Episode 339: Mark Goodacre - Did The Gospels Copy Each Other?

The Bible for Normal People
Written By Pete Enns & Jared Byas

In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with Mark Goodacre about the synoptic problem and what the striking similarities and differences between Matthew, Mark, and Luke reveal about how the Gospels were written. They explore why scholars think Matthew and Luke used Mark, the debate over the hypothetical source Q, and the evidence that Luke may have known Matthew. Together, they consider how Gospel writers intentionally revised and reshaped earlier accounts, what those disagreements reveal about the development of early Christian theology, and how recognizing these differences can change the way readers understand Scripture as a whole.

 
 

Mentioned in This Episode

  • Pete: [00:00:00] You're listening to The Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns. 

    Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.

    Jared: Hey! If you’re in a place where things don’t make sense or you wonder where God is, maybe you’re in a place of disappointment or doubt, the book of Ecclesiastes might be relatable. Our October class is a deep dive into Ecclesiastes, and our very own, Pete Enns, will be our scuba instructor. You get it? Because it’s a deep dive.

    Pete: Yeah, I get it.

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    On today's episode, we're talking about the synoptic problem with Mark Goodacre. What is the synoptic problem, you may ask? Well, it's asking why the Gospels look so similar, but also so different. 

    Pete: Yeah, Mark is a professor of religious studies at Duke University and the host of NT Pod, a podcast about, you guessed it, the New Testament and Christian origins.

    All right. So let's dive in. 

    Jared: Let's do it. 

    Mark: The process of Gospel writing and rewriting is always a response to your predecessor's work, and it's a, it's a, "Well, how, how can we have... We can't end here." I think that the authors of these Gospels, they sincerely believe they're filled with the Spirit, and the Spirit is guiding them to write what is true.

    Now, it does still leave us with that key question. Well, why did they change the details then?[00:01:00] 

    Jared: Well, Mark, it's great to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much for, uh, jumping in and teaching us a thing or two here. 

    Mark: Thanks, Pete and Jared. My pleasure. 

    Jared: Absolutely. All right. Well, we're talking about something that sounds complex but is maybe a little simpler once we break it down. So can you tell us what is the synoptic problem?

    We- If you're around biblical scholarship, you'll hear this phrase tossed about. What is the synoptic problem? 

    Mark: Sure. It's actually pretty easy to break down because the word synoptic, the clue's in the name. So syn, S-Y-N, means together. Optic is eyes. So the synoptic problem is basically looking at three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, side by side, looking at them together, and when you look at them together, you see these remarkable similarities and striking differences.

    So synoptic problem is really about looking at the similarities and the differences. And also, we have to put John to one side because although John [00:02:00] does have parallels with the other three, he's different. And he's substantially different. So we talk about the synoptic problem for Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

    Jared: Well, maybe before we jump into the synoptic problem, I think that would be a good way to start to differentiate Matthew, Mark, and Luke from John. Can you just say a little bit more about why do scholars put John to one side, and then the synoptic problem's really about Matthew, Mark, and Luke? 

    Mark: Yeah, I mean, John's Gospel is just so strikingly different, even from the very first page.

    Like, you flip over from Luke 24, where Jesus has just, uh, ascended, the disciples have just sort of finished, you know, in, in the Temple at Jerusalem. You flip over the page, and then the next thing you see is, "In the beginning was the Word." And you think, "Hold on a minute. This is different." And then John's Gospel goes on as a whole like that.

    Basically, instead of the kingdom of God is like this, the Son of Man is going to do that, in John's Gospel, it's so much more direct. It's just, "I am. I am the bread of life. I am the way, the truth, and the life," and so [00:03:00] on. So you get this very, very strong, focused Jesus who's direct. He's not elusive and all the rest of it.

    And then when you break it down even to places where John has parallels with the others, he's really different. So, like, John's- Mm-hmm ... got the feeding of the 5,000, for example, in John chapter six, but it's really, really different from the feeding of the 5,000 that you see in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And that's the pattern throughout the gospel.

    Yes, there are similarities, but there's a s- I, I mean, I talk about the Johannine firewall. It's as if you've got Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then you've got a firewall that separates John, because it's just so different. Mm-hmm. 

    Pete: So, uh, we have these Synoptic Gospels, and they are at times just remarkably similar, right?

    I mean, even- Mm-hmm ... word for word similar. But then at other times, so very different. And, um, how have people tried to ex- how have scholars tried to explain that? Some sort of dependence, I would imagine, between the two. Is it literary? Is it [00:04:00] oral? Like, what's happening there? 

    Mark: Yeah, I mean, you, you get entire paragraphs, uh, that they're identical.

    I mean, it's really, really striking. And not just Jesus's words, because sometimes people will say, "Well, maybe they're just trying to be accurate around Jesus's words." No, even the narrators often speak in the same voice. And that, they are so similar at points that you really have to say there's some kind of literary familiarity here.

    There's, someone's copying someone. At least, at least a couple of people are doing some copying here. So we're not looking at three independent witnesses to events, or three independent versions of an oral tradition. Mm-hmm. Yes, there probably are other oral traditions, there are other sources we don't know about, and so on.

    But when it comes to the material that they share, they are just too strikingly similar. I mean, the way I often put it in the classroom is that if I had two papers from two students that are as similar as Matthew and Mark sometimes are, and Matthew and Luke sometimes are, and Mark and Luke sometimes are, I would actually have to fail it.

