Time when the Gospels are written

[Christ_is_Risen]

Why would Mark have a copy of another Gospel in his hands while he was recording Peter’s speeches?

Think of a modern-day stenographer in a court of law for example… they don’t have copies of *anything *in their hands, they’re just writing down everything they hear.

Here’s the likely scenario of how Mark’s Gospel came to be.

From your link:

This changed Orchard’s speculation into an hypothesis. This he published in 1993 as: The Fourfold Gospel Hypothesis ((BOF 1)). As Mark took down the public talks verbatim in shorthand, they contained blemishes one finds in unedited common speech. Orchard explained:

‘Our thesis, that Peter was going to restrict his testimony to what he could vouch for by his own personal memories of the Ministry, is supported by his omission of Luke’s birth narratives, his Central Section, his Resurrection stories, and his omission of all that Luke himself has left out of the six composite Matthean Discourses’.

He [Peter] reinstates Luke’s Great Omission (Mt 14:22 - 16:12), and furthermore reintroduces a few Matthean stories omitted by Luke, such as the pericope about divorce (Mt 19: 3-9), and adds a few stories of his own. This leads us to formulate the following hypothesis regarding Peter’s handling of Luke as follows:-

‘Peter’s principal aim was to authenticate the text of Luke; and he decided to use the occasion to add individual comments of his own, prompted by his own personal memories, and his intimate knowledge of the Gospel of Matthew which had been circulating in the Church for at least twenty years as a handbook.** He therefore concentrates on following Luke in order, pericope by pericope, as closely as his own personal memories will permit. He holds open the scroll of Luke, but the scroll of Matthew is also within reach**, though he can quote word for word by heart whenever he wants to.

I agree, it makes no sense at all for Peter or Mark to be holding other Gospels in their hands as Peter gave his speeches.

That is why I am interested to know if this tale is found in the writings of the Church fathers, or is it a modern speculation, created as a “back story” that makes all the improbabilities of the theory you present more believable.

 

[Erich]

From your link:

I agree, it makes no sense at all for Peter or Mark to be holding other Gospels in their hands as Peter gave his speeches.

That is why I am interested to know if this tale is found in the writings of the Church fathers, or is it a modern speculation, created as a “back story” that makes all the improbabilities of the theory you present more believable.

If by “is this tale found in the writings of the Church fathers” you mean, is the narrative you quoted found word-for-word in the writings of the Church fathers, then obviously the answer is ‘no’.

That said, the long extracts from their works (as reproduced by early reliable historians) that we do have are summarized here. Oh, and did you know that there is actually linguistic evidence for Matthew’s Gospel being written first in Hebrew (which is in accord with early historical records)?

If it’s improbabilities you’re looking for, you’ll find plenty in the Markan priority and ‘Q’ theories.

 

[Christ_is_Risen]

If by “is this tale found in the writings of the Church fathers” you mean, is the narrative you quoted found word-for-word in the writings of the Church fathers, then obviously the answer is ‘no’.

That said, the long extracts from their works (as reproduced by early reliable historians) that we do have are summarized here. Oh, and did you know that there is actually linguistic evidence for Matthew’s Gospel being written first in Hebrew (which is in accord with early historical records)?

If it’s improbabilities you’re looking for, you’ll find plenty in the Markan priority and ‘Q’ theories.

So now that we know this story is not the teaching of a Church father, but rather a competing modern explanation of “the Synoptic problem” here is the elephant in the room:

** He therefore concentrates on following Luke in order, pericope by pericope,** (he being Mark)

For Markan priority, the issue of Mark and Luke presenting parallel tales in the same order raises no problems and needs no pseudo-historical explanations.

The author of Luke had a copy of Mark’s gospel in front of him. When the author chooses to use Markan material, he uses the next set of pericopes off the scroll. Matthew’s Gospel uses more Markan material overall when compared to Luke’s Gospel, but picks and chooses when to use it in accordance with his symbolic literary structure (sets of 5.) Both authors had the same source document (Gospel of Mark) but redacted differently. This is what we would expect.

To believe Matthew was written first, you also have to assume that Luke was written second so Mark’s paralleling Luke’s order, but more resembling Matthew’s style and having a higher % of common stories makes sense. Of course to get Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel into Mark’s hands as he records Peter requires the elaborate back story you quote. This story isn’t rational.

Assumptions:

1. Matthew is already written and authenticated
2. Luke bases much of his work on the Gospel on Matthew
3. Luke needs Peter to verify his Gospel

The problem is there is much material in Luke not found in Matthew. Of this unique material only 4 tales make it into The Gospel of Mark.

utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/meta-syn.htm

If Peter’s purpose was to authenticate Luke, he fails. His speeches as described in the theory you post only include 4 unique Luke stories, the rest is all just duplicate material from Matthew. Why would Peter need to authenticate these parts? The fact that they parallel Matthew means they are valid, the unique parts are what are unattributed…and Peter fails to mention all but 4 of these stories in his talks.

I mentioned the unintended consequences of creating pseudo-history before. This narrative places the primate Apostle and our first Pope into a position where he has the task of authenticating Luke while having Matthew in hand…yet he fails to authenticate either birth narrative, the Good Shepherd, the Good Samaritan, the Sermon the Mount, and even Jesus announcing his Church on Earth will be built on the Rock of Peter himself.

