Gospel of Matthew

[tqualey]

Hi, Scottm,

Do you know why the Matthew-Mark-Luke-John order was established? I don’t.

Thanks and God bless

It’s very sad that something so BLATANTLY STUPID got into a Catholic Bible. There’s no more warrant for that claim than saying, “The shortest person is likely to have written the first gospel,” or “The man with the shortest beard is likely to have written the first gospel.” Length of writing has no bearing on first in time. Come on, how many pages is the Iliad? And the Odyssey?

And then they counter, “But the 2nd guy had to copy of the first guy, and he probably added to it.”
**And I say, “YOU ARE ASSUMING THAT WHICH YOU SET OUT TO PROVE. YOU CANNOT ASSUME THE ANSWER.” **

Read it the other way around. Do it. Get your Bibles out and spend a few hours reading the Matthew first, and then Luke, and then Mark last. IT WORKS BEAUTIFULLY. Seriously. Get your Bibles out and do it! Read Mark third. You will be struck at how the story expands in the telling with Mark last of the three. **I’m serious. Do it. **

Translation: the theory of Mark first, and it’s companion theory of Q, arose in the 1800s. Before that it was unheard of.

 

[rcjones]

In sensus plenior when you have two things, one represents the heavenly and one the earthly.

When you have four, they represent two rwo’s such that you have the four voices of the Quadriga.

Heavenly - heavenly - Priest speaks a hidden language speaking of the heavenly kingdom.
Heavenly - earthly - Judge speaks God’s morality to the earthly
Earthly -earthly - King speaks what happened in the flesh
Earthly - heavenly - Prophet speaks of Christ

Matthew speaks in a hidden language of the Kingdom of Heaven
Mark finishes with the death of Jesus, judgment
Luke tells earthly gentiles what happened historically
John tells how Jesus came to know and fulfill his role according to prophecy.

These four voices are the four faces in the wheels, the four rivers in Eden, and the four edges of the two swords wielded by the two angels at the garden.

 

[Windfish]

This is something I am currently studying. It’s all highly circumstantial, and the circumstances change every five years or so when new methodologies are put forward and new discoveries are made. Until such time where a substantial theory is made, I think it is prudent to stick with the Church fathers on this one. Over and over again, tradition has only been proven right, never proven wrong.

 

[scottm]

Hi, Scottm,

Do you know why the Matthew-Mark-Luke-John order was established? I don’t.

It seems to be the result of a misunderstanding. Augustine in one writing said that Mark wrote after Matthew. This was later interpreted as meaning that the order was Matthew–Mark–Luke. However, in a later writing Augustine plainly said that Mark wrote third in time. That later writing was overlooked even by John Calvin, who otherwise championed Augustine’s teachings.

As an aside, no Church Father put Mark first, but you can find them putting Matthew first. For example, Eusebius, who died approx. 340, right about when Augustine was born, said that the early church elders said the gospels with genealogies were written first.