Orthodox Reflections

You can know that the common priest with his shiny M.Div. is functionally atheistic because he teaches that Mark was the first gospel written. It amazes me how the seminaries take secular academia at face value without questioning the premises underlying such theses, and it even more amazes me how seminarians uncritically swallow everything they are taught.

This topic truly summarizes the assumptiveness and groupthink of academia and shows how collecting lots of facts does not equal correct conclusions. And it ties back to Orthodox academic “theology” and why it’s important to defend these seemingly tiny historical questions.

Sometimes I watch the Religion For Breakfast youtube channel. This is generic but well- researched information to promote “religious literacy” about world religions broadly. The host seems to be trying to be as fair and mainstream as possible. For example, he debunked the claim that Christmas was based on Saturnalia or Sol Invictus, and he has made the point that religion functions more for social cohesion and morality than for metaphysical doctrines. He is also very good at making the distinction between something being proven and something being likely.

In this video he gives the standard explanation of “the synoptic problem”. The video focuses on Markan priority, which is the belief that Mark was the first gospel to be written. This is a good example of how academia invents a premise on very speculative assumptions and then builds further assumptions on it. He says that almost all academics assume Markan priority, which is basically true. I think there’s a few who push back on it other than evangelicals.

But to our shame, Orthodox celebrity priests like Fr Lawrence Farley and Fr Stephen DeYoung ignorantly teach Markan priority. Worse, lay people and other priests continue buying their materials and promoting it to others.

First of all, even putting aside my defense of Matthean priority below, ALL of the Church Fathers believed that Matthew was the first written. Zero of the Fathers teach what you will hear on AFR or at St Vlad’s. The Fathers varied on whether Mark or Luke were the next written, but none of them taught what your OCA priest is teaching you. Please correct me in the comments section if I am wrong.

Markan priority is hugely assumptive, and it seems very clear to me that Mark was the last of the three synoptics to be written. The error the video maker makes is assuming that the gospels all have the same purpose of being a biography. But this is not the case.

He says that Mark does not have the nativity story and this is strong evidence that it is written first, because Matthew and Luke would see this omission and fill it in themselves, whereas it would not make sense for Mark to copy Matthew and Luke and skip such a major biographical detail. But I see this as the opposite, that the omission is a major support of Matthean Priority. Matthew and Luke had already covered the nativity. Mark was written as a bridge between Matthew and Luke, and therefore he left it out, since he had nothing to add. This is also why Mark generally does not have these longer teaching sections you find in Matthew and Luke, because these had already been sufficiently covered. Mark was just filling in some gaps, which is also why his shared pericopes generally are longer and deal more with motivation. Only Matthew and Luke exist as a complete whole.

The very beginning of Mark says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the son of God.” The point of the book is the gospel, not a biographical account. The nativity does not matter for his purpose, because the nativity is not immediately relevant to the gospel as Mark defines it a few verses down, to “repent and believe in the gospel”. For this reason Mark says relatively little about the ancillary characters, and it is the only gospel where Mary is mentioned only in passing. Mark doesn’t have the same purpose as Matthew and Luke.

Because academia assumes Markan priority, they continue to make other assumptions. All of the other data is filtered through Markan priority. They build their entire theory on the foundation of a few basic assumptions which, I think, should not be taken for granted. So with the point that Mark’s pericopes are usually longer, he claims that Matthew and Luke were shortening what Mark wrote so that they could focus on the important points. But it could be just as much that Mark was expanding on what Matthew and Luke wrote and making a fuller gospel. Mark was filling in small important details that Matthew and Luke had glossed over. Likewise, he claims that Markan priority is proof that Matthew wasn’t written by the historic man Matthew, because that would mean that Matthew was using someone else as a source to describe the calling of Levi in chapter 8. But if Matthew was actually the first gospel, then this is not a concern at all.

There also seems to be the assumption that the only sources used were Mark, Matthew and the Q. The academic consensus doesn’t seem to take into account that there was an oral tradition and that each writer drew on several sources. This would also explain why they often have the same kind of language in some pericopes, that Thomas or whoever told the story the same way each time and that’s how it set in their minds. All of us speak in patterns and use language to translate our thoughts, so this should not be surprising that the synoptics often have the same kind of language. If anything it would be weird if each gospel was very different in its diction.

Luke says that “Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” How did Luke know that? Obviously because he talked to Mary. Church tradition has it that he was the other man with Cleopas on the road to Emmaus, and Paul references him as “the brother whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches” (2 Corinthians 8:18), but I suppose it’s fair to discount these if we are to be answering secular academia. Tradition also holds, perhaps less securely than the above about Luke, that Mark was the naked young man who fled at Jesus’s arrest. (I’ve also heard the theory that Mark was also the rich, young ruler, although I don’t think that’s part of the Tradition.)

