Chapter 6

Critiquing Arguments for Markan Priority

With the positive case for Lukan priority established and patristic tradition set aside as a defense of Markan priority, the specific scholarly arguments typically offered in support of Markan priority can now be examined directly. The Markan priority consensus rests on arguments that, upon closer examination, prove far less decisive than they are typically presented. Many classic arguments for Markan priority rely on superficial observations, such as Mark’s shorter overall length or its rougher Greek, that do not withstand rigorous analysis when the actual parallel passages are compared in detail. What follows is a systematic response to the most common arguments for Markan priority used by Christian apologists, academics, and scholars, demonstrating that the evidence, when carefully examined, points not to Mark but to Luke as the most primitive of the canonical gospels.

This critical engagement has a substantial precedent. Hans-Herbert Stoldt’s History and Criticism of the Marcan Hypothesis traced the rise of the hypothesis in nineteenth-century German scholarship, particularly in the work of Wilke, Weisse, and Holtzmann, and developed a sustained, point-by-point critique of the standard arguments for Markan priority. The subsections that follow take up several of the same arguments Stoldt analyzes in Part II of his book, including the arguments from originality and from language.¹

Stoldt’s Part II addresses a wider range of arguments than the present section engages, and a reader who encounters older or more specialized defenses of Markan priority in the critical literature will find each treated systematically in its own chapter. The seven arguments Stoldt examines are the argument from common narrative sequence (Mark’s order said to underlie the orders of Matthew and Luke), the argument from uniformity (Mark’s stylistically consistent composition), the argument from originality (Mark’s vividness and picturesque detail), the argument from language (Mark’s perceived linguistic primitivity), the argument from doublets (the appeal to repeated sayings in Matthew and Luke as evidence for distinct Markan and sayings sources), the argument from Petrine origin (Mark as the written record of Peter’s preaching transmitted through the Papias fragment), and the argument from psychological reflection (the appeal to authorial motivation to explain Matthew’s and Luke’s divergences from Mark).² The present treatment addresses arguments more frequently espoused by New Testament professors.

“Mark is the Shortest Gospel”

Mark is the shortest gospel in overall length. This is usually the first point made in arguments for Markan priority. However, when comparing gospel parallels, Mark is significantly longer than Luke, as noted by Halvor Ronning:

“The stories Mark told are almost always (literally 80% of the time) longer than the parallel accounts in Luke and Matthew. Mark is the longest Gospel, not the shortest in terms of the actual stories he decided to incorporate. Mark is shortest only in terms of overall length, but that is only because of the stories and sayings he chose to omit. Mark’s expansionist style fits his character as a sophisticated targumic story teller.” ³

The quantitative evidence for Mark’s expansion of Luke has been set out under “Progressive Embellishment and Redactional Expansion.” Sixty-four parallel passages accounting for 65% of the Gospel of Mark average 46% longer in Mark, as shown in Figure 2.

Judging by overall length is a superficial criterion for establishing priority because it does not account for what Mark is within its literary genre. Mark is composed as an action-packed novel in which much biographical information and the sayings of Jesus are largely omitted. Mark is shorter overall because the author omits much content that does not contribute to the drama and intrigue of the gospel narrative.

A complementary observation reinforces the same conclusion from the opposite direction. Vincent Taylor noted that Luke omits roughly half of Mark’s material, a pattern more naturally explained by Lukan priority than by Mark as the foundation on which Luke built. An author working from Mark as a primary source would be expected to retain most of it.⁴

“Mark Is a Transcription of Oral Tradition”

Because of Mark’s fast pace, abrupt style, and minimal use of antecedents, some have suggested that this indicates it is a direct transcription of oral tradition. However, a substantial body of evidence indicates the opposite.

In-depth analysis of Mark reveals a Midrashic method of homologizing and blending terminology from various sources, replacing more authentic wording with synonyms and expressions he culled from certain Old and New Testament books and other sources. Mark is essentially an annotated commentary and remix of the more primitive Gospel of Luke. Robert Lindsey describes the author’s editorial approach:

“Mark’s principal method was to replace about half of Luke’s earlier and more authentic wording with a variety of synonyms and expressions he culled from certain Old and New Testament books that, today, we can identify usually simply by consulting Greek and Hebrew concordances of the Bible… Like the rabbis, Mark loved to find linguistic parallels to the text he was copying in other, often unrelated, books, and then mix words and phrases taken from these parallels with others of his sources. This method resulted in an amplified text that many scholars had thought gave an authenticity to Mark’s work, but which, in reality, should be described as a fascinating but rather inauthentic dramatization of the Gospel story. Due to Mark’s quite normal midrashic and aggadic Jewish methods, his Gospel is the ‘first cartoon life of Christ.’ Mark was a ‘re-write man.’” ⁵

Halvor Ronning concurred after conducting an extensive analysis:

