Were the four Gospels actually written by Matthew, Mark...etc?

[Erich]

Who is Dennis Barton?

What is “churchinhistory.org”?

What relationship does this organization have to the Church?

No disrespect intended, but I’m sorry, this site raises quite a few questions with me.

The referenced publication brings together the Synoptic researches of many, especially the following pioneers:

Dr. Henry Owen (1716-1795). Anglican priest, Scripture scholar and Boyle Lecturer. First pioneer in modern times to propose the Matthew-Luke-Mark order of the Gospels.

Johann Griesbach (1745-1812). Lutheran University professor who spread knowledge of the Matthew-Luke-Mark order in Germany and beyond.

Pontifical Biblical Commission (1902 -1971). Firmly opposed the Markan Priority theory.

John Chapman OSB. (1865-1933). Considered the greatest Patristic scholar of his time, pointed out weakness of the Markan priority theory. Upheld the priority of Matthew’s gospel.

Abbot Christopher Butler OSB (1902-86). Leading English-speaking contributor at Vatican II.
Influential in forming the open attitude to research, to be found in Dei Verbum.
Lifelong active defender of the priority of Matthew’s Gospel.
Auxiliary bishop of Westminster, London.

William R. Farmer (died in 2000). Methodist professor. He showed how Markan Priority was established in Germany, by Government imposed, ‘political correctness.’
Promoted the Matthew-Luke-Mark order throughout America.
Editor of the International Bible Commentary (1998).

Harold Riley. Anglican priest and Scripture scholar. Close co-operator with Bernard Orchard.

Dom Bernard Orchard OSB (1910-2006).
Editor of:
The Catholic Commentary of Holy Scripture (1953).
The New Catholic Commentary of Holy Scripture (1969).
Catholic Edition of The Revised Standard Version of the Bible. (1966).
Bernard Orchard was also author of: The Origin and Evolution of the Gospels (1993). This short pamphlet showed how the Synoptic Problem may be solved in a way consistent with the ancient historians, modern methods of literary analysis and Dei Verbum. This pamphlet is what inspired “The Authors of the Gospels” (which itself has three pages of references / bibliography / web sites).

 

[Erich]

Who is Dennis Barton?

What is “churchinhistory.org”?

What relationship does this organization have to the Church?

No disrespect intended, but I’m sorry, this site raises quite a few questions with me.

Here’s what Karl Keating has to say.

 

[Zundrah]

Avoiding the put off of “she’s a Mormon – ignore her” I’ll say something similar. My brother is a Mormon, a very devout one. Having someone so close to me be Mormon allows me to engage in open dialogue about the differences between the two faiths at a level I would probably otherwise not be capable of because no matter what is said we both know that the other means no disrespect and so we can take things in stride. I will tell you this, he has told me so much misinformation that I had to research to clear up that I would not take anything a Mormon says as accurate without double checking it. However, I look at the information he gives me as the chance for me to learn more about my own faith because he gives me ideas for what to look into. The most recent trek he has sent me on involves the council of Nicaea, which he claimed was a joint council between Pagans and Christians. Now I know that this is incorrect and I am learning about the council well enough to explain it to others. So, if a Mormon, or for that matter anyone, tells you something about the faith look it up and check it. As for the Gospels, the introductory commentaries in your Bible should contain this information if your Bible has the imprimatur.

My friend is not just mormon, she has been a mormon missionary for ummm - since 1975!
So she seriously knows her mormon stuff!
I opened a thread on some other mad stuff she claims.
Go onto my thread list - it is called “catholics are deluded…” (the thread title was just to get peoples attention) But the thread contains some stuff she says against the catholic church teachings. It’s good, take a look you will be surprised"

 

[Nikolaj]

@ Erich:
Bismarck is long dead and I don’t know of any theologians who believe that Mark is the oldest Gospel based on his autority. And by the way, Mark was not based on Q. Q was (supposably) a source used independently by both Matthew and Luke which explains verbal agreements between them in passages that do not come from Mark.