There are also stories where the language can be very different, such as the parable of the sower, the pericope of Jesus’s mothers and brothers coming to him, or the question of the Sadducees. So clearly the authors did not directly copy one other for every story. If Luke was copying Matthew and Mark, why is his account of the question of the Sadducees so different? He must have had another source, some eyewitness. Or, I suppose, you could float the theory that the author merely invented something or heard a rumor fourth-hand. But if it was the historic man Luke, then surely he would have gotten this story from an apostle. Church tradition has that he was one of the 70 apostles, so it’s very possible that he was actually there present.

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The video also brings up “editorial fatigue”, that stories will start to sound similar and then diverge. He says that this means that Matthew started copying from Mark and then got tired and started collapsing the story later on. But you have some stories where the Mark-Luke version is longer, such as the demoniac in the Gadarenes. Or we could explain this divergence in that the story is set up the same way but each author is trying to accomplish something a little different. Editorial fatigue is a very weak and desperate piece of evidence for Markan priority. There are also stories where there is more information on the front end of the story than on the back end, such as Jesus’s mother and brothers coming to talk to him, which in Mark alone is stated because they believe him to be insane and want to take him by force. (Yes, Mark teaches that the Panagia did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah when he began his ministry, and Chrysostom criticizes her for it in his commentary on Matthew.)

The academic consensus assumes that because Matthew and Luke generally do not agree together against Mark that this shows that they drew upon the same common source. But this could just as well mean that Mark drew upon Matthew and Luke and had relatively little original thought, that Mark was just a synthesizer. Likewise with the fact that Mark is almost entirely contained within Matthew, that they say that this means that Matthew expanded upon Mark, when it could also mean that Mark was making a summary of Matthew and filling in some gaps with Luke and the oral tradition. There is no way to prove either theory. There are also pericopes in which all three gospels contradict, such as the story of the blind man outside Jericho, the transfiguration, and the reaction of the centurion at Jesus’s death. (The transfiguration isn’t really a contradiction, but all three give a different account.) Or where Matthew and Mark outright contradict with no comment from Luke, such as the withered fig tree or the scribe’s question over the greatest commandment. So clearly they did not directly use one another or the same Q for every point. Instead they were relying on a general and diverse oral tradition.

Or you have a few instances where Matthew and Luke disagree with Mark. Much of this is glossed over in English translation, but one example would be how Mark uses many Latin words and phrasings. Only Mark uses the Latin word centurion in Greek letters. Luke and Matthew use the Greek equivalent. But if they were copying from Mark, would they not default to his word choice? That is, after all, their explanation for why many passages sound so similar. All of us speak in patterns. We read something and then use that language. So if Mark is the source gospel and Matthew and Luke were borrowing from him, it makes no sense that they would default to a different word. And there are several examples of this, although they are usually very small, such as the command to only carry a staff or the omission of the scribes’ interjection in the parable of the vinedressers.

In general Matthew does much less with people’s motivations, such as Jesus being angry and sorrowful at the Pharisee’s hardness of heart in Mark 3 or the scribe’s wisdom in Mark 12 or Jesus loving the rich young ruler in Mark 10. Hardness of heart is a constant theme in Mark. This language of “hardness of heart” is mentioned only once in Matthew and never in Luke but is present five times in Mark (including once in the much maligned “longer ending”). So Mark is not simpler or cruder but only differently focused.

Other differences between Mark and the other synoptics that cannot be accounted for in the Markan priority theory is how Jesus does not cleanse the temple until the day after his entrance into Jerusalem and how Peter denies Jesus after two crows of the rooster. These are very specific details in Mark that are contradicted in the other three gospels. There are also a few parables and miracles unique to Mark. Only Mark has the line, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”

Therefore, whatever patterns or contrasts can be drawn from the synoptics, if we are to only use internal evidence with no reference to outside or later material, then all of it can be interpreted for or against Markan priority, just as any manuscript data can be interpreted for or against the Nestle-Aland text. These judgments are based on philosophy, not science.

(And no, priests should not be using or teaching the Nestle-Aland text. This is also wildly ignorant and irresponsible.)

Here is my theory, and this is entirely self-sufficient based on internal and objective evidence, just like the standard academic explanation. (Except, of course, that my theory is better.) Although Mark is a little closer to Matthew than it is to Luke, it generally follows the narrative order of Luke. I think that Matthew was focusing on the general events and teachings and would often conflate stories and use time markers in inaccurate ways. Matthew’s purpose was the gospel – that is, the good news. He was telling you what the teaching of Jesus was.

