Selected Examples of Rewriting in Mark’s Account of Jesus’ Last Week

Revised: 02-Jul-2013^[69]

In 1922 William Lockton proposed a theory of Lukan priority. According to Lockton’s hypothesis, Luke was written first, copied by Mark, who was in turn copied by Matthew who copied from Luke.^[70] Forty years later Robert L. Lindsey independently reached a similar solution to the so-called “synoptic problem.” He proposed a theory which argues that Luke was written first and was used by Mark, who in turn was used by Matthew (according to Lindsey, Matthew did not know Luke’s Gospel).^[71] As in the more popular Two-document (or Two-source) Hypothesis, Mark is the middle term between Matthew and Luke.

Lindsey arrived at his theory by accident. Attempting, for the benefit of modern speakers of Hebrew, to replace Franz Delitzsch’s outdated translation of the New Testament, Lindsey began by translating the Gospel of Mark, assuming it to be the earliest of the Synoptic Gospels. Although Mark’s text is relatively Semitic, it contains hundreds of non-Semitisms that are not present in Lukan parallels. This suggested to Lindsey the possibility that Mark was copying Luke and not vice versa.^[72] With further research Lindsey came to his solution to the synoptic problem.

A number of researchers in Israel, most prominently David Flusser, espoused Lindsey’s source theory.^[73] These scholars believe that a Hebrew Vorlage lies behind the Greek texts of the Gospels and that by translating the Greek texts back into Hebrew and considering how this Hebrew text would have been understood by first-century readers, one gains a fuller understanding of the Gospel texts’ original meaning.

In their emphasis on the importance of Hebrew for synoptic studies, Lindsey, Flusser, and their students, are a product of the pioneering work of Hebrew University professor M. H. Segal, who suggested as early as 1909 that Mishnaic Hebrew showed the characteristics of a living language.^[74] Segal’s conclusions have largely been borne out by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Bar Kochva letters and other documents from the Dead Sea area.

Lindsey’s synoptic theory is a minority opinion. The vast majority of today’s New Testament scholars assume the Two-document Hypothesis: Luke and Matthew wrote independently using Mark and a common source, which is sometimes termed Q. Since, according to this theory, Matthew and Luke relied in their Triple Tradition material upon Mark, one would not expect texts of their Triple Tradition to be superior to Mark’s. Certainly, one would not expect to find Luke and Matthew agreeing against Mark (such agreements are termed “minor agreements”^[75] )to preserve a more primitive wording. Yet, this is sometimes the case. In the Synoptic Gospels there are examples of what appear to be Markan rewriting of Luke’s account (or one of Luke’s sources or a Lukan-like source).^[76]

Let us compare the Matthean, Markan and Lukan versions of the following passages, or portions of them, from the last week of Jesus’ life (only the first in some depth): 1. Jesus’ Last Visit to the Temple (Aland pericopae 271-274); 2. the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Aland 278); 3. The Great Commandment (Aland 282); 4. the Last Supper (Aland 311); 5. Jesus before the Sanhedrin (Aland 332); and 6. Jesus’ Death on the Cross (Aland 347-348).^[77] Examination of a limited corpus of material from the last week of Jesus’ life could shed light on Mark’s editorial methods and indicate the interdependency of two of the Synoptic Gospels (Luke and Mark). Obviously, for these examples to be compelling, it would be necessary to integrate them into a fuller treatment of the synoptic problem.

Jesus’ Last Visit(s) to the Temple

The “Cleansing” according to the Synoptic Gospels

Luke’s version of the Cleansing is brief and straightforward: “And he entered the temple and began to take out the sellers, saying to them, ‘It is written, “My house will be a house of prayer,” but you have turned it into “a den of bandits.”’” According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus cleansed the temple on the same day that he and his disciples reached Jerusalem. Matthew’s Gospel agrees with Luke’s that Jesus “cleansed” the temple immediately after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The two writers agree against Mark that the Cleansing did not take place on the day following Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. In contrast to Luke and Matthew’s accounts, Mark’s account of the temple’s cleansing is much more complex: Jesus entered Jerusalem and went straight to the temple. After “he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve” (vs. 11).^[78] The next day—“In the morning,” according to Matthew—on their way to Jerusalem from Bethany, Jesus cursed a fig tree. (Matthew adds: “And the fig tree withered at once.”) Arriving in Jerusalem for the second time, Jesus entered the temple. According to Mark, it was on this second visit to the temple that he “cleansed” it, driving out not only the merchants, but their customers, as well. He overturned the money changers’ tables and the pigeon sellers’ chairs, even preventing the transporting of burdens in the temple. (Matthew, following Mark up to this point, omits “he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.”)

