Sequence

A loosely-knit chain of sayings clusters following Q's list of congratulations covers a wide range of advice on social interaction. The first cluster focuses on how to react to pressures imposed by others. Its location here was probably prompted by the congratulations addressed to people who were persecuted (Luke 6:22-23//Matt 5:11-12). For in oral recollection the logic of one saying often suggests the theme of the next.

Luke preserves this sequence better than Matthew, whose version of Q's sermon put priority on showing that Jesus' teaching did not undermine God's laws in Hebrew scripture.  The rationale for Matthew's editing is based on sayings found later in Q (Luke 16:16-17//Matt 5:18, 11:12-13). Matthew's version, on the other hand, is closer to Q's usual style of compiling simple clusters of similar sayings than is Luke's more intricate sermon structure.

The scribe who compiled Q created this particular complex from sayings that had circulated separately, since parallels in the gospel of Thomas are neither tied together nor linked to Jesus' congratulations, as we noted in our preface to Q's sermon. But even Q's sequence of sayings was hardly stable. For Matthew and Luke shuffled sentences, elaborating any they wished to stress.  A likely reconstruction of the original order is:

• love of enemies (Matt 5:44-48//Luke 6:27-28,32-36)

• reaction to confrontations (Matt 5:39-42//Luke 6:29-30)

• the "golden rule" (Matt 7:12//Luke 6:31).

Luke apparently split the first mini-cluster to frame the other sayings.

The Didache, a second-century church handbook, complicates matters by presenting this block of Q sayings in an inverted order. Moreover, the Didache raises the question of the original source of this "Teaching" by crediting it to "the twelve apostles" rather than to Jesus. Therefore, the Jesus Seminar weighed each element separately.

Love of Enemies 

Matt 5:43-44	Luke 6:27-28	Didache 1
43 "As you know,
we once were told,
'You shall love
your neighbor'
and
'You shall hate
your enemy.'
44 But	27 "But to you who listen	3Now the teaching
I tell you,	I say:	of these words is this:
love your enemies	love your enemies,
	do good
	to those who hate you,
	28 bless	Bless
	those who curse you,	those who curse you
and pray	pray	and pray for your enemies
		and fast
for your persecutors.	for your abusers..."	for your persecutors...
	35 "But	But for your part
	love your enemies	love those who hate you
	and do good...."	and
		you will have no enemy.

Logical Core

Close comparison of this sayings complex reveals four Q aphorisms that were paraphrased by either Matthew or Luke or probably both.  The logic of the core common to both versions runs:

a.  Love your enemies...and you will be children of <God>.
b.  <God is good even> to bad people....
b'. If you love those who love you, what is your <benefit>?
     Even <bad people> do as much....
a'. Be...as your Father is....

Points where Matthew's wording differs from Luke's are represented by dots (...) or words in pointed brackets (e.g., <God>).  Which version, if either, better represents the text of Q at these points is debatable. But the Jesus Seminar focused on evidence that any part of this logic actually originated with Jesus rather than on reconstructing the text of Q.

Editorial flourishes

To distinguish Jesus' voice from ideas added by those who edited his sayings for publication, one has to discount terminology that is typical of the writer who quotes him. Here both Matthew and Luke elaborate Q's four basic points by the common rhetorical tactic of adding parallel sayings to reinforce or clarify a previous statement. Which of these flourishes come from Q, if any, is debatable. For the interpretive parallels proposed by Matthew were not cited by Luke and vice versa.  Moreover, the terminology favored by each gospel reflects its own author's general style of editing Q and other sources.  While such paraphrase was obviously meant to help readers comprehend what Jesus meant, it complicates the historical task of determining what he really said. For language that is hard to trace to Q is even harder to trace to Jesus.

Love enemies	%	Red	Pink	Grey	Black	WA	Print
Luke 6:27b Matt 5:44b Luke 6:35a		67 38 25	20 54 25	13 8 33	0 0 17	84 77 54	red red pink
Do good
Luke 6:27c Luke 6:35b Did 1:3c		7 0 17	36 25 0	43 42 66	14 33 17	45 31 39	grey grey grey
Bless cursers
Luke 6:28a Did 1:3a		0 17	50 0	29 66	21 17	43 39	grey grey
Pray for Abusers
Luke 6:28b Matt 5:44c pOxy 1224 2 PolPhil 12:3		15 15 10 8	15 31 30 8	54 39 30 34	16 15 30 50	44 49 40 25	grey grey grey black

Paradox

"Love your enemies" is the only advice in this complex of Q sayings that was never credited to anyone else than Jesus. It is so paradoxical that Jesus almost certainly said it. The Jesus Seminar ranked it third highest among the genuine Jesus sayings. There could hardly be a shorter aphorism.  Like Jesus' congratulations of the poor, it inverts common wisdom so thoroughly that it is not immediately clear what it entails. But the insertion of more pragmatic conventional admonitions (pray, do favors, bless) so obscured the original conclusion of this saying that most Fellows voted gray on everything that followed.