Luke read Matthew and somewhat used it as a source but also used the anecdotes he had heard from others, as he explains in his introduction. Matthew was one of many sources Luke used, and of course these sources were often oral sources, particularly Mary herself. As I said, it’s also very likely that Mark and Luke were among the extra followers of Jesus, and each mention themselves anonymously in the text (according to the tradition). Often Luke skips a story found in Matthew for a similar story in another place (e.g., the sermon on the mount, the parables of the talents, the woman pouring oil on Jesus, the narrative of Herod). Luke was also more concerned with the art of storytelling than Matthew, and he has these great cinematic moments in both his Gospel and Acts that none of the other evangelists could quite capture. And since he was trying to bring together all the information that Matthew had glossed over, he had some extra stories he didn’t know what to do with, so he shoved them in the middle between the transfiguration and the entrance into Jerusalem. (In my opinion, this middle section with most of the classic Lucan parables is in no real chronological or narrative order.)

Then Mark read both of these and edited them into a coherent narrative and filled in some other details and set things in the proper time sequence, which is why sometimes Mark agrees with Luke and sometimes he agrees with Matthew and occasionally he will contradict both of them, but Luke and Matthew never agree against Mark except in a few small details. Mark is the most “accurate” of the synoptics and the most synopticy of the synoptics.

For example, during Jesus’s temple arguments after the entrance into Jerusalem, Matthew has the scribe disingenuously asking what the greatest commandment is and Jesus responding with the first and second command. Luke’s narrative of the temple scene mostly follows Matthew but leaves this story out completely. Instead he has a similar story earlier on to lead into the parable of the good Samaritan. Therefore he had no need to repeat this story in the temple.

Mark follows Matthew’s story except that the scribe is honestly asking a question and gives a full response to Jesus, and Jesus commends him at the end. So Mark takes what Matthew did and adds more details and motivations, and Luke removes the story to insert a similar one elsewhere. (But other times Mark and Luke together give a full version of a story Matthew glosses over, such as the expulsion of the legion of demons.)

Likewise, Mark glosses over the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, although he alone adds the extra details of being “cast into the desert” and being “with the wild animals”. There was no need to tell the full story again, but he wanted to give a full chronology and round out the all the dynamics involved in Jesus’s ministry. This story in Mark lets the reader know what it was like for Jesus to be in the desert, whereas Matthew and Luke’s account focuses on the dialogue. Matthew and Luke’s stories are about Jesus’ choice as a human, and Mark’s story is about Jesus’s sense of purpose as God.

As for how Luke glossed over many stories in Matthew (feeding of the four thousand) or gave a different account (nativity, the calling of Peter), this can be explained that although he was trying to provide a full narrative, he did not think it would be necessarily to repeat everything Matthew said. This would explain why the synopticy section before the transfiguration is relatively short compared to Matthew, and why many stories were omitted for a similar story in another place. The middle chunk, between the transfiguration and the entrance into Jerusalem, is where most of your classic Lucan parables are. Luke was trying not to significantly overlap with Matthew, while also giving a full and self-sufficient narrative.

The Gospel of Mark, however, is just a supplement, which is why he never gives a strong definition of what the gospel preached actually is. Or at least, the gospel is the life of Jesus and not the specifics of his message (which would play into the Orthodox idea that the incarnation itself as salvific). There is a lot of emphasis on Jesus having a theology he was teaching, even describing it as the logos in 2:2, but this theology is generally not explored. This could be explained that Mark knew that these details had already been covered by Luke and Matthew and were not necessary. Mark was fleshing out the narrative, not the theology. This would also be why Mark as a narrator rarely quotes the Old Testament, although the characters themselves often do.

This makes far more sense to me than anything in the above video (which presumably you will learn at any Orthodox seminary that isn’t ROCOR). It’s much more simple and straightforward and does not bring in grand, novel assumptions about authorship and prior sources based on speculative internal evidence. It fits perfectly with the tradition, whether you accept or reject the idea that Matthew wrote in Aramaic (which personally I have a hard time believing). It also has all the same evidence as the video has, which is entirely nothing beyond the text itself. It is, at worst, just as speculative as the standard academic explanation.

And instead of accepting that there can be multiple theories, academia paves all that nuance away and insists that it must be one certain way. In my Ancient Philosophy class the professor — who was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences — was explaining the Q for some reason, and I said, “But wasn’t Matthew an eyewitness?” And he laughs at the dumb southerner fundamentalist and says, “No, we know that Matthew was not an eyewitness” and continues on with what he was saying. But how do we know that? Because we already decided that Markan priority is a fact? But what evidence is there of Markan priority beyond internal textual evidence?

I challenge the Antiochian and OCA priests reading this who are incensed that I insulted the Brahmin caste – I challenge you to find me one shred of evidence for Markan priority beyond internal evidence. If you have no objective evidence for your dumb, atheistic theories, then why are you teaching against the Tradition of the Fathers?

