Four Important Insights or Keys for Understanding
the Sources and the Interrelationship of the Synoptic Gospels

By Robert L. Lindsey, PhD

Introduction       Key 1     [ Key 2 ]      Key 3     Key 4

The Second Key: Synoptic Relationships

Over the years of working with the gospels, I discovered a second very helpful key for their understanding. This second key has a direct bearing on how we attempt to solve the synoptic problem, a subject with which I never intended to get involved. It is an erudite subject that has spawned volumes of academic discussion. Nevertheless, over the course of my translation work, I came to abandon the widely accepted idea that Mark had written first. In its stead, I concluded that Luke had written the first canonical gospel; Mark and then Matthew followed.

Let me offer some reasons why I broke with the prevailing view concerning Markan priority. The Two-Document Hypothesis of Markan Priority assumes that Mark wrote first and that Matthew and Luke independently consulted his gospel. Hence, Mark constitutes one of the two documents of the hypothesis. The other document or source that they consulted has been labeled "Q" by scholars. Q is an abbreviation for the German word "quelle," which means "source." Having learned this hypothesis in seminary and having accepted it as more factual than hypothetical, I embarked upon a new translation of Mark into Modern Hebrew in 1959. While translating, I noticed that in passages where I could examine material common to both Mark and Luke, Luke’s Greek was noticeably easier to render into a smooth Hebrew translation. That is to say, when reading Luke, I normally could translate his Greek into Hebrew with great ease and without a number of the problems that I encountered when translating Mark’s Greek into Hebrew. That was the first important clue.

Then I noticed a second clue to the relationship of the synoptic gospels. In the more than seventy pericopes (or story units) shared by Mark and Luke, I realized that the actual wording in Greek differed between these parallels up to sixty percent. I also discovered that most of these differences were simply the result of one of the evangelists introducing synonyms in place of the wording of the other. In a story which has been repeated by Mark and Luke, a Greek reader will see that these stories almost never have a string of more than three to five identical words in common. In English translation these sentences in Mark and Luke may look alike, but in Greek, Mark’s text has equivalent after equivalent, or words which function as synonyms for the words which Luke employed. Based on this evidence, I concluded that either Luke was changing Mark or Mark was changing Luke. Because Luke’s gospel can be translated back into Hebrew more readily than Mark’s, suggesting that Luke reflects more closely an earlier Hebrew stratum of the synoptic tradition, I decided that Mark had reworked Luke.

A good triple tradition story for seeing Mark at work is "The Healing of the Paralytic" (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; and Luke 5:17-26). In Kurt Aland’s Synopsis of The Four Gospels one finds this story labeled as pericope nos. 43 and 92. The story is about some men who attempted to carry a paralytic on a pallet to Jesus. Upon realizing that a large crowd prevented access to Jesus, they lifted the paralytic onto the roof and lowered him on his bed right in front of Jesus.

Luke used the Greek noun klinae to describe the bed on which the man rested . Mark wrote krabattos, which some Greek purists view as a slightly vulgar word. Krabattos means pallet, and it is also found in Acts 9:33, where another paralytic named Aeneas received healing. So, Luke felt comfortable using either klinae (Luke 5:18) or krabattos (Acts 9:33). But why did Mark write krabattos, which elsewhere appears in another paralytic-miracle story? Or why, in the same story, did Mark opt not to use Luke’s word for "roof"? Luke used doma, but Mark wrote stegae.

Mark and Luke repeated the same story. A number of the sentences are basically identical. Many of the same words appear in both versions. But what motivated this method of synonymic interchange? I came to realize that Mark wrote a gospel of equivalents. He had what might be called a targumist mentality. He seems to have said to himself, "Where Luke’s gospel has this word, I will use a synonym."

Mark’s method is neither without precedent nor purpose. If we consult the ancient Aramaic translations of the Bible such as Targum Psuedo-Jonathan and ancient Hebrew and Aramaic paraphrases of the Pentateuchal narratives such as the Genesis Apocryphon and the Book of Jubilees, we will discover that Mark’s manner of writing includes some features which can also be found in this targumic genre of literature. Mark’s freedom in reworking his Lukan source may be glimpsed in his addition of details such as emotions and people’s names (footnote 12). Josephus displayed similar habits when he wrote Jewish Antiquities in Greek (footnote 13).

By replacing klinae with krabattos, Mark made a subtle allusion to an incident involving the paralyzed Aeneas. By means of his choice of words, Mark stimulated the person reading these texts in Greek to think of other passages and stories from the books of the Bible and beyond. His purpose is to splice his composition into a much larger tapestry of Biblical literature, and by doing so, he has enriched our reading of his gospel. He wants us to think of other passages or stories to which he has hinted through the lifting of vocabulary and details. Mark may have reasoned, "Jesus did a great miracle in healing that man who had been lowered through the roof! And do not forget that our risen Lord healed Aeneas, too!"

Mark’s method constitutes a whole system of interpretation. He alludes to places in other texts in a number of different ways, more of which I will address later. But the important thing for us to learn here is to begin to note the differences that appear in a given passage from the triple tradition, and not to be afraid of them. Then through diligent study of the synoptic gospels we must try to gain insight into the significance of these differences. Many of these differences are the result of Mark’s method of equivalency, the method by which he edited Luke’s story.

How I worked through the first three gospels and finally concluded that Luke wrote first and Mark used Luke as his primary source is quite involved and would require a lengthy, technical discussion outside the scope of this book. What I want the reader to realize is that in order to get back to the earliest version of a triple tradition story, he or she must place an emphasis on the Lukan version. Mark has left us an intricate pattern of literary arabesque based upon Luke’s text. Once a person recognizes Mark’s method, then he or she can study comparatively the Matthean, Markan, and Lukan parallels in order to isolate the earliest and most historical sketch of Jesus which has been preserved in the triple tradition.

By means of synonymic interchanges , Mark also made allusions to verses in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

Mark’s method of rewriting Luke’s text contributed much to the problems that I encountered while translating Mark’s Greek into Hebrew. Generally, I could easily translate Luke’s Greek into Hebrew, but this was not true in the case of Mark.

How does Mark’s method affect Matthew? I found that many of Mark’s changes and additions appear also in Matthew. In other words, wherever Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels run in parallel, by his method of writing, Mark influenced Matthew. But Matthew relied on two principal sources for his gospel: one was Mark, and the other was an older source with fantastically preserved material of the historical Jesus. In the triple tradition, where Matthew abandons Mark’s wording, we sometimes can catch glimpses of this earlier source percolating up through Matthew’s composition. Now we can see why scholars speak so highly of Q, or the material which only Luke and Matthew have in common. The double tradition material (or Q) has escaped Mark’s literary influence.

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12  Others before and after me have noticed Mark’s habit of lifting details from canonical and non-canonical texts. Benjamin Bacon’s commentary on Mark played a role in helping me formulate my ideas. Among other things, Bacon saw the similarities between Mark 1:1 and Hosea 1:2 (LXX), Mark 1:13 and Naphtali 8:4, Mark 6:13 and James 5:14, Mark 6:23 and Esther 5:3, and Mark 7:19 and Acts 10:15. Benjamin W. Bacon, The Beginnings of the Gospel Story (New Haven: Yale University, 1920.

13  See Robert Lindsey, "Paraphrastic Gospels," Jerusalem Perspective no. 51 (April-June 1996), pp. 10-15.