Comparing Luke’s use of Mark in the other parts of his Gospel with his use of him in these last sections, Hawkins[48] finds that “the verbal correspondence with the Marcan source is about twice as great in the Lucan account of the ministry as in the Lucan account of the passion.” The amount of actually new material in Luke’s passion section is about three times as great as the amount of new material which Luke introduces into any other correspondingly large section of Marcan narrative.
SUMMARY ON MATTHEW’S AND LUKE’S TREATMENT OF THE MARCAN NARRATIVE
The manner in which Matthew and Luke have treated the Gospel of Mark has been brought out in the concrete and detailed examples that have been considered. No single motive, especially no one so-called “tendency” of either writer explains all his modifications of his Marcan source. Both Matthew and Luke omitted what seemed to them superfluous, as well as whatever appeared to them to conflict with the higher veneration for Jesus which had developed in their times. Luke especially omitted what would have no significance or interest for his Greek readers—disputes with the Pharisees, questions of Jewish law, and other Judaistic features. Both Matthew and Luke treated the actual words of Jesus, as recorded in Mark, with great respect. But the narrative, and in a less degree the parables, they felt free to work over as they would. Matthew shows much greater fidelity to his source than Luke. But both of them reconstructed sentences or whole stories, changed bad constructions into good ones, added what material they would, Matthew combining this with his Marcan material while Luke kept it for the most part distinct. Not every change which they made suggests its explanation to us, and we cannot be certain that in most of them we have the actual motive operating in the mind of the evangelist. But the method of their procedure, the kind of motives that influenced them, the degree of freedom which they took in the re-working of their material from Mark, and their habits with reference to the relation of this Marcan material to the other matter which they wished to combine with it, have been sufficiently established.[49]
CHAPTER V
HAVE WE THE GOSPEL OF MARK IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM?
The number of instances in which Matthew and Luke agree in their changes of Mark has given rise to the theory that Matthew and Luke did not use our Mark but an earlier form. A certain number of such agreements might be passed over as merely accidental. A certain number more might be assigned to assimilation. But if the agreements of Matthew and Luke in their corrections of Mark are so numerous and so striking as to be quite beyond accounting for in these ways, the assumption would be justified that Matthew and Luke used, not our copy of Mark, but one in which the text ran as it now does in those passages where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark.
There are some indications that we do not have the Gospel of Mark in its original form. The conclusion is lacking. This however throws no light on an Ur-Marcus, since the conclusion was lacking in the Mark used by Matthew and Luke.[50]
There are many signs of apparent transposition in our Mark. The insertion of one miracle into the midst of another, as in the case of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the issue of blood (v, 21-43), might be held to be such a transposition. The incident of the Beelzebul dispute (iii, 20-30) is inserted between the coming of the family of Jesus (iii, 21) to take him home with them, and Jesus’ statement (iii, 31-35), which is the sequel of their coming, about his true brotherhood. The speech about the cursing of the fig tree (xi, 20-26) intervenes between the cleansing of the temple (xi, 15-19) and the demand of the scribes (xi, 27-33) as to the authority by which Jesus has done so unwonted a thing. After this question about authority, and before Jesus’ reply to it, or before the description of the discomfiture of the scribes at the reply, seriously interrupting the connection, comes the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen.[51]