The Modified Augustinian Hypothesis (MAH) regarding Gospel Origins

This is a summary of my findings on Gospel origins, as originally motivated by the Talmud of Jmmanuel document. It takes into account the external evidence and internal evidence, allowing for false representations only where the truth would have proven too embarrassing to early Christian leaders, or too unacceptable to the Gospel writers in carrying out their particular agendas.

The Augustinian hypothesis, as expressed at least in part in writings by Papias, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, as well as by Augustine and later church fathers, has three primary parts:

1. Matthew was the first Gospel written, followed by Mark and then Luke;
2. it (Matthew) was first written in Hebraic form;
3. the Gospels were all written by the men whose names are attached to them.

MAH-A. Considerable validity to the patriarchal evidence. The MAH accepts the first two of the above three parts of the Augustinian tradition as historically correct, but not the third. The lack of any mention of the Gospels until several decades into the 2nd century, the definite appearance only then of quotations from the Gospel of Matthew – but unattributed quotations at first, and the numerous writings ever since that time that relate to the Gospels (by Papias, Justin Martyr, Marcion,...), all point towards the Gospels not having become known until well into the 2nd century. But it must have been embarrassing to early church leaders to have four Gospels appear on the scene attributed to disciples and friends of Peter and Paul (Mark and Luke, respectively) when these persons could no longer be alive. Nor could the apostles Matthew and John still have been alive and active then. Consequently we find no mention of their names in connection with the Gospels until a generation or so had gone by, i.e., until around 140 CE. After another generation or two had passed, i.e., by the time of Irenaeus later in the 2nd century, it had become unacceptable for early Christians to believe anything other than that the Gospels had been written by their attributors. By then it could more easily be assumed that the Gospels had been written at a much earlier date. (The MAH allows that not only does the longer version of Ignatius's epistles contain many Gospel quotations spuriously fed in later, but even the shorter version may contain a few, and similarly the writing of 1 Clement appears to contain a couple of later insertions (in 13:1b-2 and 46:8); i.e., neither the writer of 1 Clement nor Ignatius knew Matthew.)

Considering the first two parts of this tradition, it would be common knowledge, after Hebraic Matthew had come out, that it had been the first gospel. Those in certain house-churches in Rome would know that Mark had been written in response to Matthew, and similarly at the church where the writer of Luke was located and the church where John's writer was located. Those at other churches, too, would know the order in which the gospels had appeared, as several years probably elapsed between their successive appearances. It could not have been kept a secret that Hebraic Matthew had been first, as too many persons in too many places must have known about it. Hence there is no reason that the oral tradition on this would be wrong or could have been invented. If anything, after the anti-gentile Hebraic Matthew was superceded by its somewhat altered, Greek translation (see B. below), there might have been a temptation to invent a rumor that there never had been a Hebraic Matthew that motivated the writing of the other gospels. But since no such rumor was spread, and the potential embarrassment of Hebraic Matthew's primacy was admitted, the apparent truth of its priority deserves our full consideration.

MAH-B. Anti-gentilism within Matthew. A key aspect of the MAH is the importance of the anti-gentile statements in Matthew. These occur at Matthew:

• 1:21, "...and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."
• 5:47, "And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?"
• 6:7, "And in praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do."
• 6:31-32, "Therefore do not be anxious, saying 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles [ethne] seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all."
• 10:5, "These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, 'Go nowhere among the Gentiles [ethnon], and enter no town of the Samaritans.'"
• 10:18, "And you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them and the Gentiles [ethnesin]."
• 15:24, "He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'"
• 15:26, "He answered, 'It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.'" [Here, "children" is widely acknowledged to refer to Israelites and "dogs" to gentiles.]
• 15:31, "...and they [the throng] glorified the God of Israel. [This excludes God from the Gentiles.]
• 18:17, "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile [ethnikos] and a tax collector."
• 24:9, "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations [ethnon] for my name's sake." ["All nations" (panton ethnon) refers to all gentiles.]

Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.

The parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:31-46), which includes gentiles – presumably converted gentiles – among those who might receive the reward of the sheep, may appear to be a relaxation of the writer's anti-gentile attitude. So it does seem that this writer sometimes realized that if Messianic Judaism was to triumph by the time of the End Days, a goodly number of gentiles would need to be converted to it. Presumably these gentiles would be those who "will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven."
     There thus seems to have been a strong three-way tension between the writer of Matthew's cultural dislike of gentiles, his great disappointment over most Jews – led by scribes, chief priests and Pharisees, for not having accepted Jesus as Messiah – and his desire that Jewish Christianity eventually succeed by acquiring sufficient converts, even if gentile converts. If this explanation for this writer's general attitude is not sufficiently satisfying, one may consider the words of Scot McKnight (2001, p. 95): "Any theory [referring to hypotheses on the Synoptic Problem], in fact, that explains everything easily and convincingly is overdoing it."

MAH-C. Reactions to Matthew's anti-gentilism. The relevance of B. above is that the writers of Mark and Luke, along with their associates who strongly favored discipleship for gentiles, must have reacted strongly against Hebraic Matthew's anti-gentile stance. With Christianity having been expanding into gentile lands for the previous half century, those engaged in spreading the good word could not have condoned the appearance of a Gospel limiting discipleship to the children of Israel, no matter how valuable other portions of Matthew were deemed to be. What could they do about it? – pen their own gospels! The writers' feelings show up in their Gospels – in Mark by its omission of Matthew's anti-gentile statements, by its retaliative treatment of the Jewish disciples as being extra dumb and unsuited for discipleship relative to Matthew, and by its omission of much Judaistic material. (For Luke, see E. below.) Although it has been claimed that this negative treatment of the disciples is overstated (Blomberg, 1997, p. 132), that view only holds if Mark is considered to have preceded Matthew. With Matthean priority, Mark's negative view of the Jewish disciples and even of Jews more generally cannot be overstated, as will be seen.
     The writer of Mark may already have held an anti-Semitic attitude. Goodman (1987, p.8) notes that, "Josephus accused the governors of Judaea not simply of incompetence but also of malevolence towards the Jews... Doubtless any such antisemitism may have been simply an irrational dislike of people with idiosyncratic customs, but it may be relevant that most of the procurators were from the Italian gentry and will have known about Jews mostly from the Jewish diaspora in Rome. There a large community had been settled since at least the mid first century B.C., most of them originally brought to Rome as slaves. These freedmen and descendants of freedmen were mostly poor and were, like much of the plebs of the city of Rome, prone to violence. It would not be surprising if most of the governors thus came to Judaea with an unfavourable image of Jews." Judging from 1 Clement, probably written around A.D. 97, there was at that time internal disorder within the church of Rome (as well as in the church at Corinth) involving a jealous zeal of Christians against fellow Christians (Brown and Meier, 1983, p. 179; see also 1 Clement 7:1 and 46:5-7), and this likely included Jewish Christians pitted against gentile Christians. Outside the church, during the Jewish uprisings of 115-117 already mentioned, the Jews had committed horrible atrocities against both Greeks and Romans, according to Cassius Dio (LXXV.31), in Egypt, Cyrenaica and Cyprus; as a result, no Jews were thenceforth allowed to set foot in Cyprus.
     Thus strong anti-Jewish feelings persisted in Rome and other portions of its empire during early 2nd century, when the MAH sees Mark to have been written. It should not be unexpected, therefore, that the writer of Mark, if based in Rome as external evidence indicates, shared in this anti-Jewish sentiment. The church in Rome, with which the writer of Mark must have been associated, is believed to have been made up of individual house churches governed by presbyter-bishops and not by any single bishop, until around A.D. 140-150; single presbyters may have supervised individual house churches, with the church of Rome being "supervised by the collective group of such house-church presbyter-bishops" (Brown & Meier, pp. 163-164,173-175). Thus there was room for diversity in attitudes within the various house churches regarding Jewish versus gentile views, which could encompass the anti-Jewish attitude of the writer of Mark, who may have been an anti-Jewish presbyter or deacon of a gentile-Christian house church. The anti-gentile barbs in Matthew must have contributed strongly, however, towards his motivation for writing a gospel (Mark) that would correct and replace Matthew.
     Brown & Meier (pp. 2-8) identified four basic groups of early Christians ranging from the most strongly Jewish Christians (Group 1, which insisted on "full observance of the Mosaic law") to the most strongly gentile Christians (Group 4, which "saw no abiding significance in Jewish cult and feasts"). The MAH finds the writer of Matthew to be identified most closely with Group 1 and the writer of Mark with Group 4 or beyond. And we find that the anti-Jewishness of Mark, assuming Matthean priority, indicates that the tension between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians in Rome did not rapidly fade away after the time of Paul (see Rom 14-15), but persisted for many decades thereafter.

It seems incredible that with respect to the Synoptic Problem, New Testament scholars have not heretofore taken note of this obvious possibility and explored the implications of an anti-Jewish Mark. It is not a sufficient excuse that after the Markan-priority hypothesis gained hold, by early 20th-century, the new consensus did not have to contend with this embarrassment; they could merely say that, for whatever reason, Mark has its "unflattering warts" and the writers of Matthew and Luke corrected them. An exception is Pierson Parker (1983), who placed Matthew before Mark; he summarized, "He [the writer of Mark] evidently got caught up in the Jewish-Gentile controversy, and was a strong partisan for the Gentile side."

MAH-D. Mark's writer's anti-Judaism and distancing of his gospel from Matthew. It stands to reason that if the writer of Mark wished his gospel to be directed to gentiles and supercede Matthew, he would need to make it look as different as possible from Hebraic Matthew. Yet he had to depend exclusively upon Matthew for all except what he found in a certain short Ur-Mark document (see F. below). He made use of several methods for distancing his gospel from that of Matthew:

1. Omit much from Matthew, especially Judaistic material and teachings that seemed inessential to him, or that he did not make sense of or felt his audience wouldn't, or with which he disagreed. As Ehrman (1997, p. 94) asked, would non-Jews be as interested as Jews and Jewish Christians in adhering to Jewish piety and interpretation of the Law of Moses?
2. Make changes that would directly promote gentiles or not disparage them, or promote gentile not Jewish customs, make changes that would de-emphasize Jesus' Jewish background, and make other changes that would portray the Jewish people and disciples in a bad light, thus indirectly promoting gentiles for discipleship or expressing his anti-Jewish attitude.
3. Expand or alter that which he utilized from Matthew, through use of dualisms or pleonasms, through use of Ur-Mark (see F. below) where applicable, by adding in minor items of supposed fact, by making (or attempting to make) improvements in, and even reverential upgrades to, the Matthean story, and picturing Jesus as a more dominating authority.
4. Often state the same thing as in Matthew but in different terms; i.e., change for the sake of change. (In implementing D.1. the writer usually abbreviated in bulk, causing his gospel to be much shorter than Matthew. In implementing D.2.-4., he in most instances added to the length of the individual pericope he was editing.)
5. Write in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. Thus his gospel would be the first one in the Greek language, understandably with rougher grammar than in Luke and in Greek Matthew, since their respective writer/translator could make use of Greek Mark and improve upon it.
6. Attribute his gospel to some person other than the disciple Matthew, of course. He would not attribute it to Peter, since many of his alterations were designed to make the Jewish disciples look unworthy. But since he had made use of the document that John Mark had once promoted in Rome as Peter's interpreter (see F. below), he named it after Mark, a Latin name. John Mark at least knew Greek and presumably Latin also, and could be considered a more gentile Christian than Peter.