“As a Jewish author, Mark simply followed in the footsteps of good targumic style: he dramatized his source by substituting synonyms, adding words from elsewhere, and rearranging and reversing word orders; anything to hold the reader’s attention and fascination. (Mark also demonstrates that he had an intensely active associative mind by recalling of words and phrases and ideas from the Septuagint and the writings of Paul and working these words and ideas into his paraphrase of Luke’s text.” ⁶

David Bivin, after an extensive review of Mark’s editorial style, also notes:

“The author of Mark’s modus operandi was to make almost every kind of change to his text that an editor can make. Often, his changes appear to be without purpose—simply change for the sake of change. Yet, although to post-Enlightenment western readers Mark’s treatment of his sources may seem arbitrary and even indefensible, there are ancient Jewish models for Mark’s editorial techniques in the later rabbinic aggadic midrashim and in the targumim… Scholars often refer to the editorial alterations of Mark (alterations often followed by Matthew) as ‘vivid detail’ or ‘freshness,’ assuming these ‘primitive’ readings to be a sign of Mark’s originality. However, once Mark’s Gospel is recognized as dependent on Luke’s, Mark’s editorial style becomes unmistakable.”⁷

Two distinctive structural features of Mark further confirm its character as a careful literary composition rather than a transcription of oral tradition. The first is the technique of intercalation, in which a two-part narrative is interrupted by an unrelated story whose function is to frame the interrupted action. Mark expands the use of this technique only exhibited twice in Luke (the woman with a hemorrhage interrupting the raising of Jairus’s daughter at Luke 8:40–56; the sending of the Twelve framing Herod’s wonder about Jesus at Luke 9:1–10), and adds five additional instances of his own: Jesus’s family and the Beelzebul controversy at Mark 3:20–35, the Withered Fig Tree and the Temple cleansing at Mark 11:12–21, the Conspiracy, Anointing in Bethany, and Betrayal sequence at Mark 14:1–11, Peter’s denial framing the high priest’s interrogation at Mark 14:54–72, and an extended variation on the fig tree and Temple sequence at Mark 11:15–33. Each of Mark’s five additions exhibits the same structural feature: key players in the outer story are absent from the inner story, and the action delayed by the inner story resumes in the second outer episode. This is sophisticated narrative engineering of a kind not produced by oral transmission.

The second feature is the duplication of stories. The Feeding of the Four Thousand at Mark 8:1–10 duplicates the Feeding of the Five Thousand at Mark 6:30–44. The Walking on the Water at Mark 6:45–52 duplicates the Quieting of the Storm at Mark 4:35–41. The Bethsaida blind man at Mark 8:22–26 parallels the Bartimaeus healing at Mark 10:46–52. Oral transmission tends to converge variants of the same story toward a single form rather than to preserve paired narratives at this density. Literary composition, by contrast, generates such doublets through deliberate stylistic decision, and Mark’s pattern fits the literary profile.⁸

Rather than being a transcription of oral tradition, the abrupt, vivid, and dynamic style of Mark is consistent with its being an enhanced, dramatic revision of the gospel narrative.

“Mark is the Only Gospel to Employ Aramaic Transliterations”

Mark’s is the only Gospel to include words that are unambiguously Aramaic transliterations. Some have claimed this indicates that Mark is more primitive. However, the Midrashic character of Mark suggests that these transliterations are not a sign of historical primitivity but an intentional literary device meant to add dramatic emphasis and provide exegetical explanation. This aligns with the view that Mark functions not as a simple historical account but as a crafted narrative that employs literary embellishment to reinforce themes and enhance reader engagement.

Several instances of Aramaic phrases in Mark illustrate this stylistic pattern. In Mark 5:41, Jesus takes the hand of a young girl and says, “Talitha koum,” which Mark then translates for his readers as “Little girl, I say to you, get up.” The accompanying explanation suggests that Mark’s audience would not have understood the phrase, reinforcing the view that its inclusion serves a literary function rather than preserving an authentic linguistic memory. In Mark 7:34, Jesus heals a deaf man by commanding “Ephphatha,” which Mark glosses as “Be opened.” Again, the inclusion of the Aramaic term followed by its translation reinforces the sense of a dramatic, authoritative command and heightens the vividness of the miracle, suggesting deliberate literary stylization. In Mark 3:17, Jesus gives James and John the title “Boanerges,” which Mark explains as “Sons of Thunder.” The title is not essential to the narrative but adds a symbolic layer reminiscent of Old Testament traditions in which names carried prophetic meaning.

A complementary line of evidence shows that each of the three distinctive Aramaic phrases in Mark can be traced to a Markan compositional choice rather than to a preserved Jesus tradition. Robert Lindsey argued that Mark’s Ταλιθα κουμ (Talitha koum) at Mark 5:41 was inspired by Peter’s Aramaic command Ταβιθά, ἀνάστηθι (Tabitha, anastēthi; “Tabitha, arise”) at Acts 9:40, where the verbal and contextual parallel to a raising-from-the-dead command is striking. If Mark drew on Acts as a literary source, as the broader pattern of Mark’s borrowings from Acts and the Pauline epistles suggests, then Talitha koum is a Markan composition modeled on Peter’s command rather than a memory of Jesus’s speech.