Do you want to put St. Peter in a position where he has this knowledge written in hand, and is charged with authenticating it, yet fails to put it in “his” Gospel? I don’t. It is a far worse than disagreeing with Clement of Alexandria, IMO

All theories can have holes poked in them, and religious dialog isn’t a great place to shave with Occam’s Razor, but at some point you have to choose between either letting the texts tell the tale, or creating modern day apocrypha about historical actors so the pieces still fit. I choose the former. Regardless, so long as we agree it is all Canon Scripture that represents the message of Our Saviour, we are in agreement on what matters.

 

[Abu]

Having been show in post #7 the authoritative Pontifical Biblical Commission’s emphatic declaration that

1. ‘Matthew wrote his Gospel before the other Gospels
2. Scholars are not free to advocate the two-source theory whereby Matthew and Luke are dependant on Mark and the “Sayings of the Lord” (“Q”),’
   and the fact that this ruling is part of the Magisterium (post #13), it is absurd for a Catholic to argue otherwise.

In 1982, Dom Bernard Orchard, O.S.B., alerted Catholics to the dangers of false Catholic scholarship, as English scholar John Beaumont has recalled in an article (Kulturkampf and the Gospel) in Culture Wars, Dec 1996:
"Since 1946, the majority of Catholic professors of the New Testament have given their support to the hypothesis of the priority of the Gospel of St. Mark, on grounds . . . of internal evidence alone.

“In practice, this has meant that they deny that the Apostle St. Matthew could have published his own Gospel; and this, in turn, amounts to saying that all the Church Fathers and early Councils erred on a matter of fact in saying St. Matthew wrote his own Gospel. In other words, the modern biblical ‘authorities’ are committed to denying that the Church has accurately transmitted the true tradition regarding the authorship of the Gospels.”

 

[Christ_is_Risen]

Errata:

I looked over the ordering of the stories in the synoptics last night. The common material in Luke and Mark doesn’t follow a strict uniform order. It jumps around a bit, just like Matthew’s Gospel. I took the article’s claim of “following Luke pericope by pericope” at face value without double checking it myself first. My bad. :

 

[Erich]

So now that we know this story is not the teaching of a Church father, but rather a competing modern explanation of “the Synoptic problem” …
To believe Matthew was written first…

Did you even bother to read the long extracts from the works of the Church Fathers (as reproduced by early reliable historians) that we do have, and that are summarized here? Did you even bother to read the linguistic evidence for Matthew’s Gospel being written first in Hebrew (which is in accord with early historical records)?

From this link:

Those who promote Markan Priority reject history as provided by authorities close to the times. In its place they have created an make-believe ‘history’ based on Q and other non-existent documents. But they do not stop there. They also promote a false history of modern times.

You’ll have to follow the link for further details.

 

[Erich]

The problem is there is much material in Luke not found in Matthew. Of this unique material only 4 tales make it into The Gospel of Mark.

From this link:

Opponents of Markan Priority have taken their stand on the evidence of the historians. But have, until recently, failed to provide a reason for the poor Greek of Mark. They have also tried to uphold the sequence of writing as: Matthew -Mark –Luke, used by Jerome.
Yet, B. H. Streeter, the main promoter during the early part of the 20th century in England of Markan priority, came close to partly solving the problem. He wrote, regarding the difference between the style of Mark and the other two:
‘It is the difference which always exists between the spoken and the written language. Mark reads like a shorthand account of a story by an impromptu speaker – with all the repetitions, redundancies, and digressions, which are characteristic of living speech. And it seems to me most probable that his Gospel, like Paul’s Epistles, was taken down from rapid dictation by word of mouth’. ((BHSG 163)).
Streeter was presuming Mark had taken down the words in private, while acting as a personal secretary. So Streeter was not deflected from advocating Markan priority. But it was in the 1980s that Bernard Orchard saw Streeter’s observation as significant. Orchard became particularly interested in the verses of Mark where scripture is misquoted, yet not corrected.
Orchard speculated that as Luke had not been an eyewitness to Christ’s life, Paul asked Peter to endorse Luke’s account. He further speculated that Peter had responded to Paul’s request by given public talks, quoting from Matthew and Luke while adding comments of his own. Orchard suggested that Mark’s Gospel was an exact transcript of these talks in common Kione (common) Greek, not classical Greek. This would make the sequence of writing: Matthew–Luke–Mark.
In 1991 E. R. Richards established, on the basis of new data, that Greek shorthand was in use before 52 BC. He explained:
‘…it had long been the custom for public men to have their speeches recorded by competent shorthand writers’ ((BOO 13)).
This changed Orchard’s speculation into an hypothesis. This he published in 1993 as: The Fourfold Gospel Hypothesis ((BOF 1)). As Mark took down the public talks verbatim in shorthand, they contained blemishes one finds in unedited common speech. Orchard explained:
‘Our thesis, that Peter was going to restrict his testimony to what he could vouch for by his own personal memories of the Ministry, is supported by his omission of Luke’s birth narratives, his Central Section, his Resurrection stories, and his omission of all that Luke himself has left out of the six composite Matthean Discourses’.
He [Peter] reinstates Luke’s Great Omission (Mt 14:22 - 16:12), and furthermore reintroduces a few Matthean stories omitted by Luke, such as the pericope about divorce (Mt 19: 3-9), and adds a few stories of his own. This leads us to formulate the following hypothesis regarding Peter’s handling of Luke as follows:-
‘Peter’s principal aim was to authenticate the text of Luke; and he decided to use the occasion to add individual comments of his own, prompted by his own personal memories, and his intimate knowledge of the Gospel of Matthew which had been circulating in the Church for at least twenty years as a handbook. He therefore concentrates on following Luke in order, pericope by pericope, as closely as his own personal memories will permit. He holds open the scroll of Luke, but the scroll of Matthew is also within reach, though he can quote word for word by heart whenever he wants to.
**And so whilst steadily following the order of Luke he feels entirely free either to vary the wording of Luke in favour of Matthew’s text, or to introduce his own variant of Matthew, in virtue of his being the eyewitness of the events he is describing. At the same time he has no problem in agreeing to follow Luke’s alternative arrangement of the stories in Mt 3:1 – 13:58, nor does he need as a general rule to refer to the scroll of Matthew while he follows Luke freely and even conflates it with Matthew’. **((BOA 388-389)).