@ wasmit:
I’ll try to explain why I (and most scholars) believe Mark to be older than the other Gospels. It is obvious that there are a lot of verbal agreements between the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. They don’t just tell the same stories – they use (almost) the same words in many instances. So they must be related in some way. Some of them must have copied from others.
Now, I don’t know of anyone who believes Luke to be the oldest Gospel, so to make it more simple let’s just look at Matthew and Mark. By far, most of the content of Mark (the shortest Gospel) is also found in Matthew. So either (the author of) Matthew has copied from Mark (and other sources) – or the other way round. If Matthew is older, Mark could be a kind of epitome (abbreviated, distilled version) of Matthew – that was quite common in antiquity. Yet, there are some weighty reasons to believe that Mark is older:

1. Mark writes in the least educated style of Greek compared to the other Gospels. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) improving the language of Mark while copying than Mark doing the opposite while copying from Matthew.
2. Mark often has longer and more detailed (arguably overly detailed) versions of the narratives. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) shortening and simplifying the material found in Mark in order to fit it into their Gospels than Mark amplifying the stories in Matthew with random details (though I ought to say that many Liberal scholars find the latter kind quite easy to imagine – still, they too usually believe Mark to be the oldest).
3. The Apostolic Father Papias (a very important source on the origin of the Gospels), Mark was Peter’s disciple and interpreter who put down in writing what Peter told about Jesus. That contradicts the idea that Mark was based on Matthew, because there are only very few passages in Mark that do not correspond to a passage in Matthew – and if Matthew is older, Mark must have based most of his Gospel on Matthew and not on the testimony of Peter. (Papias also writes that the Apostle Matthew wrote something, but he doesn’t say directly that this was what is now known as the Gospel of Matthew. But as I wrote earlier, Matthew may have written something which was later used as one of the sources of the Gospel of Matthew (Mark being another one of the sources).)

 

[Verbum]

Hi All,

1. The titles of the Gospels are not part of the Gospels
2. Does it really matter?

Verbum

 

[patrick457]

Before St Jerome the Authors were listed in this order - Matthew, Luke, Mark and John.

It was actually quite more complicated than that.

The “Western” (aka Old Latin, so called because of its use in most early Latin MSS of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and its use among writers and churches in the western Mediterranean) order goes Matthew-John-Luke-Mark, placing priority over the two apostles by putting them together before the other two Evangelists. This is also followed by the Gothic translation of the Bible by the Arian bishop Wulfilas (ca. 310-383) and the Greek-Latin Codex Bezae (5th century AD). Meanwhile, Tertullian in two places gave variant listings - which still puts the two apostles in the lead: John-Matthew-Luke-Mark (Against Marcion 4.2) and John-Matthew-Mark-Luke (Against Marcion 4.5):

…Of the apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil faith into us; while of apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards. These all start with the same principles of the faith, so far as relates to the one only God the Creator and His Christ, how that He was born of the Virgin, and came to fulfil the law and the prophets. Never mind if there does occur some variation in the order of their narratives, provided that there be agreement in the essential matter of the faith, in which there is disagreement with Marcion…

…The same authority of the apostolic churches will afford evidence to the other Gospels also, which we possess equally through their means, and according to their usage — I mean the Gospels of John and Matthew — while that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s whose interpreter Mark was. For even Luke’s form of the Gospel men usually ascribe to Paul. And it may well seem that the works which disciples publish belong to their masters.

The order familiar to us today - Matthew-Mark-Luke-John - first appears in the Muratorian Canon (ca. 170-200 AD). This order tends to be used among Eastern writers and is found in nearly all Greek and Syriac MSS, including the mid-3rd century Papyrus 45 (probably written in Egypt) and Codexes Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus (all from the 4th-5th centuries), as well as in the Sinaitic Palimpsest and the Syriac Peshitta. One of the exceptions to this was the Curetonian Syriac, which gives the order Matthew-Mark-John-Luke. In this the Curetonian is supported by the 4th century (probable) North African Cheltenham Canon (aka the Mommsen Catalogue).

