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Markan Priority (The Synoptic Problem) - Ian N. Mills
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2020
- Ian N Mills (Duke University) summarizes the key arguments for Matthew and Luke's literary dependence on Mark. The first video in a series on the Synoptic Problem.
Did Matthew & Luke use another (lost) gospel?
• Did Matthew & Luke use...
New Testament Review Podcast
newtestamentreview.blogspot.com/
Thanks Ian, you guys are awesome. I think you're discovering just how much of an appetite there is among us lay folks for an understanding of what critical scholars are saying about the bible. You're doing a wonderful public service with these videos and the podcast.
Matthew and Luke using Mark as a source is common knowledge and had been for decades lol
Purple Pill Philosophy Right. I think that’s his point. Scholars have been pretty much unanimous on this for a hundred years... and how much of that has filtered into popular consciousness? Most Christians in my experience think Matthew was written first by the disciple of Matthew.
We are SO HONORED to provide it!
If Mark could assume his audience knew Matthew’s and/or Luke’s work he wouldn’t be responsible to necessarily repeat any particular thing they’d said.
That was very well done and concise (45 minutes is concise for anything like this). It's helpful to have a summary of what I had heard and read about Markan Priority over the years put together in one lecture. Thank you!
This is just fantastic work. I've listened to a lot of lectures about this but I really like how you explained this topic the most.
Thanks for making this lecture available! I found it to be very helpful.
Thank you so very much for breaking this down. This was very helpful to me as an early seminary student. Well part together.
This is an amazing videos, thanks a lot , you summarized so many points with excellent presentation
Great Job Ian and Laura. Please keep on doing these great videos and Podcasts
I really appreciate this video n also you'll channel.
Tyre, - Sidon - Decapolis What is not considered here is the terrain. The shortest route may be a straight line but the fastest or safest route is the points of least resistance. Tyre to Sidon maybe by water or established level seaside paths to reach an inland route to Decapolis makes sense if the inland direct route has rough terrain, mountains, streams or marauders. Americans in the 19th century often travelled N/E to the Great Lakes to board ships to carry them west. Today a bypass north to east and back south to go around a city is why the bypasses were built.
Great episode Ian thank you.
I would love to see an episode on Bauchkham or Licona at some point.
Ian, regarding Mark's implausible redaction-profile...
what if....the tradition that Mark is a compilation notes from Peter's sermons is true?
people preach different than they write..
1 they say awkward things
2 they leave some things out according to what the topic is they are trying to emphasize
3 they can get wordy and add details to what they originally intended to say
4 they can simplify their language according to the needs of their audience
what if Mark is simply a compilation of 2 or 3 sermons? Mark can be recited in an hour and a half...what if it's just ONE sermon?
The big problem with that is Mark and Matthew have a literary relationship (as argued from extensive verbatim agreements). So if Mark is second, then Mark/Peter had a copy of Matthew in front of them and made the changes I explained. Why would Peter need to copy Matthew's exact wording of the call of Peter? No one plagiarizes their autobiography. And why would Peter make these odd changes to Matthew?
@@newtestamentreview9931
thank you for reading my comment, it is my honor!
Question 1 (about why Peter plagiarizes his own biography)
my conjecture: MAYBE Matthew's Gospel was already considered Scripture (or well on its way) and Peter's account did not differ enough from Matt for Mark see a need for addition or subtraction from the "Holy Writ". certainly Matt is the most quoted gospel in the early Fathers, which I think indicates that it probably had some kind of chronogical head start on the others. unlike today, back then because of the slow and expensive publication process , a book's widespread usage was a likely indicator of its age.
Question 2 (about why ANY changes were made) my conjecture:
MAYBE Mark wanted to preserve Peter's more blunt style of preaching e. g. ... whereas Matt says our Lord DIDN'T work great wonders because of unbelief... Peter just says it bluntly--He COULDN'T because of unbelief... such a rendering would empasize the importance of faith to a congregation that perhaps needs a reminder and would also be likely to stick in Mark's mind when he recorded it.
I don't think the accounts are in contradiction. Mark's account can be seen as an elucidation...
Hello Ian!
IMO, the nerdy mormon guy , ( I will call him NMG) at youtube ...."who when & why - the writing of the Gospels - part 5" .....quietly demolishes "Markan Priority". He focuses on the well-known event-order phenomenon of the synoptics.
where - as you already know- basically...
1. In ALL passages where matthean and markan event-order deviate , Luke's do not AND VICE VERSA
2.where Matthew and Luke agree on event-order, Mark ALWAYS agrees.
NMG simply points out that these phenomena are exactly what would be predicted if Mark was using scrolls of both Matthew and Luke and had to choose between event-orders when the latter two deviated.....
Markan priority cannot explyain this event-order anomaly other than to say that if Mark came first then Matthew and Luke performed a delicate dance where if one deviated from Mark's event-order then the other would make sure to snap back to it.... that at the very least makes Q theory impossible because neither Evangelist Luke nor Matthew was supposed to know of the others Work.