MAH-E. Reaction by the writer of Luke. Regarding Luke, its writer favored inclusion of Jewish background material as well as pro-gentile material. Thus he reinstated within his own gospel much of the Matthean text omitted from Mark. Yet he could not hide his anger at this new, important gospel (Hebraic Matthew) saying that Jesus "was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," when he and his associates had been working for years or decades at converting pagans to early Christianity. He would disclose his anger at Matthew's anti-gentile stance in several ways:
  a) favoring Mark over Matthew – following Mark's text and order where it deviates significantly from Matthew's text or order. This includes instances of omission, where Mark lacks a portion of a pericope it otherwise shares with Matthew, and so Luke also lacks the same portion. This results in many major disagreements between Luke and Matthew's text in comparison with Mark's; however, the writer of Luke could not carry this out so fastidiously as to avoid many minor agreements between Luke and Matthew against Mark, which would show up after Hebraic Matthew had been translated into Greek Matthew.
  b) when incorporating pieces of valuable Matthean material of substantial size omitted by Mark (Q verses), placing them in different, invented contexts than in Matthew, and usually in different sequence. This would show the writer's distaste for Matthew's anti-gentile stance without reproving the writer of Mark for having omitted the verses, while also ensuring that his gospel would not resemble Matthew any more than necessary; and
  c) in places where Mark follows Matthew's order and content closely, showing his disrespect for Matthew more indirectly by either following neither gospel very closely (or recasting), or by following neither at all but often adding in his own special material, of which there was much. His gospel would then look quite different from Matthew, especially since it would be written in Greek not Hebrew.
     To the extent that the writer of Luke felt obliged to incorporate much of the Matthean material omitted in Mark, he can be considered a mediator between the Jewish Christianity reflected in Matthew and the gentile Christianity of Mark. However, the manner in which he incorporated this Matthean material, b) above, reflects an unforgiving attitude against Hebraic Matthew's anti-gentile slurs and statements denying discipleship for gentiles. He may also have been more supportive of gentile than Jewish Christianity, judging from Acts 28:28, in which Paul tells the Jews, "Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen."
   d) Not only would his gospel look different from Matthew, however, it would look different from Mark, too, since it would be much longer then Mark and be written in better Greek, which included removal of most of Mark's pleonasms or redundancies.

It may be noticed that followers of the Griesbach hypothesis (Matthew, Luke, Mark order of gospels) accept the harsher Markan portrayal of the disciples relative to Matthew. They do so, however, without mention of Mark's especially obvious anti-Jewish slant relative to Matthew; they evidently rely on a general scholastic feeling that this is too disgraceful an attitude for a Gospel writer to have held and also for a present-day scholar to reflect upon, so that their silence on this aspect would receive little if any scholarly discussion. On the other hand, by placing Mark last, they can say that the writer of Mark rarely diverged from Matthew in order and content except when he was following the order and content of Luke. In that manner they can avoid any implication that the writer of Luke was a "crank" in his editorial behavior, as has occurred during discussions of the Augustinian hypothesis, where Luke comes after the other two Gospels (Streeter, 1964, p. 94, fn.). The MAH finds he was no erratic "crank," but had all-too-human reasons for his behavior.

MAH-F. Ur-Mark and its shortness. 1. With the MAH, there was an additional motivation for Mark to have been written besides correcting and over-correcting for Matthew's anti-gentile stance. According to Clement of Alexandria, when Peter and Mark were in Rome together they possessed a document that Peter neither discouraged from being read nor urged forward. With the Talmud Jmmanuel (TJ) as a guide, one may infer that this document had been an early attempt at writing down Immanuel's (Jesus') ministry as it progressed, until this Aramaic writing (call it Ur-Mark) was stolen by a young Pharisee so as to turn it over, for a price, to a chief priest seeking evidence of blasphemy. Eventually, after the crucifixion, Ur-Mark was apparently recovered by either Peter or by John Mark in Jerusalem and carried to Rome with them. The point in the TJ where this theft occurred corresponds to Matthew's 12th chapter, which happens to be the very point at which Mark's order of pericopes, from there onwards, follows Matthew's order. The writer of Mark is inferred to have known about this old document at his or another's house-church in Rome, and, when Matthew appeared on the scene, to have noticed that Ur-Mark's contents largely agreed with the contents of Mt 8-11, except for Matthean redactions. So he utilized this Ur-Mark to correct, vivify and amplify upon the corresponding Matthean pericopes, while maintaining Matthean redactions that preserved early Christian orthodoxy.
    We may note that according to Clement of Alexandria, the Ur-Mark document held by Peter and (John) Mark in Rome was neither urged forward by Peter nor strongly forbidden (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Bk 6, 14:6-8). This suggests it contained a few heresies relative to Paul's preaching that didn't bother Peter but which discouraged its active dissemination, allowing it to lie fallow within the church at Rome for many decades before the appearance of Hebraic Matthew there caused Ur-Mark to come to the attention of the writer of Mark.

2. His utilization of Ur-Mark in expanding and vivifying some pericopes served to authenticate part of his gospel, and so he spread out the location of those pericopes into other sections of his gospel in order to enlarge the authenticated region. This caused the order of many of Mark's healing pericopes to differ from that of Matthew – this "improper order" was apparently commented upon by Papias. It would be consistent with this if the writer of Mark added other authenticating touches to his gospel. In particular, he could utilize occasional Aramaic words from Ur-Mark, or perhaps from suggestions by an associate well versed in Aramaic, whose meaning he would explain in his Greek text.
     We cannot be certain, however, that the different order in Mark of a few of the healing pericopes isn't more accurate than Matthew's order, since their order in the Ur-Mark chronicle must have been correct, while the TJ source of Matthew was written years later.

3. It may be mentioned that of the Gospel writers, only the writer of Mark had access to Ur-Mark. However, after the writer of Matthew was done utilizing the TJ in forming his gospel, the writers of Luke and John did have, apparently, some limited access to the TJ. The writer of Mark had no access to the TJ. This information comes from comparing the TJ against the Gospels.
     What Eusebius quotes from Papias may be relevant in support of this: "Matthew compiled the Logia in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could." In speculation, it is possible that before Eusebius had so tersely abbreviated Papias, the original meaning had been that the writer of Matthew worked with an Aramaic document (the TJ) to produce his gospel, and other Gospel writers (writers of Luke and John) interpreted the document as best they could. This is possible because the TJ itself was much too heretical to have received any direct mention. However, dozens of other interpretations of Papias are possible and have been made in the past. In most of them, it is assumed that Papias was referring entirely to the Gospel of Matthew, and/or that the Greek word rendered "interpreted" above means "translated."

MAH-G. The role of Hebraic Matthew's translator. Regarding the translator of Hebraic Matthew into Greek, one must allow that he would make several kinds of changes. He or his church would likely have been persuaded by the time that Mark and Luke appeared, i.e., around 130 CE, that if the Gospel of Matthew weren't made more palatable to gentiles, it would lose its dominance and influence to either Luke or Mark or both within the evangelically expanding Christianity. By this time, the writer of Hebraic Matthew may well have lost his influence within the church or synagogue of Matthew's origin and have been considered too reactionary, or have passed away, leaving the way open for a modest revamping of Matthew by a translator who was not anti-gentile. (The evidence of an underlying Hebraic and/or Aramaic source to our Greek Gospels is really very extensive, as spelled out here.)
     Considering that the Greek grammar in Mark is acknowledged to be quite crude and awkward, the odds are good that this translator of Hebraic Matthew was more skillful in literary Greek than the writer of Mark. Hence, the MAH has this plausible explanation for Matthew's better Greek, since it allows that Greek Matthew was written only after Mark and Luke were available to the translator.      This translator's changes need not have been restricted to the addition of the three pro-gentile passages mentioned in MAH-B. He probably made some reverential upgrades, too. Beyond this, however, how could his translation make it known that Mark and Luke weren't so different from Greek Matthew that either of those gospels wouldn't be considered primary rather than dependent upon Matthew? Their authors had designed their gospels to be as different in appearance from Matthew as feasible. This had to be countered. The obvious way would be for him, in translating Hebraic Matthew's verses to which Mark or Luke had parallels with unaltered meaning, to utilize their Greek, word for word, in those places. Then any scribe who knew both Hebrew and Greek could see that there was a strong dependence there. And since it was well known that Greek Matthew was the offspring of Hebraic Matthew, and was still very similar to it in content, the dominance that had once been enjoyed by Hebraic Matthew within Jewish communities would carry over to Greek Matthew, which, however, would be more acceptable to gentiles. Neither Mark nor Luke could then be considered more primary than Greek Matthew even though Greek Matthew was written afterwards.
     It is noted that the numbers of lengthy strings of identical consecutive Greek words in parallel verses of Luke and Matthew, and of Mark and Matthew, are very significantly greater than can be explained by normal editing. It required purposeful replication by the translator of Hebraic Matthew, with manuscripts of Mark and Luke on hand, to accomplish this. On the other hand, the number of strings of identical consecutive Greek words in parallel verses of Mark and Luke are no greater than is to be expected from normal editing. See Deardorff, 1997, Sec. III. Thus, following the MAH, the translator of Hebraic Matthew into Greek was the "middle term" in explaining the intense verbal agreement between parallel passages of Matthew and Luke (Q verses), and between closely paralleled portions of Matthew and Mark.

MAH-H. Hebraic Matthew's source. Although Hebraic Matthew was the first of the Gospels, it had a definite source, the Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ), which is the main subject of this website. Hence Matthew, from the time of its Hebraic version onwards, contained much evidence of redactions that crept in when heavy editing was required in forming it out of the TJ. For the most part, however, the MAH does not rely upon the TJ other than noting that Hebraic Matthew had a source different from Mark.

It is to be noted that the Augustinian solution to the Synoptic Problem proposed by B. C. Butler (1969) bears some resemblance to the above, in that he allowed that Matthew and Mark could both have been dependent upon a Proto-Matthew. In the MAH, Hebraic Matthew could be called "Proto-Matthew" if desired. However, Butler postulated that Proto-Matthew was written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. Therefore, Butler's solution was missing the role of Hebraic Matthew's translator (G. above). Also missing, however, were the various motivations for the Gospel writers' editorial behaviors. Being an abbot, Butler was probably in no position to delve into improper or repugnent editorial behaviors exhibited by the Gospel writers.
    An earlier proposal by Theodor Zahn (1909) comes closer to the MAH. He proposed a Proto-Matthew written in Aramaic, which was utilized by the writers of both Matthew and Mark. Like Butler, however, his hypothesis lacked realistic motivations for the editorial behaviors of the Gospel writers.