Many Eastern catalogues of the NT (such as those of Amphilochius of Iconium, Sts. Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Apostolic Constitutions) also give that order. Indeed by the 4th century, at the time of St. Jerome, the Eastern order was finally accepted by Western writers and became the standard way of ordering the gospels in the Western churches, as can be attested by its use in the writings of St. Augustine (De Doctrina Christiana 11.12.8) and Tyrannius Rufinus (Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum, 37).

Meanwhile, our first extant witness to the Fourfold Gospel, St. Irenaeus of Lyon, ordered the gospels in several different ways but not in the Western order:

• On at least three occasions he ordered them as Matthew-Luke-Mark-John (Adversus Haereses 3.9.1-11.6, 3.11.7, 4.6.1).
• In that famous passage where he asserted that “it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are” (Adv. Haer. 3.11.8), he listed them in the order John-Luke-Matthew-Mark.
• On still another occasion he lists the Gospels in the Eastern order, apparently as their chronological sequence (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1; cf. Eusebius, History of the Church, 5.8.2-4).

The appearance of the “Eastern order” in St. Irenaeus would be remarkable, as there would be no other Western source which would use the same order for 200 years.

It would be interesting to note that there is no precedence in Patristic literature and Biblical MSS for the order Mark-Matthew-Luke-John. Codex Bobiensis (4th-5th century; paleographic study suggests, however, that it may have been copied from a 2nd century papyrus manuscript) does have Matthew after Mark (in fact these are the only surviving portions of the MSS), but the original order most probably went like: John-Luke-Mark-Matthew.

 

[patrick457]

If I could answer one of the arguments that Nikolaj presented, just for the sake of doing it :

1. Mark writes in the least educated style of Greek compared to the other Gospels. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) improving the language of Mark while copying than Mark doing the opposite while copying from Matthew.

Grammatical awkwardness and choppiness, from a literary POV, is not a reason to suppose priority, and if anything, is good reason to suppose a later writing, since it is usually the case that better forms of a work are issued first. Moreover, the brevity and choppiness are better explained by seeing the gospel of Mark as Papias did - as a record of the Peter’s preaching. Also, Mark’s brevity can be considered a device of rhetorical style - Mark was writing for an Hellenistic, Greco-Roman audience, and demonstrates a close affinity to Greek tragedy style in the gospel.

Mark’s ‘poor’, street-level Greek is not a definite guarantee that his is the oldest. People who rewrote material rewrote it in their own style. If a later author liked elegance and knew how to achieve it, the product would be more elegant. But the reverse could and often did happen. Many apocryphal gospels of the 2nd century and later are written in ‘worse’ Greek than Mark - yet no one would seriously claim that they are older works just because the canonical Gospels have neater grammar than they do! It would be merely the case that many authors, and no dount many readers and hearers, preferred more colloquial and less elegant prose. The same could happen for Mark’s.

As an aside, I am a supporter of Matthean priority and is probably somewhere in-between the Griesbach and the Augustinian Hypotheses. While the Markan priority, along with the Farrer hypothesis, is also an option for me, the Two-Source Hypothesis is not (ever since Mark Goodacre).

 

[Erich]

I’ll try to explain why I (and most scholars) believe Mark to be older than the other Gospels…

1. Mark writes in the least educated style of Greek compared to the other Gospels. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) improving the language of Mark while copying than Mark doing the opposite while copying from Matthew.
2. Mark often has longer and more detailed (arguably overly detailed) versions of the narratives. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) shortening and simplifying the material found in Mark in order to fit it into their Gospels than Mark amplifying the stories in Matthew with random details (though I ought to say that many Liberal scholars find the latter kind quite easy to imagine – still, they too usually believe Mark to be the oldest).
3. The Apostolic Father Papias (a very important source on the origin of the Gospels), Mark was Peter’s disciple and interpreter who put down in w

riting what Peter told about Jesus. That contradicts the idea that Mark was based on Matthew, because there are only very few passages in Mark that do not correspond to a passage in Matthew – and if Matthew is older, Mark must have based most of his Gospel on Matthew and not on the testimony of Peter.

From The Gospels are Historical:

…Firstly, 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.

		Secondly, it conflicts with the doctrinal teaching of the Church regarding authorship.