 

[Erich]

(continued from previous post)

Harold Riley, the close associate of Orchard, stressed the ongoing nature of this conflation. Mark’s gospel keeps going forward when borrowing from the other two. He never retraces his steps by rolling the scrolls backwards. So stories of the Centurion’s servant and the messengers of the Baptist are omitted. To find them, Peter would have had to wind back the scroll ((RO 11)).
In one place only is there a change in order and it is significant that this is Luke 6: 12-19. Here the lines of Matthew and Luke are so close together Peter could see them at the same time. Rolling back was not required.
Markans argue that if Mark wrote after Matthew and Luke he would not have left out the infancy narratives, the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes and the Resurrection. They argue that it would be more likely that Mark wrote first and that Matthew and Luke added them.
Now this would be logical if they were all writing unknown to one another and in private, but we have no evidence to presume this. The omission of the items does not cause a problem when we accept that Mark was recording Peter’s voice conflating the other two. He conflated only what was parallel and convenient.
To quote Orchard again:
**‘From the start the speaker determined to confine himself to the pericopes where Matthew and Luke have for the most part common material and are generally in parallel, that is, between 3:1 (=Luke 3:1) and Matthew 28:10 (=Luke 24:12). Thus Mark omitted the birth and resurrection narratives, the whole of Luke’s central section, and both great sermons; …But he did adopt Luke’s summary version of Matthew’s discourses on mission, community, parables and eschatology’. **((RO 268)).
The Our Father and the Beatitudes were included in the two great sermons or in Luke’s Central Section, so were not in the segments conflated. The examination of the Gospels in the light of the above produces interesting insights, for which we have room for only a few examples.
Note how often ‘And’ is used to link sentences and clauses. This is a telltale sign of an untutored impromptu speaker of Greek. We have all heard speakers, especially if they are working from notes in front of them, repeatedly using ‘and’ or ‘then’ or even ‘erh’. In a private composition, Peter and Mark would have adopted a more polished format.

 

[Erich]

(continued from previous post)

The words in Chapter 1, verses 2 and 3 lack a main verb, so do not form complete sentences. While Mark omits important aspects of the life of Christ that were reported by Matthew and Luke, he adds trivial details. These are a puzzle for Markans. But, if we accept the Clementine tradition as developed by Orchard, the puzzle is solved. Peter was omitting sections of the other Gospels where it was difficult to conflate while adding short personal memories. These additions would be very human for a speaker.
Peter would have been very familiar with Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke’s would have brought back half-forgotten memories. As Peter read Luke 8: 22-56 he recalled the scene and spontaneously mentioned the position of the cushion (Mark 4: 38). Matthew in 14: 19 tells of the multitudes sitting down on the grass, and Luke in 9:14 of them doing so in companies. Mark in 6: 39 conflates the two accounts by speaking of both the grass and the companies. But this must have brought the scene to mind and he remembers something, which at the time had caught his attention – the grass was green in that arid area.
The cautionary aside, “with persecutions” (Mark 10: 30), is thrown out as an after thought, during the course of an impassioned delivery. In Mark 12: 41-44 the speaker realises his audience has not understood what he meant by ‘two tines’, so explains that they are the equivalent of the smallest Roman coin. In Mark 3: 30 he feels bound to restate the reason for the condemnation in the previous verse 29. In Mark 7: 20, when Peter is teaching about a Jewish eating taboo, he interrupts his flow with an explanation for the non-Jews present…
The insertion of: ‘the father of Alexander and Rufus’ (Mark 15: 21) at such a sorrowful moment, indicates the remark had some personal relevance to Peter’s audience. It calls to mind that a Rufus was present in Rome (Rom. 16:13). In Mark 16: 4 Peter interjects the exuberant comment: ‘for it was mighty big’. This is known to grammarians as an ‘intensifier’ used to create a sense of wonder. A trained writer of Greek would not have used it while he sat at his desk.
It is such interjections that give this gospel its fresh and vivid style.
Redundant clauses (doublets) are often found in transcripts when a speaker has been guided by two similar documents. These are a problem for Markans, yet may be expected from a fisherman, quoting from two documents, while speaking in a foreign language.
As Orchard wrote:
‘… the Gospel of Mark is in no way the smooth product of a skilled author sitting at a desk, but has all the vividness, the inconsistencies, and the peculiar turns of speech, that one finds in actual transcripts of live speeches, for example, sudden breaks, asides, anacolutha [incoherence within a sentence] and so forth’ ((RO 273)).

