August 27, 2007

Minor Agreement of the Day

The work I'm doing right now is really drawing attention to Minor Agreements--places in a story where Matthew and Luke agree on a wording over against what Mark has. (They become problematic for the predominant theory that Luke was composed by copying some of Mark without any knowledge of Matthew.) Here's my favorite MA today:

Mark 12.8 Luke 20.15a Matt. 21.39
καὶ λαβόντες ἀπέκτειναν αὐτὸν καὶ ἐξέβαλον αὐτὸν ἔξω τοῦ ἀμπελῶνος. καὶ ἐκβαλόντες αὐτὸν ἔξω τοῦ ἀμπελῶνος ἀπέκτειναν. καὶ λαβόντες αὐτὸν ἐξέβαλον ἔξω τοῦ ἀμπελῶνος καὶ ἀπέκτειναν.
So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him... So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
I'm not really sure which I prefer, actually (Killing someone first and then throwing them out of my yard, or throwing them out of my yard and then killing them). Apparently, both Matthew and Luke independently preferred the latter rather than the former.

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