    Jared: Hmm. 

    Mark: You know, because it'd be so, [00:05:00] because it'd be so close. You know, I mean, I know these days we're more worried about AI than plagiarism, but in the good old days of plagiarism, you know, we all know what it looks like when one student copies from another, you know? Right. 

    Jared: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, uh, okay, before we get into kind some of the details of this, what, what would you say to, um...

    You know, I grew up in a tradition where the similarities would be like you said. Yeah, because it's, that's just what happened, so of course they're gonna be very similar. Because it's just, it's just- 

    Mark: Right ... 

    Jared: dictating what happened. So why is that not a viable solution, and why do then scholars go down these other paths?

    Mark: It's, it's a great question. I think it's the key question, really. Uh, I mean, the way that I would probably want to put it is that if you looked at two police reports of the same accident, as long as they were done independently, and one police officer wasn't copying off another one, if you look at two police reports, you will only ever get, even for exactly the same incident, even when it's happening, you know, the [00:06:00] report's happening the same day, you will never get more than two or three words together- in parallel.

    And the Gospels aren't like that. So, so, so think of the story about the paralyzed man. It's in, in Mark 2, paralleled in Matthew 9 and Luke 5. You get this, you get this line. Jesus says, "In order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on the earth to forgive sins," and then the sentence stops, and then it- and then you get the narrator saying, "He says to the paralyzed man," and then you get the next line, which is, "Get up and walk.

    Get- pick up your mat and walk." And the thing is, there is no way that three independent people phrase the thing in exactly the same way, stopping Jesus's speech at the same point, and, and, and, and not even finishing the sentence. And that's not even an unusual example. There’s tons of examples like that where you even get quirks of grammar that appear in Mark's gospel and paralleled in Matthew and Luke and so on.

    So [00:07:00] that's really why the sort of independent use of oral tradition doesn't work. 

    Pete: So, I mean, you have these traditions then that are somewhat... Somebody's dependent on somebody else. So can you talk about that a little bit? Like, um, what's the reigning theory? I don't like to put it that way.

    What's, what's been a popular theory? 

    Mark: Sure. ... Yeah, I mean, they, you, you can really break it down into two parts. The first and easiest part is Markan priority. So the vast majority of scholars today, I mean, really literally the vast majority, I'm talking like 99% of people think that Matthew and Luke both used Mark's gospel or something very like it.

    Obviously, we haven't got the autographs of these things, so we're going on textual witnesses. But they are so similar to Mark in so many ways, and they have, they repeat quirks of Mark's style. They have elements of Mark's order that are similar. And, so people basically think that Matthew and Luke are both highly likely to have used Mark, so that's Markan priority.

    The [00:08:00] second bit is a little bit more controversial. The second bit basically is that, okay, we've got loads of triple agreements, Matthew-Mark-Luke agreements, and usually we can explain those as Matthew and Luke are using Mark. However, we've also got a whole bunch of double agreements, passages where Matthew and Luke agree together in material that's not in Mark at all.

    And in those places, there's a real question mark. Does Luke know Matthew? Does Matthew know Luke? Or do neither know the other, and they both know some hypothetical source? And really, scholarship is split on this one. Um, I'm on one side of the debate, and others are on another side of the debate. And I suppose we can, we can touch on that in a bit more detail. But, but I think I would want to distinguish between those two facets, Markan priority, which is really mainstream, and has been for a very long time. Mm-hmm. It's really s- it's one of those, I mean, never say never, but it's one of those theories that's really stood the test of time.

    Uh, and then the other bit, which is the more [00:09:00] controversial bit. 

    Jared: Mm-hmm. Well, maybe, yeah, let's take those one at a time then because I think there's enough to unpack in each one of those. Yeah. So the 99% agreement that Mark came first, that Matthew and Luke are, are utilizing Mark in, in some way, can you give a couple of reasons why there's such a high degree of agreement on that?

    Mark: Yeah, sure. I mean, one, one of the issues is that there's very little material that's unique to Mark. There's only just a handful of verses. And so that phenomenon is much more likely to arise if you've got two authors using that first one. Mm. And the few bits that are unique to Mark are just the type of things you could imagine both Matthew and Luke omitting.

    So one example, Mark 14:52, you have a young man running away naked when Jesus is arrested. Now, if it were me, I would copy that detail in- ... because I think it's fascinating. But you can see why Matthew and Luke would both mutually omit that [00:10:00] detail because it's strange, and no one knows what's going on there, and people have debated what's going on there for the last, you know, two millennia.

    So the bits that are unique to Mark look like places that Matthew and Luke have both omitted, rather than the idea that Mark's going, "Ooh, I've got to get that story about the, you know, about the young man running away naked in, and never mind the Lord's Prayer. We'll not bother with that. Sermon on the Mount, don't want that." 

    Pete: Uh-huh. 

    Mark: Doesn't seem as plausible as the idea that Matthew and Luke are working from Mark. So, so there are arguments like that that persuade people. Uh, I think personally another of the really strong arguments is something I call the, the phenomenon, phenomenon of fatigue in the Synoptics, where you'll get Matthew or Luke making changes at the beginning of a story, characteristic changes, and then drifting into the wording of Mark as you go through. And a really simple example of that is the story of the death of John the Baptist, in, basically Herod's birthday, Mark chapter 6, Matthew 14.

    At the [00:11:00] beginning of that story, Mark... Well, all the way through the story, Mark is calling Herod the king, basileus. He's calling him the king. And Matthew seems to know that this guy wasn't actually a king. He was a tetrarch. Very technical name, you know, meaning a ruler of a fourth of a kingdom. And so he changes it to Herod the tetrarch, which is a good move.

    But then halfway through the story, he's drifted back into Mark- Mark's wording, and he started calling him the king again. Now, that kind of variation is more plausible if Matthew is using Mark than if Mark is using Matthew. Mm. And then there are a bunch of other examples that are similar to that. 

    Pete: Mm-hmm.

    Well, I mean, just to sort of make sure everybody's on the same page, because this is a lot already. I mean, there's so many moving parts to this, which is- 

    Mark: Sure ... 

    Pete: why you have a job, right? And I have a job. I mean, these- ... these things are not, these things are complicated at times. Yeah. So the issue is [00:12:00] Um, the relationship between Luke and Matthew. They both seem dependent on Mark for a lot of things.Other things, they go their own way. And there are places where Luke and Matthew are also different, but some places where they are the same, but they don't have that in common with Mark. So the question is, where do those similarities come from? 

    Mark: That’s right.

    Pete: One of those theories is an independent source. So can you explain what that argument is? 

    Jared: And if you were watching, I think it was in, like, Time Magazine in the 90s. It was all of this, like, "There's a hidden gospel that Matthew and Luke..." That's how it got popularized. So some people may remember that. So, so, uh, set us straight here on this elusive, possible other source. 

    Mark: I mean, I don't wanna say this is where it gets fun, because I think already Mark and priority is fascinating enough.

    But this is where it gets really intriguing. Because as soon as you're dealing with mysterious lost documents, you're [00:13:00] like, "Hello." "This is interesting," you know? And so, so here's the thing. If Luke didn't know Matthew or Matthew didn't know Luke, they have to have got that extra material from a hypothetical source.

    And lots of people think that's where they did get their material from. So what do you call it? Well, the German word for source is Quelle. And so German scholars right back in the 19th century started calling this extra source Q, because it was the first letter of Quelle, meaning source, and it stuck. And so now you'll hear about this lost gospel, this lost source, Q, which is held to be a source for Matthew and Luke. And it must have been important if it existed, because the stuff that Matthew and Luke agree on that's not in Mark is stuff like the Lord's Prayer, the Parable of the Lost Sheep, loads of the Sermon on the Mount, like the Beatitudes. I mean, it's got some really famous gospel material in there.

    And they're really close in this material, so they must have really, if, if it existed, Matthew and Luke really valued this extra [00:14:00] source, Q. Mm-hmm. But some people are spoil sports. I'm one of them. And think that, and think that, uh, Q didn't actually exist. Uh, I, I think that the agreements between Matthew and Luke are much better explained if we look at a direct link between the two, that Luke not only knows Mark's gospel, but Luke also knows Matthew.

    So that's the theory that I, uh, push forward. Although, that's not because I think that the Q theory is silly or redundant or problematic. I think there's many, many good things in that theory. And, uh, I understand why it's so popular.

    Pete: Q is not a ridiculous idea. It's, it's hypothetical, which a lot of biblical scholarship is, but you're- Right ... I guess you're saying there's [00:15:00] a simpler explanation. 

    Mark: Right. And, and I think, uh, I mean, sometimes people portray the argument against Q, as if it's an argument against hypothetical entities, and that would be kind of stupid if it was that argument, because, yeah, like you say, scholarship's full of hypotheses. And, uh, and the idea that an important early Christian document was lost is fact. I mean, we know that there are tons of things that got lost. I mean, it looks like Paul is talking about a previous letter to the Corinthians that we don't have, you know, in, in, in, in 1 Corinthians. And we, you know, we, we've dug up... I mean, not me personally, but people have dug up fragments of gospels, and we don't know what they are. There was one published just a couple of years ago. We have no idea what it is. It's, it's from something that we... So Q is not problematic because it's hypothetical, but there is an important methodological principle, I think, which is you should always start in scholarship with the simpler hypothesis or the more [00:16:00] straightforward hypothesis.

    Like, you know, going back to the idea of two students that have got really similar work, my first inclination would be to check to see if one had copied from the other, rather than see if both of them had copied from a third student who I don't know. You know? Mm-hmm. Right. They could have done that, and they might have done that, but it's, um, it, it's...

    You, you start by trying to find out if one's copied from the other. And my view is that there's lots of evidence that Luke did copy from Matthew, which means that you can dispense with Q. The Q is, is... It, it kind of, it vanishes in a puff of logic really when you're thinking about the possibility that Luke knew Matthew.

    Jared: Mm-hmm. All right. Well, let's dive into some of that evidence. Ma- make your case- Yeah ... a little bit. If you could just choose a couple of- Sure ... pieces of evidence for, for why we think Matthew, uh, Luke knew Matthew, what, what would it be? 

    Mark: I suppose one, one of the, one of the things that I, I would draw attention to is, is the fact that Luke actually agrees [00:17:00] with Matthew, not only in the material that isn't in Mark, but sometimes the material that is in Mark as well.