 

[Erich]

(continued from previous post)

Two scriptural allusions in Mark are significant. The first is in chapter I. Peter opens his talk with a title. He says he is going to quote from Isaiah, but quotes Malachi 3:1. As the words leave his lips he realises his error so runs on with Isaiah. It passes in a moment but the shorthand secretary has recorded the slip of the tongue for posterity.
The second error is in chapter 2: 26, where Abiathar is referred to as the high priest who gave David and his companions the Bread of the presence to eat (1 Samuel 21: 1-6). But Ahimelech, the father of Abiathar was the high priest at that time. Again the shorthand recorder has caught the slip. A writer in the quiet of his room or taking private dictation would have made corrections. But if was an unedited verbatim record of a talk, problems do not arise.
The Gospel of Matthew has 18,293 words and that of Luke 19,376, which are just the right lengths to fill a standard papyrus roll. Mark, with 11,025 words, leaves nearly half his roll unused. This is a pointer to Matthew and Luke carefully planning their compositions, while the publication of Mark had not been planned.
Exegetes have noted the way Mark ends so abruptly at 16: 8, without reporting any resurrection appearances. Orchard suggests that the two existing accounts of Christ’s resurrection appearances, like his infancy, were too dissimilar to be easily conflated ((RO 271-2)). Mark’s Gospel narrative stops exactly at the point where Matthew and Luke are no longer able to be conflated ((BOM 112)). Also, Paul was able to provide his own witness of Christ coming to him (1 Cor. 15: 18), so could endorse this part of Luke’s Gospel himself.
When we compare Orchard’s hypothesis with the early historical records, (Chapter 9) we find complete agreement. It is instructive to read Papias where he defends Mark’s unedited wording, Justin who mentions Peter’s memoirs, Irenaeus’s statement that Mark recorded Peter, Clement reporting the delivery of the talks and the requests of the audience, The Anti-Marcionite Prologue adding extra details, and Eusebius making a summary of the records.

 

[Erich]

So now that we know this story is not the teaching of a Church father

In case you missed it (emphasis mine)

When we compare Orchard’s hypothesis with the early historical records, (Chapter 9) we find complete agreement. It is instructive to read Papias where he defends Mark’s unedited wording, Justin who mentions Peter’s memoirs, Irenaeus’s statement that Mark recorded Peter, Clement reporting the delivery of the talks and the requests of the audience, The Anti-Marcionite Prologue adding extra details, and Eusebius making a summary of the records.

 

[Erich]

To believe Matthew was written first, you also have to assume …

The acceptance of Markan Priority would mean all the early Christian historians were seriously wrong, so unreliable.

Advocates of the Markan Priority theory claim that it would be inconceivable for Mark to have changed the well constructed Greek of Matthew and Luke into poor Greek. He must have written prior to the others. Sounds logical but it contradicts all the ancient historians who record that Matthew wrote first.

According to the Markan priority theory, when Matthew ceases to follow the order of Mark, Luke continues in it until Luke ceases when Matthew takes over. This continues throughout the Gospels. This could only have been accomplished if Matthew and Luke co-ordinated their work very closely. But, according to the Markan theory, these Gospels were created in separate communities that were out of touch with one another. This is an insoluble difficulty for the Markans. This difficulty also applies to other phrases. Matthew and Luke use exactly the same five Greek words to form a phrase concerning Peter’s denial. Mark uses three different words conveying the same meaning (Mark 14: 72). If Markan priority is correct, Matthew and Luke chose the same phrase without having been in contact with each another

If Mark’s Gospel had been the first Gospel to be written, and therefore the ‘flagship’ of the Christians, why was Peter so indifferent regarding its promotion? On the other hand, if we accept that two well constructed Gospels already existed, and that Peter had merely preached a series of commentaries based on them, Peter’s attitude is understandable.

Matthew’s Gospel exhibits far more antagonism towards the Jewish leaders than Mark’s. This has traditionally been explained due to Christianity being born and persecuted in the Jewish setting of the Holy Land. Matthew wrote soon after Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, so reflected this background. Mark wrote many years later in Rome, where the population and civil authority was Gentile. In Rome, Jewish antagonism towards Christians was not so intense. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark echo these two periods. But according to Markan history, Jews and Christians had good relations till the Council of Jamnia in 85 AD. Yet in 64 AD Nero launched a persecution far worse than anything attempted by the Jews. If the author of the Gospel of Matthew wrote much later, why are the Romans reported so favorably? If a Council at Jamnia so outraged the Christians that they suddenly became anti-Judaic, why is there no hint of it in Christian and heretical literature?