• ^[1] The word περιβλέψεσθαι has a profile that Lindsey classified as “a Markan stereotype” (see his A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark [2nd ed.; Jerusalem: Dugith, 1973], 57-63.) The word appears six times in Mark (Mark 3:5, 34; 5:32; 9:8; 10:23; 11:11), but only once in the rest of the New Testament (Luke 6:10 [opposite Mark 3:5]). ↩
• ^[2] “Probably the best explanation of the narrative is that the parable of the Fig Tree in Lk. xiii.6-9, or a similar parable, has been transformed into a story of fact, or that in primitive Christian tradition a popular legend came to be attached to a withered fig tree on the way to Jerusalem” (Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark [London: Macmillan, 1955], 459). Earlier, Lockton already had come to the same conclusion (Lockton, The Three Traditions in the Gospels, 111-13). F. W. Beare comments: “The strange episode of the Cursing of the Fig Tree is the only cursing miracle of the Gospels. Its symbolic significance leaps to the eye: it is a symbol of Israel, which has failed to bring forth the fruits for which God planted it, and is therefore condemned to perish. The same symbolism lies behind the parable of the Barren Fig Tree (Luke xiii. 6-9), and it is not unlikely that the miracle-story is a secondary form of the parable….” (The Earliest Records of Jesus [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962], 206). According to R. Steven Notley, “The ‘Parable of the Fig Tree’ (Luke 13:6-9), which communicates God’s patience and mercy, becomes in Mark the ‘Cursing of the Fig Tree.’” In creating his pericope, Mark has inserted into it “hints to the destruction of Jerusalem that allude to the words and actions of the prophet Jeremiah… The action against the fig tree recalls the words of Jeremiah, ‘When I would gather them, says the Lord, there are…no figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered….’” (“Anti-Jewish Tendencies in the Synoptic Gospels,” JerPers 51 [1996]: 25). ↩
• ^[3] It was a common practice of farmers in the land of Israel in ancient times to plant fig trees in one or more corners of their vineyards. A fig tree provided a shady spot for vine-tenders to rest or take their meals, and gave the owner a bit of added revenue. ↩
• ^[4] “This editorial activity [the separation of Mark 11:15-19 and 11:27-33] is to be ascribed to the evangelist Mark, and in that case we may also have to assume that he has edited the story of the cursing of the fig tree itself” (Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition [trans. John Marsh: Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963], 218). ↩
• ^[5] Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 230-31. A. Robin also suggested Mic. 7:1 (“The Cursing of the Fig Tree in Mark XI. A Hypothesis,” NTS 8 [1961/62]: 276-81). ↩
• ^[6] Cf. Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard” in 5:1-2—a vineyard that yielded only bad fruit: “The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel” (Isa. 5:7a). See Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Luke (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1896), 453. Cf. Isa. 5:7; Matt. 21:28. Elsewhere, the vine represents the people: Pss. 80:8, 14 (gefen); Jer. 2:21 (sorek); Ezek. 17:6; 19:10 (gefen). ↩
• ^[7] See Lockton, The Three Traditions in the Gospels, 114-15: “As the account of an actual event the story appears impossible, and must be explained as the result of the materialisation of parables and metaphorical sayings into a narrative historical form in the course of a process of literary development and accretion. If the story stood alone, we might hesitate to postulate such an origin, but other examples of the same thing may be recognised in the second gospel, including…the portents at the time of the crucifixion with the cry of dereliction, and also what is the most important instance, the long discourse of the last things.” ↩
• ^[8] From personal knowledge, one would not find ripe, edible figs on fig trees in the land of Israel at the Passover season. The early figs do not ripen until at least a month later. “One theory is that Mark was the first to link this with the entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple, there being no original connection with these events. If this is so, it is superfluous to ask whether Jesus could expect to find edible fruits on the tree in spring-time at the Passover” (Claus-Hunno Hunzinger, “συκῆ,” TDNT 7:756). ↩
• ^[9] Personal communication. See Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 460: “The parenthesis ὁ γὰρ καιρὸς οὐκ ἦν σύκων is best ascribed to Mark himself, since such explanations are in accordance with his style.” According to the Babylonian Talmud (b. Ta‘anit 24^a), R. Yose’s son commanded a fig tree להוציא פרותיה שלא בזמנה (to bring forth fruit out of season). ↩