The term "modified Augustinian hypothesis" has previously been briefly applied to Butler's defense of the Augustinian hypothesis by Dungan (1999), who also inexplicably lumped the Farrer hypothesis (a Mark-Matthew-Luke order) in with it.

Arguments against the priority of Matthew by Delbert Burkett,
as nullified by the MAH

Burkett's first argument that applies independently of the language Matthew was first written in is his #11): Mark and Luke do not contain Matthew's "fulfillment quotations," which support the belief that Jesus was the messiah. If coming after Matthew, he reasoned, their writers should be expected to have included those quotations, as they did not object to the messiah concept. Although Burkett allows that an explanation might be put forth to explain this, he leaves this as a probable point against Matthean priority. With the MAH, Mark's omission of these quotations is explained by D.1, and Luke's by E.a). This is discussed in greater detail below under the critique of Stein's argumentation (his 6a, second topic).

The next question that applies is Burkett's #13), concerning Matthew's five end-of-discourse phrases, such as "when Jesus finished these sayings." Mark contains none of them, while Luke contains only one. It seemed more likely than not to Burkett that if Mark followed Matthew, it would have retained these phrases; if the opposite sequence had occurred, he felt that the writer of Matthew would likely have added the phrase. That's possible, but not at all compelling due to the following reasons, which stem from MAH-D.1.
     Matthew's first end-of-discourse phrase, Mt 7:28, comes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, whose entirety Mark omits except for a very few verses. So Mark can't be expected to contain any parallel there to Matthew's end-of-discourse phrase.
     The next occurs at Mt 11:1, which follows a discourse of some 27 verses to which Mark has only 8 scattered verses in parallel. Again, the writer of Mark would therefore not be expected to include an end-of discourse phrase after having abbreviated out so much of the discourse.
     The third occurs at Mt 13:53, the end of Jesus' long series of parables. Here the writer of Mark had omitted 16 verses from Matthew, and at Mk 4:33 ended the parables he had included by stating, "With many such parables he spoke the word to them." Hence no further ending would be needed there that would parallel Mt 13:53.
     The fourth occurs at Mt 19:1. At the corresponding point in Mark – Mk 10:1 – Mark omits 26 Matthean verses, with a verse from the Sermon on the Mount in their place. Thus at this point Mark's writer had not been following Matthew's order, and would not necessarily have felt any need to go back and pick up Matthew's end-of-discourse phrase.
     The fifth occurs at Mt 26:1. At the corresponding point in Mark its writer had just omitted a whole chapter and more of Matthew, going back to Mt 24:42. So once again we cannot expect him to have added a Matthean end-of-discourse phrase after having abbreviated out so much discourse.
     Regarding the writer of Luke, according to the MAH-E.b) he felt obligated to add back in much from Matthew that Mark omits. So he did include at Lk 7:1 one of Matthew's end-of-discourse phrases. But he also wished to support Mark over Matthew where Mark deviates from Matthew. His compromise on this favored Mark by including only one of Matthew's five end-of-discourse phrases.

Burkett's final, relevant topic involved the apparent Matthean interpolations of Mt 9:13a and 12:7: "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'" From MAH-H., one can agree that these are Matthean interpolations, but it was a different source than Mark they were added to. The writer of Mark at Mk 2:17 and 2:26, while following Matthew, could easily decide to omit the two Matthean verses, since to understand them requires knowledge of Hos 6:6 plus other Hebrew teachings – see MAH-D.1 – which gentile Christians in Rome would have no need for.

In summary, Burkett's objections to Mark having made use of canonical Matthew carry no weight against the Modified Augustinian Hypothesis and its priority of Hebraic Matthew.

Arguments against the priority of Matthew by Robert H. Stein, as nullified by the MAH

In chapter 2 of his book, Stein (1987) gives many of the usual arguments in support of Markan priority, and in particular, priority over Matthew.

1. Mark's shortness. Stein starts off by presenting the old argument that the first gospel is likely to be the shortest, with subsequent gospel writers adding to it and thereby increasing the length of their gospels. Indeed, Mark is only some 62% as long as Matthew, and 58% as long as Luke. However, this argument fails if a gospel writer has strong reason to abbreviate his primary source, which the writer of Mark had, according to MAH-D.1. Moreover, as is well known, the Markan pericopes that parallel those of Matthew tend to be longer not shorter, and this destroys Stein's "shortness" argument. Although this was discussed by Stein, he did not distinguish between the omission of large blocks of material deemed inessential or too Judaistic by a writer with an anti-Jewish viewpoint (see MAH-C.) from the expansion and redaction of individual pericopes deemed important and retained. The whole concept of Hebraic Matthew having been especially anti-gentile in tone, and especially offensive to the writer of Mark in Rome, is missing from Stein's presentation, as from NT studies in general.
     And Stein never questioned whether or not the writer of Mark would desire his gospel to be as different as feasible from Matthew, but just assumed that if he were to abbreviate out large chunks of teachings, surely he would also abbreviate everything he wished to retain. Instead, as a bulk abbreviator, the writer of Mark nevertheless betrayed his gospel's secondary nature by expanding upon the individual accounts he retained from Matthew.
     Stein also repeated objections as to why the writer of Mark, if his gospel was second, would omit specific sections, such as the Nativity. Consider, however: He didn't question why Mark includes a clause about Jesus looking around with anger at the Jewish folk in the synagogue (Mk 3:5), why it includes a sentence relating that Jesus' (Jewish) friends were saying that Jesus was "beside himself" (crazy) (Mk 3:21), why it includes the sentence, "He meant to pass by them" (Mk 6:48c) as Jesus was walking on water towards the boat full of (Jewish) disciples in distress, and other anti-Jewish slurs. And so the thought didn't seem to arise that the writer omitted Matthew's nativity account so as to avoid emphasizing Jesus' Jewish step-father and Jewish genealogical line of descent, as well as avoiding unnecessary Scriptural quotations. The revised naming of one of Jesus' brothers, Joseph in Mt 13:55 to Joses in Mk 6:3 (in the nominative case), is consistent with this theme, since the son Joseph was likely named after his Jewish father, Joseph.
     The possibility that the writer of Mark was anti-Jewish in outlook (MAH-C.) as well as aggravated over Matthew's anti-gentile slant (MAH-B.) seems not to have been considered by Stein (and others).
     And why would the writer of Mark omit Matthew's Sermon on the Mount?

• It teaches meekness, turning the other cheek, and qualities at odds with the Markan portrayal of Jesus as one to be treated as royalty and defended militantly (e.g., in Mk 3:9 the disciples are told to get a boat ready for Jesus so that so that the crowd would not crush him, in Mk 4:38 there is the cushion Jesus is said to be asleep on, omitted is Matthew's verse saying "the Son of man has no place to lay his head," in Mk 11:2 the colt that Jesus was to ride on was one that had never been ridden, omitted is Matthew's statement not to use the sword (Mt 26:52), and at Mk 14:51 the consistent interpretation is that the disciples who fled rather than defend their Lord were like a boy who flees away naked).
• It teaches righteousness, particularly in the sense of upholding the laws of the Torah (Mt 5:20). Four other verses in the Sermon also mention righteousness (Mt 5:6,10; 6:1,33) and were therefore also good candidates for the writer's rejection. Mt 23:3, which urges you to practice and observe what the Pharisees tell you, is notably missing (along with most of the other Woe verses), and obedience to that would involve practicing righteousness. Consistently avoided also are the other two Matthean verses involving righteousness: Mt 3:15 and 21:32. In Matthew where Jesus preached that it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles (Mt 15:16-17), in Mark this is expanded to mean that all foods are good to eat (Mk 7:19), in violation of various laws of the Torah. Hence significant parts of the Sermon involving "righteousness" were good candidates for rejection by the writer (MAH-D.1.).
• And perhaps the writer of Mark would not want to be reviled and persecuted so as to be blessed (Mt 5:10).
• In the Sermon Jesus teaches not to be angry, but the evident fact with Hebraic Matthew holding priority – that the writer of Mark seems to have been angry at Matthew's writer for denying discipleship to gentiles, all the while he was writing his gospel – could well have helped cause him to omit Mt 5:22 and its connected verses. And would the writer care for Matthew's teaching of not resisting those who are evil (Mt 5:39)? Of not making any judgments (Mt 7:1)?
• See under this discussion the positive regard held for mammon in Mark versus just the opposite in the Sermon on the Mount.
• Also, the Sermon contains three of Matthew's anti-gentile slurs (Mt 5:47, 6:7 and 6:32).

It is not unreasonable, then, that the writer found so much wrong with the Sermon, and was so intent upon omitting as many large chunks from Matthew as feasible, that he omitted essentially the entire Sermon on the Mount.
     Mark fails to contain not only Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, but other Matthean teaching material. Stein asks if that would be consistent with Matthean priority, in that Mark contains no shortage of brief references to Jesus' teaching ministry. Several points can be made here:
(a) It would be consistent for a bulk abbreviator to form summaries of longer accounts, as with Mark's 2-verse summary (Mk 1:12-13) of Matthew's 11 verses of the Temptations in the Wilderness that included Scriptural allusions. Thus the writer need not have had any aversion towards including brief summaries of Jesus' teachings from Matthew (Mt 4:23/Mk 1:39, Mt 7:29/Mk 1:22, Mt 9:35/Mk 6:6b, Mt 13:54/Mk 6:2).
(b) According to MAH-D.1., teachings that seemed inessential to the writer, or that did not make sense to him, would be prime targets for omission. E.g., he could omit the parable of the eccentric employer (Mt 20:1-16) since it didn't make sense that those who worked one hour would be paid as much as those who worked all day; he could omit the parable of the two sons (Mt 21:28-32) perhaps because he didn't understand the connection between it and harlots, tax collectors and John, and so felt that his readers wouldn't understand it either.
(c) The writer of Mark had access to a short document called Ur-Mark here, according to MAH-F. Being more of a chronicle than later remembrances of the ministry that produced the TJ and then Matthew, Ur-Mark could well have contained a few more healing episodes and summaries of teaching episodes than is found in Matthew. For this reason the writer of Mark may have desired to emphasize Jesus as a teacher as well as a healer.
     Stein includes mention of the resurrection narratives (beyond the empty tomb) as an omission in Mark difficult to understand on the basis of Matthean priority. By MAH-B., however, the only resurrection narrative at that time was Mt 28:16-17, in which the disciples both worshiped and doubted. Mt 28:18-20 were added later by the translator. Because Hebraic Matthew ended on such an ambiguous note, it is understandable that the writer of Mark would have left this brief resurrection narrative alone.

2. Mark's poorer writing style. This argument is based upon the supposition that if Mark was secondary to Matthew, it was secondary to the Greek, canonical Matthew, not Hebraic Matthew. Then it is assumed, rather reasonably, that the writer of Mark would not have "dumbed down" Matthew's better Greek writing style. With the MAH-A., one sees that this line of argument is specious. Indeed, on this one question the MAH agrees in a sense with Markan priority – Mark was the first Gospel written in Greek. So it is not surprising that its use of the Greek language was poorer than in the other Gospels.