Editorial echoes

Matthew balances "love your enemies" with one corollary; Luke adds two others.  Notice how the advice in each version echoes that gospel's paraphrase of Q's fourth congratulations, which---as we noted above---directly preceded this command in Q:

Matt 5:11: "Congratulations to you when they...persecute you....">
Matt 5:44: "...and pray for your persecutors." &

Luke 6:22: "Congratulations to you when people hate you...."
Luke 6:27: "...do favors for those who hate you."

Which saying---congratulations formula or admonition---influenced which is uncertain. Two things are clear, however: Q juxtaposed two paradoxical sayings (congratulating the oppressed and loving enemies) prompting one to be interpreted in terms of the other; yet Matthew and Luke obviously did not limit their interpretations to phrases found in Q.  This makes it unlikely that Jesus was the author of the injunctions that either synoptic gospel appends to Jesus' advice to love one's enemies.

Matt 5:43 is further evidence of the tendency of an editor to echo favorite phrases. Since the rhetorical formula, "we once were told...but I tell you," is found only in Matthew's gospel, it too is not traceable to Q, much less Jesus.

Apostolic advice

Even if the admonitions to bless, pray and do favors for opponents could be traced to Q, there would still not be enough evidence to prove Jesus said them. For early Christian writers who claimed apostolic authority sometimes gave the same advice without crediting Jesus. In the Greco-Roman world "apostles" were viewed as official ambassadors, whose message bore the stamp of the one who sent them without necessarily quoting the sender's own words.  In such a social context, those who accepted anyone as an apostle of Jesus would naturally think Jesus was the source of that apostle's instructions.

Paul, for instance, presenting himself as a "slave" and "apostle" of the risen Christ (Rom 1:1), urged the Christian community at Rome:

Bless those who persecute <you>;
bless and do not curse them.
---Rom 12:14.

While Paul does not attribute such advice to Jesus himself, anyone who saw him as Jesus' ambassador might have.

Paul's letter to Roman Christians further shows that the idea of doing favors for opponents was a stock principle of Judaic wisdom hundreds of years before Jesus. Without echoing Jesus' paradoxical injunction "love your enemies," Paul invokes the conditional advice of this Hebrew proverb:

If your enemy is hungry feed him;
if he is thirsty give him drink.
---Rom 12:20//Prov 25:21.

Like Paul, the Didache cites pragmatic wisdom as the motive for treating opponents well:

Now the lesson of these words is this:
Bless those that curse you;
and pray for your enemies;
and fast for your persecutors.
---Didache 1:3

But since it labels this advice "the teaching of the twelve apostles," it is evident that the kind of injunctions that Matthew or Luke, and perhaps Q, appended to Jesus' striking call to love one's enemies were drawn from the grab-bag of anonymous early Jewish Christian wisdom rather than from a clear recollection of the remarks of one particular sage, Jesus of Nazareth.

Children of God

Motivation models

The next sayings in this Q cluster invoke a pair of positive and negative role models:

• God (Luke 6:35: "the Most High"; Matt 5:45: "your Father in heaven")

• moral inferiors (Luke 6:32-4: "sinners"; Matt 5:46-7: "toll collectors" and "pagans").

To motivate people to adopt an extraordinary and ostensibly contradictory social attitude (love/enemies) the author of this sermon issues twin challenges to be better than the second model and like the first.  This appeal is linked to the audience's claim (and ambition) to be God's own offspring. Such a conviction was held by first-century Christians and Jews alike. Unfortunately, however, history proved that neither group readily recognized the other's claim to this status. Whatever the original circumstances that prompted this part of Q's sermon, it was obviously composed to shame those who viewed themselves as morally superior to their opponents into a more tolerant view of them.

Luke 6:35 and Matt 5:44-5 reveal the core of the underlying argument with the least amount of editorial revision.  The phrasing of these verses varies enough, however, to require close scrutiny to determine which elements are traceable to Q.

Matt 5:45, 48	Luke 6:35-36
	35 ..."Your reward will be great,
45 "You'll then become children	and you'll be children
of your Father in the heavens.	of the Most High.
For	As you know,
God makes the sun rise	the Most High is generous
on both the bad and the good,	to the ungrateful and the evil.
and sends rain
on both the just and the unjust...
48To sum up,
you shall be perfect	36Be as compassionate
in the same way	as
your heavenly Father is perfect."	your Father is."

Matt 5:45 cites a pair of natural phenomena (sun/rain) as examples of God's indiscriminate treatment of all people. The second clause further illustrates Matthew's concern for justice that is evident in sayings he added to Q's list of congratulations, for instance: "Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for justice!" (Matt 5:6) and "Congratulations to those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice!" (Matt 5:10). However, the fact that the first clause gives "the bad" priority over the good is not typical of Matthew.