• ^[10] So Craig A. Evans (Mark 8:27-16:20 [WBC 34B; Dallas: Word Books, 2001], 172): “That animals were to be bought and sold for purposes of the sacrificial offerings is completely in step with the requirements of the Law of Moses.” ↩
• ^[11] In the Septuagint ἐκβάλλειν is usually (28 times; cf. 2 Chron. 29:5, 16; 23:14) the translation of לגרש (legaresh; drive out, expel), and only 5 times the translation of להוציא. ↩
• ^[12] Lindsey may not have noticed that when ἐκβάλλειν is used in the Septuagint to translate להוציא, the sense is always a removal for the purpose of purifying, or cleansing, the temple: “bring her [Athaliah] out of…[the temple to be executed]” (2 Chron. 23:14); “Sanctify yourselves and sanctify the house of the LORD…and take the defilement out of the holy place” (2 Chron. 29:5); “The priests went into the house of the LORD to purify it, and they brought out of the sanctuary all the unclean things…and they [the Levites] took them out [and got rid of them] in the Kidron Valley” (2 Chron. 29:16); “to put away [send away, get rid of] all such wives and their children” (Ezra 10:3). These wives and children represented the unfaithfulness of the people and their pollution due to intermarriage. It is significant that the people’s admission of guilt as well as their step of repentance took place in the square, or courtyard, before the “house of the LORD” (see Ezra 10:1, 9). Each of these five occurrences of ἐκβάλλειν = להוציא is an occasion of bringing out, or removing, pollution from the temple, that is, each was a cleansing of the temple. Did the translators of the Septuagint distinguish this use of the Hebrew verb להוציא by translating with ἐκβάλλειν? Did, therefore, the Greek translator of the Hebrew Life of Jesus, aware of this Septuagintal translation pattern, use ἐκβάλλειν as his translation of להוציא in Jesus’ “temple cleansing of pollution”? ↩
• ^[13] “Although Luke was following Matthew at this point [Luke 19:45-46], he made a number of changes. For example, Luke changed Matthew’s ἐξέβαλεν in Matt. 21:12 to ἤρξατο ἐκβάλλειν (Lk 19:45). This pleonastic/inceptive use of ἄρχομαι + the infinitive is a linguistic characteristic of Luke….” (Allan J. McNicol, ed., Beyond the Q Impasse—Luke’s Use of Matthew [Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996], 250. This book was written by a research team made up of Lamar Cope, David Dungan, William R. Farmer, Allan McNicol, David Peabody and Philip Shuler [p. vi], members of the “Farmer School.” Originated by William R. Farmer and Dom Bernard Orchard, the members of this school have returned to the Griesbach Hypothesis as a solution to the synoptic problem [p. xiv].) It is untrue that the use of ἄρξασθαι + infinitive is a linguistic characteristic of Luke. The Farmer School’s approach is methodologically flawed because it has not taken into account the book of Acts, Luke’s second composition. While, in Luke’s Gospel ἄρξασθαι + the infinitive is found twenty-seven times, in Acts this linguistic feature occurs only six times (Acts 1:1; 2:4; 11:15; 18:26; 24:2; 27:35). Such a dramatic drop in occurrence from Luke to Acts suggests that it was not Luke who had a penchant for this idiom, but rather, that he accepted it from a source. A more serious flaw in the Farmer School’s methodology may be its non-use of the Hebrew control: Does the Greek of Matthew, Mark or Luke appear to be Hebrew in Greek guise? The Hebrew control is not just an examination of an isolated Hebrew idiom, but a careful inspection of the idiom’s context, which inquires whether or not the idiom appears in a Semitized Greek context that reflects, for instance, Semitic word-order and Semitized Greek word choices. The “ἄρξασθαι + infinitive” usage—not to speak of the brevity of the passage and the καί with which it opens—is an indication of Luke 19:45-46’s originality. The usage, more common in Middle Hebrew than Biblical Hebrew, is a telltale Hebraism and points to a Hebrew undertext. For a detailed analysis of this usage, see Buth and Kavasnica’s “Excursus on ἄρξασθαι, or Who Was Rewriting Whom?” Critical Note 4 in Randall Buth and Brian Kavasnica, “Temple Authorities and Tithe Evasion: The Linguistic Background and Impact of the Parable of the Vineyard, the Tenants and the Son” in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels, 1:261-68. ↩
• ^[14] These merchants were selling sacrificial animals and birds to pilgrims who came to the temple from within and without the land of Israel. A few dozen meters south of the Huldah Gates, the entrance to the temple, there were stalls of money changers who provided the Tyrian coin required for payment of the annual half-shekel tax. (See Shmuel Safrai, “The Temple,” in The Jewish People in the First Century [ed. Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern; Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1976], 945-70.) ↩