Irenaeus, Eusebius, Tertullian and others had travelled throughout the Roman Empire, and were well educated. Why did they have no knowledge of the alleged anonymous authors or ‘Q’? Why did the Jews, heretics and pagans never mention them or it? Why were all the ancient historians and theologians completely ignorant of ‘Q’? Or the name of the genius, who had produced the key written account of the life and teaching of Christ? Also, why did all the historians of the period, alleged to have lived far apart, accept the gospels were written by four other men and agree their names and backgrounds?

An early Greek prologue to Luke’s Gospel says that Luke was an unmarried physician, a Syrian by birth who died aged 84 at Thebes in Boeotia. Irenaeus in his ‘Against Heretics’ took it for granted that Luke was the author of one of the four Gospels. The heretics with whom he was disputing must have accepted this as true, otherwise the arguments being used by Irenaeus would have been useless. There is nothing in the many early writings or in more recent discoveries that remotely hints that the author was not the companion of Paul. The only reason it is alleged to have been someone else, is because the acceptance of Luke’s position destroys the theory of Markan priority. Luke says Christ came to preach (4:18) and that he did preach (20:1) yet, according to Markan priorists, Luke not only failed to report this preaching but substituted the views of a later unnamed creative theologian.

Markans describe the period between the time of Christ and the writing of the Gospels as ‘a long dark tunnel’. They have spent years, at the expense of Universities, looking for ‘Q’ and its author in darkness. But historians tell us the period was short. The ‘long’ is not a fact, but a further creation. They are working in a long dark tunnel, because they refuse to turn on the lights provided by the ancient historians.

 

[Erich]

That is why we know that Luke and Matthew are written 1-2 decades after Mark, and between each other.

For nearly 2000 years it has been held that Matthew wrote his gospel in Jerusalem prior to the destruction of the city in 70 AD. The reason modern books have transferred its composition to a later period is so as to conform to the Markan theory.

From Dating Matthew:

The new Christian community was formulating its position with regard to the Hebrew Scriptures, The Law, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Temple sacrifices, purification rites, the Sabbath, admission to the community, internal discipline, fasts, prayers, marriage, divorce and celibacy, as well its attitude to the Samaritans and Gentiles. As we read through the chapters and verses of Matthew we see this taking place. This is what gives this Gospel such a Jewish flavour and points to it being written at that time and place. There are many examples which indicate its Palestinian background … Luke and Peter/Mark addressing mainly Gentile audiences omit these subjects.

Matthew was very conscious of Jews living by ‘The Law’. He used the words: Just, Justice, Lawlessness, worthy and judgement fifty times. Luke uses them twenty four times and Mark twice. Here is a sign of a moving away from the Palestinian environment.

Matthew assumes his readers are familiar with the views and customs of the Scribes, Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducees. He never explains who they are, which would be expected if he had a mixed Gentile-Jewish audience towards the end of the first century.
…
Matthew in 16: 1-12 attacks the Pharisees and Sadducees four times in a long passage. In the related passage in Mark 8: 11–27, we see the mention of the Pharisees reduced. There is no mention of the Sadducees. If Matthew had written second, why would he have doubled the references to the Pharisees, and insert the phrase ‘and the Sadducees’ four times? Remember that after 70 AD the Sadducees did not exist. Why would Matthew (17: 24-7) be preoccupied with the half- shekel Temple tax? The Temple had ceased to exist fifteen years earlier?

Comparing the two stories in Matthew 15: 1-2 and 15: 21, with Mark 7: 2-4 and 7: 28, we see Mark finding it necessary to explain the act of ‘washing’ and the nationality of a Canaanite. Matthew writing for Palestinians had no need to do this. If Matthew was writing years after Mark for a mainly Gentile readership, and basing his Gospel on Mark’s Gospel, why did he leave out the helpful explanations provided by Mark?

Matthew’s Gospel is full of examples claiming Christ fulfilled the prophecies of the Hebrews (e.g. 1:22, 2:15, 2:17, 4:14, 8:17, 12:17, 13:35, 21:4, 27:9). He reports the rending of the Temple veil (27: 51), yet not the destruction of the Temple.

These are all signs of Matthew writing pre-70 AD. The referenced link contains even more evidence of Matthew writing before the 50s AD.

 

[Erich]

From Luke and Acts:

The traditional belief is that the Gospel of Luke was composed by the companion of Paul in Greek no later than 65 AD. It was based on his personal research and extracts borrowed from the Gospel of Matthew. Those claiming this Gospel was written anonymously about 85 AD, or in the second century, deny the author was a companion of Paul.

The author declares his aim is to set out an orderly account of the events in the life of Christ and His followers. He does so in the form of a letter to Theophilus. In a second volume, known as ‘Acts’, the author continues the story from where he left it at the end of his Gospel. If it can be shown that Acts was composed prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, it follows that Luke’s Gospel was also composed prior to 70 AD.

The author of Acts records the conversion of Paul in his ninth chapter and then spends eighteen chapters detailing his travels with Paul. This included Paul’s arrest, voyaging, shipwreck, arrival in Italy and two years awaiting trial. But when we would expect details of Paul’s trial; sentence or release; there is an abrupt silence. The absence of this information is a clear indication that Luke completed Acts before 64 AD.

