The Concept of Proto-Luke

Streeter Introduces the Concept of Proto-Luke

B.H. Streeter, in the eighth chapter of The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (1925), enlarged the popular two-source theory (two-document hypothesis) to include four sources.  Based on a review of the Material unique to Mark as compared to the Lukan material common to Mark he concluded that the special Lukan material was derived from a single document, Proto-Luke, that he used as a framework (p.208). This Proto-Luke is understood to contain “Q” (sayings of Jesus common to Luke and Matthew) as well as “L” (material that is unique to the Gospel of Luke).  He states his hypothesis as follows:

I desire to interpolate a stage between Q and the editor of the Third Gospel. I conceive that what this editor had before him was, not Q in its original form… but Q + L, that is, Q embodied in a larger document, a kind of “Gospel” in fact, which I will call Proto-Luke. This Proto-Luke would have been slightly longer than Mark, and about one-third of its total contents consisted of materials derived from Q. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (1925) p. 208)

Streeter maintained the faulty position of Marcan priority, yet observed that in cases that have a parallel with Mark, Luke exhibited an earlier tradition. Under the theory that Luke’s Gospel is based on “Proto-Luke” itself, he stated additional rationale for the theory:

A further reason for supposing that Luke found the Q and the L elements in the non-Marcan sections already combined into a single written source [Proto-Luke] is to be derived from a consideration of the way in which he deals with incidents or sayings in Mark, which he rejects in favor of other versions contained either in the Q or the L elements of that source. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (1925) p. 209)

In summing up his observations on how Luke apparently deals with Mark (under the false presumption of Marcan priority) Streeter states the following:

It would look, then, as if Luke tends to prefer the non-Marcan to the Marcan version, and this is whether it be the longer or the shorter, and whether it belongs to that element in the source which we can further analyze as being ultimately derived from Q or from the element which we call L. But such a preference, especially where it is a preference in regard to the order of events, is much more explicable if Q and L were already combined into a single document. For the two combined together would make a book distinctly longer than Mark, and would form a complete Gospel. Such a work might well seem to Luke a more important and valuable authority than Mark. But this would not be true of either or L in separation. The Conclusion, then, that Q+L lay before the author of the Third Gospel as a single document [Proto-Luke] and that he regarded this as his principal source appears to be inevitable. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (1925) pp. 211-12)

Streeter further claimed that the existence of Proto-Luke is a “scientific hypothesis,” which to a considerable extent is capable of verification, and that his hypothesis had received the adhesion of “not a few” New Testament scholars (p.218).  On the first point, a demonstration of this can be evidenced by the article Statistical Validation of Lukan Priority. On the second point, Later German Scholars Joachim Jermias (1966) and Freidrick Rehkopf (1959) also attest to a special source like Proto-Luke (G. Strecker, History of New Testament Literature (1997), p 117). Moreover, many Scholars attest to Lukan Priority, essentially identifying Luke and Proto-Luke as the same document that preceded both Mark and Matthew. This includes William Lockton) The Origin of the Gospels, (CQR 94 1922), David Linsey, and other scholars associated with the Jerusalem Schools. See Lukan Priority and the Jerusalem School.

Regarding authorship, Streeter believes that the companion to Paul, Luke the physician, is the author of both Proto-Luke and Luke, in addition to the Acts of the Apostles:

I suggest that the author of Proto-Luke—the person, I mean, who combined together in one document Q and the bulk of the material peculiar to the Third Gospel—was no other than Luke the companion of Paul. And I suggest that this same Luke some years afterwards expanded his own early work by prefixing the stories of the Infancy and by inserting extracts from Mark—no doubt at the same time making certain minor alterations and additions. For reasons summarised in the last chapter of this volume, I hold that the author of the Third Gospel and the Acts was Luke the companion of Paul, who kept the diary which forms the basis of the so-called “we sections” or “travel document’’ in the latter part of Acts. But if Luke wrote the Acts twenty years or so later than the events with which it ends—and I cannot personally accept an earlier date—there were at least two periods of literary activity in his life. There was the period when, while in attendance on Paul, he wrote the “travel document,” and a later period when, years after the Apostle’s death, he embodied this early sketch into a larger and maturer history. The suggestion I make is that what is true of the Acts is also true of the Gospel. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (1925) p. 218)

Steeler provides the main reason for supporting the author of the Third Gospel and the Acts to be the same person as the author of Proto-Luke is that the interest and point of view of the author are consistent between the two works; “being exactly the same throughout.” (p.219) He notes that the special testes, sympathies, and characteristics of the author are equally conspicuous in the parts of the Gospel derived from Proto-Luke, to those which we must attribute to the editor of Luke as a whole. These characteristics are consistent with the first part of Acts, in the “we sections” of Acts, and in the final editing of Acts (p. 219) Steeler gives a synopsis as follows:

Again, there is throughout the Lucan writing an atmosphere of extraordinary tenderness, somehow made quite compatible with the sternest call to righteousness, sacrifice, and effort— an atmosphere which can be felt rather than demonstrated—and finding expression in a unique sympathy for the poor, for women, for sinners, and for all whom men despise. But this attitude can be felt equally in the Infancy stories, in Proto-Luke, and in the Acts; it is also what determines many of those omissions from Mark ! which can only be due to the final editor of the Gospel… a subtle individuality which reflects, not a Church tradition, but a personality of a very exceptional kind. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (1925) p. 221)

Steeler follows up that regardless of whether the compiler of Proto-Luke was Luke or not, “the historical importance of the identification of a source of the Third Gospel entirely independent of Mark is obvious.” (p.221) He concludes that “far more weight will have to be given by the historian in the future to the Third gospel, and in particular to those portions of it which are peculiar to itself” (p. 222).