NTL Q is what most modern scholars accept these days without question or even the least bit of curiosity.
you really should invite NMG on to discuss Markan priority...(but please dont ask him about planet Kolob or I'll boycott that one😀)
you can search down his youtube channel by using the somewhat mormony name......don't snicker..."hold to the rod"
Hello MM SS!
Happy Easter to you!
I am afraid that the Farrer hyp. does not quite explain Luke's redaction profile. Nerdy Mormon Guy explains this way better than I ever could in an 18 minute video here: ua-cam.com/video/L6iBtu9FQCw/v-deo.html
MMSS,
Two problems come to mind in hypothesizing that Luke is sooo late!😊
1. Luke ends Acts on an up-beat note and has a generally positive view towards Roman soldiers AND Rome. Agreed? Maybe you are in the new camp that says Christians made up the Tacitus account of Nero's persecution. or think perhaps Peter and Paul were never martyred under Nero despite unanimous testimony that they were. If they were, and Luke wrote a hundred years later, then it would be very strange for him to leave out their 'crowning' achievement or be painting a rosy picture of the Roman Empire. It's not like Luke didn't think martyrdom was such a big deal. Please note how much emphasis he devotes to Steven's passion.
Therefore it is logical to conclude that Luke omitted Peter and Paul's martydoms because they hadn't yet happened when he closed out Acts.
2. When there appears to be a literary dependency between two ancient authors, it is hard to determine who the copycat is. A school teacher can know who the better student is and can thus usually guess the culprit accurately. But really, how do we know that Josephus was not familiar with New Testament writings?
Great as always Ian. I would love more lectures or put this content up on Patreon
You said Luke has a habit of moving the location of stories from where Mark or Matthew said they took place. Where can I read more about that particular habit of Luke’s?
Cool, is this an unscheduled bonus episode? Thankyou.
I gave this lecture in my NT class and then came home and thought, “UA-cam would probably like that.”
That the names were added from the outside later for the reasons you mentioned does not logically mean that authorship was also imposed in the same way. (6:10ff)
Excellent.
Whether or not his theory is ultimately correct, Wenham does valuable work identifying and challenging many of the assumptions that underlie the current New Testament scholarship and positing a credible counter argument. While the book has much strength the examination of historical testimony pertaining to Gospel authorship is particularly worthwhile and illuminating. It has often struck me that contemporary scholarship has been a bit too quick to dismiss ancient testimony in favour of modern literary techniques (as valuable as they are). A balanced view that weights internal and external evidence does indeed seem warranted. Redating Matthew by John Wenham (Author)
I wonder if anyone can help - regarding the discussion of editorial fatigue in Matthew 8 (calming of the storm), I cannot find a single English translation in which verse 24 refers to an earthquake. I'm not doubting what Joel Marcus writes - I can see that 'seismos' is there in the Greek - yet I can't find a single English translation that includes it. Is this representative of how unreliable translations are? Is the tendency to harmonise the synoptics so strong as to render our mainstream translations less than reliable?
Very much appreciated. You and others like Digital Hammurabi, Pine Creek and others are doing an invaluable service bringing this material into the reach of this small band of very interested people. This form of bringing access to scholarly thinking to a wider audience will, I think, just grow in importance and gain an ever increasing audience for years to come.
I wouldn't compare this channel to Digital Hammur (a passive aggressive pocket scholar) and certainly not PineCreek (a middle aged troll who tries to play armchair psychology and has this uncanny ability to insult the intelligence of both xtians and his own intellectually-devoid audience).
@@paradisecityX0 "... Digital Hammur (a passive aggressive pocket scholar)" - that there is some trollish nonsense.
@@TheDanEdwards You try interacting with him on Twitter. Or see Sentinel Apologetics' vids addressing him. He presents himself as lofty and objective but panders to village-Atheists often (not to mention part of the Woke religion), but changes his tune when up against veteran scholars like Michael Brown
@@paradisecityX0 Oh, dear. Looks like someone has pissed on your chips. No need to get bitter and twisted. If you can't come up with some good arguments but can only slag people off, maybe you should invest in some camomile tea and take up something !ess stressful
@@stuartc9149 I'm calm as Humphrey Bogart. What arguments? I agree with everything in this vid
I don't think "who would read that and decide not to include it?" is a very good argument for priority. If the author of Mark happened to be skeptical of the most fantastical claims in Matthew, he might have decided to remove them specifically to make the accouht appear more realistic.
Matthew “deleted” Mark’s naming of the high priest “because” he knew he was wrong? That is badly reading into the Matthew’s motives and actions.
Peter (Mark recording) often includes details in his accounts that Matthew and Luke didn’t bother to. Many times that just speaks to his having been there and having those details to offer.
The fallacy is that because all the academics are in agreement doesn't mean it's true especially in a field that is not a hard science. Textual critism is highly subjective thus is subject to group think and especially when publishing in the literature is more difficult if it goes against the prevailing narative in academia.
