In my previous blogs I discussed evidence for a literary relationship between the synoptic gospels. I want to spend the next few blogs discussing what that literary relationship is.
Scholars who have studied the synoptic problem believe there is interdependence between the gospels. In other words, the authors of the gospels copied one another. So for instance, Mark could have copied Matthew, Matthew could have copied Luke, Luke could have copied Mark, etc. Altogether there are 18 possible combinations.
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that Mark did not copy Matthew or Luke. Rather, it seems that Matthew and Luke copied Mark. Scholars call this Markan priority.
Mark is the shortest gospel with 11,025 words. Matthew has 18,293 words, and Luke has 19,376 words. Of the 11,025 words in Mark, only 132 have no parallel in Matthew or Luke. So 97% of Mark is found in Matthew and Luke.
Matthew has 94% of Mark duplicated in his gospel and Luke has 88% of Mark duplicated in his gospel. However, only 55% of Matthew is duplicated in Mark, and 42% of Luke is duplicated in Mark. See the chart below for a visual representation of this.
In my next blog, I will continue discussing evidence for Markan priority.