Randall Buth has shown that the bystanders’ confusion of Jesus’s cry from the cross with a summons for Elijah (Ἠλίας; Ēlias) presupposes a Hebrew Ἠλὶ ἠλὶ (Ēli ēli) rather than an Aramaic Ἐλωῒ ἐλωῒ (Elōi elōi). Mark’s Aramaic form at Mark 15:34 destroys the phonetic basis for the Elijah-confusion that Mark himself reports, a clear indication that Mark’s Aramaic is secondary to a pre-Markan Hebrew form. Matthew at 27:46 reverts to the Hebrew Ἠλὶ ἠλὶ form, consistent with the broader pattern of Matthew partially restoring pre-Markan readings developed elsewhere in this study. The third transliteration, Ἐφφαθά (Ephphatha) at Mark 7:34, appears in a healing story without parallel in either Matthew or Luke and contains other elements pertaining to wonder-working distinctive of Mark alone, including Jesus inserting his fingers into the man’s ears, spitting, touching the man’s tongue, and sighing deeply. Both the contextual and the source-critical evidence point to all three Aramaic phrases as Markan creations rather than preserved Aramaic speech of Jesus.⁹

In Jewish Midrashic traditions, Hebrew words occasionally appear and are explained in interpretive statements, often to clarify meaning, provide exegetical insight, or reflect the linguistic influences of the time. This is also a feature Aristotle describes as characteristic of the diction of poets:

“That diction, on the other hand, is lofty and raised above the commonplace which employs unusual words. By unusual, I mean strange (or rare) words, metaphorical, lengthened- anything, in short, that differs from the normal idiom… A diction that is made up of strange (or rare) terms is a jargon. A certain infusion, therefore, of these elements is necessary to style; for the strange (or rare) word, the metaphorical, the ornamental, and the other kinds above mentioned, will raise it above the commonplace and mean, while the use of proper words will make it perspicuous.”¹⁰

The Gospel of Mark follows a Midrashic pattern and includes terms that would seem strange to the reader, suggesting that the Aramaic phrases are added for effect rather than preserved speech from Jesus. Additionally, the explanatory translations make it clear that the intended audience of Mark did not speak Aramaic. Therefore, such Aramaic phrases are likely literary constructs.

The term Rabbi appears in Mark (9:5, 11:21, 14:45) and is later used by Matthew (but not in Luke). Historically, the term gained prominence after 70 AD, when formal rabbinic structures developed following the Temple’s destruction, as noted by Jewish scholar Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin:

“It was not until the second century that ‘rabbi,’ which literally means ‘my master’ or ‘my teacher,’ became an official title. Until that time, even the greatest Jewish sages and prophets were not given an honorific… At the time that these titles [Rabbi, Rab, Rabban] developed, the Jewish nation was in turmoil. The first to bear them saw the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD, and the institution of an oppressive Roman occupation in Israel.”¹¹

Because “Rabbi” was not widely used as a title during Jesus’ time, its presence in Mark suggests an anachronism (a later narrative addition that is out of place in the life of Jesus). Furthermore, the Gospel of Mark includes several Latin loanwords, reflecting Roman influence and possibly indicating a composition context within the Roman Empire.

Notable examples of Latin terms include centurio, referring to a centurion (Mark 15:39); denarius, a Roman silver coin (Mark 12:15); and flagellare, meaning to scourge or whip (Mark 15:15). Other Latin terms in Mark include modius (a measure) in Mark 4:21, legio (legion) in Mark 5:9, speculator (executioner) in Mark 6:27, sextarius (container) in Mark 7:4, and census (poll tax) in Mark 12:14. In contrast, the Gospel of Luke contains fewer Latinisms. Although Luke employs some Latin terms, they are less frequent and less specific than those in Mark. This difference may reflect variations in audience or authorial intent between the two gospels. The greater number of Latinisms in Mark suggests a later composition in a more Roman context rather than primitivity. If Latinisms in Mark suggest a later date, there is no reason to assume that Aramaisms indicate an earlier one.

Rather than demonstrating Mark’s primitivity, the Aramaic phrases in Mark are secondary stylistic additions consistent with its Midrashic character. Much of Mark’s vocabulary reflects later linguistic trends rather than an early or eyewitness-based tradition. This is evident in the use of the term Rabbi and Latin loanwords.

“Mark Contains Unflattering Statements”

The presence of unflattering and humanizing statements about Jesus and his disciples in the Gospel of Mark is often cited as evidence for Markan priority, on the assumption that later Gospel writers (Matthew and Luke) would have softened, omitted, or altered them. This argument is rooted in redaction criticism and the criterion of embarrassment, which holds that historical sources are less likely to invent details that could be seen as damaging or difficult for later believers. The argument suggests that Mark offers a more raw, unpolished portrayal of Jesus and his disciples.