Luke 6:35 summarizes 6:27-28 before making a single reference to God's generosity. Luke's editing of Q's cluster probably led him to present only the general gist of this saying. But it is striking that, unlike Matthew, he does not describe God as generous to "good" people.

The concluding injunction in this Q cluster (Matt 5:48//Luke 6:36) stresses the premise of the first: children should act like their father. But the different paternal traits emphasized by Matthew (perfection) and Luke (compassion) so reflect each author's personal view of God that the original word in Q is uncertain.

God's Children	%	Red	Pink	Grey	Black	WA	Print
Luke 6:35e Matt 5:45a		8 8	25 33	42 42	25 17	39 44	grey grey
Sun rises
Matt 5:45b		8	58	17	17	53	pink
Ungrateful
Luke 6:35f		8	42	25	25	44	grey
As Your Father
Luke 6:36 Matt 5:48		17 0	42 27	8 27	33 45	47 27	grey grey
Great Reward
Luke 6:35d		0	8	33	58	17	black

Pre-Christian parallels

Long before Jesus of Nazareth, other Judean sages appealed to people to act like true children of God. Jesus ben Sirach, whose wisdom was treated as scripture by Greek-speaking Jews and Christians, wrote:

Be as a father to the fatherless,
and as a husband help their mother;
then you will be like a son to the Most High,
and he will be more tender than a mother to you. (Sir 4:10).

Similarly, stoics like Seneca, the leading Roman philosopher of Jesus' day, cited divine non-discrimination as a model of human behavior: 

If you imitate the gods,
give benefits even to the ungrateful;
for the sun also rises on the wicked
and the sea lies open even to pirates (de Beneficiis 4.26.1).

Matt 5:45 is somewhat like Jesus' genuine parables of the leaven and mustard seed (Luke 13:) in that it uses simple observations of nature to challenge traditional views of God.  Unlike other passages in Matthew or Q, it makes no claim that the unrighteous face eventual punishment.  Moreover, it accounts for Jesus' favorable attitude toward sinners that other Jews found scandalous.  Thus, most Fellows were inclined to view this saying as based on something that Jesus really said.  But the parallels to Seneca, particularly in Luke, raised enough doubt about the synoptics' phrasing to keep it out of the red.

Finally, although the Jesus Seminar accepted the authenticity of many other Q sayings that encouraged people to act as real children of God, the original phrasing of those elements in this complex was so uncertain that most Fellows did not vote higher than gray.

Better than sinners

Matt 5:46-47	Luke 6:32-34	Didache 1
46 "Tell me,
if you love those	32 "If you love those
who love you,	who love you,
why should you be rewarded	what merit is there	3...For what merit is there
for that?	in that?	if you love those
		who love you?
	After all,
Even the toll-collectors	even sinners
do as much, don't they?	love those who love them.
47 And if you greet
only your friends,
what have you done
that is exceptional?
Even the pagans		Even the pagans
do as much,		do as much,
don't they?"		don't they?"
	33 " If you do good
	to those
	who do good to you,
	what merit is there
	in that?
	Even sinners
	do as much.
	34 " If you lend to those
	from whom you hope
	to gain,
	what merit is there
	in that?
	Even sinners lend
	to sinners,
	in order to get as much
	in return."

The question behind Matt 5:46//Luke 6:32 ("If you love those who love you...") supports the Q admonition to love one's enemies.  But the next questions diverge in both focus and phrasing.  Matt 5:47 concerns social greetings, not the ethical and economic behavior of Luke 6:33-34.  Matthew, moreover uses typical Judean terms for social deviants (toll collectors/pagans), while Luke preferred ethnically neutral language (sinners).

The Seminar was evenly divided on Matt 5:46//Luke 6:32.  The rhetorical question ("If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that?") is ironic.  But its appeal to the credit motive is conventional enough to raise doubts that the source of this moralistic rhetoric was Jesus.  The Fellows generally agreed that Jesus did not promise people rewards for being righteous, as traditional preachers did; hence, the black vote on Luke 6:35d.  Moreover, the Fellows generally agreed that Jesus was criticized for associating with social deviants like toll collectors and sinners (Luke 7:34//Matt 11:19).  This made many doubt that Jesus would have made condescending comments about such people.

Sinners Love	%	Red	Pink	Grey	Black	WA	Print
Luke 6:32 Matt 5:46 Did 1:3b 2 Clem 13:4		25 25 25 25	25 17 25 25	42 50 42 42	8 8 8 8	56 53 56 56	pink pink pink pink
Pagans greet
Matt 5:47		25	8	50	17	47	grey
Sinners Do Good
Luke 6:33		17	25	42	17	47	grey
Sinners Lend
Luke 6:34		25	8	42	25	44	grey
Great Reward
Luke 6:35d		0	8	33	58	17	black