		Thirdly, the whole Markan logical edifice is balanced on a presumption. This presumption is that 			the Gospel of Mark was carefully thought out in the author’s room and composed by him in his best Greek style.


		If a different scenario more consistent with history, doctrine and literary analysis replaces 			this presumption, the theory loses its foundation. ...

…Those who held the view that Mark wrote third persevered in their research. From literary analysis and the ancient historians they developed the scenario of Peter giving a series of talks. In these he quoted alternatively from Matthew and Luke and thereby blended them together like two streams conflating into one. Peter’s secretary Mark, in response to repeated requests, issued copies of his unedited verbatim shorthand transcript. This is what we now know as Mark’s Gospel. According to Clement of Alexander (who lived 200 years nearer to the events than did Jerome), Peter was indifferent to its distribution until he saw its beneficial effects.

From Clement we know that Mark issued his transcript to meet an urgent demand. We can see how Luke’s Gospel could have been written pre-Mark but published after it. When Jerome wrote his: ‘Prologus Quattuor Evangeliorum’, he records that the Gospels were Published in the Matthew, Mark, Luke order. But, when writing his history: ‘Of Illustrious Men’, Jerome places them in the Matthew, Luke, Mark order (i.e. in order of writing). It should also be remembered that in Jerome’s covering letter to the Pope, regarding his vulgate version, he had to explain why he had placed the Gospels in an unfamiliar order.

Nikolaj:
(Papias also writes that the Apostle Matthew wrote something, but he doesn’t say directly that this was what is now known as the Gospel of Matthew. But as I wrote earlier, Matthew may have written something which was later used as one of the sources of the Gospel of Matthew (Mark being another one of the sources).)

All of this is covered in The Authors of the Gospels. If you don’t have time to read the entire booklet, I recommend you at least start reading here (about 20% of the way in)

 

[Nikolaj]

@ patrick457:
I didn’t say that I thought that the language argument was decisive. In fact, I think both of the other arguments are more important. You are right that Mark may have been meant for those who prefer a lower style (as epitomes often were). But Mark’s language is not just simpler than the other Gospels – sometimes it’s more complicated. I find it hard to imagine Mark copying something from Matthew and in doing that making it harder to understand. If anything, he should have been making it easier (as Matthew and Luke often did when they copied from Mark). And by the way, I think my second argument goes very much against the epitome-idea: Why would Mark amplify individual passages in his epitome? (It might explain it if the extra details were added by Peter himself based on his own memory of Jesus, however, I don’t think that fits very well with the testimony of Papias and others.)

@ Erich:
I am quite willing to believe that a very early version of the Gospel of Matthew was written before the other Gospels – perhaps already during Jesus’ ministry – by Matthew the Apostle. If so, he probably wrote it in Hebrew or Aramaic. As a former publican, he would certainly have known how to write and perhaps he kept a kind of diary of the words and acts of Jesus. He probably gave great attention to the speeches of Jesus, as the Gospel of Matthew reflects. Later, someone translated this into Greek and (as I think) inserted it into a narrative structure based on the Gospel of Mark – resulting in the Gospel of Matthew as we know it. The translator/compiler/author who did this probably also had Aramaic/Hebrew as his native language which is reflected in his style of Greek and in his treatment of Old Testament quotations (many think that he was originally educated as a Jewish scribe).
So in this way, we might say that Matthew (or proto-Matthew) is in fact the oldest Gospel, but Matthew as we know it is younger than Mark (it was probably written around the same time as Luke, or a bit earlier).

 

[David_Zampino]

Don’t have more time right now, but if we wish to speak of “presumptions”, “The Gospels are Historical” is a document full of presumptions.

Please don’t get me wrong. I DO believe that the Gospels are historical and that the authors were who the Church has always claimed them to be. I also believe in relatively early authorship, etc. (AD 65-95, with John last).

But the author of the document, in my view, takes the argument too far, making documents (in some cases, documents in which we only have fragments – Papias, for example) say more than they really are (or can) say.