    So remember that if Matthew and Luke are writing independently of one another, Luke has not seen Matthew's versions of Mark's stories. Mm-hmm. But in fact, there are many places where Luke actually has-- And this is where earlier on we had to oversimplify. But there are many places where Luke actually has parallels to Matthew's reworkings of Mark.

    So I’ll give an obvious example, in Mark chapter 1, John the Baptist says, "He will baptize you," talking about Jesus, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit," full stop, period. That's it. "He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit." Move on to the next story. But in Matthew and Luke, at exactly the same moment, they say, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire, and his winnowing fork is in his hand."

    Now, Q theorists know full well that, you know, that agreement's there, because they're looking at the same [00:18:00] Synoptics I'm looking at. And so what they say is, "Well, Mark and Q must have overlapped at this point. So we'll explain these agreements between Luke and Matthew by saying that Mark and Q overlapped."

    Now, the difficulty with that is that you have to have Matthew and Luke independently of one another conflating Mark and Q in the same way. 

    Pete: Mm-hmm. 

    Mark: But even more seriously than that, one of the reasons for believing in Q in the first place is that Q scholars generally say that Luke doesn't share Matthew's reworkings of Mark And I say, "Yes, he does."

    It's just that you've put them in a separate category all of its own called Mark-Q overlap. So that's one of the areas that Luke is really close to the way that Matthew reworks Mark. And if Luke hasn't seen Matthew's Gospel, it's a coincidence that's just too great for comfort. So that's one, that's one key argument I would draw attention to.

    The [00:19:00] real problem of Mark-Q overlap, and then there are also many minor agreements as well between Matthew and Luke against Mark. There's not a single story that Matthew and Luke share with Mark that doesn't have agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark. Mm-hmm. The, the, when, when you- Oh ... when you read them in the Greek, there's even more.

    Mm-hmm. The English translations get rid of quite a lot of those agreements, sadly. But, but, but they're there in every single passage. There's not a single passage that doesn't have Matthew-Luke agreements against Mark. Mm-hmm. 

    Pete: So could you, would you mind giving maybe another example or two? Because I think just hearing examples can concretize the theory. 

    Mark: Mm-hmm. 

    Pete: And, yeah- Yeah ... I mean, I think it would help. 

    Mark: I agree. I agree. It's so much easier to, to do this thing by illustration. Well, let's return to the feeding of the 5,000, which we mentioned not long ago. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus is teaching the crowds before he does the big miracle, but in both Matthew and Luke, he's curing, healing the crowds.

    It's only one minor agreement, but you, like, like I say, [00:20:00] there's something like that in every story, sometimes multiple ones. Or think of when Jesus is being beaten and persecuted, really dreadful- a horrible story. It makes your blood, you know, go cold. But it's the story where Jesus is basically, people often talk about blindfolded, but I think actually they're imagining like a hood, like putting a hood, a hood on Jesus, and they're hitting him.

    This is Mark 14:65. And in Mark 14:65, you get the line, "Prophesy." They hit Jesus, and they say, "Prophesy." Hmm. Now, in exactly that point in Matthew and Luke, they both add five words in Greek, "Who is the one who hit you? Who smote you?" 

    Pete: Mm-hmm. 

    Mark: Now, if Luke doesn't have access to Matthew's Gospel, it's kind of amazing that he would write exactly the same five words.

    And one of the words there, the word for hit or smite, that's the [00:21:00] only place it occurs in the whole of Matthew's Gospel and the whole of Luke's Gospel. So it's pretty striking. And you, you can just keep adding examples like that. And, and in fact, the standard response from Q theorists to that one is to say that either all of our manuscripts of Matthew are corrupt, because there's not a single manuscript of Matthew that lacks who is the one that smote you, or all our manuscripts of Luke are corrupt, because there's not a single one manuscript of Luke that's... The, I mean, literally in the entire manuscript history of Matthew and Luke, no one's been able to find a manuscript that doesn't have who is the one who hit you.

    So, and you can't put that in Q because Q doesn't have a passion narrative. That's one of the things we're told- Oh, okay ... as the saying's gospel, it doesn't have a passion narrative. Yeah. So, you know, so the, I mean, it's places like that that just for me, with any theory where you have to keep expanding the theory or making it more elastic to explain the anomalies, you then have to start saying, "Hold on a minute, maybe the theory wasn't right in the first place." 

    Pete: Right, [00:22:00] right. You can't keep forcing it if, if there are simpler explanations. Yeah. So, so yeah, you know, it's, this is all very fascinating and it's, it's got a few moving parts, but I think it's important for people to understand what they're reading and the relationship between them. And I know, um, you know, when I, when I do some of these things with undergraduate students on a, on a much lower level, many of them are actually fascinated at, uh, even coming from more or less conservative homes, because they realize, "Oh, these guys are actually thinking about what they're writing."

    Mark: Yeah. Yeah. It is actually quite exciting. I mean, I think I find with undergraduate students, they begin a lot of them by being really shocked because I think the popular perception, most people that haven't studied this would simply assume that you've got three or four different versions, independent versions of the same stuff, and they've just-- And that's because they've not just sat down and looked at a synopsis.