The Gospel of Mark contains a number of unflattering or humanizing episodes that are often cited in support of this argument. Mark reports that Jesus’ own family thinks he is insane (Mark 3:21) and that his power was limited in Nazareth (Mark 6:5). Mark alone describes Jesus healing a blind man in two stages rather than instantaneously (Mark 8:22–26). The disciples are repeatedly portrayed as failing to understand Jesus (Mark 8:17–21; 9:32), and they abandon him completely at the moment of his arrest (Mark 14:50). Jesus himself is shown expressing human emotions such as anger, sorrow, and frustration (Mark 3:5; 7:34; 8:12), and his final cry from the cross is the anguished “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

However, such potentially embarrassing, humanizing, and unflattering statements in Mark should not necessarily be read as indicators of historical primitivity but rather as literary devices deliberately employed to enhance the narrative’s intrigue, drama, and thematic elements. When viewed as a piece of literary storytelling, these elements fit into Mark’s broader pattern of deliberate dramatization.

If Luke first appeared as a more straightforward, primitive narrative, it would make sense that Mark took that simpler account and deliberately infused it with more intriguing and sensational elements. These embellishments are characteristic of Mark’s storytelling, which exhibits tendencies to amplify dramatic tension, exaggerate conflicts, and create vivid, action-packed narratives. Mark does not simply recount events but reshapes them to heighten suspense, intrigue, and irony. The less flattering portrayal of the disciples and Jesus is a deliberate part of the stylized narrative. For example, Mark theologically emphasizes the theme of the “suffering servant” and intentionally portrays Jesus’ followers as failing until after the resurrection to create a dramatic arc.

The fact that Luke and Matthew never agree in wording against Mark in the unflattering parallels indicates that Mark was the later redactor, not the source. Mark often adds unnecessary but highly dramatic details to scenes that, in a more primitive form, may have been far simpler. Luke, simple and bland, represents the narrative’s primitive form.

Furthermore, many of Mark’s dramatic themes and motifs are less pronounced in Luke. Particular literary frameworks in Mark include the Messianic secret motif (Jesus frequently telling people not to reveal his identity) and the suffering servant motif (emphasizing Jesus’s misunderstanding, rejection, and suffering). Accordingly, Mark’s structure, dramatic additions, and intriguing elements indicate that it is not the earliest Gospel but a creative retelling of an earlier, simpler tradition, as exemplified by Luke.

“Mark Contains Rougher Greek and Poorer Grammar”

Some claim that Mark’s Greek is more colloquial and unrefined, and that Matthew and Luke often improve Mark’s grammar and style when they appear to be copying from him. Although Matthew is more polished and refined than Mark, the opposite is true of Luke. The comparative evidence that Luke preserves more primitive wording than Mark, including the fourteen sayings cataloged in Table 3, has been presented in the prior section, “Primitive Wording and Comparative Restraint.”

What remains is the narrower question of whether Mark’s distinctive grammatical roughness reflects an early stage of the tradition or a later stylistic revision. It is true that there are other examples where Mark uses sub optimal grammar and is more concise and punchier, take for example the compassion of Mark 1:32 and Luke 4:40. Mark 1:32 reads: “That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons.” The parallel in Luke 4:40 reads: “Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him.” One can see that in Mark, the syntax aligns with the aims of a dynamic, fast-paced narrative. In such cases, the more abrupt syntax is most complementary to a dynamic narrative. Mark’s concise, fast-paced, abrupt syntax is a stylistic feature, rather than an indication of primitivity, and is employed to heighten the sense of urgency and action in the narrative.

Although Mark is typically longer than Luke, there are cases, such as the example above, in which Mark omits unnecessary detail, keeping the sentence short and forceful. Similar stylistic abbreviations occur throughout Mark, where brevity and directness are characteristic of its energetic, action-driven storytelling.

This aligns with Mark’s frequent use of three complementary stylistic features. The historical present tense (“Jesus says” rather than “Jesus said”) makes the story feel more immediate. The Greek conjunction kai (“and”) repeatedly links events, creating a breathless, continuous sequence of action. The adverb euthys (“immediately”) appears more than forty times in Mark, far exceeding its usage in Matthew or Luke and underscoring the swiftness of the narrative action.

The techniques described above, including the punchiness of several verses in Mark compared with Luke, draw readers into the action, making Mark feel like an unfolding event rather than a bland biographical narrative.

Quantitative analysis of Mark’s distinctive grammatical features confirms the pattern. The historical present tense, used to describe past actions in present-tense verbs for vivid effect, occurs 156 times in Mark, 99 times in the longer Gospel of Matthew, and only 13 times in the still longer Gospel of Luke. The construction ἵνα plus subjunctive, often functioning as a substitute for Hebrew or Aramaic infinitival constructions, appears 61 times in Mark, with nearly half of these instances occurring in passages where Luke and Matthew both omit the construction. Imperfect verbs, excluding forms of “to be,” appear 233 times in Mark; only 5 of these are supported by parallels in both Luke and Matthew, indicating that the imperfect tense is overwhelmingly Markan rather than pre-Markan. Diminutive nouns appear 26 times in Mark, often replacing standard nouns in the parallel material that Mark inherited from his sources. The cumulative grammatical profile is distinctive to Mark and not shared with either of the other Synoptic Gospels, which is precisely the pattern expected if Mark stylistically rewrote a more primitive Lukan source.¹²