• ^[15] Lindsey, A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark, 133. Lindsey’s English translation of Luke 19:45 is “‘…usher out all those who were making business,’ as he shouted, ‘It is written….’” (Robert L. Lindsey, Jesus, Rabbi and Lord: A Lifetime's Search for the Meaning of Jesus' Words, 151). ↩
• ^[16] For examples of the thrust of the Hebrew verb להוציא, see Gen. 14:18, where Melchizedek “brought out” (LXX: ἐξήνεγκεν) bread and wine; Josh. 6:22, where the spies were commanded to “bring out” (LXX: ἐξαγάγετε) Rahab from Jericho; and b. Ta‘anit 24a, where R. Yose’s son commanded a fig tree to “bring forth” fruit. ↩
• ^[17] See BAG, 236-37; Jastrow, 587-88. ↩
• ^[18] One should note that there is this same pattern of increasing violence from Luke to Mark to Matthew in the Markan-Matthean parallels to Luke 21:12-13: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake.” Mark’s parallel reads, “They will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake” (Mark 13:9). Matthew’s parallel reads, “They will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake” (Matt. 24:17-18). See Notley, “Anti-Jewish Tendencies in the Synoptic Gospels,” 23. ↩
• ^[19] Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (AB 28A and 28B; Garden City: Doubleday, 1981, 1985), 1264. For a discussion of the historicity of Jesus’ dramatic action in the temple, see Evans, Mark 8:27-16:20, 164-69. Evans conclusion: “Recent research in the historical Jesus has by and large come to accept the historicity of the temple demonstration” (Mark, 166). ↩
• ^[20] For a detailed explanation of Lindsey’s suggestion, see Joseph Frankovic, “Remember Shiloh!” JerPers 46-47 (1994): 28-29, n. 2. ↩
• ^[21] Perhaps Mark noticed the reference in his source(s) to paritzim (robbers) in Jer. 7:11, then read on to Jer. 7:15, where the text says והשלכתי אתכם מעל פני (vehishlachti etchem me’al panai; LXX: ἀπορρίψω, cast out), and expanded his text midrashically in the direction of ekballein’s “cast out” nuance. This may explain Mark’s midrashic-like expansion of Mark 11:15-16. Additionally, Mark may have been influenced by the words of Zech. 14:21, “On that day there shall no longer be any merchant in the house of the LORD of hosts.” ↩
• ^[22] The “temple” was not only the temple proper, but also the temple complex, including its commercial areas. Even Jerusalem is sometimes called “the temple” in Jewish sources. “As time passed, the Rabbis taught that the sanctity of the Temple applied to the entire city of Jerusalem, and that the ‘minor sacrifices’ (i.e., those that could be eaten by the people) could be eaten throughout the city (m. Zebah. 5.7-8). Talmudic literature frequently attests that the Paschal sacrifice was in fact eaten in the houses of the city and on its roofs. So also, Philo indicates that on the Festival of Passover every ‘dwelling-house’ (οἰκία; Spec. Laws 2.148) assumes the sanctity of the Temple. The halakah of the Qumran sect was opposed to this ruling, and their literature vehemently challenged the eating of the Paschal sacrifice throughout the entire city of Jerusalem. The author of Jubilees, who was close to the ideology of the Qumran Sect, even mandated the death penalty for anyone who ate this sacrifice outside of the Temple (49.16-20; cf. also 7.36, and 32.4; and 11Q19 17.8-9” (Shmuel Safrai, “Early Testimonies in the New Testament of Laws and Practices Relating to Pilgrimage and Passover,” in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels, 1:47-8). An area could be added to the temple court by the Sanhedrin of seventy-one judges (m. Sanhedrin 1:5; m. Shevi’it 2:2).
  Since areas beyond the temple proper, particularly the temple’s commercial areas, could be referred to as “the temple,” the area of stalls located at the base of the temple platform near the southern entrance to the temple compound, the Huldah Gates (m. Middot 1:3), is a candidate for the place of Jesus’ action. Most New Testament commentaries suggest that the outer court of the temple, also known as the Court of the Gentiles, was the site of the Cleansing. According to Safrai (personal communication), there is not the slightest possibility that the Cleansing could have happened in the Court of the Gentiles. No selling was allowed in the temple’s courts, including the temple’s outer court—there was a prohibition against going up on the temple platform carrying a purse (m. Berachot 9:5). Commercial activity also took place in the Royal Stoa, or Solomon’s Portico, a huge hall located on the southern edge of the temple platform; however, it was not possible to enter the temple courts from that hall. The Royal Stoa was enclosed and the only exit (and entrance) was via an arched stairway whose highest arch is today known as Robinson’s Arch. See Joseph Frankovic, “Where Were the Vendors?” JerPers 46-47 (1994): 29. Cf. Safrai, “The Temple,” 945-70. ↩