    So one of the things I do with my undergrads is we get [00:23:00] a synopsis in English. I mean, I make them myself because I love making synopses. That's the kind of nerd that I am. And then I get them to color them, uh, using good old-fashioned colored pencils. And then when you get like... So for me, uh, the Q material, the double tradition, Matthew and Luke agreements, they're all green.

    And then you just look at this passage, "Oh, my goodness, look at all that green." You know, so there's that, um, there's that kind of phenomenon in there. But, I do find as well, when I'm teaching this, that I have to do a lot of work to try and make Q sound plausible. Mm-hmm. I find that sometimes they already know that I've, you know, I'm an outspoken critic of Q, and so that disadvantages me a bit.

    But not all of them necessarily know that, especially if they're coming in, you know, fresh. And so I just pretend to believe in it for a bit. And then I really, really push why so many people believe in it. And then I'll say, "This-- I've, I've got some problems with it." Because otherwise, what I used to find is, I used to [00:24:00] find that students would like kind of really pile on.

    You know, they were like, "Oh, this, yeah, this. Oh, I don't believe it because it's hypothetical." And it's like, look, there's tons of hypothetical stuff that we do in, in scholarship. It's not problematic because of that. It's problematic, I think, because there's a better argument. But yeah, I love teaching the synoptic problem with undergrad students because you know, they do find it fascinating. And just one little wrinkle on that. I've just started trying out, uh, how good AI is at creating synopses. And the fun thing is that they're nearly all terrible. Terrible! I mean, they can't, you know, they can't construct a synopsis and color it for, you know, for love or money, you know?

    So that's a lot of fun. I'm watching with great interest to see how much better the models will get at doing that, or whether we can manipulate the models to do some of that work. Mm-hmm. Scary, because I like people to do it themselves- Mm-hmm ... so they learn the problem. But it's also fascinating just watching it as, [00:25:00] as something that AI's struggling with.

    Jared: So if we go back and we, we kind of chart out a timeline of this, it's that Mark is put together first. 

    Mark: Yep. 

    Jared: And then, then Matthew is put together relying on Mark in some way. And then Luke comes along. And then it sounds like John then as a later gospel. How does this affect kind of timeline?

    Like, where are scholars in terms of when these were put together in the forms that we have them now? 

    Mark: Yeah, it's, it's, uh ... I think this is ... You know, some people will say about the synoptic problem, why is it important? And this is exactly one of the reasons why I think the synoptic problem is important, because it helps us to get a sense of when the Gospels were written, at least the sequence.

    So, so yes, I think we have Mark as the first gospel. Matthew is using Mark to an extent trying to fix Mark, rewrite it. Luke is rewriting Matthew and Mark, and then John is doing something a little, little different, but I think still, uh, with familiarity of the other [00:26:00] three. It's hard, though, getting precise dates out of that because even though you can get relative dates, there's then the controversy of where you pin any one of those texts in absolute terms.

    I personally believe, and I've argued for this, that all four Gospels post-date the Jewish War and the fall of Jerusalem in 70. And, there's a bunch of reasons for that. I think the way that even Mark's gospel talks about the war, it's prophesying it, but the way it talks about the temple is more likely to be something that you see after the events that are being prophesied than before them.

    And if that's right, and lots of people don't agree with me on that, so, but just bear with me. If that's right, then we've got some help with dating the Gospels, because it means that the earliest we can go is Mark post-70. And then we'll have to have, you have to allow some time for Matthew to get ahold of Mark, Luke to get ahold of Matthew and Mark.

    So you can then map the dates somewhere between the 70s to the [00:27:00] early second century. They, none of the Gospels can be much later than the early second century because people start talking about them and fragments of them start appearing and all the rest of it. So we've actually got a reasonably good window for dating if we go post-70 and if we go obviously before manuscripts of any of them were discovered.

    Pete: So it's the descriptions of the temple destruction, which are in all four gospels, right? 

    Mark: Less so in John, but yeah. 

    Pete: Right, less so in John, but the synoptics were- 

    Mark: Little bit in John, yeah. 

    Pete: very similar, but they, um, they do tell us something about the relative dating of these, and probably after 70.

    I mean, some might say, I mean, not to get into the weeds here, but some, I think, might say, I agree with you by the way, um, that, yeah, okay, that's fine. Jesus mentioned, you know, during his lifetime on Earth, um, yeah, this temple's gonna, it's not gonna be here forever, right? Which is sort of like an economic forecast. You [00:28:00] know, the good times are not gonna last. Something bad's gonna happen. 

    Jared: Yeah. 

    Pete: And then, um, it was filled in though from a later perspective. Right. Right. 

    Mark: Yeah, and, 

    Pete: I think- So it could have been Jesus could have done something like this. It's, it may not just be completely fabricated, right?

    It, it, maybe it is. I don't know. 

    Mark: No, right. No, absolutely. I, I mean, the way that I would, would kind of go to it is that the reason for including prophecies in your work is because the author thinks they were fulfilled. 

    Pete: Mm-hmm. 

    Mark: So the Jewish historian, Josephus, he writes the book Jewish War and the book Antiquities, and includes in those prophecies of the temple's destruction.

