In previous articles, I have illustrated Mark’s tendency towards omitting Matthew’s Old Testament quotations, when covering the same episode as Matthew, while at the same time inserting a few words which allude to the underlying OT passage itself. I am presently aware of six instances of this behavior. Correspondingly, I…
Why Four Gospels? By Arthur W. Pink. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2017, 176 pp. [Originally published as: Why Four Gospels? By Arthur W. Pink. Swengel, PA: Bible Truth Depot, 1921.] The fundamentalist-modernist struggles of the 1910s and 1920s have increasingly fascinated me—this was the era during which the series,…
Is There a Synoptic Problem? : Rethinking the Literary Dependence of the First Three Gospels. By Eta Linnemann. Translated by Robert W. Yarbrough. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1992, 219 pp. Back when I began my own journey in wrestling with the Synoptic Problem (SP), I found that Eta Linnemann was frequently…
Last year, I surveyed the opinions of various scholars who either “broadly discounted the Gospels as providing chronological accounts” or who specifically discounted Matthew’s chronological sequence of events, in favor of Mark’s ordering of events. In contrast, I suggested that “if we accept that Matthew was published first, coincident with…
On the premise that Matthew was published coincident with the events in Acts 10–11 and Mark shortly thereafter, with full knowledge of Matthew’s Greek text, I have been evaluating the passages which Mark chose to resequence–from Matthew–into earlier settings within his own narrative. Refer to “Mark’s resequenced episodes, assuming Matthean…
Which of Mark’s episodes were resequenced, on the assumption that Mark had Matthew’s Gospel available to him? For this exercise, I am excluding some of the teaching events, such as the parables, as Jesus may well have taught things at multiple times. Plus, the narrative summary statements are also excluded.…
In a prior blog post, “The two-part story of the withered fig tree,” I argued that the Matthean and the Markan accounts can be harmonized by realizing that Mark is employing a flash-forward. According to Matthew’s account, it is after the temple cleansing that (1) Jesus curses the fig tree,…
Matthew, Mark and Luke: A Study in the Order and Interrelation of the Synoptic Gospels. By John Chapman. Edited by John M. T. Barton. London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1937, 312 pp. Last month I was privileged to acquire a copy of John Chapman’s significant work on the order and…
How do assumptions regarding the publication date of Matthew’s Gospel and Matthean priority affect our interpretation of the book? Previously, we looked at how J. Oliver Buswell’s belief that Matthew was published after Paul’s writings impacted his identification of the elect in the Olivet Discourse. Today, we consider the identity…
In 1961, S. Vernon McCasland published an article entitled “Matthew Twists the Scriptures,” in which he charges the author of Matthew with distorting not only his Old Testament sources, but also his contemporary sources. Brazenly, McCasland begins his accusation by redirecting the expressed concern of 2 Peter 3:16 at the…