• ^[23] Was Jesus protesting commercialization, or, as Buth and Kavasnica suggest, accusing the high priests of stealing from God (“You have made it a den of thieves”)? (see Buth and Kavasnica, “Temple Authorities and Tithe Evasion: The Linguistic Background and Impact of the Parable of the Vineyard, the Tenants and the Son,” in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels, 1:65-73). There were Jewish elements in first-century Israel who strongly condemned the mixing of temple commerce, which tended to encourage overcharging and even fraud, with the holy activities of the temple. See Flusser, The Sage from Galilee, 131-2; Shmuel Safrai, Die Wallfahrt im Zeitalter des Zweiten Tempels (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981), 185-88 (= Pilgrimage in the Second Temple Period [Tel Aviv: Am Hassefer, 1965], 147-49 [Hebrew]). See also, Safrai, “The Temple,” 945-70. ↩
• ^[24] See Notley, “Anti-Jewish Tendencies in the Synoptic Gospels,” 25-6. Cf. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM, 1985), 61-71. ↩
• ^[25] The idea of completely removing merchants from the temple, which entered the story as recorded by Mark and Matthew, may have come from the concluding words of the book of Zechariah: ולא יהיה כנעני עוד בבית יי צבאות ביום ההוא (Zech. 14:21). The word כנעני (kena’ani) could be understood as “Canaanite” (“And on that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the LORD Almighty”; NIV); but its original meaning was probably “merchant, trader” (cf. Prov. 31:24), so JPS: “in that day there shall be no more traders [JPS note: ‘To sell ritually pure vessels’] in the House of the LORD of Hosts.” Targum Onkelos rendered the phrase using תגר (merchant): ולא יהי עביד תגרא עוד בבית מקדשא דיוי צבאות בעידנא ההוא (See the entry “תגר” in Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period [Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990], 575.) If, in writing his midrashic expansion (Mark 11:15-16), Mark was influenced by Zech. 14:21, he must have understood kena’ani as “merchants.” ↩
• ^[26] Apparently, the text of Jer. 7:11 that Jesus had memorized, like the text of Isa. 56:7, read ביתי (my house), and not הבית הזה (this house), the reading of the MT (so Joseph Frankovic, “Remember Shiloh!” 27). The words “this house” would have spoiled the rabbinic gezerah shavah (similarity of phrases in two scriptural texts—the principal of inference by analogy) that Jesus created. This hermeneutical principle demanded a common word or phrase, in this case, “my house.” Significantly, “my house” (ὁ οἶκός μου) also is the reading of the LXX for Jer. 7:11. ↩
• ^[27] For a description of Jesus’ sophistication in handling Scripture, see Joseph Frankovic, “Remember Shiloh!” 24-31. ↩
• ^[28] At this point, both Matthew and Luke omit πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν (for all nations), a Matthean-Lukan minor agreement in omission. Beare, ignoring the significance of this minor agreement, states: “The story of the Cleansing…requires little comment. Matthew and Luke have abbreviated the Marcan story, without affecting its main lines or even its vocabulary in any significant way. Both have omitted the phrase ‘for all the nations’ (Mark xi:11) from the citation, perhaps to throw into high relief the contrast ‘house of prayer’—‘den of thieves’” (The Earliest Records of Jesus, 206). ↩
• ^[29] Personal communication. ↩
• ^[30] Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 459; Beare, The Earliest Records of Jesus, 206; Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, 218. ↩
• ^[31] Personal communication. ↩
• ^[32] Flusser, The Sage from Galilee, 118-19. ↩
• ^[33] Philo, Prob. 75; Josephus, Antiq. 18:19 (see Louis H. Feldman’s note [Note a] to 18:19 in LCL); Damascus Document IV, 15-18; V, 6-7; VI, 11-13. “For the desert sectaries of Qumran, the Temple of Jerusalem was a place of abomination; its precincts were considered polluted, its priests wicked, and the liturgical calendar prevailing there, unlawful” (Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ [175 B.C.