The Secondary
Character of Mark
Assuming the validity
of the Two-Gospel Hypothesis, Mark had access to both Matthew and Luke. In the
case of the scribes who loves salutations in the marketplaces, Mark preserved
the less Jewish version of Luke, including the additional offenses mentioned by
Luke. He preserved Luke’s account presumably because it was more understandable
to his Gentile readers.
Watch out for the
scribes, who want to go about in long robes and (who want) salutations
in the market places and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of
honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long
prayers They will receive the greater condemnation. –Mark 13:28-40
Verbatim agreement
between Mark and Luke is indicated by underlining. Luke’s text has been accommodated
for western Gentile readers not well acquainted with Jewish religious and
cultural practices. Luke’s text in this case was apparently well enough suited
for Mark’s intended readers that he could copy it almost word for word.
It may be asked, “Were
Mark’s readers that unacquainted with Jewish customs?” The answer is, “It
appears that they were.” In any case, independent evidence exists that Mark’s
intended readers were unacquainted with the religious practices of Pharisees.
We have a well-known case in Mark’s text where we are offered an extended
explanation of certain Jewish customs. This explanation is not found in the
parallel passage in Matthew.
1 Then Pharisees and
scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,
2 “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do
not wash their hands when they eat.”—Matt. 15:1-2 (RSV)
1 Now when the Pharisees
gathered together to him, with some of the scribes, who had come from
Jerusalem,
2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands defiled, that is,
unwashed.
3 [For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their
hands, observing the tradition of the elders;
4. And when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they purify
themselves; and there are many other traditions which they observe, the washing
of cups and pts and vessels of bronze.]—Mark 7:1-4 (RSV)
The bracketed words
in Mark’s text are regarded as a later explanatory addition by some scholars
who believe Mark to be the earliest Gospel. But no textual evidence supports
this conjecture. Based on the view that Mark is secondary to Matthew, these
sentences could conceivably have been copied first in the margin of a copy of
the Gospel of Matthew that Mark was using. Such an explanatory gloss (or
addition) would serve as a comment on the text of Matthew, to make it more
understandable for Gentile readers of Matthew who needed such clarifying
information. It would be natural for a copy of Matthew circulating as far west
as Italy to b glossed in this way. Theoretically, Mark could have seen the
advantage of copying such an explanatory gloss into the text of his Gospel for
the benefit of his intended readers.
This is one possible
explanation of how this gloss could have come into the Markan text. It could
have happened in any number of other ways. It is even possible that the
evangelist Mark could himself have added these explanatory words. In any case,
all copies of Mark have these words of explanation, and all scholars agree that
they represent a later and more developed form of the Gospel tradition This
kind of expansion, not present in Matthew, is easily explained if Mark wrote
after Matthew.
Weighing against the
explanation of Markan-priority advocates that this gloss was a later addition
is the fact that this is the way Mark reads in all Greek texts that have
survived the ravages of time, as well as in other later versions of Mark in
Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic, among others. The presence of this
explanatory addition in all known texts of Mark constitutes a serious problem
for those who think of Mark as the earliest Gospel. Why would the evangelist
Matthew omit such helpful information? We know that elsewhere in his Gospel,
Matthew explained the meaning of Jewish terms that his readers needed to have
interpreted. For example, in Matt. 1:23, the evangelist explains that the
Hebrew word “Emmanuel” means “God with us,” and again in Matt. 27:33, he
explains that the place called “Golgotha” means “the place of a skull.”
All of the passages
are most easily explained based on a hypothesis that the Gospels were composed
in the sequence: Matthew, Luke, Mark. We should be quick to note, however, that
not all the textual evidence in the Gospels fits so exclusively this one hypothesis.
Some passage can be explained equally well based on other hypotheses. But the
adherents of the Two-Gospel Hypothesis find a comprehensive network of evidence
to support their view, which is stronger than any corresponding network for
alternate hypotheses. This is partly because, while some passages can be
equally well explained under other hypotheses, no passages are known to exist
that cannot be equally well explained based on the Two-Gospel Hypothesis. It is
important to emphasize that many passages like those cited thus far cannot be
explained equally well under the Two-Source Hypothesis. E.P. Sanders has
identified thirty-eight passages spread throughout fourteen chapters in Mark
where he has found scholars who hold to Markan priority who have nonetheless come
to see that the text of Mark is secondary to that of Matthew or Luke, or both,
in at least one or more places [6]. In answering the question “What is the Two-Gospel
Hypothesis?” the sixth point is that according to this hypothesis, Mark
clearly has a secondary character. (William R. Farmer, The Gospel of
Jesus: The Pastoral Relevance of the Synoptic Problem [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 1994], 33-35)
Note for the Above
[6] Mark 1:1, 11, 14,
15, 29, 33, 35; 2:3; 4:31-32; 6:3, 8-9, 13; 7:24-31; 8:27-33; 9:14; 9:30f.; 9:35-37,
43-47; 10:11, 37, 43-45; 11:17, 25; 12:25, 28-34, 36; 13:1-2, 11, 13b;
14:17-21, 22-25, 30, 58, 62, 72; 15:5, 25, 44-45. This constitutes very telling
evidence against the priority of Mark because the scholars making their
critical judgments are effectively hostile witnesses in that they are drawing
attention to evidence that is anomalous to their own theory. Of course, no
single adherent of Markan priority is aware of all this evidence. Such a person
probably would look for another theory. (There is no similar list of passages
that witness against the view that Mark was written third.) C.F. “Suggested
Exceptions to the Priority of Mark,” in Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 290-93. Sanders gives a
brief explanation for each passage and the relevant bibliographical references.
A multiple-sources hypothesis can also explain Sanders’s data. In this case,
though, the Two-Gospel Hypothesis explains the agreements and disagreements
among the three Gospels equally well without appealing to hypothetical sources.
(Ibid., 212)
