Any ideas on who wrote the Gospel of St. Mark?

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It is also conjecture that St Mark would want to write the same thing that was already written.
 
In your comment, you said that it would be odd for Mark to be after Matthew and Luke because of the amount of material he would have deleted (which makes the modern assumption that a whole lot of borrowing was going on, which is likely an early oral traditon).

The comment I replied to was your comment to another poster that his explanation of such was conjecture.
 
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buffalo:
This was a Protestant innovation. I think it has run its course.

The Clementine Tradition puts it at Matthew, Luke, Mark and John. St Jerome after, put it at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

As if the Bible just fell put of the sky, we now say Markan priority, disregarding the long history.
Was Augustine’s, Irenaeus, Papias’s, or Origen’s statements that Mark was written before Luke Protestant innovations?

What I personally believe is that Mark was the first to compose his Gospel in Greek. Matthew wrote in Hebrew, then Mark, then Matthew in Greek, then Luke.
That’s basically how I view the history of the synoptic gospels too. The original writings of St. Matthew, which the Greek version of his gospel is based on, predates the Gospel of St. Mark. But it’s very likely that the Greek translators of St. Matthew original writings added and edited the writings of St. Matthew to include more than what St. Matthew had originally written, including stories that were written down in the Gospel according to St. Mark.

Hence, in what became the accepted canonical versions of the Holy Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, St. Mark’s is the oldest, followed by St. Matthew’s and then St. Luke’s.
 
maybe; i’d always been “taught” that the “order” is mark, matthew, luke, john
 

Considering how much information we find in Luke’s gospel that draws on Mark’s…:man_shrugging:t6:
 
1%.
All Synoptics have a fair bit in common, but Luke shares much more with only Matthew than with only Mark, at least according to that chart.

Of course, an easy solution to the “synoptic problem” is that they all shared a very similar early tradition, some of which the synoptics shared, because it’s based upon actual events, rather than coming up with Markan priority and a hypothetical document that we have no physical proof of or mention of whatsoever.
A similar, shared oral tradition. It’s really that simple. And then not everything was written down by each, only what they wanted to. It’s all quite simple without a bunch of confusion.
 
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If you consider the fact that Mark was a disciple of Peter, and Peter became a disciple before Matthew, it would make sense tha Matthew may have drawn some traditions from Mark and edited his Hebrew original to make Greek Matthew.
 
then good old Saint Paul showed up; his compadre Luke tagged along & wrote His gospel & the “Acts”

i think it worked out fairly well
 
What I personally believe is that Mark was the first to compose his Gospel in Greek. Matthew wrote in Hebrew, then Mark, then Matthew in Greek, then Luke.
This creates more issues than it solves, though, doesn’t it?

If you hold to Matthean priority, then how do you explain the passages in Mark that match passages in Matthew (after all, according to your timeline, Mark was ‘copying’ from a Hebrew manuscript, not a Greek one) – how did they just happen to translate Mark’s Hebrew identically?

But, if you hold to Markan priority, then you have to explain why Matthew modified his Gospel to match Mark’s, when he translated his Gospel from Hebrew to Greek!

Seems rife with difficulties… 🤷‍♂️
 
If you hold to Matthean priority, then how do you explain the passages in Mark that match passages in Matthew (after all, according to your timeline, Mark was ‘copying’ from a Hebrew manuscript, not a Greek one) – how did they just happen to translate Mark’s Hebrew identically?
Didn’t I answer this?
If you consider the fact that Mark was a disciple of Peter, and Peter became a disciple before Matthew, it would make sense tha Matthew may have drawn some traditions from Mark and edited his Hebrew original to make Greek Matthew.
 
Didn’t I answer this?
I hit ‘reply’ to your post from last week. Still, I’m not sure I buy what you wrote last night:
If you consider the fact that Mark was a disciple of Peter, and Peter became a disciple before Matthew, it would make sense tha Matthew may have drawn some traditions from Mark
Are you suggesting that Mark was Peter’s disciple prior to Matthew becoming an apostle? That just doesn’t make sense.

Or, are you suggesting that the only items that Matthew pulled from Mark happened prior to Matthew’s call to be an apostle? If memory serves, that’s not where the correspondences between the two Gospels exist. (I mean, you could make the claim that Mark and/or Matthew aren’t strictly chronological accounts… but then you’d have to claim that the correspondences between Mark and Matthew – that is, the parts that you’re claiming Matthew got from Mark – all happened chronologically prior to Matthew’s call. That’s a really tough claim to support…)

Otherwise, your suggestion appears to have a quite serious weak point: why would Matthew – an apostle – draw from what Mark learned from Peter?
and edited his Hebrew original to make Greek Matthew.
Here’s the thing: there’s no data to suggest that Matthew translated his Hebrew into Greek. Even Jerome (IIRC) asserts that no one knows who translated it. Even so, you would have to make the case for the reason why Matthew would ‘write’ his Gospel twice, in two languages. 😉
 
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Here’s the thing: there’s no data to suggest that Matthew translated his Hebrew into Greek. Even Jerome (IIRC) asserts that no one knows who translated it.
I guess Irenaeus and Papias’ statements aren’t evidence. 🤔
 
I guess Irenaeus and Papias’ statements aren’t evidence. 🤔
Here’s what they have to say on the matter of Matthew translating his own Gospel into Greek, AFAIK:
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Papias:
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Irenaeus:
On the other hand, here’s what they did say:
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Papias:
Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.
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Irenaeus:
Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church.
I’m not aware of any statements by either of them, asserting that Matthew either translated his own Gospel into Greek or edited his Gospel, adding Markan material.

(Perhaps modern scholars make this claim, but not from any direct claims from anyone, especially Papias or Irenaeus.)
 
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Or, are you suggesting that the only items that Matthew pulled from Mark happened prior to Matthew’s call to be an apostle?
Why does it feel you’re not really reading my post? Lemme break it down for you. Peter was a disciple before Matthew. Mark wrote his Gospel from what Peter told him. So it would make sense for Matthew to use Mark as his source material for writing his Gospel in Greek.
 
I’m not aware of any statements by either of them, asserting that Matthew either translated his own Gospel into Greek or edited his Gospel, adding Markan material.
Still, a Hebrew Matthew existed. These statements make sense once you consider the facts.
 
Why does it feel you’re not really reading my post?
I dunno. Maybe because you’re not making sense.
Lemme break it down for you. Peter was a disciple before Matthew. Mark wrote his Gospel from what Peter told him. So it would make sense for Matthew to use Mark as his source material for writing his Gospel in Greek.
OK… this is what I’d hoped you weren’t saying. Are you suggesting that the sequence of events went something like this:
  • Peter is called as an apostle
  • Mark becomes Peter’s disciple
  • Peter tells Mark what Jesus said and did
  • Mark writes down what Peter told him
  • Matthew becomes an apostle
  • Matthew writes down what Jesus said and did
Is that what you’re claiming?

Or, are you claiming:
  • Peter becomes an apostle
  • Matthew becomes an apostle
  • Mark becomes Peter’s disciple
  • Peter tells Mark some stuff that happened before Matthew became an apostle
  • the common material between Mark’s Gospel and Matthew’s Gospel is the stuff that Peter told Mark (but which Matthew never experienced personally)
Is that it?

(p.s., the info we have on Matthew is that he wrote his Gospel in Hebrew (or Aramaic), not Greek. 😉 )
 
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