The fact that Mark contains more Aramaic expressions than is found in Matthew or Luke, is discussed in this section by Stein. He somehow tries to explain it as being due to the Greek-speaking audiences of Matthew and Luke having no perceived need to hear the Aramaic words. His reasoning here with respect to the MAH is quite deficient. The main audience for Hebraic Matthew was the large Jewish community that had still not accepted the new messianic form of Judaism. They of course would not need any explanation for the meaning of Aramaic or Hebrew words within an Aramaic/Hebrew document. Later, after Matthew was translated into Greek, its Greek-speaking audience would need explanations for Aramaic expressions that were retained. And so the translator provided them, perhaps being prompted by such explanations in Mark.
     Secondly, MAH-F.2. supplies a good reason why the writer of Mark would insert some Aramaic expressions into his gospel. The ones at Mk 3:17 (Boanerges), Mk 5:41 (Talitha cumi) and Mk 7:34 (Ephphatha) are believed here to have stemmed from Ur-Mark. At Mk 15:22, "Golgatha" stemmed from Hebraic Matthew, with the parenthetical explanation added by the writer of Mark, and later added by the translator to Mt 27:33. The Aramaic "Eloi, Eloi" at Mk 15:34 (rather than the Hebrew "Eli, Eli" at Mt 27:47) could have stemmed from Hebraic Matthew, since Aleph and other old manuscripts containing Matthew attest to "Eloi."

Concerning the avoidance in Luke of these Aramaic expressions in Mark, the MAH cannot offer anything definite. It could be due to any of several reasons. The possibility I prefer is that Luke's writer was more sophisticated and experienced at writing than either Mark's writer or Matthew's translator, and knew that adding in parenthetical explanations would detract from, rather than add to, the perceived authenticity of his gospel. The prologues of Luke and Acts suggest that their writer was concerned at providing an appearance of authenticity for the two books, and the lack of continuation of narration in Acts about Paul, shortly before his death in Rome, suggests a concern that his writing be given an early date—many decades earlier than when he wrote it.

Concerning Mark's "rather clumsy redundancy," Stein has no explanation other than treating it as more of the poor writing style of Mark's writer. He considers it to be a purely Markan stylistic feature, cleaned up by gospel writers who followed Mark. He gives reasons it could not be due to the writer of Mark having conflated Matthew and Luke, as backers of the Griesbach hypothesis have proposed. However, the solution provided by MAH-D.3. & 4. was not mentioned by Stein. The thought just never seems to arise within NT scholarship that the writer of a gospel who must depend upon a previous gospel for most all his material would want his gospel to be different in content and appearance from the gospel he copied from, while still telling the essence of the story. And indeed, after the several types of changes the writer of Mark made in this respect (MAH-D.), Mark is sufficiently different from Matthew that many scholars object to the word "copied" being used here. To recap, Stein has no satisfactory explanation for the 116 or so pleonasms (or dualisms or redundancies) in Mark's text paralleled by Matthew.

3a. Mark's harder readings: Apparent limitation of Jesus' power or influence. Stein gives two of three examples where Mark reads like "he healed many" (in Mk 1:32-34a and 3:9-10), while the parallels in Matthew and Luke refer to "healing them all." Here it is surmised that these are two instances in which the writer of Mark had utilized Ur-Mark, which had been written "on the spot," so to speak, rather than relying just on the Matthean account that had come from remembrances (in the TJ) some years after the events. See MAH-F.1. Therefore, in these two pericopes the Markan accounts are more vivid and detailed than their Matthean parallels. They are likely more accurate, therefore. The tendency in writing events from years-old memories is to generalize, as from "many" to "all"—those few who weren't healed are forgotten or ignored in comparison with the many who were healed.
     In his third example, Mt 13:58/Mk 6:5-6, Stein compares Matthew's "And he did not do many mighty works there" with Mark's "And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them." Here one is hard pressed to say which reading is the "harder," since the "except" clause in Mark fully compensates for the "not do many mighty works" clause of Matthew. I find it's a toss-up. It's an example of Markan "change for the sake of change," MAH-D.4.; it's not a variant related to Ur-Mark, which writing had been aborted due to theft at an earlier point corresponding to about the beginning of Matthew's chapter 12.

It would have been fair if Stein had presented some examples that point to redaction in the opposite direction. For example, in Mk 2:12 we read: "And he [the paralytic] rose, and immediately took up the pallet and went out before them all; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We never saw anything like this!'" The Matthean parallel (Mt 9:7-8) reads, "And he rose and went home. When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men." We see here that the writer of Mark did not wish to dilute the power and authority of Jesus by implying that men had this same authority to heal, as stated in the Matthean parallel. Matthew has the harder reading.
     As another example, in Mk 3:3 we read: "And he said to the man who had the withered hand, 'Come here' (or 'Rise into the midst' in the Greek)." Then followed the healing. In Matthew's parallel (Mt 12:10-11) there is no such corresponding command. It appears to be a Markan addition designed to further portray Jesus as a commanding figure with greater authority. If Mark were written first and Matthew second, one would not expect this command to be absent from Matthew. Mark has the easier reading.
     As a third example, in Mark's version of the feeding of the five thousand the following clause (Mk 6:41-43) occurs that's not in the Matthean parallel (not in Mt 14:19): "and he divided the two fish among them all." This appears to be a Markan improvement over Matthew as well as an insertion for the sake of change. Although in Matthew it is mentioned how the loaves were distributed by the disciples, there is no explicit mention of the distribution of the fish. The writer of Mark thus corrected this oversight in his gospel. By so doing, he heightened Jesus' powers. At the same time, he added to the reverential aspect by specifying that it was Jesus, not the disciples, who should receive full credit for the multiplication and distribution of the fish. Matthew has the harder reading.
     As a fourth, consider that Mk 8:34 reads, "And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, 'If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.'" In contrast, the Matthean parallel (Mt 16:24) just starts out, "Then Jesus told his disciples, 'If any man would come after me...'" This then is an upgrading of Matthew by the writer of Mark, having the purpose of showing that a message of which he particularly approved had gotten across to a much larger audience (the multitude) than to just the disciples. Here in Mark, Jesus has greater influence.
     In the parable of the vineyard at Mk 12:9, Jesus asks the chief priests, scribes and elders in the temple what the owner of the vineyard would do about the killings by the vineyard tenants. Then he immediately answers his own question in 12:9b. However, the reason for speaking a parable is to try to get one's listeners to do the thinking and answering of questions for themselves. In the Matthean text that the writer of Mark was following here (Mt 21:40-41), the question was indeed answered by the listeners of the parable, not by Jesus. We may then infer that the Matthean form of this verse is the harder reading and the more original. The writer of Mark is seen to have been motivated to make the change primarily so that Jesus would be the sole teacher, fully in control, and would not be dependent upon the chief priests, scribes and elders to provide an answer.
     As a sixth example, we have the Markan story at 14:13-17 in which Jesus provides prophetic instructions to two disciples whom he sends out to prepare the Passover meal. In the Matthean version, Mt 26:18-19, Jesus displays no power of clairvoyance, but just tells the two the name of the person to go to. Thus the Matthean version is the harder reading, as the Markan version displays Jesus' powers of foreknowledge.

3b. Mark's harder readings: Negative descriptions of the disciples. Along with the scholarly consensus, Stein has no explanation for these negative descriptions. MAH-C. & D.2. were unknown or unacceptable to him.

3c. Mark's harder readings: Miscellaneous theological issues. In Mt 19:17 an unknown person "came up" to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" The reply is, "Why do you ask me about the good? One is the good." (Here a close translation to the Greek is used.) In the Markan parallel, Mk 10:17-18, we read, "a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, 'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' And Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.'" Stein, along with most Bible text, interprets the final response in Matthew as "One there is who is good." This then is considered an easier reading than Mark. However, as pointed out by Lamar Cope (1976), Matthew's "the good" was a rabbinic term for the Torah. Many Gospel scholars are unaware of that, and, by the MAH, the writer of Mark in Rome was most likely also unaware. Thus he attempted to improve upon the Matthean verse and remove its ambiguity. This he did by writing Jesus' response in authoritative terms. But in so doing and writing, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone," he introduced the more serious problem of Jesus not being good. Thus a failed Markan improvement is nowadays incorrectly considered to be an unexplained and harder reading. And let us notice that the Markan verses are otherwise a reverential upgrade of Matthew: Jesus is called "Good Teacher," not just "Teacher," and the man kneels before Jesus, which reverence is not in Matthew.
     Stein's second example in this category has already been mentioned under discussion of his "Mark's shortness" section. He can give no explanation as to why, in Mk 3:5, Jesus looks around at the persons in the synagogue with anger, and can only say it's a harder reading of Mark. With MAH-C. & D.2., it's merely one of many Markan anti-Jewish slurs in retaliation of Hebraic Matthew's anti-gentile slurs.
     His third example occurs in Mk 2:26 where the writer adds to the Matthean parallel (at Mt 12:3-4) by saying Abiathar was high priest at the time of the incident. It is known that, instead, it was Ahimelech who was high priest then. Stein considers this a "harder reading" for Mark, which the writer of Matthew avoided, whereas by the MAH-D.3. it is no less likely that the writer of Mark was adding to Matthew to help make his gospel less identical to Matthew, but in this case made a factual mistake. That the writer of Mark was woefully ignorant of Judaism has been brought out by Pierson Parker (1983).
   It may also be noticed that in Mark the disciples pluck the grain as if for no good reason (Mk 2:23), whereas in Matthew they had cause: they were hungry (Mt 12:1). The omission of their hunger could well have been purposeful by the writer of Mark in order to portray the disciples in a poorer light than in Matthew (MAH-D.2.).

4. The scarcity of major Matthew-Luke agreements against Mark: The argument from agreements in verbal content and in order. Here Stein discusses the fact that in the triple tradition (where all three Synoptics contain the same material in general) the content and order of Matthew and Mark is nearly the same, and so also between Mark and Luke, but not so between Matthew and Luke. He suggests that Markan priority, with Matthew and Luke independent of each other, best explains this. Although he allows that other possibilities can explain it if Matthew and Luke are not independent, he notes that those possibilities are ruled out if "Q" exists, which he favors but the MAH rules out. However, MAH-E.a) half explains these lack of major agreements: the writer of Luke showed his strong preference for pro-gentile Mark over anti-gentile Hebraic Matthew by following Mark's content and order where Mark deviates from Matthew's order and/or content. This left a strong majority of instances with Mark and Luke in good agreement but not Luke and Matthew.
   The other half of the explanation, in the triple tradition, is that where Mark follows Matthew closely, the writer of Luke avoided showing any support for Matthew by not following either very closely (MAH-E.c)), thereby leaving many minor instances with Matthew and Mark in good agreement. In so doing, he was not showing his usual preference for Mark because it follows Matthew closely. It is also to be noted that those places where the writer of Mark omitted most but not all the Matthean passage, and the writer of Luke felt obligated to reinstate it using Matthew, became places displaying major agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark. They are also sometimes called Mark-Q overlaps.
   By Stein's reckoning, the present MAH solution would probably fall under his umbrella of "insurmountable problems" requiring the existence of "Q". That is, it is totally unacceptable (an insurmountable problem) to a majority of NT scholars that the Gospel writers would exhibit their anti-gentile or pro-gentile and anti-Jewish feelings through their editorial behavior. Concerning the strong case against "Q", the work of Michael Goulder (1989) and web site of Mark Goodacre are quite revealing.
   It needs mentioning that the writer of Luke could not be absolutely consistent in his anti-Matthean editorial behavior, and so minor agreements between Luke and Matthew against Mark do exist.