    And the reason why they're poignant is because the temple was destroyed. Or, or to use a more modern analogy, you know, I was brought up in the UK, and, you know, we, we heard a lot about Winston Churchill, and we went to visit Blenheim Palace, where he was born and so on. Well, Winston Churchill prophesied the Second World War coming.

    Now, if Hitler, Hitler hadn't invaded Poland, and the Second World War didn't happen, we wouldn't [00:29:00] talk about it. Well, I mean, it will be a footnote that Winston Churchill prophesied it, but the fact that he, he prophesied it and it happened means we talk about it a whole bunch. I was listening to a podcast just the other day about how Winston Churchill warned everybody that the war was gonna happen, you know?

    So that to me is why I see Mark and all the others as being post-70, because it's poignant. So when the guys in Mark 15, they say, "You who said that, you know, uh, destroy the temple, jump down from the cross and save yourself." And, and so if the temple was then destroyed, the irony is just so much more profound in that context.

    Pete: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 

    Mark: And, and of course you can't prove that Mark is, is post-70, but it makes more sense if that author is trying to draw attention to the poignancy, the irony, the, the dramatic fulfillment of the things that he sees Jesus as prophesying. And yeah, I mean, I have no problem with the idea that Jesus, [00:30:00] I mean, lots of people thought that the temple's days were numbered.

    I mean, the whole Dead Sea Scrolls community, the Qumran community, they were living out in the desert. Thought, thought the temple was already doomed, you know? So, here's no problem with that idea, but it's the, it's the function of those prophecies, I think in a text like Mark. 

    Jared: How, how do scholars talk about the purpose for these...

    It's no small amount of labor to, in these days, write another account. And- they're similar enough. Like John, of course, there's a whole different theology of makeup. But with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, why, how do scholars think about the purpose for these? You know, I grew up maybe an overly simplistic understanding of there's a different community, and so they're writing it to this community for this purpose.

    But it's similar enough. I guess w- how do scholars think about, like, h- why these things would have sprung up when they're similar enough, but then they're also different enough? What accounts for that, especially now that we have, you know, three? For people, this may be a [00:31:00] new idea. There's Mark, then there's Matthew then there's Luke over these couple of decades. Why are these springing up? 

    Mark: Yes, it's such a fascinating question, that I spend lots of time thinking about this, 'cause we do get into the realm of speculation here. Right. But then speculation is fun, 'cause the alternative is, you know, to go ignorant.

    But I can't make sense personally of Matthew's gospel unless that author thought in some senses he was replacing Mark's gospel. I don't think you copy out the vast majority of the previous book If you don't think that that will help us to dispense with the other book. Like, you know, wh- when people do a revised edition of their book, they don't recommend the first edition to their students.

    They want you to read the revised edition. And I think Matthew to some extent, is probably trying to revise Mark and replace it. And I think Luke might have been doing the same thing as well, that Luke sees what Ma- I think Luke saw what Matthew's Gospel was, i.e., a revision of Mark, [00:32:00] and Luke has already known Mark for a while, and he thinks, "Do you know what?

    I could do that. I could do a revised edition of Mark too." And in my version, in my version, we can pull in some of this new stuff. This, like, you know, the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer and the Parable of the Lost Sheep. No, we'll, we'll do that. So Luke then has a go as well.

    And, the joy of that whole process, if that's right, is that they all failed. Because people continued to read Mark's Gospel and continued to read Matthew. They didn't see these things as replacements, and they, and, you know... So, so, so you have the joy, then of a, you know, four-fold cannon ultimately, you know, where these things do sit alongside one another.

    Mm-hmm. You know, I'm happy that if that was Matthew's aim, that he failed, you know? Because I love Mark's Gospel. I'm happy that we can see that. 

    Pete: It's interesting. That raises the, the, um, the notion of some competition, let's say, between the gospel writers and not just- Mm ... oh, different perspectives. Like, you know, you're watching- Right

    a car accident, and you just sort of see it differently. No, they're intentionally- Mm ... [00:33:00] disagreeing with each other. Mm-hmm. And, uh, that makes, you know, Luke's prologue, you know, I never really got that until, you know, years ago when I started studying this. So I was like, "Oh, he's saying he did it better."

    Like, many have tried to do this but I did my research. Yeah. You know? And here you go. And this is the most, this is an excellent account, so. And, you know, that sometimes gets buried in Christian rhetoric, especially conservative Christian rhetoric. Yeah. You can't have the Bible doing that.

    Mark: No, I, I, absolutely, I so agree. I think you can only make sense of Luke's prologue. I mean, it actually explicitly refers to many that have attempted, and it sounds, like, almost condescending that they've attempted- ... you know, to do this thing. But I've done the research, you know? Yeah.

    This is the, this is the, you know, this is the one. And, and I think even though you don't have quite the same thing in John's Gospel, you do right at the end of John get this notion that, you know, there are [00:34:00] many things I could have written, you guys. There's many signs that we could have shared with.

    But these ones are written so that you may know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. And, then you get this at the end of 21, that's the end of 20, and then end of 21, you get, well, if everything was written down, then the whole world would be, you know, filled with the book, so. And it's a subtle way of saying, this is the important stuff, you know?

    Pete: Yeah. 

    Mark: So, so yeah. I think that's right. There has to be some sense of competition there. Definitely. 

    Pete: Yeah. 