B.H. Streeter argued that Mark’s Greek could be shown to be “crude” and “vulgar” compared with that of Matthew or Luke. Streeter’s idea traces back to Abbott’s famous article “Gospels” in the 1879 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which substantially influenced English critical opinion on this issue. Abbott presented “linguistic” evidence in support of Mark’s originality, listing nine expressions or words used by Mark that were expressly forbidden by the grammarian Phrynichus. However, eight of these nine examples of bad Greek appear in other New Testament books, including John, the Pauline epistles, and Acts. Moreover, seven of the nine examples appear in either Matthew or Luke-Acts. The fact is that various Gospel writers, on occasion, used words condemned by grammarians. It is also true that at the time of the Atticist grammarians (2nd – 4th centuries), contemporary writers also used bad grammar.

In his article, Abbott lists two “barbarisms” in Mark (where a word is combined with another in the wrong case, or a particular word is used improperly to ask a question). However, Abbott acknowledges that both are “idioms common in the Acta Pilati, and perhaps indicate Latin influence.” The Acta Pilati is an apocryphal text believed to have been composed in Greek in the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD and later translated into Latin. Thus, grammatical “barbarisms” in Mark suggest affinities with later Apocryphal gospel literature, both in its poor grammar and in its Latinisms (which some mistake for Aramaic idioms).

There were scholars, well known to Streeter, including C. H. Turner, who were familiar with the topic and particularly aware of the impact Latin had on Mark’s Greek usage. In response to the question of Latin influence upon Mark, Turner states, “Whence did Mark derive his occasional use of an order of words so fundamentally alien to the Greek language?” and further continues:

“Greek puts the emphatic words in the forefront of the sentence, and the verb therefore cannot be left to the last. Latin, on the other hand, habitually closes the sentence with the verb. The conclusion seems irresistible that …  Mark introduces in the Greek of his Gospel a Latinizing order.”¹³

The use of poor grammar in Mark suggests a later date of composition, given the deliberate and eccentric literary style of an author who favored Latin syntax. Latin, not Aramaic, explains Mark’s poor Greek. Thus, in the case of Mark, the “poor” grammar is actually an indication that Mark is a stylistic revision of a more primitive narrative (Luke).

“Mark Lacks an Infancy Narrative and Genealogy”

One common argument for Markan Priority is that the Gospel of Mark lacks an infancy narrative, unlike Matthew and Luke. This absence is often interpreted as evidence that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke later added birth narratives to fill in what they saw as missing details about Jesus’ origins. However, Mark’s omission of an infancy narrative does not necessarily mean it was written earlier; it may simply reflect Mark’s literary focus on Jesus’ public ministry rather than on his origins.

Mark omits much biographical detail that does not contribute to the dynamic, action-packed narrative. Mark’s focus is on Jesus as an adult, beginning with his empowerment by the Holy Spirit at his baptism rather than at birth. In Mark, the emphasis is more on signs and wonders that would appeal to a Roman audience and less on Jewish Messianic fulfillment. There are several indications that Mark was written to a Gentile audience less concerned with Jewish Messianic genealogies, so there was no need to emphasize Jesus’ biological origins; the narrative is constructed to be most intriguing to a Hellenistic audience. Overall, Mark is a shorter gospel that serves the purpose of communicating the Gospel to Hellenistic society, as Brad Young notes:

“A shortened edition of the gospel could have performed some important functions. For one thing, it certainly could have provided an effective tool for communicating the gospel to Hellenistic society. The instruction of Jesus would probably be less important to a non-Jewish, pagan audience. Conversely, the miracles and activities of Jesus would be considered a better vehicle of communication.”¹⁴

Three considerations explain why Mark would have intentionally omitted an infancy narrative. The author is not concerned with Jesus’ birth but with his public ministry. The author’s fast-paced, action-driven style avoids dwelling on background details. And the author was writing for a Gentile audience who would not have been interested in Jewish genealogies or messianic birth prophecies. It is also worth noting that the Gospel of John omits an infancy narrative and begins with Jesus’ ministry, yet no one argues that John is the earliest Gospel because of this omission.

Furthermore, because some scholars argue that Luke’s infancy narrative may have been a later addition, its absence in Mark cannot be taken as evidence that Mark was written first. If the infancy narrative was added after Luke’s initial composition, it would not bear on the question of priority, given the numerous parallels between Mark and Luke. The weight of the evidence suggests that Luke, either in the form we have today or in a slightly earlier version without the infancy narrative, served as the foundation for Mark’s Gospel.

Several lines of textual and structural evidence suggest that the genealogy in Luke 3:23–38 may not have been part of the original composition. In one early Greek manuscript, Codex Washingtonianus (W, 032), the genealogy is entirely absent, suggesting that some early versions of Luke circulated without it. In another manuscript, Codex Bezae (D, 05), Matthew’s genealogy was inserted into Luke’s text in reverse order, indicating early scribal instability. When early manuscripts of Luke are compared, the genealogy in Luke 3:23–38 shows a higher concentration of textual variants than any other section of the Gospel. The genealogy also interrupts the natural narrative flow from Jesus’s baptism (Luke 3:21–22) to his being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness (Luke 4:1), and its placement deviates from the chronological ordering that characterizes the rest of Luke’s account.