Acts ends at a time of peace for the church in Rome. Yet secular historians tell us there was a great persecution of Christians after 64 AD. As this does not appear in Acts, we have an indication that Acts was sent to Theophilus before this event.

This dating is confirmed by the way Jerusalem and its Temple are treated. Luke-Acts constitutes one third of the New Testament, yet contains two thirds of the references to Jerusalem. In the Gospel and Acts, the city is mentioned 31 times. We can see that the Temple and Jerusalem are very prominent in the thinking of the author. Yet he ignores their destruction, the civil and religious symbolism of such destruction and the impact on the life of the Church and her missionary preaching. Again, the obvious reason is that Jerusalem and the Temple were still standing at the time he wrote.
…
In four places in Acts (16: 10-17; 20: 5-15; 21: 1-18; 27: 1-28) the author uses the pronoun ‘we’, when recording the journeys of Paul. The obvious meaning is that the author was with Paul in the 60s. Those arguing against this meaning, claim ‘we’ could have been a stylistic device or that the author was copying from an old manuscript without adjusting the wording. But these claims are pure speculation to avoid acceptance of the clear meaning. Acts contains a whole range of pronouns such as: I, me, he, us and they. Together with ‘we’ they all fit naturally into the manuscript.

Paul, when acting alone, is referred to as ’he’. When Paul is separated from the author but with others, they is used. When Paul is with the author ‘we’ or ‘us’ is used.

Paul’s companions are referred to as ‘they’ until Paul arrives for the first time in Troas (Acts 16: 8) when ‘we’ and ‘us’ is used till Paul leaves Philippii with Silas (Acts 16: 40). ‘They’ is used again until ‘they’ return to Troas (Acts: 20, 5). Then for the remainder of the travels of Paul, the word ‘we’ is used.

It is common for a writer to give greater detail to events in which he has been involved compared with those he has learned of second hand. It is noticeable that the author deals at great length with the ‘we’ events at Philippi, yet provides a short summary of the ‘they’ passages (Acts: 16: 4-8; 18: 18-23).

For the remaining time the author is in such close touch with Paul that events are often recorded on a day-to-day basis. The suggestion that Luke was using the royal ‘we’, when meaning ‘I’, is contrary to the narrative. When he refers to himself in Acts 1: 1, he uses ‘I’.

All these (and more) observations point to Acts, and therefore also Luke’s Gospel, as being written some time before the death of Peter in 65 AD. Jerome stated that ‘Acts’ was completed in the fourth year of Nero which would be in 64 AD.

 

[Christ_is_Risen]

In case you missed it (emphasis mine)

I would hope my question asking for a specific reference to the “Luke authenticated by Peter’s speeches,” my remembering that your source says Peter had Luke’s gospel in hand when he gave his speeches, and my specific refutations that shows the created narrative isn’t rational at its most basic and raises far more questions than answers is proof I have been reading your posts and links.

Again, all we have from the Church Fathers is that Mark recorded Peter’s speeches, not anything about having Matthew or Luke’s Gospels in hand when he gave these speeches. Again, if I wrong, please show me the quote to show so.

The theory you present also reduces Markan priority to a strawman in order to try and refute it.

• The sloppy Greek of Mark is not a problem for Markan priority, it is what is expected. Mark is oldest, and closest to the original source material. Much of this material is oral. As Catholics, we already know this, the Gospel was spoken first, written second. Oral tradition and the first recordings of it should be full of “ands,” and other clumsy linkages. Compilations of oral traditions and early pericopic collections should be episodic with weak narrative structures. These aren’t sticking points for Markan priority, they are some of the strongest evidence it was written first.
• Jesus spoke Aramaic. At some point his teachings were translated into Greek. We don’t know when. The Aramaic/Hebrew Gospel of Matthew is a fascinating topic. Sadly, we don’t have a copy of it, and scholars disagree about whether our Koine Greek version is a direct translation or not. Most believe it isn’t. The evidence of some Hebrew or Aramaic subscripts are not unexpected as translation obviously occurred. We just don’t know when. Again, just looking at the texts, most scholars believe them to be written in Greek, and are not direct translations from other languages.

If your only evidence for a Matthew-Luke-Mark writing order is the same link you keep posting, I would appreciate it if you addressed the big problem that exists because the underlying pseudo-history that the theory is based on is extremely dubious when examined rationally.

 

[Christ_is_Risen]

Catch-all post

• Matthew was writing to a Jewish-Christian audience. I am not sure if I have read anyone who hypothesizes differently.
• Matthew and Luke choose different Markan material to reorder in their Gospels, this is why it appears that **“when Matthew ceases to follow the order of Mark, Luke continues in it until Luke ceases when Matthew takes over. This continues throughout the Gospels. This could only have been accomplished if Matthew and Luke coordinated their work very closely.” **

I will add the fact that Matthew and Luke reorder Markan material differently isn’t a sign they worked closely together. It is frankly bizarre that anyone would think that. Signs of harmony and coordination are indications of shared knowledge, each author choosing to break Mark’s order independently of what the other is doing isn’t.

