. 14 parables

7:41-42 Parable of two debtors

10:30-35 Parable of the good Samaritan

11:5-8 Parable of the friend at midnight

14:28-33 Parable of the tower and the king going to war

15:8-10 Parable of the lost coin

15:11-32 Parable of the lost son

16:1-8 Parable of the dishonest steward

16:19-31 Parable of the rich man and Lazarus

17:7-10 Parable of the unprofitable servants

18:2-5 Parable of the unjust judge

18:10-14 Parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector

No comment is really needed on this list. Clearly the parables are not found elsewhere, but one is left wondering why the Parable of the lost sheep has been omitted. The easy answer is to say that the parable is also found in Matthew 18:12-14 and therefore it belongs to the source Q. According to the rules of source criticism that is undoubtedly correct, but the Matthew version of the parable is very different in it message. This example may begin to expose the weakness of using source criticism alone. What seems to be needed is a much more fluid understanding of how the stories circulated in the early Christian tradition.

2. Various Sayings

3:23-28 Genealogy

11:1-4 The Lord's prayer

12:13-15 On dividing the inheritance

13:1-5 The Galileans and the tower of Siloam

13:31-33 Go and tell that fox

14:7-14 Invitation to a banquet

16:14f Lovers of money

21:12-36 Parts of the eschatological discourse

22:24-30 True greatness

Again the limitations of source criticism become apparent. The Lord's prayer undoubtedly appears in Matthew's Gospel Matt 6:9-13. The wording is somewhat different, but of course with strong similarities. Taylor judged that each evangelist had taken the prayer from his own source and not from Q, but that is quite a subjective judgement. The material appears in both gospels!

3, The following narratives

a) The sermon at Nazareth 4:16-27 Mark mentions this but does not enlarge on it.

b) The call of Simon 5:1-12 Again Mark's basic narrative is enlarged by the inclusion of a miracle story by Luke.

c) the raising of the widow of Nain's son 7:11-17.

d) The meal at the house of Simon the Pharisee. 7:36-50.

e) The description of the ministry of women 8:1-3.

f) The Samaritan village 9:51-56.

g) The mission of the seventy 10:1-16.

h) Jesus' visit to the home of Mary and Martha 10:38-42.

i) The proclamation of the woman in the crowd 11:27f.

j) Healing of a woman with a spirit of infirmity 13:10-17.

k) Healing of the man with dropsy 14:1-6.

l) Healing of ten lepers 17:12-19.

m) The story of Zacchaeus 19:1-10.

4. Additions to the Passion narrative

There are really quite a lot of these and many scholars have wondered if Luke actually had his own version of the passion narrative into which he eventually inserted Marcan passage. Generally these days this is considered unlikely. It seems better to assume that Luke used somewhat freely the account of Mark. Three passages stand out though for special mention and they are Jesus' being sent by Pilate to Herod 23:6-11, Jesus and the weeping women of Jerusalem 23:27-31 and Jesus' conversations with those crucified alongside him 23:39-43.

5. The resurrection narratives

a) Appearance of Jesus to two disciples on the way to Emmaus 24:13-35.

b) Appearance of Jesus in Jerusalem 24:36-43.

c) Conclusion of the ministry and ascension 24:44-52.

It could be argued that Mark's gospel is deficient at this point. There are no appearances of the risen Jesus in his gospel. This is not the place to enter into a discussion about the possible lost ending of Mark. Suffice it to say that an argument based on silence is always rather dubious. It seems better to assume that the three resurrection narratives above are peculiar to Luke.

6. The narratives of the birth of Jesus and the birth of John the Baptist. Chapters 1 and 2.

These stories are not found in any other gospel. In the past it has been popular to assign these to yet another independent source used only by Luke! While this may be true, I find multiplication of the unknown a difficult concept!

CONCLUSIONS OF THE SOURCE CRITICS

Some of the conclusions of the source critics were indeed extremely useful and perceptive. They pointed out that there was a heavy reliance for Old Testament references on the LXX. It was also pointed out that much of this material had an eschatological or apocalyptic theme.

The material gave rise to the phrase "Luke's gospel has a universalistic approach" meaning that women were numbered among his followers and there were a umber of stories which showed dealing with and accepting foreigners. The theme of forgiveness figured strongly, both in Jesus' actions 7:36-50 and on some of the parables that were included.

Distinctive narratives accompanied the beginning and the end of the gospel.

Source critics were less successful in their attempts to discover how much of this material was written before Luke included it in his gospel and how much was oral material. Many scholars felt there was more than one source and some even tried to put a geographical location where the undiscovered document might have been written! Equally unsuccessful were their attempts to assign a date to the material. This tended to depend on where it had not been used and upon subjective opinions about the simplicity of the material. Phrases such as "This seems to be a very early unsophisticated account of the incident" used to appear and one was left asking "compared to what?"

A WAY OUT?

Scholarship has moved a long way since the days of Streeter and Vincent Taylor. The findings of Form Critics who pointed out the importance of the oral tradition and the adaptation of Jesus material for the churches of 30 years after his death, must have had an impact on the way stories were told, if not the details themselves. What was applicable to Jesus' first audience in Palestine would probably not have matched the needs of the early Christian living under the threat of persecution in Rome thirty years later.

Christianity was a living religion which needed to develop its message and ideas to be applicable to those who were listening to the gospel. Therefore the substance of many stories might be changed.

We now also realize that those first evangelists had their own interests, ideas and themes. Redaction Criticism has shown that the authors of the gospels themselves would have had a tremendous input. This could be as slight as their own interest. It could be as large as wanting to give a definite message to the church as a whole about the nature and purpose of Jesus' mission. That may seems unduly obscure, but one needs to remember that the very first Christians immediately after the death and resurrection of Jesus were convinced that the end of the world order was at hand. Paul's letters seems to underline this point. Mark's gospel also seems to be anticipating the parousia. Luke on the other hand is a number of years down the line. No end of the world, no parousia and he felt moved, in his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, to write a beginning of church history. This was bound to affect the way he shaped the material in the gospel. He could not end his first volume assuming that the return of Christ was imminent.

This is perhaps not a very satisfactory conclusion to an article which is attempting to describe material peculiar to Luke. Nevertheless the student of source criticism needs to be aware that there is no easy solution to the origin of this material special to Luke's account. It could come from a written or an oral source. It could equally well come from the pen of the author of the gospel himself as he struggled to interpret the message of Jesus for the church of his own day.