5. Some literary agreements explained by Markan priority? Here, if we focus upon Matthew and Mark, Stein first considers the difference between their accounts of the healing of the paralytic (Mt 9:1-2 and Mk 2:1-5). Mark has the fuller, more vivid account that portrays the resolve of the men with the paralytic to bring him in past the crowd to where Jesus can heal him. The details in this pericope are seen here to have stemmed from Ur-Mark (see MAH-F.1.), though with the declaration "your sins are forgiven" from Matthew having been included by the writer of Mark. It is entirely understandable that when Matthew's source (the TJ) was written years later than Ur-Mark, many details were omitted and/or forgotten that had been included in Ur-Mark. Hence Matthew lacks some of the detail of Ur-Mark.
     Stein makes mention also of the extra details in Mk 5:29-33,35-37 not in Matthew's parallel at Mt 9:18-26. Since this was an incident occurring after the Sermon on the Mount and before Matthew 12, it is also a prime candidate to have been in Ur-Mark (again, MAH-F.1.). Hence I regard portions of it that were not redacted by the writer of Mark as having priority over Matthew.
     Interestingly, in discussing these episodes, Stein reasons that it was typical of the writer of Matthew to abbreviate individual accounts in Mark, while expanding his gospel otherwise. With the writer of Mark, Stein did not want to allow the reverse: that he would expand upon the individual accounts he wished to retain from Matthew while abbreviating much else by simply omitting large chunks.
     The next example concerns the difference in wording between Matthew's

"And having been baptized, Jesus immediately went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened..." (Mt 3:16, Greek transliteration),

"Jesus...was baptized...And immediately, going up out of the water, he saw the heavens being rent..." (Mk 1:9-10, Greek transliteration).

6a. The argument from redaction: Matthean redactional emphases compared with Mark (and Luke). Stein's first topic here concerns the frequent use of "Son of David" in Matthew (some 11 times) versus only some four times each in Mark and Luke. In the four pericopes he discusses, he finds it more convincing that the writer of Matthew added many of these than that the writers of Mark and Luke omitted them. However, he did not know that the MAH arguments well explain them. Three of them are:
   Mt 12:22b-24/Mk 3:22/Lk/11:14b-15, explained by MAH-D.1. & E.a);
   Mt 21:12-15/Mk 11:15-17/Lk 19:45-46, also explained by MAH-D.1. & E.a); and
   Mt 21:9/Mk 11:9-10/Lk 19:37b-38. In this latter one, the writer of Mark is seen to have omitted "to the Son of David" after "Hosanna" in Matthew, as could be expected by MAH-D.1. However, immediately following he utilized "David" in an awkward extra verse: "Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming." This easily fits into the category of using "David" for the sake of "padding" or change for the sake of change (MAH-D.3.); most of that Markan verse (11:10a) probably qualifies as a pleonasm.
   In a fourth pericope, Mt 15:21-27/Mk 7:24-27, the explanation for Mark's omission of "Son of David" again is MAH-D.1. – the writer of Mark often omitted Judaic material if it was inessential, although this doesn't mean he was consistent or rigorous in so doing. The writer of Luke omitted this pericope entirely, instead of supporting Mark by including a version that would parallel Mark much more closely than Matthew. In speculating as to why, several possibilities arise. One is that he felt that the writer of Mark had too flagrantly altered Matthew in changing the Canaanite woman into a Greek Syrophoenician, so he omitted the pericope entirely rather than follow Matthew. A second is that the writer of Luke understood what "take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs" meant in Matthew, which the writer of Mark included, apparently in ignorance of its anti-gentile meaning. So Luke's writer omitted the entire pericope. A third possibility is that, since the writer of Luke had had a chance to read the TJ before writing or finishing his gospel (see MAH-F.3.), and so knew that the pericope had been invented by the writer of Matthew, he would not include it. If so, however, he was not at all consistent in this regard. I tend to favor the second possibility.

Stein's second topic here involves the formula quotations "this was to fulfill...", which occur in some 11 Matthean verses. In six of these Mark and Luke contain neither a parallel to the formula quotation nor to the Matthean pericope leading up to it: Mt 1:22, 2:15, 2:17, 2:23, 4:14, and 27:9. This is exactly as per MAH-D.1. & E.a): Luke follows Mark where Mark deviates from Matthew, thus rewarding the writer of Mark for his deviance.
     In four other cases, there are parallel passages in Mark and Luke to the Matthean pericopes leading up to the fulfillment quotation, but again no fulfillment quotations in either. These are the Matthean passages: Mt 8:17, 12:17, 13:14 and 21:4. Again this is as per MAH- D.1. & E.a): Luke follows Mark where Mark deviates from Matthew, with Mark's deviation being not so great as to include omission of the associated pericope.
  Regarding Mt 8:17, the writer of Mark certainly did not wish to omit the pericope of Jesus healing the sick, which was likely present in Ur-Mark, too; so he retained it (Mk 1:32-34) while omitting the fulfillment quotation which followed.
  Regarding Mt 12:17, a healing pericope led up to this fulfillment quotation, which the writer of Mark could not have wished to omit (Mk 3:10).
  Regarding Mt 13:14, the writer of Mark understandably retained some of Matthew's preceding pericope about why Jesus spoke in parables, at the end of which he could add a verse denigrating the disciples' intelligence (Mk 4:13).
  Regarding the pericope immediately preceding the fulfillment quotation of Mt 21:4, this concerned Jesus' sending two disciples into Jerusalem to secure an animal for him to ride on into the city. This was an important part of the passion narrative that Mark could not have skipped over, though he could easily omit the Scriptural fulfillment quotation.
     In the remaining case, Mt 26:54,56, Mark contains the associated pericope and the fulfillment quotation as well (Mk 14:49). However, this concerns a general reference to letting the scriptures of the prophets be fulfilled, with no scriptural quotation. Even more important, the writer of Mark would have to include it in order that some explanation be given why Jesus allowed himself to be captured and arrested. And, no surprise to the MAH, Luke does not contain any allusion to the scriptures here. This simply follows MAH-E.1. Where Mark follows Matthew, that's where the writer of Luke felt free to deviate from both. However, Stein argued that this particular case indicates there was no Markan reluctance to include scriptural material, so that the general absence of the fulfillment quotations in Mark and Luke relative to Matthew could best be explained by Matthew having added them to Mark. The idea that all this is perfectly consistent with a plausible solution to the Synoptic Problem (the MAH) that takes into account Mark's "harder readings" and the external evidence, was apparently quite unknown to Stein (1987). My book on the subject came out only later (Deardorff, 1992).

6b. The argument from redaction: Markan stylistic features compared with Matthew. The first feature Stein considers here is Mark's excessive use of the word "immediately," (euthys or eutheõs in Greek). Whether one knows Greek or not, its excessive use there is apparent. It occurs 41 times in Mark but only 18 times in Matthew, 14 of which are in verses with Markan parallels. He reasons that if Mark followed Matthew, then Matthean material not in Mark (M and Q) should contain the word a considerable number of times, roughly in the ratio of:
(a) the number of Matthean words in verses not having Markan parallels (7,392), to
(b) the number of Matthean words in verses that do have Markan parallels (10,901).
This ratio is 0.68. Since "immediately" occurs 17 tmes in (b), Stein expects it to occur some 0.68 x 17 = 12 times in (a), not just twice (in Mt 14:31 and 25:15 or 16). (He does not include Mt 14:31 as an M verse, a Matthew-only verse, though it lies within the four verses of Peter walking on the water, not in Mark. It may be that in defining parallel text, he was dealing with the text at the pericope level, while I dealt with it at the verse or half-verse level.) So he reasons that Matthew's use of the word resulted from its having been derived from Mark, with some of Mark's excessive uses omitted. It certainly does appear that the translator of Hebraic Matthew was inclined to use the word only when his Aramaic text called for it (shaah), and not to use it just to denote a temporal sequence or even as a conjunction, as the writer of Mark often did. Of the 14 times that both Mark and Matthew use euthys or its alternate in parallel passages, I find that 13 make good or very good sense in terms of "immediate," with only 1 (in Mt 14:22) being unnecessary (however in some Matthean manuscripts the word is absent at 14:22). On the other hand, of the 15 times that Mark contains euthys and Matthew has a parallel passage but the word does not occur there, I find that 8 of them constitute poor or very poor usage in Mark, 6 are not needed, and 1 is not absolutely necessary. So this is quite consistent with the translator of Hebraic Matthew knowing when to properly use the word and not use the word, during his translation.
   However, from a perspective of Matthew's translator or writer having used the word because he copied it from Mark, there are 4 instances in which Matthew uses the word but it is not in Mark (as noted by Stein), versus the 14 times Matthew uses the word and it is in a Markan parallel. I believe we should be comparing these 4 against 14, not 1 against 14. I.e., if Matthew was formed out of Mark, there are 4 instances in which its use of "immediate" did not depend upon Mark.
   One may nevertheless ask Stein's question, of why euthys or eutheõs does not appear considerably more than once or twice in the M & Q verses. Those verses include Matthew's genealogy, Sermon on the Mount, some parables and teachings where no sequence of actions is involved, and many isolated verses where "immediately," had it been present, could not have been divorced from its preceding verse. Hence we see that "immediately" occurs relatively more often within verses of narration than verses of discourse. If (a) and (b) above are restricted to verses of narration (distinguishing them down to the 1/2-verse level), one finds the ratio of interest to be 0.39, not 0.68. Hence a more reasonable statistical expectation would be for 6 occurrences in M & Q, not 12, compared with the 2 occurrences so far discussed.
   The actual subject matter of M & Q, along with what the writer of Mark chose to retain from Matthew, needs to be taken into account also. One is hard pressed to look over a list of M verses, and of Q verses, and find more than the two spots already mentioned where euthys in its sense of "immediately" would be appropriate. It might be thought appropriate for use in the pericope of the healing of the centurion's servant (at Mt 8:13b, not in Mark), but there the healing took place "in that hour" (according to the Greek text) rather than "at once." On the other hand, what the writer of Mark chose to retain from Matthew most notably included passages involving action, and Jesus' ministry with its temporal sequence of events and immediate healings. All that included many verses where use of "immediate" was appropriate, but by definition those verses cannot appear in M & Q.
   Therefore, the burden is upon the supporter of Markan priority to point to a significant number of M & Q verses where the proper use of euthys would have been appropriate.

