Every time Paul mentions Mark, he also mentions Luke

[Peter Kirby]

What are the arguments pertaining to Evangelion?

Well, here's a start. I'd preface this by saying this is all very provisional. I reserve the right to be wrong. Its just a few hours worth of work: doing a good job would take at least a year....so any help improving or disproving this is welcome.

To even get started, we need a good reconstruction of the Evangelion. I think Ben Smith's is as good as any and better than most, so for sake of this discussion, let's stipulate that he's got it more or less right.

Here are arguments for the priority of Mark relative to Matthew and Luke:

https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/mark-prior.html

I always like clicking back to that website, many happy memories

From that page, lets take a look at all of the arguments which are used to argue that Mark is prior to Luke and Matthew, and see if they can be modified, mutatis mutandis, to produce valid arguments for the priority of the Evangelion over Luke.

The Argument from Sequence of Incidents

The argument form is to look at parallel events, whose sequence is changed, and see which order the change makes most sense in. This is going to be of limited applicability, because as Ben Smith's reconstruction shows, to the best of our knowledge the Ev follows Lk's order very closely.

But in the one big example of where they do differ--whether Jesus went to Capharnum or Nazareth first, argues in favor of Ev priority. Lk has an odd reference to Jesus's miracles in Capharnum, even before Jesus was ever there. It looks for all the world like Luke just lost track of his edits and botched the story. Marcion's order makes much more sense. So this would argue for Marcion priority.


The Argument from Grammar and Aramaicisms

I have to beg complete incompetence to give a real evaluation on this Argument. And BeDuhn has for the most part given up on reconstructing *exact* wordings. So--at least by my limited skills--it appears that this argument form is neutral on priority. All help would be appreciated.


The Argument from Harder Readings

This suffers from much the same problems as the previous one: we have more of a gist of what was said, than the specific words. I was unable to find any systematic study of Ev vs Lk on hard readings; and even after looking for a while, I didn't find any examples. Maybe someone out there can help.


The Argument from Redaction

Many arguments for priority in some sense advert to the principle that the shorter, simpler version is prior to the longer, more elaborate version. This seems to hold true both in detail (e.g. Mt over Mk: divorce is strictly prohibited...er except for adultery) and in aggregate (Mk is shorter than Lk or Mt). The evangelists--orthodox and heterodox alike--prefer to preserve the prior text as much as possible, and make their "corrections" in the form of additions or recontextualizations. Elisions do happen, but these tend to be swamped by additions.

Placing Lk prior to the Ev would make it the single, solitary counterexample. A real standout.

It's hard to believe that Marcion had a maniacal desire to expunge inconvenient material, because everybody who has looked at the Ev in any detail, from Tertullian to BeDuhn, have all remarked at how strange some of the things are that Marcion (putatively) "left in" his gospel. E.g. the Ev gives Jesus a mother, and brothers, explicitly called a family--which is quite strange for a docetic Jesus. It would seem that the author of Ev had the same reluctance to elide inconvenient material---there are some hard texts for Marcionites in there. No doubt they had to be explained with hand waving, er, "hermaneutically reinterpreted". Just like *any* branch of Christianity finds hard sayings in the gospels which they must grapple with.

More recent commentators https://sites.google.com/site/inglisonm ... ed-on-mark have noted that the "omissions" by Marcion are strange in another way: They are almost all Lukan sondergut:

"Knox observed, “Of the verses which [sic] there is positive evidence to show did not belong to Marcion, 79.7 per cent are peculiar to Luke. Of all the verses of Luke which are peculiar to Luke, 39 per cent are known to be missing in Marcion, whereas of verses of Luke paralleled in Matthew or Mark or both, only 10 per cent are known to be missing from Marcion.”

It would be quite weird if Marcion just took his scissors to Luke's sondergut--how would he even know it was Luke's sondergut?

This argument is almost comically pro Ev priority.


The Argument from Theology

This criteria looks at the theology of the parallel texts, and tries to deduce from that which is earlier. I find this argument form problematic for a few reasons: First of all, we don't know that much about Marcion's theology, aside from broad brushstrokes. Second, there's plenty in Ev which contradicts what we little we do know about his theology.

Do the birth narratives and genealogies count here? Inasmuch as Mark doesn't have them, and they are therefore representative of a later stage of theological development, perhaps this argues for Ev priority as well.

I don't put much weight on it though, I think it's problematic even for arguing for Marcan priority. People have argued about what the theology of these books are literally for millennia.

The Argument from Content

This argues that we should look at the content and judge which is prior. Ostensibly, this should be the Achilles heal for Ev priority. It would seem like all the fathers would collectively and cumulatively be death by a thousand paper cuts for Ev priority here, on account of content. But, in this section at least, the focus is not on the content *lacking* from the shorter gospel, but the content *present* in the longer gospel. When we focus on this, the advantage dynamics shift.

