This assumption could be displaced by, for example, identifying material appearing in both Matthew and Luke that was very different from either of them, which, when extracted, appears to be a work in its own right, with a beginning, middle and end. Neither of these factors are found in Q, as reconstructed by scholars. He also says (writing before the publication of the Gospel of Thomas) that "we have no reason to believe that documents of the Q type were plentiful", which would have made the hypothesis that Matthew and Luke drew on one more likely.