     Stein's second subject on stylistic features concerns the circumstances under which the Greek gar (or "for," the conjunction that provides a connection to an immediately following explanatory sentence or clause) is used in Matthew versus Mark. Both use the word quite frequently. Some of these uses of gar are editorial, i.e., used in the narration – 11 of them in Matthew, of which Mark has 10 parallels, and 34 in Mark. Mark contains some 25 more usages of the editorial gar not paralleled in Matthew. If Matthew followed Mark, shouldn't one expect that Matthew would contain more than just 29% (10/34) of Mark's editorial gar's? However, Stein doesn't ask that question. Instead, he asks, why in the Matthean verses not paralleled within Mark (M & Q) does the editorial gar occur only once, while occurring 10 times in the verses paralleled by Mark? Again using the 0.68 ratio of (a) to (b), Stein expects that Matthew should contain about 7 (68% of 10) gar clauses within its M & Q verses, not just 1. Thus Stein reasons that Markan priority explains this – the writer of Matthew followed Mark and used its editorial gar's, except for the 25, which Stein apparently accepts as redactional insertions by the writer of Mark ("probably not part of the tradition that Mark used"). He does not suggest any source material to which the writer of Mark added these insertions, but with the MAH, that source was Hebraic Matthew.
   However, there is an important question as to just what an editorial gar, or editorial comment, is, and what Stein meant by it. He referred (p. 83) to Mt 7:12 as containing one of them, which occurs within discourse of Jesus. If such discourse is allowed as being "editorial," then there are very numerous examples of the "editorial gar" in the M and Q verses, not just one. Here we must assume this was a typo; neither of us believes that Jesus wrote any of the Gospels (though an implication of the MAH-H. is that Immanuel or Jmmanuel dictated most of the TJ to his trusted writer years after his survival of the crucifixion). Another question arises from Stein's footnote 43, in which he doesn't include the gar occurring in Mt 28:2 as editorial, saying it "is part of the account itself." Yet it was an explanation by the writer of that account, which fits his definition of being editorial though it and others are not obvious parenthetical expressions. Moreover, there are several instances in the M verses where editorial gar occurs as spoken through words stemming from the writer – how the writer acquired them may be uncertain. Why shouldn't these be considered "editorial gars," especially for a hypothesis that assumes the writer or editor invented the account? Examples occur in Mt 1:20 (spoken by an angel), 2:2,5 (spoken by the Magi), 2:13,20 (spoken by an angel)? Many Markan priorists assume that these and other aspects of the Nativity account in Matthew are redactions or stem from legends (e.g., Beare, 1981), so shouldn't they consider the "explanatory gars" occurring therein to be editorial? And how about Mt 13:15, which contains a gar explanatory clause in a rendering of the LXX version of Is 6:9-10? In the LXX here gar is not present, indicating this was an editorial change wrought by the writer of (Hebraic) Matthew, later translated utilizing gar. This occurs in an M verse. If these considerations are taken into account, we find from 2 to 6 more, or up to 7 in all, uses of the gar explanatory clause that could qualify as editorial, in Matthean verses not in Mark.
   In addition, however, one again needs to take into account the subject matter of the M & Q verses, on the one hand, and the Markan material its writer favored retaining and omitting from Matthew, on the other, if statistically comparing word usage between the two, using an Augustinian or MAH perspective. A large fraction of Matthew missing from Mark is comprised of Jesus' discourses, which by definition contain no narration and thus no editorial gars, while what its writer most favored was Jesus' ministry in action, which involved a good deal of narration. This distinction should have been taken into account, and we should be comparing the narration verses. Of a total of about 504 verses in M & Q, only 106 involve narration. Of a total of about 535 verses in Matthew that have parallels in Mark, about 270 are narration. The ratio of narration verses in M & Q to narration verses in Matthew with parallels in Mark, is 0.39. Thus, at the most, Stein should be using a statistical percentage of 106/270 = 39%, not 68%, giving 4 expectations of editorial gars in M & Q rather than 7 expectations. And we found up to 7 depending upon how one defines "editorial" gar.

     In a footnote, Stein mentions that a third stylistic feature of Mark that may have bearing on the Synoptic Problem is its frequent use of the historic present ("and he comes, and says, and heals, and goes"). Mark contains it about three times more frequently than does Matthew. This has sometimes been argued to be in favor of Markan priority, but apparently without due regard for the MAH. With the MAH, one may allow that it reflects underlying Semitic usage within the sources of Mark and Matthew, which carried over into the Greek in Mark. Its less frequent usage in canonical Matthew then reflects greater concern for Greek literary correctness by the translator of Hebraic Matthew than by the writer of Mark.

7a. Mark's more primitive theology. Here Stein considers the Christological title "Lord." He pointed to a dozen places in the triple tradition where Matthew uses "Lord" but the parallels of Mark instead make use of "teacher," "master," "rabbi" or no special title. By MAH-G., this strongly implicates the translator of Hebraic Matthew in reverential upgrading while forming his Greek text. Such minor alterations would have been especially simple for the translator to make, as they could be implemented even without close examination of the copies of Mark and Luke he had on hand. This is not some "convenient" aspect of a hypothesis designed to explain away criticisms from competing hypotheses. It is instead an essential aspect of a hypothesis built largely upon those portions of oral tradition (the external evidence) having no logical reason for being false – Hebraic Matthew was written before Mark (and translated later).

7b. Mark's more advanced theology (not mentioned by Stein). With either the Augustinian hypothesis or the MAH, one expects that indications may exist of the writer of Mark having advanced his theology over that of Hebraic Matthew. If so, Mark's theology should appear, in different locations of the gospel, both more primitive and more advanced. Examples of the latter are:

• Mk 1:1 substitutes "son of God" for Matthew's "son of David" (Mt 1:1).
• Mk 1:8 has "...he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" while Mt 3:11 has it "...he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Elimination of "and with fire" eliminates the association of Jesus with the symbol of hell.
• Mk 1:34b reads "and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him," which is not present in the Matthean parallel at Mt 8:16. It might be thought to be an addition inserted to bolster Jesus' image as an authority figure so deserving of respect that even possessing demons would not speak out if he ordered them not to. However, the more basic MAH explanation for the Markan emphasis upon the Messianic secret holds that such was a "secret" to be kept only from the Jews. See the discussion under Ehrman.
• Mk 3:29; here Mark omits "And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven," which is present in Matthew's parallel at Mt 12:32. It should be self-explanatory why the writer of Mark omitted it: Disrespect towards Jesus should be discouraged, not tolerated.
• Mk 5:6; here the Gerasene demoniac sees Jesus from afar, and then runs and worships him. In the Matthean story (Mt 8:28b) the two demoniacs simply come out of the tombs and meet Jesus – no worshiping. Thus this is a Markan editorial touch of added reverence towards Jesus. However, the MAH allows that Mark's one demoniac may be more correct than Matthew's two, as the Markan account may have made use of Ur-Mark, while the Matthean account came from an older memory.
• Mk 5:19 reads "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." The verse has no parallel within Matthew although it has the same pericope about the Gerasene demoniac (Mt 8:28-34). The verse and its following one were probably added for the purpose of having the good word be spread in a gentile land, because the healed man is said to have then gone home to the Decapolis.
• Mk 7:25; this verse occurs in the pericope of the Syrophoenician (a Greek, i.e. gentile) woman whose daughter was possessed. In the parallel Matthean verse (Mt 15:22), where she is a Canaanite (non-gentile), she comes forth to Jesus and makes her plea. But in this Markan verse she first prostrates herself at his feet. The gentile supplicant thus showed proper respect for Jesus.
• Mk 8:35; here the writer of Mark showed his interest that the gospel – a tangible written account of how to be a Christian – be shown the same respect and priority as the name of Jesus itself. Thus he added "and [for] the gospel's [sake]" to the Matthean parallel he was following at that point (Mt 16:25). If Matthew had followed after Mark, its writer would have had no reason whatsoever to remove this phrase about the gospel.
• Mk 9:47; Mark reads: "..it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell." The Matthean parallel (Mt 18:9) reads: "...it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire." Mark's "kingdom of God" is a reverential upgrading of Matthew's "life."
• Mk 10:17 portrays a man running up to Jesus, kneeling before him and addressing him as "Good Teacher." In the Matthean parallel (Mt 19:16) the person simply comes up to Jesus and addresses him as "Teacher," without any kneeling or prostrating of himself. The Markan version is a significant upgrading in reverence, being twofold in character.
• Mk 10:50 states that the blind man who was about to have his sight restored threw off his outer garment, leaped up and came to Jesus. This was amongst a crowd along the road from Jericho. In the Matthean verses being followed at this point (Mt 20:32-34 along the road from Jericho) Jesus asks the blind men what they want, and then he touches their eyes to restore their sight. Presumably Jesus walked up to them to do this, as nothing to the contrary is mentioned. Thus the writer of Mark has made Jesus into a more respected figure here by having the blind man rush to Jesus without any implication that Jesus came to him. See Deardorff (1992) for explanation of Mark's blind man here being two blind men in Matthew.
• Mk 10:52; at the end of this same pericope, the writer of Mark similarly enhances the image of Jesus as a commanding figure by having him tell the man with the restored sight to go (depart), which command was not in the parallel Matthean source. (Then the writer of Mark went back to following Mt 20:34c by having the man follow Jesus, forgetting that his added sentence had just ordered the man to "Go.")
• Mk 12:6; in the Markan form of the parable of the wicked tenants, the owner of the vineyard finally sends his "beloved son" to collect some of the fruit. In Matthew (21:37) it is just "the son" who is sent in this third attempt by the owner. The Markan version is a substantial upgrading of Matthew, and makes the point clearer that this son represents Jesus in the parable, since "my beloved son" is what he was called in Mk 1:11 & 9:7. The writer of Luke (20:13), as customary with him, tended to follow Mark's alterations from Matthew; in particular, he retained the "beloved" son, as would be expected.
• Mk 12:27b; at the end of the short discourse to the Sadducees on resurrection, one finds the following statement coming from the lips of Jesus: "You are quite wrong." This sentence does not occur in Matthew's parallel (Mt 22:23-32), and therefore stands out as a Markan addition to Matthew because it makes Jesus more of an authority figure. It is less plausible that the writer of Matthew, had he been following Mark, would have removed this statement indicating that Jesus was an absolute authority who could rightfully judge and pronounce others incorrect.
• Mk 12:36, within the "Son of David" pericope, reads, "David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand...'". This is a close parallel to Mt 22:43-44, except that in Matthew it is just "Spirit," not the more Christological "Holy Spirit." Thus this represents a reverential improvement by the writer of Mark. If viewed the other way around, the writer of Matthew would not likely have downgraded Mark's Holy Spirit to Spirit, had he been copying from Mark. He had nothing against the phrase, as he used "Holy Spirit" five times in his gospel.
• Mk 15:32 reads, "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Its parallel, Mt 27:42b, on the other hand reads: "He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him." We see that in Mark, "the Christ" occurs in place of Matthew's "him." This is a reverential upgrading, pure and simple.
• Mk 15:44-45; at this point, when Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and requested Jesus' body, Pilate wondered if he were already dead, summoned a centurion to ask him, and learned that he had been declared dead. There is no equivalent to this in Matthew (Mt 27:58-59). It appears to be a Christological upgrade to confirm, more convincingly than is presented in Matthew, that the man had really died on the cross, a belief that is demanded of fundamentalist Christians (1 Cor 15:3-4).