I like how this is a vague and general comment not directed at anything, when you literally have a 40 minute going over facts and citations. If you want to build a case for something do it. Cheap vague pot shots are worthless.
This is a great lecture, but I am curious about this idea of a redaction profile - it seems obvious to us that the redactions should only go one way because we have some preconceived notion of who Jesus was - but is that an assumption we can make for the author of Mark? Conceivably Mark could have tried to write a “lesser” christology in response to “higher” ones floating around at the time? The assumption seems to be from an originally low to a high christology - why discount the other way around?
The strongest form of yhe argument works by establishing that Mark accepts X on the basis of other passages and then showing that on the supposition of Matthean priority, Mark makes changes that work against X. Formulated that way, it doesn't presuppose anything about the development of christology. For instance, Mark believes the disciples saw Jesus in Galilee after he rose from the dead. Why, therefore, would he delete Matthew's account of that appearance? This argument also works for Jesus' healing abilities, the Lord's prayer (as argued by Goodacre), and Jesus' goodness.
Thank you for making this video :)
A fish also doesn’t debate the existence of the water it swims in. Your insinuation about the legitimacy of Markan priority based on its dominance in scholarship doesn’t actually prove anything if the majority of scholars basically take it for granted.
The question isn’t why did Mark delete things. The question is why he repeated what he did.
Mark does not have to include all the things we want him to to fulfill his own purposes. Seriously reading modern expectations and desires into a 2,000 year old work instead of coming to terms with the idea that the writers didn’t have is in mind at the time.
It doesn’t say Jesus made a beeline north to south. It just says he went to those places in that order. Whom did he need to meet?
What were the geographical features of the land He had to traverse on foot that might have made a less world-map-direct route a better plan? No questions like this are being asked by modern people who look at maps and drive cars on paved roads.
What might have bee the political or safety situations that could have played into His choice of route?
Can't watch it know but I will definitely watch it later 🥺 (exam tomorrow 😅)
I have a significant problem with saying that 90+% of Mark is copied verbatim in Matthew. Looking at the topic exhaustively, Mark's narrative is significantly longer and more vividly detailed than Matthew's, and there are several pericopes which are simply absent in Matthew---particularly events where Matthew was not present but Peter, James, and John were. For example, the first miracle in the synagogue of Capernaum. Inside the house during the raising up of Jairus' daughter, etc. And others exist in greatly expanded form, such as the healing of the paralytic who was let down through the roof. It's fairly predictable that Mark will leave out the controversy among Jewish sects, the long sayings of Jesus, and anything potentially derogatory about the gentiles or unnecessary or unsuitable for the demographic (genealogy, visit by the Magi from a rival empire to give gifts to the one born "king of the Jews"). This is because it is widely accepted that Mark was written in Rome, and has many Latinisms present within it. This actually conforms to what Papias has to say about the gospel composition.
Verbal agreement means very little if you can't present authoritatively "it was Matthew who borrowed from Mark" or "it was Mark who borrowed from Matthew." Had Matthew been written first, Peter could have utilized it as a memory aid and augmented it with his own experiences and testimonies. But it would be redundant to add all the long sayings of Jesus which had already been composed.
As for "editorial fatigue," there is really a paucity of examples--and none, in my opinion, that are compelling--for "Matthew was borrowing from Mark." On the other hand, there is an abundance of instances (at least around 15 or so potential cases of editorial fatigue) where it could be said, "Mark was borrowing from Matthew." In other words, this kind of analysis is only insightful when examining both sides of the equation.
At about 21:45 Matthew 8:24, σεισμὸς μέγας ἐγένετο ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ, "there was a great tumult at sea," the word σεισμὸς means "a shock, agitation, or commotion" (LSJ)--not "earthquake"! We translate the word contextually as "earthquake" on land contextually. In such a case, you would generally consider that the more difficult reading (as with the beheading of John the Baptist) represents the original, both of which cases favor Matthew. Also, we prefer the shorter reading. In both of these instances, Mark's gospel is longer and with greater detail.
You mentioned that Matthew changes it to be about goodness rather than Jesus questioning his own goodness but Luke also has Jesus say, "why call me good?" (Luke 18:19). Luke also says that Jesus grew in favor with God and men (Luke 2:52) and doesn't openly call Jesus "God", but Matthew says that Jesus Christ is God with us (Matthew 1:23). Man people say that Matthew came before Luke, but based on some of the arguments that you used for Matthew using Mark instead of Mark using Matthew and seemingly "downgrading" Jesus, I think a similar case can be made for Matthew using Luke instead of Luke using Matthew and "downgrading" Jesus.
I love your guys work, what are the best Journals to read on these things
Thanks! Unfortunately the peer reviewed journals themselves are often paywalled. But scholars will post their publications on Academia, Hcommons, and other cites. So you can either go searching for a scholar or you can go to a journal page (like NTS, JBL, or Novum Testamentum), browse their catalog, and then go searching for an article that looks interesting.
