The
word πασιν (“everything”) shows the scope of
Luke’s investigation. He wanted to find out all that could be known about Christ’s
life and teaching. Thus Luke’s Gospel commences at an earlier point in time
than either of the other Synoptics and carries through to a later point in
time; it also includes a great deal of Jesus’s teachings (especially in
parables) and a number of his miracles and other events that do not occur
elsewhere. Luke’s interest in tracing the course of everything from the
beginning raises a question about the Markan Priority theory. Why would Luke
have omitted so much of the detailed information of Mark’s Gospel if he used it
as his source? And in particular, why would he have left out completely a
number of Mark’s pericopes, including the entire section Mark 6:45-8:26, often called
“the Great Omission”? Advocates of Markan Priority have suggested a number of possible
explanations: (a) Luke was not interested in points of detail; (b) he already
had stories rather similar to those he omitted; (c) he cut his Gospel to a
length that would fit into a single roll; (d) he considered some of Mark’s
materials irrelevant or theologically objectionable; and (e) the edition of
Mark from which he was working lacked the Great Omission. But the question is
raised in an even more acute form if one is forced to conclude (as many
scholars do) that the most valid explanation of much of the material that Luke
shares with Matthew but not with Mark is that Luke had access to Matthew’s
Gospel. If one seeks to avoid this problem by saying that Luke had access only
to some portions of Matthew, that is in fact to adopt a view similar in
its essentials to the Progressive Publication Hypothesis. But these other
explanations virtually amount to a denial of Luke’s expressed interest in
tracing every aspect of Christ’s life. (B. Ward Powers, The Progressive
Publication of Matthew: An Explanation of the Writing of the Synoptic Gospels [Nashville,
Tenn.: B&H Academic, 2010], 41)