These examples by no means exhaust the indications of Markan dependence upon Matthew. More Markan improvements upon Matthew can be found here, and other indications of Markan awareness of the Gospel of Matthew here.

In this web page we have concentrated on how the MAH explains the priority of Matthew over Mark. We have not delved much into the evidence indicating Luke's dependence upon both Matthew and Mark. The presently most accepted hypothesis (two-source hypothesis) assumes that Luke and Matthew were written independently of each other. One of its strongest drawbacks are the minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark (e.g., see the website of S. Carlson). The MAH supports the scholarship that indicates these minor agreements are of critical importance in showing that the writer of Luke made use of Matthew as well as Mark.

Arguments supposedly favoring priority of Mark over Matthew by C. M. Tuckett,
as nullified by the MAH

• the strength of the oral tradition of a Hebraic Matthew having come first,
• that gospel's anti-gentile tone,
• a plausible reason for Mark's "harder readings,"
• a plausible reason for Mark's redundancies,
• Mark's pericopes of greater length being indicative of redaction,
• a source being needed for Mark if that source isn't Matthew, and
• a plausible reason needed why there is no trace or mention of "Q" (or of a non-heretical document utilized by the writers of Matthew and Luke that would have no reason to be kept secret).

Mark's redundancies. Tuckett starts off by reviewing and augmenting Streeter's arguments, questioning why, if the writer of Mark followed Matthew, he added a lot of redundancies – see MAH-D.3. Further on, he similarly asks, "Why too did he expand much of the material he did retain with such inconsequential details so that the same story is often twice as long in Mark as in Matthew?" See MAH-D.3.&4.

Why is Mark so much shorter than Matthew? Then there is the usual question of why the writer of Mark would have omitted so much good material from Matthew – see MAH-D.1. and the discussion of particulars under Stein's Sec. 1 above. One particular question not covered there is why the writer of Mark, even if he felt like omitting the entire Sermon on the Mount, did not go back and extract the Lord's Prayer from it and utilize it somewhere in his text. Surely he would want that, so the argument goes. However, in its introduction (Mt 6:7-8a), one reads, "And in praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them..." Those are words guaranteed to rankle a gentile writing a gospel for gentiles. However, the writer of Mark did apparently have second thoughts later and picked out one piece from the Lord's Prayer, in writing, "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses" (Mk 11:25). It seems as if the writer favored praying standing up, and therefore did not care for the inference of Mt 6:5 that only hypocrites pray standing up. The possibility may further be suggested that the writer did not endorse the Father's name being hallowed, as he once referred to him as "Abba" or "Papa" (Mk 14:36). Hence there are plausible reasons why the writer of Mark may have wished to mostly avoid use of the Lord's Prayer as written in Matthew.
   Tuckett also asks why Mark, if it is secondary to Matthew, omits the teaching of John the Baptist. This teaching involves Abraham (Mt 3:7-10), so if the writer wished to most strongly focus his abbreviations on Judaistic material (MAH-D.1), this was a prime chunk to omit.
   From Mark's omissions Tuckett finds "some force" in their support of the hypothesis of Markan priority. However, this implicit feeling comes from viewing the writer of Mark as a respectable Christian by modern standards, which view in turn comes from presuming Matthew came only after Mark. Instead, when considering the view of Matthean priority, we must view the writer of Mark by the profile his gospel provides of him under the proviso that his gospel actually came after (Hebraic) Matthew, upon which he was dependent. Neither way of viewing it represents an argument of circularity, but rather of consistency.

Order of pericopes. Next, Tuckett finds some merit in Streeter's argument that "the deviations in order between Matthew and Mark, and between Luke and Mark, are relatively small in number and can quite easily be explained as due to the redactional activity of [the writers of] Matthew and Luke respectively. ...the Augustinian hypothesis cannot really explain why [the writer of] Mark should have changed the Matthean order in the way he must have done." However, this is easily explained by MAH-F.2.

Editorial behavior of Luke's writer. Tuckett also finds the editorial behavior of the writer of Luke very difficult to explain with an Augustinian type hypothesis, in the writer's typical preservation of Mark's order of pericopes while substantially changing the order of Matthean material. However, this difficulty stems from Tuckett (along with almost all other NT scholars) having ignored the anti-gentile tone of Hebraic Matthew, and having ignored how seriously an important but anti-gentile first gospel would be treated by pro-gentile evangelists, decades after early Christianity had been expanding into gentile lands. This editorial behavior is explained in MAH-E.a) & b).

Comparison of parallel texts. Next, Tuckett looks at the "not many miracles" versus "no miracles except" comparison.

Matthew 13:58		Mark 6:5-6
And he did not do many miracles because of their unbelief		And he could not do any miracles there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them and he marveled because of their unbelief

As discussed above under Stein 3a), neither writer can be shown here to have portrayed Jesus as more powerless than the other. In Mark he healed a few persons, thereby performing a few miracles; in Matthew he did not do many miracles, which is the same as having done a few miracles. Thus, in both accounts he performed a few miracles. The Markan account shows the expansion characteristic of a redactor, especially one who purposely feeds in redundancies and restates his source to ensure that his gospel will look different from that source (MAH-D.4).
  Tuckett does bring forth an additional argument, however: in Mark it is not stated that Jesus performed only a few miracles because of the people's unbelief, as is stated in Matthew. Instead, Mark's use of "unbelief" leaves Matthew's reason as implicit while expressing the thought that the Jewish people's unbelief was appalling. So Tuckett concludes that Mark's is the harder reading and thus more original. However, this conclusion totally ignores MAH-D.2., which, along with Mark's verbose rewording, easily explains the Markan text.

Tuckett then chooses some examples from the triple tradition, first from Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi.

Matthew 16:16		Mark 8:30		Luke 9:20
You are the Christ, the Son of the living God		You are the Christ		You are the Christ of God

Here it seemed fairly evident to Tuckett that the writers of Matthew and Luke expanded upon the short Markan sentence to honor Jesus with a more divine title. However, he failed to discuss the fact that the Matthean title is "Son of the living God." The "living God" expression is Judaistic, being found in Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel, 2 Kings, Psalm 42, Daniel and Hosea. From MAH-D.1., we thus find it more likely than not that the writer of Mark would have omitted "son of the living God" from Matthew, or at least "living"; he chose to do the former. Consistent with this is that in Mk 14:61 he did not copy Matthew's "living God" from Mt 26:63. To this we may add that the writer of Mark, in Rome, would know that various Roman emperors had claimed to be God or god, and their sons might be called sons of the living god; he wouldn't wish Jesus to be placed in that category.
   The writer of Luke here would likely have noticed that the Markan text follows the first half of the Matthean text perfectly while omitting the last half. From the latter, his inclination would be, according to MAH-E.a), to follow this first half closely, while from the former his inclination would be to deviate from both texts (MAH-E.a)). So he added "of God" rather than "Son of the living God;" in his gospel he also avoids any use of the term "living God."

Next, an example of pure Markan redundancy:

Matthew 8:16		Mark 1:32		Luke 4:40
When evening was come		When evening was come and the sun was setting		When the sun was setting

Tuckett notes that although the above and similar examples have been used to argue in favor of Markan priority, such arguments are probably indecisive. Here, these parallels are shown in that they typify the editorial behaviors of the writers of Mark and Luke as set out by the MAH. The writer of Mark added a redundancy to Matthew for the reason expressed by MAH-D.3. The writer of Luke favored Mark over Matthew by following Mark's addition (MAH-E.a)) and omitting the Matthean portion, also so as to remove a Markan redundancy (MAH-E.d)).

The minor agreements. This topic is then discussed by Tuckett, as the minor agreements between Luke and Matthew against Mark are difficult to explain on the assumption of Markan priority, even with the assumption of the Two-Source Theory (2ST) that Luke was written independently of Matthew, with both making use of "Q". As stated elsewhere by Tuckett (1996),

"The fact that the Minor Agreements are so minor makes it very hard to believe that [the writer of] Luke has been both influenced positively by Matthew's text in such (substantively) trivial ways, but also totally uninfluenced by any of Matthew's substantive additions to Mark. Undoubtedly the Minor Agreements constitute a problem for the 2ST, but precisely their minor nature constitutes a problem for Goulder's theory [Mark-Matthew-Luke order] as well."

Tuckett then examines the most famous of all the minor agreements, involving "Who hit you" or its absence:

Matthew 26:67-68		Mark 14:65		Luke 22:64
Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists, and said, "Prophesy to us, Christ! Who hit you?"		Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, "Prophesy!"		They blindfolded him and demanded, "Prophesy! Who hit you?"

The 2ST does not simply assume that the writers of Matthew and Luke added to Mark in order to provide a reason for the "prophesy" command, for that would imply that one was aware of the other's text. That theory's preferred solution is that some scribe, when transcribing an early copy of Matthew, saw the "Who hit you?" in Luke and added it in to Matthew. Tuckett acknowledges the obvious weakness of this hypothesis – there is no manuscript evidence for any texts of Matthew that were unaffected by such a scribal error. By the MAH, some time, perhaps up to ten years, elapsed before the Gospel of Luke appeared following Matthew. In that time, surely many copies of Hebraic Matthew had been transcribed, so that the 2ST solution does seem very shaky.
   Although it might be postulated by the MAH that the question was an addition fed into Matthew by its translator, this does not seem likely or necessary. Instead, the present MAH postulates that the writer of Mark attempted an improvement of Matthew by providing a reason for the "Prophesy!" command, but then overlooked the copying of "Who hit you?" An accidental error of this sort seems somewhat more probable than the scribal intent of assimilating text from a different gospel.
   The writer of Luke is then seen as following Mark in correcting the oversight in Matthew of having omitted the blindfold, while correcting the oversight in Mark of not asking for something to be prophesied.