@@newtestamentreview9931 Paywalls don't bother me. I was just wondering which was the best
@@coalhouse1981 New Testament Studies, Journal of Biblical Literature, Novum Testamentum, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, and Journal of Theological Studies
@@newtestamentreview9931 thank you well at least some of those are in englsih... LOL
The difference between Luke and Mark on the feeding of the Five Thousand seems a fair bit weaker than the differences between Mark and Matthew. Mark mentions in 6:31 that Jesus says “Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.
So in Mark they start in the hustle and bustle of the township where they agreed to meet up, then they travel out of town to a deserted place. Luke puts them directly in the deserted place outside of Bethsaida and I don't think he's at all trying to say that the middle of town is deserted, just that they went somewhere quiet with Bethsaida being the closest township. It can't be fatigue if Luke puts 'deserted place' in the same sentence as Bethsaida in the first place; his description is consistent, unlike Matthew with the earthquake reference. Unless you claim that Luke is calling the town 'a deserted place' which seems a bit more than just fatigue. I guess it's still consistent with the source theory though, just not in the same way.
41:40 Ahimelech was the priest and Abiathar was high priest. Why mistake? Can be two different people on different positions. Also it's said "only for the priests" (plural), so there were several priests there.
I don't think it's that easy. If I remember correctly Bart Ehrman wrote a very long assignment as a student when he was still a Christian trying to resolve that question alone.
Verbatim agreement could go either way. On its own this says nothing about who said it first. If Mark (Peter) used Matthew and Luke you could expect the same thing.
So Matthew in the death of John the babtist kept "grieved" but removed the "deeply" in front of it.
That seems strange, like he was not fatiqued enough to just copy over "deeply grieved" but could accept "grieved".
Excellent work, Ian! You've given a concise lecture on why Mark was first and _had to be_ first. Which means Marcion was second or third because scholars of Marcion such as John Bull and Dr. Marcud Vincent are demonstrating that Luke is an expansion of Marcion.
If you're taking suggestions I'd love to hear what scholars think of Barrie Wilson's "how Jesus became Christian".
Someone at my gym with a master's in bible studies (from University of Toronto's Trinity College) claimed that Barrie Wilson's close to being a quack but I lack the requisite knowledge to agree or disagree.
I'm skeptical of both (Wilson's claims about Luke & Acts and my gym contact).
You assume Mark doesn’t believe in the virgin birth because he doesn’t record it? “What kind of person is Mark”? Probably the kind if person who has a different reason for writing and therefore makes different choices what to include or not from material that already exists and might not all need repeated for his audience/purposes, maybe?
He “wants to delete” these things is not a logical necessity.
For the algorithm
How is the editorial fatigue argument not circular (proving nothing)? Don't you first have to assume Markan Priority before this "phenomenon" can be seen? If you flipped it around, you could just as easily assume Mark came later and fixed inconsistencies. Dunno, seems fallacious as proof of "priority."
@@mmss3199 You've missed the point of my question. It only *appears* that way if you presume already that Mark was first. That presumption is fine I suppose, but then EF can't be argued as "evidence" of priority without running into a circularity issue.
@@kearlanventures Watch that part again. Editorial fatigue doesn't make sense in reverse - if Mark was copying the others because, if he did that, there would be narrative inconsistencies in Mark. Well, Mark does not have any narrative inconsistencies. Rather, the inconsistencies are in Matthew and Luke. Hence, they were copying Mark and not the other way around.
Greek word order does matter. In fact the ability to change the word order freely allows for nuance in intention that English has to express with extra words. Biblical Scholars would do well to familiarize themselves with the function of word order in modern languages that are related more closely to koine Greek than English is. Knowing Hungarian and Russian, for example, has helped me understand the kinds of nuance free word order makes possible.
English was likely similar in this way before losing both its French and German inflections (endings) on the way to becoming its own language. Now we rely heavily on concrete word order to express grammatical relationships instead of endings, and it’s harder to appreciate what Koine Greek is doing.
5:45 ish. The things that make me doubt the case for the titles of the Gospels being secondary are:
1) whilst it is normal to put the author in the genitive case, ευαγγέλιον + genitive signifies who the good news is about (in this instance Ιησού χριστού); κατα is not an unreasonable way around this problem - and if Mark did this, others could well have aped him
2) no-one in antiquity seems to have had a well-informed idea of who the four evangelists actually were - they are not particularly convenient names for giving the works apostolic authority (unlike, say, the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of Thomas), and the rather tendentious identifications of the authors with figures known from the text of the New Testament looks like it is solving the problem of the names already existing
3) we always get the same four names - there are no instances of a canonical Gospel being ascribed to someone else
4) where we do have a work that is actually anonymous in the New Testament - Hebrews - then we get all sorts of patristic speculation about its authorship
Thanks for your thoughts! I’ll offer a few brief replies. On point one, I’ve just been surveying this and the authorial genitive is actually more common for Memorabilia (possibly closest analog to the gospels) than the subject genitive. Point two doesn’t apply to Matthew and John. The Luke attribution goes along with other late first century associations of Paul with Luke (eg. Colossians). So i think that argument only works for Mark. I should do a whole video on the these. I’m not sure there’s much force to #3 (I’d need some sort of methodological control).
