(a) Outline your knowledge and understanding of the sources used and structure of Luke’s Gospel 

            The Gospel according to Luke is the first part of a two-volume work that continues the biblical history of God's dealings with humanity found in the Old Testament, showing how God's promises to Israel have been fulfilled in Jesus and how the salvation promised to Israel and accomplished by Jesus has been extended to the Gentiles. In the prologue Luke states that his purpose of the two volumes is to provide Theophilus and others like him with certainty and assurance about earlier instruction they have received.

             Among the sources which were used by Luke were at least two written documents, one of them the gospel of Mark in substantially its present form, and the other a collection in Greek of sayings of Jesus, incorporating some narrative details; known as ‘Q’; from the German Quelle meaning source. The use by Luke of these sources can be demonstrated because, in the case of Mark, the source itself is available, and a comparison of the texts of the three gospels leaves no reasonable doubt as to its employment in the two Gospels as Matthew and Luke independently copied Mark for its narrative framework.

            In the case of ‘Q’; a quarter of Luke is very similar to one third of Matthew therefore it is suggested that there was a common source used between them, although the original document has not survived, the occasional verbal agreement in ‘non-Marcan’ passages of Matthew and Luke is such as to show that a document existed, although its extent can only partially be established and the possibility always remains that more than one document was used. The date of Q’s composition cannot be accurately determined, but clearly lies within 20 or 30 years of the Resurrection. It does not seem to have been known by Mark.

             Luke also used material unique to him ‘L’ and this accounts for half of his gospel. ‘L’ is where we find writings that are specific to Luke. Luke may also, of course, have kept a diary or have recorded material in notebooks, but there is no way of proving or disproving this. Nor is there any satisfactory means of determining from which of many possible informants he derived any particular incident or parable.

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           The question of Luke’s sources is complicated by Streeter’s theory that Luke had composed a gospel before he came into possession of a copy of Mark. As I have said above; we know that Mark was one of Lukes sources as half of Marks Gospel can be found in Lukes. This theory is based on the fact that in large sections of Luke, Mark is not employed as a source, and that it is possible to reconstruct from Luke, omitting all his borrowings from Mark, a gospel-like document of considerable extent. As Luke doesn’t interweave ...

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