It seems to me that the thrust of this thread has drifted from the “historicity” of the Gospels to an argument between Matthean and Markan priority. (BTW, I did used to know a scholar – only one, mind you – who argued for a Lukan priority!)

Blessings,

 

[Nikolaj]

1. The titles of the Gospels are not part of the Gospels
2. Does it really matter?

Martin Hengel (and some other scholars with him) believe that the titles of the Gospels were not added later but were part of them from the beginning.
Yes, this matters a great deal when we try to find out who actually wrote the Gospels – and that’s not just important for establishing their authenticity (the Holy Spirit might work just as well through an anonymous community of writers) but also for understanding the original intentions and readership of the Gospels and their relations to other New Testament literature.

 

[Erich]

Don’t have more time right now, but if we wish to speak of “presumptions”, “The Gospels are Historical” is a document full of presumptions. …

But the author of the document, in my view, takes the argument too far, making documents (in some cases, documents in which we only have fragments – Papias, for example) say more than they really are (or can) say.

The Gospels are Historical and the companion leaflets Why, How and When the Gospels?and Apostles and Apostolic Men are only intended to provide the “view from 10,000 feet.” The booklet ‘The Authors of the Gospels’, sets out the evidence for the above in more detail.

 

[wasmit]

@ Erich:
Bismarck is long dead and I don’t know of any theologians who believe that Mark is the oldest Gospel based on his autority. And by the way, Mark was not based on Q. Q was (supposably) a source used independently by both Matthew and Luke which explains verbal agreements between them in passages that do not come from Mark.

@ wasmit:
I’ll try to explain why I (and most scholars) believe Mark to be older than the other Gospels. It is obvious that there are a lot of verbal agreements between the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. They don’t just tell the same stories – they use (almost) the same words in many instances. So they must be related in some way. Some of them must have copied from others.
Now, I don’t know of anyone who believes Luke to be the oldest Gospel, so to make it more simple let’s just look at Matthew and Mark. By far, most of the content of Mark (the shortest Gospel) is also found in Matthew. So either (the author of) Matthew has copied from Mark (and other sources) – or the other way round. If Matthew is older, Mark could be a kind of epitome (abbreviated, distilled version) of Matthew – that was quite common in antiquity. Yet, there are some weighty reasons to believe that Mark is older:

1. Mark writes in the least educated style of Greek compared to the other Gospels. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) improving the language of Mark while copying than Mark doing the opposite while copying from Matthew.
2. Mark often has longer and more detailed (arguably overly detailed) versions of the narratives. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) shortening and simplifying the material found in Mark in order to fit it into their Gospels than Mark amplifying the stories in Matthew with random details (though I ought to say that many Liberal scholars find the latter kind quite easy to imagine – still, they too usually believe Mark to be the oldest).
3. The Apostolic Father Papias (a very important source on the origin of the Gospels), Mark was Peter’s disciple and interpreter who put down in writing what Peter told about Jesus. That contradicts the idea that Mark was based on Matthew, because there are only very few passages in Mark that do not correspond to a passage in Matthew – and if Matthew is older, Mark must have based most of his Gospel on Matthew and not on the testimony of Peter. (Papias also writes that the Apostle Matthew wrote something, but he doesn’t say directly that this was what is now known as the Gospel of Matthew. But as I wrote earlier, Matthew may have written something which was later used as one of the sources of the Gospel of Matthew (Mark being another one of the sources).)

Thanks for the detailed explaination

 

[4everjustjesus]

Many, if not most Christians (myself included) would readily accept that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did write (dictate, preach, teach, etc.) their Gospel accounts. The Early Church Fathers provide ample and consistent testimony on this point.

THIS BEING SAID . . .

It is also quite possible, even probable, that there was some editing going on within the first couple of generations after Jesus. Many of the earliest extant manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel don’t include the “long ending” (last dozen verses or so). Likewise, John’s Gospel shows signs of an editing process in its two endings. Also likewise, the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery has been placed (depending on the manuscript) in both Luke’s Gospel and John’s Gospel.

None of this would contradict either the inspired nature of the books, nor their canonical status.

Totally agree

 

[Erich]

Many of the earliest extant manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel don’t include the “long ending” (last dozen verses or so).