James, interesting. It seems to me that anonymity was a desired goal of all four evangelists for whatever reason. It seems strange to obviously avoid leaving any internal evidence as to who you are and how you are connected to this story if, the narrative as presented really happened and you were personally involved in it. Stranger still that they, all four, didn't bother with even a title page naming themselves as author.This makes much more sense to me on the mythic Jesus scenario than it does on the historical Jesus hypothesis, to me. I thought that all of our earliest extant copies of all four are lacking any semblance of a title page. It seems Mark didn't do this, so he couldn't be aped, as it were. My understanding of why all four end up with Kata is because they were all named at the same time by the same person, name escapes me, around 180CE.
I think that under the circumstances they did a pretty good job. Two of the gospels, by attribution, falsely claim to be written by an eye witness. A third, by the attribution "Mark" and later legends, thanks to Papias, absurdly claims to be an eyewitness testimony, of Peter, once removed. It had to be because Peter was supposed to be an illiterate fisherman. Lastly they couldn't really have a Gospel of the ever popular Paul because he famously failed to bump into Jesus during his life time and they still had samples of his writing. Some one else had to be found to relay this gospel.
Point 3 probably comes down to the fact that in the very early days particular gospels belonged to particular communities. Other communities didn't need to dispute authorship of other communities gospels they just needed to commission their own gospel, which they could name whatever they wanted to......Peter, James, Thomas etc, etc.
4. How old is this patristic speculation on Hebrews? Who are the candidates besides Paul, who did not write it. I think the answer to your speculation lies in the age and content of Hebrews. I think it is much earlier than usually dated. Not only does it assume the Temple sacrifice is still in place it shows no sign of knowing the Temple is in peril. I think that it is pre 66CE, especially because it presents no evidence for a historical Jesus, like every text written before the war of 66-70.
Very much appreciating your presentation thus far, but i paused when you declared that Jesus did not speak Greek. Upon what basis do you say this? It seems absolutely obvious that He mostly spoke Greek, as that was the dominant language in the culture in which He lived. Everyone seemed to understand Him! He had no trouble communicating with anyone, neither did He have any trouble gaining a huge following. Would be very interested to hear your answer.
Jesus definitely spoke Greek.
Well, for starters, Acts 26:14. And that the gospels seem to represent themselves as translating Jesus' Aramaic speech into Greek. Lastly, Josephus indicates that it was atypical for Palestinian Jews in the first century to learn Greek (e.g. Antiquities 20.11). And Jesus was a long way below Josephus on any socio-economic measure.
Not sure where Will's confidence comes from... except maybe certain (ill-founded) contemporary apologetic arguments.
@@newtestamentreview9931 Jesus was not a Jew. He could speak all contemporary languages.
@@noworries864 uh... Jesus was definitely a Jew. Read literally any gospel. Yikes.
@@newtestamentreview9931 You mean all the gospels that were included in the canon by what later became the Roman Catholic Church? The same institution that was desperate to sell the masses the lie that Yahweh is Jesus's Father.
Mark 11 records that Jesus emphatically said that no sign (from heaven) would be given to first century Israel. In the Jerusalem Bible footnotes, this quotation is alleged to be an abridgment of what Jesus originally said. However, Jesus' Markan prohibition fits nicely with Jesus' statement in Luke 11 where Jesus criticizes the crowd for asking for a sign and says that the only sign that Israel would receive is the sign of his ministry. The J.B. alleges that Jesus' statement in Luke 11 is a conflation of other verses. Something weird is going on here, and it appears to be that the editors of the J.B. are wrappped up in the tradition of Jesus' resurrection as the Sign of Jonah and therefore must falsify contradictory verses in Mark and Luke.
An analysis has recently emerged which allows for the harmoney of the statements that Jesus is recorded as having made about a sign from heaven in Mark and his three defintions of the Sign of Jonah in Matthew 12/16 and Luke 11. These three defintions appear to form a trinity, and there is no way that the Gospel writers of Mark, Matthew, and Luke could have constructed this trinity on their own. There only viable hypothesis is that Jesus himself had a hand in the writing of the Gospels.
See: "The Enigma of the Sign of Jonah," BSTS Shroud Newsletter, Summer, 2023.
Matthew's description of Herod need not mean "grieved" - it can be translated as upset or regretful (its used to describe the rich young man when he walks away from Jesus. In Matthew's account Herod wants to silence John but is afraid of the stigma of being a prophet killer. Herodias manipulates the situation to get Herod to kill John, which is why Herod is upset/regretful (he will now be known as a prophet-killer). Matthew's account is self-consistent.
Rather it is Mark's account that shows signs of editing. In Mark's account Herod "protects John knowing him to be a righteous and holy man". However like Matthew, Mark says "Herod gave orders to have John arrested, bound and put in prison". This description is only consistent with Matthew's Herod who tries to silence John, not Mark's Herod who protects him.