The points above suggest that early copyists handled the genealogy differently, that the manuscript tradition was unstable, and that the genealogy was in an inappropriate location, raising doubts about its originality in Luke. Given the possibility that the genealogy was added to Luke later, Mark’s lack of a genealogy provides no basis for proving that Mark was composed before Luke.

Furthermore, even if genealogy was part of Luke’s original composition, the absence of a genealogy in Mark does not necessarily indicate that Mark is more primitive than Luke. Instead, the omission aligns with Mark’s narrative structure and literary style, which emphasize action, immediacy, and mystery rather than biographical detail. If Mark is best understood as a dramatized, novelized account of Jesus’ ministry, including a genealogy would have disrupted its literary flow and thematic emphasis.

“Mark’s Resurrection Story Is More Primitive”

Another common argument for Markan Priority is that Mark’s resurrection account is more primitive than those in Matthew and Luke. This argument rests on the claim that Mark’s brief, abrupt, and seemingly incomplete resurrection narrative reflects an earlier stage of the tradition.

However, an abrupt ending does not necessarily indicate primitivity. Mark may have deliberately left the ending open for theological or literary reasons. If Mark were a shorter adaptation of Luke, the omission of post-resurrection appearances might be an editorial decision to create suspense or maintain the Gospel’s punchy, action-driven narrative. It is plausible that Mark ends abruptly at 16:8 to create a cliffhanger (as many thrillers do), leaving the audience in suspense. Ancient storytelling often employed open-ended conclusions to evoke emotion and engagement. Greek tragedies and Jewish apocalyptic literature sometimes ended ambiguously, requiring the audience to interpret the outcome. Mark’s ending aligns with this tradition, making it less about providing a resolution and more about provoking a response. Moreover, Mark contains themes of mystery, faith, and the unknown, often emphasizing secrecy and ambiguity. The abrupt ending of Mark fits this pattern.

Another possible explanation for Mark’s abrupt ending at 16:8 is that its original ending was either lost or intentionally transplanted into John 21, with some modifications. Several scholars have noted that John 21:1-18 exhibits themes, syntax, and grammar characteristic of Mark, suggesting that this chapter may preserve a lost or reworked conclusion to Mark’s Gospel. One of the strongest motivations for this hypothetical transplantation would be to rehabilitate Peter, as John’s Gospel, until chapter 20, portrays Peter in a less flattering light than the Synoptic Gospels. This would also explain why John 21 appears to be an appendix rather than a natural continuation of John 20.

It is also well documented that the resurrection narrative in Luke 24 underwent textual alterations over time, as evidenced by differences among early manuscripts. These scribal changes were likely intended to provide a more embellished and structured ending. As a result, the common text of Luke 24 appears more developed than it originally was, creating the false impression that Luke’s resurrection account was always fully formed, in contrast to Mark’s abrupt ending. By removing later interpolations and textual expansions from Luke 24, its ending becomes much less developed compared to Mark’s.

Greek Codex Bezae (D, 05), Old Latin (a b e ff2), and Syriac (sys syc) manuscripts of the “Western” text type present shorter readings in Luke 24, suggesting that several details (verses and portions of verses) were added later. The following nine readings are absent from most of these manuscripts.

Table 4. Textual Variants in Luke 24 Absent from the Western Text Type

These are just some of the textual variants in Luke 24, as can be seen in the AI Critical New Testament.¹⁵ With the recognition that the ending of Luke had been significantly altered and expanded through hundreds of years of scribal copying, it is possible to reconstruct a version closer to its original form. Once later textual additions are identified, a more primitive and streamlined version of Luke’s resurrection narrative emerges.

Thus, the original composition of Luke exhibits a much less embellished ending. Accordingly, Mark’s abrupt ending cannot be used as a decisive argument for Markan Priority compared with the altered versions of Luke transmitted through centuries of scribal copying. It is only because Luke’s later interpolations create the illusion of a more developed resurrection narrative that the argument appears to hold water. The most dramatic and suspenseful place to end the narrative, in reference to the original composition of Luke, is when the women depart from the tomb, which is exactly where Mark ends it.

“Mark’s Eschatological Discourse Is More Primitive”

The standard argument that Mark 13 preserves the more primitive form of Jesus’s eschatological discourse, with Luke 21:5–24 representing a post-70 retelling, has been articulated by C. H. Dodd, R. T. France, N. H. Taylor, and most recent commentators on Luke. ¹⁶ The argument rests on a contrast in language: Luke 21:20 specifies that Jerusalem will be “surrounded by armies” (κυκλουμένην ὑπὸ στρατοπέδων) and Luke 21:24 mentions Jerusalem “trampled by the Gentiles” until “the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled,” while Mark 13:14 retains the cryptic Danielic phrase “the abomination of desolation” (τὸ βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως). On the standard reading, Luke historicized Mark’s apocalyptic vagueness in light of the events of 70 AD, which presupposes that Luke depended on Mark.