• All of the events of Jesus’s life were pre-Temple destruction. To expect any author giving us testimony to the ministry of Jesus to include it would be, well strange. It would scream “anachronism!” I sheepish add the fact that Jesus does mention the Temple’s destruction as “prophecy” is often used by scholars to show just that, that it is an anchronism that pushes the dates into the 70s and 80s for the first Gospels. (I see no reason to doubt Jesus’ prophecy, but that is another thread entirely)
• The theme in Acts is extremely pro-Roman. The Romans comes to the rescue of Paul while the Jews try to kill him. The Romans are kind and always listen to Paul, while the Jews shove him out of towns. Acts purposefully tries to show that this early Christian movement is not a threat to the Roman Empire. To include the destruction of the Temple would be contrary to this. Again, I add sheepishly, that stopping the story at a “high point” around 64 AD is probably to avoid telling the next chapter of the story, which is anti-Roman.
• Acts does read like an eyewitness account…The Gospel of Luke doesn’t. No argument from me here on authorship. This doesn’t mean it was written in its current form in 64 AD, only that the narrative stops there.
• The traditions, be them written or oral, that Matthew used came from the time of Jesus when the Sadducees were around. Again, the Gospel is about what Jesus did and saw. Matthew was familiar with the Holy Land and his knowledge about the encounters in Matthew 16 shows this. It is hard to say that Mark knew much about Palestine. His geographic knowledge is sketchy at best, and it is pretty clear his audience speaks neither Hebrew nor Aramaic, as Mark translates key words for them.

I see all this as peripheral. Again, Markan priority is a strong theory. To try and claim any of these small (and questionable) points “defeat” it is reducing it a strawman. Not only are they easily refutable, but even if true as described don’t cut to the heart of which Gospel was written first. To avoid this, conflation with language substrates, dating, disputed authorship, and assuming that Matthew/Luke as redactors would amend their sources (more than just Mark) to eliminate pre-Temple destruction references or continue there narrative into darker times, are all tangential.

The real meat of the argument is avoiding by discussing these tangents. This is done on purpose I suppose because the source you rely on, at its most basic, needs to create pseudo-history to create a scenario to account for facts that under Markan priority flow naturally.

 

[Erich]

The sloppy Greek of Mark is not a problem for Markan priority, it is what is expected.

Indeed. It’s the reason for the theory – and that’s all it is, a theory (and no longer a very good one, at that) – to begin with! Every early historian states that Matthew wrote the first Gospel. Any theory, however clever, must be doubted when it is unable to face the challenge of history.

For nearly 2000 years, Christians have accepted that the four Gospels provide reliable historical facts about the life of Jesus. They also accepted that the ancient historians provided reliable accounts regarding the origins of these Gospels. Then in the mid 19th century, some folks noticed that Mark’s Greek wasn’t as good as Matthew’s and Luke’s (which is something Papias, who lived within a generation of the events, already knew about and was able to explain) and concluded from this that Mark “must have” written first – because it would have been inconceivable for Mark to have changed the well constructed Greek of Matthew and Luke into poor Greek.

These same folks noticed that there are identical verses in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, so they further concluded that both authors"must have" copied from Mark’s Gospel. They further assert that Matthew and Luke had no knowledge of each other. So where did Matthew and Luke obtain their many identical verses that were not present in Mark’s Gospel? Why, from a “lost” document, which they called ‘Q’ (from the German word ‘Quelle’). There is not the slightest historical evidence, or even a hint, that ‘Q’ or its author ever existed!

The first chapter of many modern books often admits that Markan priority is no more than a theory, but the author treats it as a fact in his remaining chapters. In fact, you do the same in your posts on this thread: “Matthew and Luke choose different Markan material to reorder in their Gospels”, “Mark is oldest”, “the underlying pseudo-history that the [Clementine] theory is based on is extremely dubious when examined rationally”, etc. Following books by Chapman, Butler, Riley, Farmer, Orchard, Robinson, Peabody and others, many accept that the evidence for Markan priority has now ceased to be convincing. Inertia is now a major ally of the theory. But, as Mark Goodacre notes in The Case Against Q, the majority acceptance of Q cannot function as an argument for its existence.

Christians agree the Gospels were inspired by the Holy Spirit, so they are free from error. But, as Mark’s chapters 1 and 2 contain serious misquotations of information from the Old Testament, Markans have been faced with a problem.

        Scholars often envision Mark sitting at a desk in his room, making use of documents and his memory. In this scenario             it is difficult to uphold the truth of his Gospel being inspired by the Holy Spirit. But when we accept the scenario,             as proposed by Orchard, we are able to suggest a way to solve this problem.
        
        It was not Mark who had the lapses of memory, but Peter. No one claims that Peter's talks were free of error. Mark             accurately recorded what Peter had said in his talks. Mark did not make an error in doing this. Peter had made             slips and Mark accurately recorded them.
        
        It is interesting that Papias (the earliest Christian historian) wrote: **"Mark             did not err at all when he wrote certain things just as he [Peter] had recalled [them]. For he had but one intention,             not to leave out anything he had heard, nor falsify anything in them."**
        
        Papias is obviously defending Mark's Gospel against criticisms that Mark had made errors. Papias is saying that             Mark **had but one intention**. It was             not Mark's responsibility to change anything regarding Malachi, nor correct the word 'Abiathar'.