As put, the description of how to apply the argument is pretty vague, but this section provides two concrete examples of it:

One example is that if one gospel contains virtually all of the content of another gospel, then the contained gospel is prior. For instance, the vast majority of Mark being copied into Luke augers for Marcan priority. But (as Ben Smith's reconstruction plainly shows) the same holds for Ev vs. Lk, and to an even greater degree.

Another example is that the gospel which contains more "legendary" material is later. E.g. Mt is later than Mk, because it contains earthquakes which resurrect the saints. which is purportedly legendary. On this criterion, surely the Ev scores highly by omitting the virgin birth, and the rest of the birth narratives, however beautiful and charmingly written they are.

This concludes my hasty and provisional analysis of the arguments for Marcan priority, and their applicability to Ev priority. I provisionally conclude that most argument schemas which can be used to argue for Marcan priority, can be retrofitted, mutatis mutandis, to produce an argument for Ev priority, salve veritate.

I confess, this was not written from a disinterested viewpoint, so I would very much appreciate it if somebody who was as dead-set against Ev priority would also take a look at these criteria, and see how well my analysis holds up.

---///----

Since long-form content is welcome I'll add a few observations/arguments of my own.

First of all, I'd like to see a really good argument *against* Ev priority. AFAICT, the main argument is that Marcion cut down the Evangelion for doctrinal reasons. But at best, surely this point is neutral w.r.t. Ev priority; why isn't it just as likely that Luke interpolated the Ev for doctrinal reasons?

And increasingly, the trend is to question this rational, because of the stuff which Marcion *didn't* putatively cut out. It just doesn't withstand close scrutiny.

What's left? Really, all I can think of is 4 reasons:

1. Dogmatic reasons: (all the church fathers said so), or a lingering reluctance to consider the possibility that Luke (and perhaps Mathew) are based on a heretical gospel.

2. Funding reasons: I can only imagine the problems that getting funding from a religious endowment would be. "You mean, you want me to help you prove that Luke is based on a heretical gospel, that says that God is the Devil?????"

3. Book sales, too. At first Q too was doctrinally very controversial, but these days a book about Q can be safely marketed to the faithful--after all, studying Q is just studying the gospels that are already in your Bible!!! Alas, the faithful are not going to be interested in a book which says that Luke is based on a heretical gospel for a long time. This has got to reduce the market for the book by several orders of magnitude.

4. Plumping for Marcion priority is a career-limiting move. The poster child for this is Markus Vinzent. Even tenure and a mile-long C.V. have been known not to shield professors who hold this opinion. Securing an academic position is almost impossible as it is; why make it even harder? What's in it for the Dude??

EDIT: re-reading this, I can see where somebody might get the impression that I'm condemning academics. I'm not. First of all, I think doctrinal reasons are perfectly good reasons--we have freedom of religion, everybody has the right to live according to the dictates of their own conscience. Second of all, there are a lot of colleges which require you to sign a statement of beliefs.. I don't condemn them either: if a church is funding a college, I think they should have the general expectation that students who go there will be taught about that religion, by people who believe in that religion.

Getting appointed to a tenure-track position, at a research university, and then getting the funding to do research--and getting book publishers to publish your research--well, I have endless admiration for *anybody* who has been able to do that. Its far beyond my abilities, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with giving yourself every possible edge.

I'm just trying to point out that its not just lack of evidence which is standing in the way of general acceptance of Ev priority. There's all kinds of reasons, and, I'd even go so far to say that at present, most of them are good reasons.
END OF EDIT

Nevertheless, since Lucan priority is the current scholarly consensus, I do accept the burden of proof.

This site contains lots of examples of where Ev priority makes sense:
https://sites.google.com/site/inglisonm ... ic-problem

And this site has an extensive list of arguments for Ev priority:
http://www.marcionite-scripture.info/CW_2.htm

Those are some interesting arguments. I should return to this at some point.

[RandyHelzerman]

Those are some interesting arguments. I should return to this at some point.

Once we all stop talking about naked men, please do Very much interested in your thoughts.

[andrewcriddle]

I think you may be confusing Origen and Augustine.

Yeah, Origin also thought that too. Astoundingly.

Can you give a source for Origen believing that Mark used Matthew please ?
Origen certainly held that Matthew was earlier than Mark but that is not the same thing.

Andrew Criddle

[RandyHelzerman]

Can you give a source for Origen believing that Mark used Matthew please ?

I can't I was relying on something I read in a wiki article about the synoptic problem, but when I double-checked the source they were using (Eusebius's church history) it didn't say that at all. -Wiki got it wrong....I'm shocked, shocked

Thanks for pointing that out. Now I idon'thave to defend to the death a position which is wrong

--//--

I think my other point was pretty much unaffected though.....even if you think Marcion was making some sort of critical edition of the gospel, by comparing all the other gospels---is it multiply attested, etc etc---like some love child of Erasmus and the Jesus seminar---well....

...the more smarts you attribute to Marcion, the more you've got to take him seriously. Smart people tend to be right. Unlike Erasmus--who was working with texts written (at best) 500 years after the autographs, Marcion was at most 50-60 years from the autographs. If he says that his Evangelion came first, well, the smarter you make him, the more you have to take that seriously.