From The Authors of the Gospels:

Mark`s Gospel breaks off abruptly at 16: 8, before continuing with twelve more verses. This break involves ending with an enclitic form of Greek grammar, and this is inappropriate for the ending of a paragraph, never mind a book. Many suggestions have been put forward in explanation of these additional verses. As mentioned in our Chapter VII, Orchard suggested that they might have been notes for a further talk that was not delivered.

My suggestion is as follows: The audience listening to Peter would have already known the information provided in Matthew’s Gospel. But for most of them the gospel of Luke contained new material.

As Orchard has pointed out, Peter stopped at the point his personal eyewitness of the earthly life of Christ ended ((RO 271-8)). Peter had not commented on all the new interesting pieces of information provided by Luke. I suggest that the audience would have asked questions, and these last verses record the answers supplied by Peter.

To illustrate: As the ‘he’ of verse 9 does not refer to the young man in verse 5, one would have expected to read ‘Jesus’. But if the name of the Lord had been contained in a question, the use of ‘he’ would be correct.

Matthew in 28: 1-10 says that Mary Magdalene was, with another woman, the first to see Jesus, and Luke 24: 10 confirms this. But earlier Luke had mentioned a woman of the same name, ‘a Mary who is called Magdalene’, who had been possessed by seven devils (Luke 8: 2). We should not be surprised if someone, noting her history, asked if this was the same person. Peter replies that it was (Mark 16: 9). He then confirms that Luke was also correct when he wrote that it was she who told the Apostles.

Matthew had not reported that Christ had appeared to two men walking, but Luke gives this incident much space (Luke 24: 13-31). Should the audience accept this story as true? As Peter was not one of the two, he was unable to confirm all the details, but he does confirm that Christ did appear to two disciples walking in the countryside (Mark 16: 12).

Luke then tells the story of Christ appearing to the eleven (24: 33-36). Yet Matthew has not mentioned this. Was it true? Peter, being there, is able to confirm that it was (Mark 16: 14).

Matthew says followers of Christ were to teach and baptise (28: 19), but Luke says they are to preach penance and forgiveness (Luke 24: 47). Was there a discrepancy here? Peter explains how baptism follows on from successful preaching (Mark 15: 15-16).

In his second volume, Luke says that Paul was able to cast out a devil (Acts 16: 18). There was no mention of this power in Matthew. So was it true? Peter, not being present at the incident, could not confirm it, but gives it credibility by saying Christ had foretold that such happenings would occur (Mark 16: 17).

In Acts 2: 4 and 10: 46, Luke reports Peter as having been present on two occasions when speaking in tongues had taken place. Matthew had not reported these events. Peter is able to confirm them in his response to the question about casting out the devils (Mark 16: 17).

The audience had read in Acts 28: 5, that Paul was impervious to the poison of a snake. Matthew had not recorded such an incident. Could it be true? Not being present at the incident, all Peter can do is again refer to the words of Christ. We then read of a similar question regarding the laying on of hands. He answers (Mark 16: 18) in the same way.

Luke in 24: 51 and Acts 1: 9 describes how Christ ascended to heaven. As Matthew had not described this, the audience would have found it of great interest. Peter, having been an eyewitness, was able to confirm and slightly embellish the account of Luke. (Mark 16: 19).

A person’s style of speaking will be different when answering questions from when he is giving atalk. The different style of these final verses has often been noted.

If the above suggestion is accepted, it would point to Acts, as well as Luke’s gospel, having been seen by some of the audience prior to or during the period of the talks. In addition to Mark, the audience is likely to have included Paul, his guard, Luke, Linus, Cletus, Clement of Rome, Alexander, Rufus and Hermas.

 

[Erich]

@ Erich:
Bismarck is long dead and I don’t know of any theologians who believe that Mark is the oldest Gospel based on his autority.

Bismarck was a politician not a theologian. The universities in Germany were government controlled, and anyone upholding the priority of Matthew was seen as pro-Catholic and unpatriotic at a time of nationalist fervor.