    Jared: Do we get a sense, too, of- This emphasis of more important thing, I'm thinking of how Mark's gospel ends and then Matthew. Like, this, just some of these additions are also making these broader theological points that sort of start to evolve as we, as we move forward. Is there also a sense, not just I'm gonna do the same kind of thing differently, but also, we've kind of evolved in our thinking, and we need to make sure we include these other points that have these, like theologically significant moments [00:35:00] here. 

    Mark: Yeah, very much so. And, you know, most scholars rightly, in my view, think that Mark's gospel originally ended with the tomb story, the vacated tomb, and doesn't have any appearance stories. And pretty much everyone in history ever since Mark has gone, "Hold on a minute.

    Where are the appearances of Jesus?" And I think the first person to say that, that we know of, was the author of Matthew's gospel. "No, we need to tell about the appearances of Jesus." And then Luke follows suit, and John follows suit again with, you know, more and more stories about appearances.

    And it's, so to that extent, the process of gospel writing and rewriting is always a response to your predecessor's work. And it's a, well, how can we have... We can't end here with the women fleeing the tomb and not saying anything to anyone- can we? And then, you know, throw in some else.

    Matthew's gospel ends in Galilee. They're on a mountain in Galilee, and yet I think the author of Luke's gospel knows full well that the disciples didn't [00:36:00] end up living in Galilee. Uh, the earliest we see them in Paul's letters, in Galatians one and two, they're living in Jerusalem. 

    Pete: Mm-hmm. 

    Mark: So Luke switches the entire thing to Jerusalem, you know.

    So you have this, and then John is wonderful 'cause John does both. Starts in Jerusalem and then does Galilee. Got to love, uh, the fourth gospel. So- I mean, I, I think, yeah, absolutely. I think the... And these things are not just playing around the sides. These are all theologically rich and interesting issues that they're having these agreements and disagreements on. 

    Pete: It seems, it's probably fair to say at least the Synoptic Gospels are bearing witness to- a theological disagreement, historical disagreement. Those two things I think melt together very nicely. And, um- We all think, "Well, they're just giving different accounts, but they'll all be happy with us reading all of these."

    But I'm not so sure anymore. Mm-hmm. I mean, I think Luke is saying, "No, read mine," or Matthew. "No, no- Mm-hmm ... I've got this straight. You know, Mark, Mark was okay, you know, but he, he didn't quite get it all. Yeah. And I, I [00:37:00] need to put it differently, and I need to say things stronger. And we have to have a better resurrection account and, and all of that.

    And I, I just, I don't know, I find that absolutely fascinating to think through these kinds of things, and it's fun if you don't think you'll go to hell for thinking the wrong things. Which is what some people think and deters them from having these conversations, but yeah.

    Mark: Well, I, no, I, I quite agree. A- and I think one of the things that's kind of reassuring, you know, if people do find these discussions troubling, and I know that people do. I teach courses on the New Testament. I teach more undergraduates than graduate students so I have these kind of conversations regularly with believing Christians.

    And I think one of the things that actually does break through to them is when they notice that some of this sense of acknowledged disagreement is present in the text themselves. Right. This isn't just a bunch of 21st century liberal-minded scholars imposing something on the Word. Yes. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, [00:38:00] you brought up the, the prologue of, of Luke.

    It's pretty explicit. It's pretty explicit that other people have done this job, and I'm gonna do it better. 

    Jared: Mm-hmm. 

    Mark: And I think i- if you, you know, if you move to John's gospel as well, there's some quite open criticism in John of some of the stuff that you read in the Synoptics. Like, you know, Jesus, in all three Synoptics, prays the night before his death, this agonized prayer.

    You know, "Take this cup away from me." And in John's gospel, John 12, he says, "Father, what shall I say? Shall I say save me from this hour? No, I'm not going to say that." And then you don't get Gethsemane in, in John's gospel. It sounds to me like a- you know, quite a strong critique of what is in the other gospels, you know?

    Pete: And, this is at a relatively early stage in history. I mean, it's not as early as- Right ... Paul's letters, but it's, you know, we're a, a couple generations away, and they have disagreements about this Jesus and what he said. And, and, and, you know, okay, [00:39:00] I'm gonna ask you this. Do you think- Do you think that when, let's say, Luke was adjusting Matthew and/or Mark, that he was saying, "I don't think that's what happened, and I think this is what happened," or do you think it was more, "I think this tells a better story of this person"?

    I see a distinction between those two. 

    Mark: Yeah. No, I do too. And, it's an interesting question whether Luke would've seen that distinction. 

    Pete: Mm. 

    Mark: I mean, I don't rule out that the authors of the four Gospels thought that they were writing scripture or thought they were writing something like scripture, and therefore they had the authority to correct and change what they saw in their source material.

    And the reason why I'm reasonably happy with that possibility is that as early as we do go, when we look at the letters of Paul, Paul says, "And I [00:40:00] think I have the mind of Christ." And he talks about individuals being filled with the Spirit. And in John's Gospel, we have the line that, "The Spirit will lead you into all truth."

    Mm-hmm. So I think that the authors of these Gospels, they believe. That they're not, they're not, um, fraudulent or anything like that. They sincerely believe they're filled with the Spirit, and the Spirit is guiding them to write what is true. Now- ... it does still, it does still leave us with that key question.

