Synoptic Sequences

Recasting Mark’s kai euthys as “and then”

In this “Synoptic Sequences” series, we are working through some of the sequential differences which one finds when comparing Matthew’s Gospel to Mark’s Gospel, with the hope that the differences can be explained in a way that is consistent with my early Matthew proposition. Therefore, we’re approaching these sequential differences with the following assumptions:

  1. Matthew was published coincident with the events in Acts 10–11 and Mark shortly thereafter, with full knowledge of Matthew’s text.
  2. Because Matthew wrote within a decade of the resurrection, his Jewish audience would expect for his account to be chronologically and sequentially accurate, consistent with their knowledge of Jesus.
  3. Mark worked from Peter’s teachings, which Papias says Peter adapted to meet the needs of his audiences, and therefore the stories in Mark’s Gospel are sometimes arranged topically.

The problem statement

If we accept that Matthew was written coincident with the events in Acts 10-11 and Mark shortly thereafter, per what I’ve been arguing, then we need to come to terms with the different sequence of events between the two Gospels. Eusebius records Papias as reporting that:

Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. p 173 For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.” These things are related by Papias concerning Mark.1

That Mark worked from Peter’s adapted stories is a fine approach, but when we actually look at Mark’s Gospel we find passages which are often connected with “and immediately” (kai euthys), suggesting that Mark is carefully attending to chronology. For example, Mark indicates that the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law occurs right after Jesus and the disciples depart the synagogue in Capernaum:

And immediately (kai euthys) he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them. (Mark 1:29–31 ESV)

In Mark, this passage occurs before the healing of the leper, the one known for his appeal to Jesus: “if you will, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40–45). In contrast, Matthew places the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law somewhat later (Matt. 8:14–15), and after the healing of the leper (Matt. 8:2–4).

Some scholars assert that the Gospel authors had little concern for chronology, given that contemporary biographers felt free to arrange their material topically.2 However, Craig Keener does an excellent job in surveying the compositional practices of ancient biographies and then contending that even if the Gospels were arranged topically, they should still be approached as accurate historical accounts.3 Regardless, my present assumption is that because Matthew wrote within a decade of the resurrection, his Jewish audience would expect for his account to be chronologically and sequentially accurate, consistent with their knowledge of Jesus. Therefore, I’m going with the premise that Matthew has presented a chronologically accurate account, while Mark (or perhaps Peter) sometimes rearranged his account topically.

Resolving the problem

All of this gets us back to needing to deal with Mark’s kai euthys. This expression is used twenty-five times in Mark’s Gospel. In all but one instance (in the ESV), it is translated as “and immediately.” Can we instead understand this expression as meaning something else?

Indeed, we can. Mark’s Gospel is commonly recognized as reflecting Hebraisms—particularly, in its preference for kai (meaning and, so, etc.) over other typical Greek conjunctives, such as gar, de, men, oun, te, etc.4 Decker reports that “about 64 percent of the sentences in Mark begin with kai.”5 In addition to employing kai euthys, Mark also favors kai egeneto (and it happened) and kai combined with a variety of verbs and participles.

According to Decker, when “euthys occurs alone [without kai], it is always adverbial, never conjunctive.”6 However, when combined with kai, “it may be either adverbial or conjunctive. Only the context can determine the proper classification.”7 For example, in Mark 1:10, as Jesus comes up out of the baptismal waters, the two-word expression acts as a simple “sequential conjunction, ‘and then,'” as the heavens are then seen to be torn open.8 In contrast, the two-word expression in Mark 10:52 suggests a sense of immediacy, as the man immediately recovers his sight and follows Jesus, after Jesus heals him.9 This adverbial approach seems particularly appropriate in Mark 10:52, as the parallel account in Luke 18:43 uses a similar adverb to convey that the healing was “at once,” while Matthew 20:34 employs an expression similar to that in Mark.

Our passage of immediate interest, Mark 1:29, is translated by Decker as: “and so, leaving the synagogue, they went to the home of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.”10 Hence, the delay between the departure from the synagogue and the entry into Simon’s home is left indeterminate, and the conjunctive language is able to accommodate the editorial decision to shift this episode in Simon’s home out of Matthew’s chronological order, so that it can be thematically paired with other healing miracles in Mark’s Gospel.11 In contrast, Mike Licona leverages the “immediately” interpretation to give Mark (chronological) priority, over Matthew, as Licona fails to acknowledge Mark’s distinctive use of kai euthys. Licona thus concludes that the timeline in Matthew has been rearranged, rather than that in Mark (and Luke).12

In the future, we’ll look at a few additional instances where Mark’s Gospel has presumably resequenced portions of Matthew’s narrative, and will assess whether the above approach to the conjunctive language is sufficient to accommodate such.


  1. Eusebius, Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of Constantine, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, vol. 1, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2 (New York, NY: Christian Literature, 1890), 172–173. ↩︎
  2. I’ve recently seen an assertion to this effect and need to go find it! ↩︎
  3. Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019), 138–142. ↩︎
  4. Nigel Turner, Style, vol. 4, A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1976), 15, 17. ↩︎
  5. Rodney J. Decker, Mark 1-8: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), xxvi. ↩︎
  6. Rodney J. Decker, “The Use of Εὐθὺς (‘Immediately’) in Mark,” Journal of Ministry and Theology 01, no. 1 (Spring 1997), 119. Refer also to Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1952), 160. ↩︎
  7. Rodney J. Decker, “The Use of Εὐθὺς,” 119. ↩︎
  8. Decker, Mark 1-8, 13. ↩︎
  9. Rodney J. Decker, Mark 9-16: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), 78. ↩︎
  10. Decker, Mark 1-8, 31. ↩︎
  11. Riley likewise finds that Mark’s use of euthys often means “and then,” and that this is the meaning in Mark 1:29. Harold Riley, The Making of Mark: An Exploration (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989), 217. ↩︎
  12. Michael R. Licona, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently (Grand Rapids, MI: HarperCollins Christian Publishing, 2024), 148. ↩︎

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *