Although not to the same extent as Matthew's Gospel, Luke also shares some important passages in common with the Didache. Once again the parallels come from parts of the Didache that are highly unlikely to have been created at one time or by one author - and yet they reappear in similar combination in both texts. This raises the question of whether it is likely that the traditions that eventually found their way into Didache each happened to seek inspiration from the same part of Luke's Gospel? It is more likely, for example, that Luke 6 was written with knowledge of the diverse sayings that had previously been gathered together in Didache 1. For more detail see The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache pp. 224-227.

The implications of this observation are wide-ranging. Previous scholarship has tended to argue that the similarities between Matthew, Luke and the Didache are due to the Didache's knowledge of both Gospels (or a harmony of the two). The opposite is, however, more likely - that both Matthew and Luke knew the Didache. This puts the Didache (at some stage in its development) in the position of the notorious hypothetical document 'Q'. The existence of such a document was proposed by scholars as a means of explaining the presence of extensive passages in Matthew and Luke that don't appear in other known texts (the so-called 'double tradition'). Detailed attempts to reconstruct 'Q' have relied on the belief that Matthew and Luke were written without knowledge of one another - the double tradition material deriving solely from their shared use of 'Q'. However, the pattern of parallels between the Didache, Matthew and Luke reveals a previously unconsidered possibility; that Matthew and Luke did indeed share a common source (the Didache) but that Matthew also knew Luke and conflated similar passages from Luke and the Didache. For fuller details see The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache pp. 227-236,252. For illustrations of Matthew's conflationary practice see synopses.

One consequence of the conclusion that Matthew used Luke, and Luke used the Didache is to add to the antiquity of the Didache's base layer. Unfortunately, however, there is no means of showing the degree to which Luke's Gospel predates Matthew's.

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