    Well, why did they change the details then? Yeah. I mean, was Jesus's robe purple or scarlet? It can't be both. Well, I suppose it could be both, but no one's saying it's both except the harmonizers. So, you know, why did they do that? 

    Pete: Mm-hmm. 

    Mark: Uh, and I can only make sense of that if they thought they were correcting it to something that was true.

    And they might well have known full well that they hadn't got this from a, you know, an actual [00:41:00] human source, but they may have believed they got it from a divine source. I don't know. I love asking these questions, though. I think to an extent they're what, they're what makes studying the New Testament so exciting.

    Jared: I think we're maybe coming to the end of our time, but I wanna double down on, you know, Pete, you used the word fascinating and Mark used the word exciting. And I think that's true from a scholarly perspective, but I do think it's really important to settle in on this because it does have the potential to really, I don't- hopefully I'm not over-dramatizing, but revolutionize how people see their Bible.

    To see these disagreements and these, "Yeah, this happened, but I'm gonna change it on purpose because I think this is more accurate- Mm-hmm ... and I think this is a better way of doing." To have that baked into our Bible, I think could be really mind-blowing for people. [00:42:00] And in some ways that's very scary, and I think both of you have a lot of experience teaching, you know, young minds about this.

    And I'd be curious kind of as we, as we leave, what, what difference does it make as you see these students go through and they're introduced to these concepts? By the time that they, you know, leave the class, or by the time that they leave the program, have you seen the difference that it can make in terms of how they see the Bible and how they approach the Bible? Because I think for a lot of our listeners who grew up with the kinda white glove approach, you can't touch it, if you disagree, that's just liberal scholarship, to recognizing this is part of the tradition in the most sacred possible way, we have it baked in. I would just imagine that changes people.

    And have you seen that? 

    Mark: Right. I would love to hear what Pete's response is to that, but mine would be, um, absolutely that I like that term, it's baked in, because I will often say in the classroom that you can already see these agreements [00:43:00] and disagreements within the canon. And if already within the canon of the New Testament you have this interesting range of views and people kind of working out, then it means that it's, it's important for people today to do the same thing to use their own discernment and to discuss these things. And this isn't just the Gospels either. One of the, one of the things that I love reflecting on is the fact that Paul explicitly in his epistles changes his mind, sometimes even in the same epistle. So if, if something that is being regarded as Scripture actually has the, the author in the process of working it out, surely it's okay, you know, for us to do the same thing. At least that, that's how I, I tackle those things. Mm-hmm. But I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are. 

    Pete: Well, I mean, I think it's, not to overstate, but I think coming to terms with the phenomena of Scripture and just paying attention to it- will, um, I think expose a lot of popular views of all this as being inadequate.[00:44:00] 

    Not, not stupid but truncated. Like, when people say, um, "Well, yeah, the Gospels are different, but not in the important stuff." You know, it's... Well, yeah. Yeah. But still, it's different. And if the Spirit is inspiring- Yeah ... these people to literally disagree with each other, you know, what does that do for us?

    And, I always like to think of that as an invitation to think about the nature of Scripture and how it impacts people's spiritual development and the life of the Church, rather than... It's not an attack. It's, it's trying to describe and, and hypothesize, which is inevitable, right? But trying to, um, explain why does the Bible look the way that it does?

    "Well, it can't be doing that." Mm-hmm. Yeah, the problem though with that, it is doing that. So what are we going to do with that? And, you know, that's one of our taglines here, what is the Bible and what do you do with it? And, and that comes not from reading atheists. It comes from reading the [00:45:00] Bible itself.

    You know, I always go back to Chronicles and Samuel. Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. It's, it's, it's a similar thing. Chronicles is inten- He has Samuel Kings in front of him, most scholars think. I agree with that. Intentionally changing it. And not so much because he thinks the other one's wrong, but he has a story to tell for a different people that has a different impact. And maybe that's relevant for the Gospels, too. I don't know, but, um, all this is- sorry, Jared, it's fascinating, okay? It's exciting and it's fascinating. 

    Mark: Yes. No. And, and, yeah, and, and just, just very quickly on that one. I wouldn't be surprised if the author of the Gospel of Matthew took that as his model, because that's in his Bible.

    Samuel, Kings, Chronicles. And we know he, he knows that stuff. And so if he sees the chronicler doing that- ... with Samuel Kings, he can do that with Mark's gospel, too. 

    Jared: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you, Mark, for, for jumping on. It is a fascinating topic. And an unending one, too. It's just more, it's just more than that.

    I think it has a chance to really help people out, so thank you. [00:46:00] 

    Pete: Yeah. 

    Mark: A pleasure. Thank you for having me on. 

    Jared: All right, one last thing. If you made it this far, you're clearly the kind of person who thinks about this stuff more than is probably necessary. 

    Pete: We say that with love, but you're not alone.

    We are also those people. 

    Jared: Community for us folks who do a lot of extra thinking, it's called the Society of Normal People, which, yes, we know is a little ironic given what we just said. But it's a good group, smart and weird in the right ways, and not trying to convince anyone of anything. 

    Pete: Come be weird with us.

    The link is in the show notes, or go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com. 

    Jared: Front slash join. I forgot to put that.


Pete Enns & Jared Byas
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Episode 338: The Brian Recker and Tamice Spencer-Helms Takeover