The word Matthew uses in 8:24 "seismos" need not mean "earthquake". It can just mean "shaking" or "disturbance". When Matthew introduces the earthquake in 27:51 he says "ge eseisthe" - "the earth was shaken". In 8:24 Matthew is just saying "there was a disturbance/commotion on the sea". So again no editorial fatigue here.
Nope. The term is never used to describe storms. Ancient Greek authors always use the term to mean earthquake.
Matthew is not using it to mean "storm" but "stirring" or "commotion". Matthew's "There was a great stirring" also contrasts better than Mark's "there was a great storm of wind" with the ending they both use "there was a great calm". Much more likely is that Mark is conflating Matthew's "There was a great stirring" and Luke's "there was a storm of wind".
@@imbored9966 You can just assert that if you want. But that's not how that word is ever used. Joel Marcus catalogs the uses of the term in his article "Did Matthew Believe his Myths?". Or you can do a search on the TLG for seismos. The word never means disturbance or storm. It means earthquake.
Revelation 11:19 "Then God’s temple in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, a *SEIMOS* and heavy hail."
This is God's temple in heaven and these are all events in the heavens. Lighting, voices, thunder, SEIMOS, heavy hail.
A translation of "earthquake" doesn't work here. Only "storm" or "tempest" or "gale" or "tornado".
Ive heard people try to argue that Matthew isn't dependent on Mark.. 😱😂
That’s what this is a response to. :-)
@@newtestamentreview9931 thank you for doing so!
Excellent overview. Please mute when drinking in future or cut in edit lol.
Excellent suggestion.
Matthew wrote Greek in a Hebrew style, just like anyone speaking a second language today will exhibit characteristics of the their first language’s grammar or style in the attempt. As good as Matthew’s Greek probably was, he was an Aramaic/Hebrew native speaker.
One nit picky suggestion: since the Greek word κατά (katá) is stressed on the 2nd syllable, perhaps the word “katana” would be a helpful analogy for how it’s pronounced. Just say “katána” (the way Americans typically say it) without the final ‘na’, and you end up with /katá/.
true
I do believe in markian supremacy, but you are overstating the case.
Specially in mark 6 and 10. Mathew in the end of 13 actually makes jesus vulnerable to unbelief, while mark makes it seems like it's a casual opportunity issue. And that's just one example.
It's the difference between "sorry I couldn't stay long, but we had fun" to "I did not stand long because there was too many people". The second one feels less capable and the second one is mathew.
For me, it's way easier to explain it all knowing that mathew is a bigger book and seems self-conscious about it.
Also, mark 7:13 makes absolute sense, considering the elevation.
Your claim that we can infer that Papias was looking at texts only is quite shaky. We have from Papias the very clear expression of a desire to hear the words of people who knew the apostles, and that this was much better than books.
Your claim that all subsequent traditions are based on Papias is merely a claim, with no evidence for it.
Papias may be misinformed, and the early church fathers might be mistaken, but the fact that they're unanimously against Markan priority constitutes a problem for that theory. Blowing them off with bad arguments is not a sufficient response to that problem.
Matthew 8:24 has no inconcistency. You don't know what you are talking about. Here it is wrong to translate σεισμός as 'earthquake.'
First of all, the noun comes from a verb root that means 'to shake'. Matthew creates an antithesis between σεισμός and γαλήνη, a movement of some short (shaking) and absence of movement.
Some of the Greek speakers could consider its use wrong, only if they associated the word exclusively with the meaning 'earthquake'. That is possible but only for some speakers depending how the word was used in their place of origin. There is no reason to consider its use wrong on an historical or etymological basis, since the meaning earthquake is not primary or exclusive and even if its use was wrong it could have been explained by Matthew not being a native speaker.
He rebukes the winds AND the sea. It is implied that the waves and the shaking are caused by winds.
σεισμός always means earthquake, including throughout Matthew. See Marcus 2016, and even the possible exception cited therein don't withstand scrutiny.
I've heard you and Laura talk about Mark Goodacre many times, but he looked very different in my imagination! Hahahaha
Very posh
first we got Markan sanwiches
Now we get Markan perogies.
That Mark sure was an epicurean. Just waiting for you to give me some Markan matzoh balls
If you are saying Matthew is adding into text sth like earthquakes because of end time messianic expectations you are making him a liar, a froudulant deceiver... I really don't like markan priority theory... It makes things less credible. I believe Augustin has put it down the way it was... 😎
Why does he sound like Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs?
Because it puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again.
Put the Greek manuscript in the f@$#n basket.
This is just a bad reading of the situation, and the fact that even Conservative scholars feel like they have to work within this framework speaks more to peer pressure than to legitimate scholarship.
Your 90% claim is false. Did you hear that somewhere? I think if you looked at the Greek words yourself, you'd see that the 90% claim is just false.
The claim is based on Morgenthaler's tabulation of the number of Markan verses used by Matthew in Statistische Synopse (1971). I've worked through the Greek synopsis repeatedly, and am satisfied that this is about right.