The decisive counter-evidence is what Luke 21 does not contain. If Luke wrote with hindsight after 70 AD, the vivid features that Josephus documents would naturally have entered his text: the brutal infighting between Jewish factions within the besieged city (Jewish War 5:98–105, 248–257), the prolonged famine that reduced inhabitants to cannibalism (Jewish War 5:424–438; 6:193–213), the burning of the Temple sanctuary with worshippers trapped inside (Jewish War 6:110, 164–168, 177–186, 232–235, 249–266), and the climactic desecration by Roman soldiers offering idolatrous sacrifices to their military standards in the Temple courts after the sanctuary had burned (Jewish War 6:316). Luke 21 contains none of this. Its siege language is generic prophetic imagery drawn from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Septuagint, not historical reportage. Bivin and Tilton conclude that “nothing in Luke 21 betrays historical knowledge of the events it predicts.”¹⁷

Mark’s “abomination of desolation” language, by contrast, fits the 70 AD event with precision. First-century Jews regarded Roman military standards as idolatrous (1QpHab VI, 3–5; Jewish War 2:169–174), and the Roman sacrifices to standards within the burned Temple courts were exactly the kind of abomination prefigured in Daniel 9:27 and 12:11. Mark’s Danielic vocabulary is therefore not pre-70 vagueness awaiting fulfillment but post-70 typological reading of an event that had already occurred. An earlier scholarly view associated Mark 13:14 with the 40 AD Caligula crisis, but that crisis was averted by Caligula’s assassination and was already decades in the past when Mark was composed; the 70 AD Roman desecration is the only event for which Mark’s language is precisely fitted. The directional implication is the opposite of the standard reading: Mark’s apparent primitivity disguises post-70 colored typology, while Luke’s apparent specificity preserves a pre-70 prophetic form.¹⁸

Flusser observed that the two versions of the discourse exhibit different theological perspectives that imply different community settings. Mark 13 quickly loses sight of Jerusalem and the Temple and focuses on the salvation of the elect, with the result that the discourse takes on a sectarian character that distinguishes the Christian community from the Jewish people; the proclamation of the gospel to all the Gentiles even becomes a precondition for the Son of Man’s coming (Mark 13:10). Luke 21, by contrast, never loses sight of Jerusalem’s fate or of the Jewish people: “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, for your redemption is near” (Luke 21:28), where the audience’s redemption and Jerusalem’s are one. This Jewish-solidarity perspective is appropriate to a pre-70 setting in which Jesus’s followers had not yet differentiated themselves from the rest of Israel; Mark’s sectarian focus on the elect fits a later setting in which that differentiation has been established. The directional implication once again favors Lukan priority.¹⁹

The list of portents that opens the discourse provides a further test case. Luke 21:10–11 enumerates seven items: people rising against people, kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, famines, pestilences, terrors, and signs from heaven. Mark 13:8 abbreviates the list to four, eliminating pestilences, terrors, and signs from heaven, and Matthew follows Mark’s shorter list. The vision of the Six Seals in Revelation 6, however, preserves all the elements of Luke’s longer list in nearly identical order: war, international strife, famine, pestilence (rendered θάνατος [thanatos], “death”), persecution corresponding to “terrors,” and the cluster of earthquake and astronomical signs. R. H. Charles, in his early-twentieth-century commentary, observed this correspondence and concluded that Revelation drew on a pre-synoptic source containing the longer list. If Luke depended on Mark, Luke’s addition of three portents missing from Mark and independently attested in Revelation would require explanation; the more economical hypothesis is that the pre-synoptic source contained the longer list, that Mark abbreviated it, and that Luke preserves the original.²⁰

The four observations converge. Luke lacks the post-70 specifics that hindsight would have produced. Mark’s Danielic language fits the 70 AD typology that Luke avoids. Mark’s sectarian focus on the elect reflects a Jewish-Christian differentiation that Luke does not presuppose. Mark’s portent list is an abbreviation of a longer original preserved in Luke and Revelation. The standard argument that Mark 13 is more primitive than Luke 21 inverts under examination. Far from supplying evidence for Markan priority, the eschatological discourse furnishes one of the strongest single test cases for Lukan priority within the Synoptic tradition.

Meijboom’s verse-level analysis of the parallel passages reaches a directional conclusion that supports Markan posteriority on this material. Comparing Mark 13:33–37 with Luke 21:34–36 and Matthew 24:42–25:13, Meijboom finds that “Luke’s line of thought and his vocabulary can be recovered completely in Mark in a somewhat less articulated manner.” The directional fit is straightforward to read as Mark conflating Luke and Matthew; reading the same data as Luke, abbreviating Mark requires Luke to have removed every Matthean element from Mark with surgical consistency and to have reassembled the surviving material into a unified admonition, which is a harder editorial procedure to motivate.²¹

“Editorial Fatigue Proves Markan Priority”

What requires refutation in the present subsection is the claim that Luke is dependent on prior gospels, supported primarily by the argument from editorial fatigue. The refutation bears against both the two-source hypothesis and the Farrer hypothesis.

