Assuming that Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q, the question arises: was this Q source written or oral? was it a combination of the two? How can we know?
There are three main arguments that certain scholars have given for why Q was used by Matthew and Luke in the form of a single written source:
[1]. The exactness of the wording - There is material common to Matthew and Luke, in which the two gospels agree almost word-for-word (in Greek) in some places. For example, in Matthew 6:24/Luke 16:13, 27 of the 28 Greek words are identical as well as their order. In Matt. 7:7-8/Luke 11:9-10, all 24 words in both passages are identical and again are in the same order.
[2]. The order of the material - Matthew and Luke often arrange their material in a similar order. This argues that they may have used Q in a similar way. Here is table of this phenomenon:
However, there are notable exceptions to this, especially in the way that Luke distributes the Sermon on the Mount material throughout his gospel.
[3]. "Doublets" in Matthew and Luke - In the context of gospel studies, the term "doublet" refers to when a gospel records the same saying or narrative (pericope) two times. While this argument shows that Matthew and Luke likely used Mark (for the first record of the same story) and Q (for the second record of the same story, thus making up a "doublet"), this does not argue that Q was necessarily a written source.
James D.G. Dunn is somewhat adamant in seeing Q as primarily oral tradition (see his chapter "Q as Oral Tradition" in The Oral Gospel Tradition).
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