The hypothetical "Q" source. Tuckett reviews some arguments pro and con on the reality of Q. Regarding order of pericopes, the writer of Luke, by the MAH, made very few changes to the Markan order but thoroughly changed the Matthean order. So Tuckett asks the common question, "Why has [the writer of] Luke behaved so conservatively with the order of one of his sources (Mark), and with such freedom in relation to the order of his other alleged source (Matthew)?" As noted before, the MAH well explains this in MAH-E.a) & b) as editorial behavior that should not seem surprising in view of the provocative anti-gentile content of Matthew. However, Tuckett notes that close inspection of the order of Lukan pericopes within the five main blocks of Matthean teachings does disclose striking agreement in order with their Matthean parallels. This is also consistent with the MAH: the writer of Luke, in showing his distaste for the anti-gentile Hebraic Matthew by thoroughly "disrupting Matthew's clear and concise arrangement of the teaching material," did so on the gross scale without bothering to do this in minutia. Tuckett's finding has caused supporters of the Q hypothesis to assume that the writer of Luke followed the order of pericopes in Q much more closely than did the writer of Matthew, who supposedly rearranged them.
   Tuckett feels that the Q hypothesis is strengthened by "the fact that [the writer of] Luke never seems to be aware of Matthew's modifications to Mark in Markan material. Examples cited are Mt 12:5-7 and 16:16-19; the writer of Luke "never betrays any knowledge of these Matthean additions." By the MAH, however, these are not Matthean additions but pieces of Matthew that the writer of Mark did not see fit to reproduce (MAH-D.1.); the writer of Luke showed his preference for Mark over Matthew by following Mark's omissions (MAH-E.a)). Of course, that writer had to exercise his judgment on which omissions of Mark were important enough for him to reinstate in his gospel (much later to be known as Q), and which weren't.

Relevant to his discussion on reasons why he thinks the writer of Luke did not make use of Matthew, Tuckett mentions a few beatitudes that he believes are expressed more primitively in Luke than in Matthew, such as Mt 5:3/Lk 6:20b. However, this has been capably nullified by Goodacre (2002).
   In the same vein, he points to Luke's shorter version of the Lord's Prayer than Matthew as being indicative of Luke being more primitive than Matthew. Tuckett did not use this reasoning when discussing Mark's pericopes generally being of greater length than their Matthean parallels. However, length is no guide to priority in every case, and it could well be that the writer of Luke was adhering even here to his feelings of preferring Mark over Matthew: since Mark omits the Lord's Prayer almost entirely, he would compromise by shaving off portions of Matthew's prayer while incorporating most of it because of its importance within his Christian community.
   Tuckett mentions the Sign of Jonah verses in Lk 11:30 seeming to be more primitive than Matthew's (Mt 12:40; not in Mark). However, it seems easier to argue for the reverse case. In the Matthean pericope, the Sign of Jonah is explained as an omen of Jesus' coming entombment for three days and nights. In Luke, an entirely different explanation is given. It could well be that Luke's writer did not want any inference to be drawn that, because Jonah survived his three-day experience within the great fish, Jesus may have survived his crucifixion and entombment, thus explaining the post-crucifixion appearances.
   An argument involving doublets that is said to favor Q is also utilized: There are a few (perhaps only two?) doublets shared between Matthew and Luke in which one of the verses is shared by Mark also. So it is assumed that the latter set of doublets arises from dependence of Matthew and Luke upon Mark, and the other arises from Q. The example Tuckett gives is the doublet of Mt 16:24/Mk 8:34/Lk 9:23 along with Mt 10:38/Lk 14:27. It involves the saying of denying oneself, taking up the cross and following Jesus. The latter half of the doublet occurs in a Matthean context of setting a man against his father, not being worthy of Jesus if you love your son or daughter more than him, and of losing your life if you find your life. It's not surprising that a bulk abbreviator with an agenda that includes MAH-D.1. would find cause here to omit the entire pericope of Mt 10:34-40a (which contains the four statements of Micah 7:6), thus causing Mark not to share in the doublet. The other instance I know of lies adjacent to the above one, except in Luke: Mt 16:25/Mk 8:35/Lk 9:24 along with Mt 10:39/Lk 17:33. Hence it is not present in Mark for the very same reason.
   Again, the website of Goodacre is recommended for some sound arguments against the existence of Q.

Online arguments against the priority of Matthew by Mahlon H. Smith,
as nullified by the MAH

1. Jesus' kin. This is the first pericope he treated, found in Mt 12:46-50, Mk 3:31-35 and Lk 8:19-21. If Matthew came first, Smith asked:

(a) Why did the writers of Mark and Luke alter Matthew's literate Greek style?
     This is explained by MAH-G. Hebraic Matthew was translated into Greek Matthew only after Mark and Luke were written. Matthew's translator was free to use his own Greek style, or improve upon that in Mark and/or Luke if he wished, or even replicate parts of their Greek text. It was during translation that substantial alterations and additions could most freely be made. The new text in Greek could be promulgated while the previous Hebraic text could be phased out. While the two texts coexisted, few persons were capable of comparing both texts for the purpose of sorting out changes, assuming they could even acquire both texts. And as we know from comparison of the surviving Gospels, non-heretical changes made by anonymous editors to the texts of others could be tolerated. Bishop Papias was probably one who could read and write Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and he noted that events in Mark were not in correct order; this must have been with respect to a preceding writing, namely Hebraic Matthew.

(b) Why did the writer of Mark "add a redundant verse (Mark 3:32) in which a 'crowd' simply relays to Jesus the information the narrator gave in the previous verse"?
     This is well explained by MAH-D.3. The writer of Mark added it as change for the sake of change, which he may also have believed was a minor improvement over Matthew, to better explain why Jesus' kin could not fit in the house. The writer of Luke retained the "crowd" in Mark for the reasons expressed in MAH-E.a) (he tended to follow Mark where Mark deviates from Matthew).

(c) Why did the writers of Mark and Luke both change Jesus' pronouncement on who his mother, brother and sisters were?
     Actually, Mark has it nearly the same as in Matthew, except for "God" instead of "Father in heaven." Luke has rather different wording. Matthew's "Father in heaven" is just "God" in Mark, and from the greater prevalence of "God" than "Father" in Mark, one presumes that its writer preferred to use "God," probably because "Father" is an old Testament term for God used in Isaiah and Jeremiah (MAH-D.1). His alteration here, according to the MAH, could also have been due to his desire for "change for the sake of change" (MAH-D.4.). We might infer that the writer of Luke noticed Mark's use of "God" here instead of "Father," and so followed Mark for the usual reason (MAH-E.a)), by using "God." However, the Markan pronouncement is so similar to the Matthean one, otherwise, that Luke's rather different wording from both Mark and Matthew fits the other typical editorial behavior of Luke's writer (MAH-E.c))

2. Parable of the Sower. In this pericope (Mt 13:1-9/Mk 4:1-9/Lk 8:4-8) Smith noted that all hypotheses need to account for:

(a) The fact that Luke deviates from the details of setting & parable that are in Matthew & Mark, where both are virtually identical.
     This is fully explained by MAH-E.c). Where Mark and Matthew agree in meaning, the writer of Luke was free to insert his own additions. If he were to literally follow Mark at those points, he would be following Matthew too, and that would not express his approval of Mark and dissatisfaction with Matthew. There are exceptions to this behavior, of course, which account for some of the minor agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark.

(b) The fact that Mk 4:9 contains "He who has ears to hear, let him hear," Luke has it the same as Mark, while Mt 4:9 has the simpler "He who has ears, let him hear." So Smith noted that Luke's aphorism about "hearing" echoes the unnecessary infinitive in Mark (to hear) that is not in the oldest mss. of Matthew. But this is well explained by MAH-D.3. & E.a). The writer of Mark added a bit of superfluous material (the extra "to hear," for the reasons mentioned); the writer of Luke, having noticed this addition, then expressed his preference for Mark over Matthew by following Mark's deviation from Matthew. The later translator of Hebraic Matthew into Greek faithfully translated its text here without copying Mark or Luke.

(c-e) Why the writers of Mark and Luke regularly changed Matthew's plural forms to singular, added superfluous verbs [in the triple tradition] about growth & yield, and inserted an unnecessary break ("and he said," in Mark; somewhat more in Luke) between parable & aphorism. These are also explained by MAH-D.3.&4., and by MAH-E.a). The writer of Mark made changes for the reasons stated – these changes could be noticed by the writer of Luke even though the Matthean text was written in Hebrew or Aramaic. So the latter writer could show his preference for Mark there by following it rather than Matthew.

(f) Why, if Mark's text (in Greek) is longer than Matthew's, that could be consistent with the writer of Mark being an abbreviator. MAH-D.4. explains this. The tendency is for the redactor to add to the length of passages he goes over in detail, which is what the writer of Mark did. Other passages that he omits entirely causes his gospel to be shorter overall.

(g) Smith also noted five ways in which, if Mark came after Matthew, the writer of Mark "butchered" the Matthean passage. All five of these are well explained by MAH-D.3. – he didn't butcher any of Greek Matthew's text because Hebraic Matthew, upon which he was dependent, had not yet been translated into Greek.

Something Smith did not comment upon is that Mark's "and brought forth grain ....and yielded thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold" (Mk 4:8) appears to be a dramatic improvement over Matthew's "and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty" (Mt 13:8).

3. Why speak in parables. This pericope occurs at Mt 13:10-17/Mk 4:10-12/Lk 8:9-10.

Matthew 13:10-17		Mark 4:10-12		Luke 8:9-10
10Then the disciples came and said to him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" 11And he answered them, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 13This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says: 'You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see, but never perceive. 15For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.' 16But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17Truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."		10And when he was alone, those who were about him with the twelve asked him concerning the parables. 11And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables; 12so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven."		9And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, 10he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand."

Needing explanation, Smith found, are:

(a) Why Mark and Luke both "have a problematic purpose clause rather than Matthew's pedagogically accurate causal clause to explain Jesus' use of parables." This refers to Mt 13:13 in its use of "because" versus the use of "so that" in the parallels of Mark and Luke in the above table.
    This is explained by MAH-C. By making this small alteration, the writer of Mark could imply that the disciples were not supposed to perceive or understand – being Jews they weren't supposed to be worthy of it. In Matthew, one notices that the purpose of the parables was to help the unseeing disciples see. The writer of Luke followed Mark here, because it deviated somewhat from Matthew (MAH-E.a)), yet its derogatory tone towards the disciples was evidently too subtle to gain his attention or require his modification.

(b) Why Mark and Luke both "omit most of the rest of Matthew's version of Jesus' reply, including a biblical quotation that clarifies Jesus' perplexing words." This refers to the absence from Mark and Luke of the content of Mt 13:14-15 and most of 13:16-17.
    Again this is explained by the attitude of the writer of Mark (MAH-D.1. & 2.), followed by that of the writer of Luke (MAH-E.a)). Mark's writer didn't want the disciples to be honored by being the fulfillment of a prophecy, and even went out of his way to alter the introduction to the parable so that Jesus' listeners would not be just the disciples but also others who were about him along with the disciples. He also did not mind omitting Mt 13:14-15 due to it being Judaistic scriptural material. The writer of Luke could have decided either way – to show his preference for Mark by following its text with its omission of these two Matthean verses, or to reincorporate them in his gospel in another context. He chose the former, quite likely because it would be difficult to inv