Mark Goodacre, a prominent advocate of the Farrer hypothesis, has applied the editorial fatigue argument to Luke’s relationship with both Mark and Matthew.²² Editorial fatigue is a phenomenon that occurs when a writer who is copying from another’s work makes changes to the source but fails to sustain those changes throughout the passage, lapsing back into the language or details of the original. Goodacre has argued that Luke exhibits fatigue relative to both Mark and Matthew, and that this fatigue demonstrates Luke’s dependence on the earlier gospels. Several specific passages have been proposed as evidence, including the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4–15 // Mark 4:1–20 // Matt 13:1–23), the Healing of the Paralytic (Luke 5:17–26 // Mark 2:1–12), and the Parable of the Talents/Minas (Luke 19:11–27 // Matt 25:14–30).²³

A close examination of these passages, however, reveals that what has been identified as Lukan fatigue is better explained as Lukan primitivity. The Parable of the Sower is illustrative. Luke’s account (8:4–15) is 251 Greek words; Mark’s parallel (4:1–20) is 368 words; Matthew’s (13:1–23) is 444 words. This progressive expansion is precisely the pattern that Lukan priority predicts: Luke preserves the shorter, less elaborated form because Luke is the source, not the copy. The reason Luke lacks the explanatory details that Mark and Matthew supply is not that Luke carelessly dropped them while copying; it is that those details did not exist in the tradition Luke was drawing from. They are Markan and Matthean additions. Luke is less self-explanatory precisely because it is more primitive, and primitivity should not be confused with fatigue.²⁴

Mark consistently operates as a dramatizer of his Lukan source, adding synonyms, parenthetical explanations, and vivid descriptive details throughout, a pattern consonant with targumic expansion in the Aramaic tradition. When this dramatization momentarily thins within a pericope (a self-contained gospel passage), the plainer stretches of Markan text look, to a reader who presupposes Markan priority, like places where Luke has “lapsed” back into a Markan original. What is actually being observed in those stretches is the baseline Lukan text showing through where Mark’s embellishment has not been sustained. The diagnosis is inverted: the unadorned passages are not evidence of Lukan fatigue relative to Mark; they are evidence that Mark’s characteristic expansion has dropped momentarily and exposed the simpler source beneath. Editorial fatigue, on this reading, is not a property of Luke at all. It is a property of Mark’s own inconsistent dramatization that the Markan-priority framework has misattributed to the earlier evangelist.²⁵

The same pattern holds across the other proposed cases. In passage after passage, the differences between Luke and Mark that Goodacre attributes to Lukan fatigue are more naturally explained as cases where Mark has expanded, dramatized, or clarified a simpler Lukan original. The theory of Lukan fatigue presupposes that the author of Luke, the very author whose prologue claims to have investigated everything carefully and to be writing an orderly account (Luke 1:1–4), was a careless copyist who repeatedly failed to sustain his own editorial changes. This characterization is difficult to reconcile with the literary sophistication and historiographic care that Luke exhibits throughout both volumes.

It should be acknowledged that the editorial fatigue argument has greater validity when applied to the relationship between Matthew and Mark. Matthew does exhibit clear signs of fatigue in his use of Markan material, which is consistent with the view that Matthew is a later revision of Mark. But the same argument does not transfer to Luke. There is stronger evidence of Markan and Matthean embellishment relative to Luke than there is of Lukan fatigue relative to Mark or Matthew. The preponderance of the evidence, including the progressive embellishment data documented elsewhere in this study, points to Lukan priority with respect to both Mark and Matthew. Robert Lindsey of the Jerusalem School concurred: “rather than assuming that Luke used Mark as the basis of his Gospel, as is commonly held by most New Testament scholars, it appears that the opposite is true.”²⁶

Although the editorial fatigue argument is unconvincing, the reversible argument of progressive embellishment, which demonstrates Mark’s dependence on Luke, is much more compelling. If Mark is posterior to Luke, one would expect Mark to exhibit similar phenomena relative to Luke, and the embellishment patterns documented in the following sections are consistent with that expectation.

The fatigue argument is not the only line of defense contemporary Farrer advocates have developed. Eric Eve, in Writing the Gospels: Composition and Memory (2021), and Francis Watson, in Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (2013), have extended the Farrer framework along broader compositional and theological lines.²⁷ The refutation above applies to both, because both rest on the same Luke-uses-Matthew direction of dependence that the fatigue evidence was meant to establish. Alan Garrow’s Matthew Conflator Hypothesis, sometimes grouped with Farrer-adjacent work, in fact reverses that direction and holds that Matthew used both Mark and Luke; it is closer to the Matthean posteriority position than to Farrer strictly speaking, and its conclusions about the sequence of composition are broadly consonant with the case this study makes.²⁸