Much less can any reason be assigned for Matthew's omission of the sixteen unduplicated sayings ascribed to QLk.[129] Matthew almost invariably shortens Mark's narratives, and sometimes omits a narrative section, but practically never omits a saying of Jesus given in Mark. The case of the third would-be follower of Jesus, with the particularly fine saying, "No man having put his hand to the plow"; the little parables of the Man Building a Tower and the King Going to War; the sayings, "I came to cast fire upon the earth," "I have a baptism to be baptized with," "Fear not, little flock," would attract Matthew as much as they did Luke, and with Matthew's almost slavish adherence to Mark in all Mark's sayings-material, no reason can be given for his omission of them.
If it be asked why these unduplicated sections, which have been assigned to QMt and QLk, are not assigned simply to special and undetermined sources, the answer is that all these sections stand more or less closely connected with Q material, they are strongly similar to the other Q matter in form and idea, and equally different in form and feeling from the passages assigned to special sources. They consist, in both Matthew and Luke, of short parables of the undoubted Q type (cf. the Treasure Hid in the Field, the Pearls, the Fish-Net, the Unjust Judge) and of short sayings; whereas the special source or sources (whether of Matthew or Luke) consist of narratives (the opening chapters of both Gospels, the Peter-sections in Matthew, the death of Judas in Matthew, Jesus before Herod in Luke, the watch at the grave in Matthew, the Emmaus incident in Luke, and the peculiar matter of both Matthew and Luke in their accounts of the days in Jerusalem) and of story-parables like the Prodigal Son, the Lost Coin, the Good Samaritan, the Entrusted Money. These similarities in the material assigned to a special source or sources are not enough to prove the unity of that source for either Matthew or Luke, and are not so intended; but they are enough to distinguish the material so assigned from that assigned to QMt and QLk, and to establish the comparative homogeneity of this latter material in each case.
THE "SECONDARY TRAITS" ARE IN QMt AND QLk, NOT IN Q