Notice that the rejection of the small, irrelevant detail of Matthean priority leads to all these other rejections. From Markan priority comes the rejection of Matthean authorship, and from that comes the Q, and from that comes the implication that none of this was inspired by God, that it all just fizzled together at a later date. It Matthew and Mark were written later than their actual authors’ lives, then Luke must have been also. And if the authors were not the apostles, then they were probably much later, and so we cannot even trust that the narrative presented is reliable. If these stories are fourth-hand and third-generation rumors and not second-hand eyewitness accounts, then they are just folklore.

We Christians have to defend Matthean priority because, to our great surprise two thousand years later, the credibility of the entire religion depends on it. If Matthean priority is false, then Jesus did not rise from the dead, and what John and Luke promised that these things are written for you to know the certainty of them is a lie. This is not the obvious conclusion of Markan priority, and it sounds absurd on its face, but scholars have rightly drawn that line of conclusions. They reject Matthean priority because Matthean priority, and only Matthean priority, means that Jesus is who the gospels say he is.

How they square that with the fact that John is clearly written by an eyewitness, I don’t know. Maybe they just ignore it. Wikipedia says that most scholars believe that John was written in 90-110 by someone other than the apostle. When C.S. Lewis was an atheist, even he recognized that it was written by an eyewitness because of tiny details like there being a fire of coals. John is just so saturated with personal memory, and it’s clear that the author is not lying, that the claim of the book seems to be true, that merely by reading it one can be convinced of the things written therein. So they also must discredit the authorship of John.

The Church will die if it continues promoting these kinds of people. There is value to academia, and certainly priests should know what they are talking about. Vladimir Lossky explained the mysteries of the faith with a clarity and wholeness in a way that no one else could ever do in two thousand years. But this kind of academic vivisection, this is the opposite of life. It’s sterile and makes people hate God. I spit on the memory of Schmemann, Meyendorf, Florovsky and especially Romanides.

Why would anyone want to believe in the god of St Vlad’s Seminary and Ancient Faith Radio? A weak god terrified of the flu who left a weak Bible text imperfectly preserved and who thinks that schoolteachers have more value than car mechanics. A god less wise and less powerful than the CDC, NHS and WHO. The god of rootless cosmopolitans and lispy male feminists. The god of St Vlad’s and AFR is the god of doubt, the very “spirit of cowardice” 2 Timothy 1:7 condemns. I reject this false god. There is no “baptism of fire” in this kind of institutionalized, civic religion. The god of St Vlad’s Seminary is the god of Eisenhower and Reagan, the unitarian god on the dollar bill.

Young men go to St Vlad’s, thinking that it’s the smart person seminary where they will learn historic theology, and instead it fills their heads with these lies. And then all they can do is repeat what they were told, assuming that this makes them more intelligent than the common plumber.

The culture of critique that gives rise to the question of Markan priority or Dionysian authorship is cancer to the church. It is the inverse of faith. All forms of Christianity have gone from teaching doctrine to teaching doubt. The liberal-secular Brahmins of the Church believe in a later dating of Dionysius. Are there any conservatives who believe in a later dating? Do any of the saints believe in a later dating? The people who take literally what Jesus said about how the wealthy and worldly will all go to hell, do any of these believe in a later dating? If the only people who believe in a later dating are OCA communists who think the economy works by fiat and that Jesus apparently told us to murder the wealthy and seize the means of production, why should I trust their discernment on anything else?

The question of the authorship of Dionysius, while itself maybe irrelevant, is part of the broader culture of critique that has eviscerated Western Christianity and infected Orthodox Christianity almost as soon as it got here. No Orthodox saint ever believed in evolution. No saint ever condoned birth control. And I could make a safe guess that no saint ever accepted the later dating of Dionysius.

Similar to the synoptic problem above, if the traditional authorship of Divine Names is wrong, then its entire theology is wrong. The Divine Names is so saturated with claims of personal experience that if these claims are false, then the author is being intentionally deceptive. If he is deceptive, then we cannot trust what he says about truth. If we cannot trust what he says about truth, then the entire book must be discarded, because the entire book is about truth. And this book is so foundational to our theology that most people take its theology for granted who have not even heard of Dionysius (Kallistos Ware and Romanides were basically bad summaries of it). Therefore, if Divine Names was not written by the historic Dionysius of Athens, then we have to throw it into the trash and reject it wholesale.

But we cannot reject it, because it is too foundational to our theology and particularly to major Greek fathers. If the theology of Divine Names is to be rejected because the author is dishonest, then so must Damascene and Maximus also be rejected. And if we reject Damascene and Maximus, then the claim of divine guidance that the Eastern tradition makes is also a lie. Therefore, we have to accept the traditional authorship. A seemingly insignificant question about church history holds up the entire faith.

— Augustine Martin