I’m not, as you claim, “reducing Markan priority to a strawman in order to try and refute it.” I’m summarizing, in a single post drawn from my (many) other posts on this topic, the biggest problems that exist with the Markan priority theory. You claim my points are “easily refutable,” so it should be easy for you to tell us… if Mark’s Gospel had been the first Gospel to be written, and therefore the ‘flagship’ of the Christians, why was Peter so indifferent regarding its promotion? Why didn’t Irenaeus, Eusebius, Tertullian and the rest, who had travelled throughout the Roman Empire and who were well educated, have any knowledge of the alleged anonymous authors or ‘Q’? Why did the Jews, heretics and pagans never mention them or it? Why were all the ancient historians and theologians completely ignorant of ‘Q’?

It is worth repeating: Markans describe the period between the time of Christ and the writing of the Gospels as ‘a long dark tunnel’. They have spent years, at the expense of Universities, looking for ‘Q’ and its author in darkness. But historians tell us the period was short. The ‘long’ is not a fact, but a further creation. They are working in a long dark tunnel, because they refuse to turn on the lights provided by the ancient historians.

 

[Erich]

All of the events of Jesus’s life were pre-Temple destruction.

New Testament scholar Carsten Peter Thiede redated the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew to sometime before the end of the first century (and as early as 60), based on a comparison of the style of its script with papyrus scrolls from Qumran, Pompeii, and Herculaneum (which, of course, are datable before 70 or 79). Thiede actually argued that since the main comparative script (from Nahal Hever) is generally dated no later than AD 50, the possibility of a date around the middle of the first century for the Magdalen papyrus would be possible. Matthew D’Ancona even says as much in the book he co-wrote with Thiede, Eyewitness to Christ:

“…Yet Thiede…argued that they * were of astonishingly early origin, dating from the mid-first century A.D…”

This review of that book* even describes how Thiede arrived at that date:

“…Thiede reexamined the fragments, using state-of-the-art electronic scanners with close analysis of the paper, ink, letter formation, line length, and other factors to redate the fragments to around A.D. 60. Thiede’s tests and skill appear to be well within responsible papyrology, although his conclusions have met with strong opposition from critics…”

• Of course* Thiede’s conclusions “have met with strong opposition from critics” – his findings are controversial precisely because of the implications for the Markan priority theory!

 

[Christ_is_Risen]

And any piece of non-canon history, no matter how old, must be doubted when unable to explain modern critiques without creating a new bit of NT Apocrypha.

I guess we will disagree. I will keep up on the scholarship and keep learning.

 

[Erich]

And any piece of non-canon history, no matter how old, must be doubted when unable to explain modern critiques without creating a new bit of NT Apocrypha.

NT Apocrypha? Ah… you must be referring to Q

From A Question of Priority:

The biggest problem with Markan priority is that it depends on the existence of Q, but no such document ever has been found, nor has any ancient reference to it ever been uncovered. No one seemed to have known about it until modern scholars deduced its existence as being necessary for the theory of Markan priority to work at all.

Another problem for Markan priority has been the motives of some of its advocates, especially early ones. Many of them argued for the theory precisely because Mark’s Gospel has the fewest miracles and because they had an anti-miraculist bent. If Mark wrote first and Matthew and Luke later, these scholars could argue that the latter two intruded pious but false stories into the narrative.

The traditional theory and the theory of Markan priority were not the only ones in play. In 1776 J. J. Griesbach, a German Bible scholar, proposed that the true order of writing was Matthew, Luke, and then Mark, with Mark relying on the first two. The “Griesbach Hypothesis” never won a large following, but it had the convenience, as did the traditional theory, of not having to imagine something like Q.

In recent decades Griesbach’s ideas were refurbished by Dom Bernard Orchard, monk of Ealing Abbey and chief editor of the 1953 Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (which, along with its 1969 revision, are my favorite commentaries). In three books published between 1977 and 1993, Orchard advanced a modification of Griesbach’s idea. He proposed that the order of writing was Matthew, Luke, and then Mark, which is what Griesbach had proposed, but that the order of publication was Matthew, Mark, and then Luke. Orchard said that Mark, a follower of Peter, for whom he acted something like a secretary, wrote in essence the Gospel according to Peter. Orchard said that Luke, who was neither an apostle nor the secretary to one, likely would have withheld publication of his Gospel until it could be approved by Peter or other apostles. He wrote before Mark did, and Mark took information from him and from Matthew, but Mark’s Gospel came out first, Luke having to wait for an imprimatur, so to speak.

I find Orchard’s thesis persuasive, if not compelling, particularly since I hold, with writers such as Jean Carmignac and Claude Tresmontant, that all of the Gospels were been written much earlier than advocates of Markan priority will allow. Besides, I think Q is a fantasy and that any such document, had it ever existed, would have been preserved, copied, and commented upon in antiquity just as the canonical books of the New Testament were, yet antiquity is entirely silent on Q.

The last paragraph expresses my view (and others’ views) as well.