@@newtestamentreview9931 verses? That makes no sense. Very rarely does the entire verse match word for word. So if you want to say verses, it's less than 5%. I've actually mapped out the Greek myself. I suggest you do the same. Or at least look at it. Here's a video where I show the Greek to refute this idea of 90% agreement. ua-cam.com/video/MPh2QLBDimU/v-deo.html
@@willcd Right; we're not counting the number of verses where there's 100% agreement -- that describes very few verses (and is not very interesting). Morgenthaler's statistic is the number of verses where the author of Matthew is dependent on the wording of Mark -- that is where Matthew is copying out of Mark. That is about 90% of the verses of Mark are taken over into Matthew.
Goodness sake, literary criticism is such a joke. I could make any argument to counterbalance against all of these arguments with very little thought. It just takes a good imagination.
The reason that there is no pushback on Marcan priority today is because the gatekeeping at the collegiate level, not because of thinking people are making thoughtful discoveries.
I don't doubt your imagination. I can imagine a scenario where Elvis wrote the first gospel. The question is can you make a compelling, methodologically controlled argument against Markan priority? That is, can you make the kind of argument that would correctly establish the direction of literary dependence in analogous uncontroversial cases which supports your own point of view.
Goodacre's Editorial Fatigue, for instance, correctly identifies the direction of dependence between the two Greek recensions of Tobit. Or between the Hypostasis of the Archons and Genesis.
Also this isn't what scholars call "literary criticism". This good old fashioned historical-critical scholarship.
@@newtestamentreview9931 I believe the question becomes "Can Markan prioritists make a coherent argument?"
It's editorial fatigue if Matthew does it. It's an error of fact if Mark does it.
I'm not against the notion of Markan priority. It's a fine speculation. I am, however, against unsubstantiated claims masquerading around as fact. Biblical scholarship - or the pseudo-scientific discipline of "historical criticism" is full of it.
"Editorial fatigue", so called, could very well be later scribes correcting seeming errors they find in the originals.
It seems just as odd to me that someone who is transcribing word for word would randomly choose to change only one word. Seems much more likely that later scribe would correct for seeming inconsistencies. But again. It's all reaching, unsubstantiated speculation.
@@mikewilliams6025
Wrong on every count. Also, is there some rule that people who disagree in UA-cam comments have to be so uncivil? Sheesh.
First, I don't think you understand editorial fatigue.
It would be editorial fatigue in Mark if within a pericope in Mark there was a characteristic change relative to Matthew (independently corroborated in Mk/Mt material) that generated a narrative inconsistency later in that Markan pericope. Editorial fatigue isn't just differences or "factual errors."
You can "explain" any pattern of data with any model if you're willing to conjecturally emend the text until it fits your theory (by invoking scribes whenever convenient). Textual criticism (like scholarship on the synoptic problem) isn't just people describing the data in light of their ready-made convictions. There are actually methodological controls and canons of evidence that allow us to adjudicate between competing explanations.
Actually, I think it's this last bit that your comments reflect an overall failure to reckon with. History -- like all ampliative reasoning -- is falibilist. You don't get deductive proofs. But it's not arbitrary speculation based on what you are able to imagine. We use the same adjudicatory practices to evaluate competing explanations for the literary relationships between the gospels that we use to evaluate competing explanations for where I left the keys. They're both history -- just with a difference of 2,000 years.
Make a rigorous, methodologically controlled argument against Markan priority. There is no one policing the academic journals or conferences. Heck, a mythicist (whom virtually all scholars think is crazy) published in our fields top journal and presented at the Society of Biblical literature. I don't think he's persuaded anyone, but make your case and you'll get a hearing.
@@newtestamentreview9931 So, in the case of editorial fatigue example given about an earthquake, I think he’s correct. If Mark writes last, constructing a narrative primarily of only where Matt and Luke agree, it wouldn’t at all be unreasonable for Mark to correct a supposed inconsistency by referring to a windstorm. I’m not sure how fatigued I’d have to be to make a change to earthquake on purpose and still quote Jesus as rebuking the wind, but that just seems far less likely than someone who is relying on a source making an inference and correction.
Why do you talk like Zuckerberg?
There's nothing original in the Hebrew language about Jesus, it's all in Greek, which seems to be evidence against historicity of Jesus and even Peter
Why? That makes no sense.
Markan priority is a delusion.
21:24 -- I don't think this is a good example. Danker's concise lexicon says that it is context specific; BDAG notes that Plato uses it to mean a mighty windstorm. LSJ says that it can be any sort of shaking. In fact, Matthew uses the word _seismos_ a few times. He and the author of Revelation are the primary users of this word, and they both understand it as an Earthquake. Matthew specifically says that the "shaking" happens _on the sea._ But it is also true that some ancients thought that earthquakes were most common _in_ the sea, and Poseidon was linked with earthquakes because of this. (I should say, I am emphasizing _in_ and _on,_ and English is the only European language to really do this, but I am aware that _εν_ can mean either _in_ or _on;_ I am interpreting it as _on_ and asserting that.)