@ wasmit:
Yet, there are some weighty reasons to believe that Mark is older:

1. Mark writes in the least educated style of Greek compared to the other Gospels. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) improving the language of Mark while copying than Mark doing the opposite while copying from Matthew.

From page 89 of The Authors of the Gospels:

The foundation-stone of the Markan priority theory is the alleged inability of Mark (the secretary of the bishop of Rome) to write in good Greek. But if we accept Orchard and the Clementine tradition, an alternative explanation comes to mind.

Extremists among the Judaizing Party would not have been pleased at the acceptance by Peter of Luke’s Gentile gospel. We know today that when a religious or political leader makes a statement on a disputed subject, some in the losing party will be suspicious that their leader has been misquoted. They will demand to know exactly what the leader has said.

I suggest that diehard members of the Judaic party would have wanted to read an unedited verbatim record of the exact words of Peter. An edited, improved version would not have been acceptable. So the scriptural misquotation and poor grammar had to be left unchanged in the published document. The early Christian communities already had two long carefully designed gospels. So the literary style of a transcript of a series of talks, would not have be seen as of great importance or an embarrassment for the Church.

The problem of the poor Greek of Mark is more acute for the upholders of Markan priority. They claim it was the only gospel in existence for 20 or more years. As the key document of a new dynamic religion, it would have presented a very negative portrait of the intelligence, education and capability of its leaders. So why did the Christian Community leave the obvious misquotations and grammatical errors uncorrected?

1. Mark often has longer and more detailed (arguably overly detailed) versions of the narratives. It is easier to imagine Matthew (and Luke) shortening and simplifying the material found in Mark in order to fit it into their Gospels than Mark amplifying the stories in Matthew with random details (though I ought to say that many Liberal scholars find the latter kind quite easy to imagine – still, they too usually believe Mark to be the oldest).

From page 29:

(I)f 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. This would be very human for a speaker.

Peter would have been very familiar with Matthews Gospel, but Lukes would have brought back half-forgotten incidents. 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.

(there are several other examples)

And from page 30:

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, would leave nearly half the roll unused. This is a pointer to Matthew and Luke carefully planning their compositions, while the publication of the third gospel had not been planned.

1. The Apostolic Father Papias (a very important source on the origin of the Gospels), Mark was Peter’s disciple and interpreter who put down in writing what Peter told about Jesus. That contradicts the idea that Mark was based on Matthew, because there are only very few passages in Mark that do not correspond to a passage in Matthew – and if Matthew is older, Mark must have based most of his Gospel on Matthew and not on the testimony of Peter. (Papias also writes that the Apostle Matthew wrote something, but he doesn’t say directly that this was what is now known as the Gospel of Matthew. But as I wrote earlier, Matthew may have written something which was later used as one of the sources of the Gospel of Matthew (Mark being another one of the sources).)

Pages 21-26 contain too much information for me to quote directly, so you’ll just have to read them on your own.

 

[patrick457]

Very interesting one there Erich.

For an unrelated note:
By the way, the discussion here just reminded of that Johnny Cash song in that Jesus film of his (Gospel Road) :

**Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John
Told about Jesus on that Gospel Highway
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John
Told about Jesus on that Gospel Road

How His pillow was a stone where He laid His head
How the hungry five thousand on the hill were fed
How the people came and listened to Him - everything He said
Walking down that Gospel Road…**

 

[David_Zampino]

Erich,

You make no argument. You merely continue to cite an outside website from an individual who, while I will never question his faith or integrity, does not present a clear or cogent argument for his opinion. There is an awful lot of ad hominim and guilt by association in his “research” – and I seriously question it.

Moreover, I SERIOUSLY question the notion that someone who accepts Markan priority necessarily automatically subscribes to the liberal German Protestantism of the late 19th century. The two don’t necessarily fit – and I seriously question both the judgment AND the scholarship of someone who insists that they do.

 

[TMC]

The Church teaches that the Gospels are Apolostolic in origin and that they faithfully hand on the teachings of Christ. The Church does not take a position on authorship or order, as far as I am aware.

Marcan priority makes the most sense to me, and I had no idea that Bismark had a theology.