In case Mark Goodacre has some time to spare between the end of exams and the big holiday event that he and I both celebrate at this time of year (the Doctor Who Christmas special), I thought I would pose a question that occurred to me today.
Goodacre (we’re on a first name basis, but it is simply too confusing to write “Mark” in this context!) suggests that it is possible to hold to Markan priority (thus addressing the issue of the apparent dependence of Matthew and Luke on Mark) and yet dispense with Q.
The question I have is whether, if Luke had access to both Mark and Matthew, he would have chosen Mark as the source to follow more closely, when most of Mark is in fact reproduced in Matthew, as well as Matthew containing much else besides.
It seems to me more likely, all other things being equal, that Luke would have chosen to utilize Matthew as his primary literary source in composing his own Gospel.
I realize it may be possible to answer this in terms of Mark having an authority for Luke that Matthew did not, or in some other way. But once we have to invoke speculations about Luke’s motives and the authority of a Gospel that would before long be placed first in the church’s collection of Gospels, we don’t seem to be on firmer ground than in the case of speculation about a lost written source.
It may be that Mark Goodacre or another New Testament scholar with a Q-skeptical bent has already published something that addresses this question. But since I couldn’t think of anything off hand (and that may simply be a memory lapse on my part) I thought I would pose the question here, and see what various readers (both Q-skeptical and Q-believers) think.
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| A useful diagram I came across online on “The Full Wiki”. |
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