I tend to always be biased in favour of a given author's skill, so I would prefer to say it is more likely that Mark read Matthew, thought he worded it weird and fixed it. Or to say that Matthew wanted to play around a bit and changed Mark.
And I'll say this, this is subjective, but using reconstructed Palestinian Koine pronunciation, I find Matthew's sounds better than Mark's.
Mt 8:24a "[cɛ iˈdu], [s̠iz̠ˈmos̠ ˈmɛ.ɣas̠ ɛˈɟɛ.nɛ.to ɛn t̬e tʰaˈla.s̠e]!" (¶ Behold, [a] massive disturbance happened on the sea!)
Mk 4:37a "[cɛ ˈɟi.nɛ.tɛ ˈlɛ.la.ps̠ mɛˈɣa.le (a)ˈnɛ.mu]" (¶ [There] happened [a] massive wind-storm.)
GREAT response, thank you for it. While I’m not taking a stance on what your correction means in terms of Markan/Matthean Priority, I will simply add another, more obvious problem.
30:20 - There is no contradiction between the story in Mark and Matthew about the incredulity of the people at Jesus’ hometown synagogue. The maker of the video quotes Mk 6:5 but leaves out the directly subsequent verse, 6:6, which says: “And he was amazed at their unbelief.” (NRSVCE; this seems to be the translation he is using).
So, Mark says that Jesus performed only some miracles there and was shocked by their lack of belief. Matthew says he “did not do many” miracles there (same thing), and that this was due to their lack of belief (reasonable extrapolation).
It seems in both versions, Jesus decides not to heal anyone just because they’re skeptical about where his powers come from (to be fair, a motif more common in Mark than in Matthew if I remember correctly).
Of course, you can raise some theological/moral issues at this point (why not heal your hometown folk despite their incredulity since it means helping people in need which is Jesus’ whole thing in the first place?; and, maybe healing more people in good faith would’ve eventually convinced more people) but any of those sorts of objections are irrelevant to the topic at hand because the stories are non-contradictory in their portrayal of Jesus, and thus I do not think it fits the Redaction Profile argument.
In terms of hypothesizing explanations for the change in wording, I had originally thought of two, one for each direction of transmission, but I’ve genuinely forgotten what I had in mind for the Matthew-to-Mark direction.
That leaves me with one explanation for now, and ironically it’s the same argument you used but in the opposite direction, to the opposite effect.
The author of Matthew read Mark and decided to make it more clear that Jesus didn’t heal any more BECAUSE of their unbelief. It’s the same argument you make for one author attempting to clarify the text of the other, which obviously means one (Mark in this case) came first. Of course, you can also make the same argument that Mark wanted to play around a bit with Matthew’s wording and changed it (in that case, Matthew came first).
I might make a synthesized argument, though, and say that maybe Matthew wanted to play around with Mark’s wording in the windstorm/earthquake quote and wanted to make Mark’s words more clear in the incredulous Nazarenes quote. This because Matthew would trust, in the context of his time and for the reasons you gave, that his audience would understand a windstorm from his words so it wasn’t a problematic change for him to make there, but really wanted to drive home the fact that Jesus was not incapable AND amazed at their unbelief, but rather that he did not do more works there by choice BECAUSE of their unbelief.
But yeah, that’s just conjecture at this point, obviously. It might just be inconclusive.
It’s only an interesting sidenote to mention that the same story is completely different in Luke. In Luke, a MUCH more detailed account for some reasons, Jesus heals not a single person but instead preempts and shoots down any such healing requests before they can even be made, and then is almost thrown off a cliff. This, in my opinion, is probably therefore a later, legendary retelling. It seems to have the hallmarks of a legendary retelling, the increased detail missing from any other source, the dramatization, etc. You’d think the other versions of the story would’ve preserved at least one of the elements from Luke’s account (no healing at all, attempted murder).
One can make the flimsily argument, though, that Mark and/or Matthew decided to make a watered down version of Luke’s account for some reasons. It seems like a stretch considering how much of the rest of the texts are direct copies word for word as the maker of this video demonstrated. Plus, I don’t know if anyone who argues for Lucan priority anyhow 😂
This is my first time really getting into the thick of the Synoptic Problem, though.
Sorry my reply to you was very long and has some major tangents. Again, I really appreciate your reply. It’s important to look at the earliest wordings in Greek and consult multiple translations and semantic contexts. And I really appreciate this video as a whole by the way, great point are made in it either way!
@@germanshepherd2701 Myself as well. I have always considered the synoptic problem adiaphora, and still do, but sometimes I find the underlying assumptions... odd... like the idea story gets more complex overtime, rather than simpler. A good story teller can gauge his audience and will get simpler or more complex if it suits him.
I don't think think "who would read that and decide not to include it?" is a very good argument for priority. If the author of Mark happened to be skeptical of the most fantastical claims in Matthew, he might have decided to remove them specifically to make the accouht appear more realistic.