-A.D. 135], [ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar and Matthew Black; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979], 2:582. See also 2:535, 570, 588-89). Privately, Safrai has communicated to me the following: “The Essenes viewed the temple as polluted. They were not really anti-temple, but they could not participate in temple worship because the temple had become unclean as a result of Sadducean corruption and Pharisaic practices. Paradoxically, although the Essenes hated the Sadducees, their halachah was very similar to that of the Sadducees. Since very early in the Second Temple period, they had isolated themselves, the Pharisees’ development of the Oral Torah had passed them by. The Pharisees, however, did not see the temple as defiled. Although they viewed the high priestly families as corrupt, and differed with the Sadducees on the validity of the Oral Torah and innumerable theological and legal issues, they participated in temple worship and sacrifice. The daily service was conducted according to Pharisaic halachah, and many of the simple priests were Pharisees. The half-shekel tax was instituted by the Pharisees. The temple of Jesus’ day did not own land. If someone donated property to the temple, it was sold and the proceeds went to the temple. This practice was unique, since the temples of other contemporary religions became rich in land. The temple’s non-ownership of land was a result of a Pharisaic ruling. Our knowledge of the Essene movement has grown as a result of new archaeological discoveries and the publication and study of additional Judean Desert materials. For instance, although the Essenes at Qumran abstained from marriage, the bones of women were found in the cemetery that adjoined their commune. And although the Essenes’ main center was at Qumran, according to Josephus, they resided throughout the land of Israel (War 2:124). Josephus states that the Essenes sent terumot (heave offerings) to the temple in Jerusalem (Antiq. 18:19), and, although it cannot yet be proven, it is likely that the Essenes, or at least part of them, sent the half-shekel tax to the temple. Apparently, there were a number of streams that made up the Essene movement, and their situation changed from period to period.” ↩
• ^[34] Compare the stoning of Stephen: “They…dragged him out of the city and began to stone him” (Acts 7:57-8). ↩
• ^[35] These priests viewed tithing on the tithes they received as unnecessary since these offerings had already been tithed. For evidence that “fruit” may have symbolized the tithes the high priest were not paying, see Buth and Kavasnica, “Temple Authorities and Tithe Evasion: The Linguistic Background and Impact of the Parable of the Vineyard, the Tenants and the Son,” in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels, 1:72, and n. 72). See also, John A. T. Robinson, “The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen: A Test of Synoptic Relationships,” NTS 21 (1974-1975): 443-61. ↩
• ^[36] Menahem Stern, “Aspects of Jewish Society: The Priesthood and Other Classes,” in The Jewish People in the First Century, 604-09. See also Stern, “The Reign of Herod and the Herodian Dynasty,” in The Jewish People in the First Century, 273-74. ↩
• ^[37] E.g., “Abba Saul ben Bothnith said in the name of Abba Joseph ben Hanan: ‘Woe is me because of the house of Boethus; woe is me because of their staves. Woe is me because of the house of Hanan; woe is me because of their whisperings [i.e., informing to the civil authorities, apparently]. Woe is me because of the house of Kathros; woe is me because of their pens. Woe is me because of the house of Ishmael ben Phiabi; woe is me because of their fists. For they are high priests, and their sons are treasurers, and their sons-in-law are trustees, and their servants beat the people with staves’” (t. Menahot 13:21; b. Pesahim 57^a). For details of the clan of Annas, or Hanan, into which Joseph Caiaphas married, see David Flusser, “To Bury Caiaphas, Not to Praise Him,” JerPers 33-34 (1991): 23-8. ↩
• ^[38] To both pericopae, compare Jer. 8:13: “When I would gather them, says the LORD, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.” Compare also Isa. 5:4: “What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” ↩
• ^[39] Personal communication. For elaboration, see David Bivin, "'They Didn’t Dare' (Matt 22:46; Mark 12:34; Luke 20:40): A Window on the Literary and Redactional Methods of the Synoptic Gospel Writers." ↩
• ^[40] The wording of Luke 20:41. In Matthew’s account, the wording is, “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” (Matt. 22:42). ↩
• ^[41] Central to Jewish teaching and learning in the time of Jesus was the asking of questions. Rather than deliver a lecture, a sage would ask his disciples a question and they would answer by asking a further question. The teacher knew that his students had correctly understood the material when they responded with appropriate questions. Hillel remarked, “A timid student does not learn” (m. Avot 2:6), and certainly a pupil who was too shy to ask questions would gain little in an educational system that demanded so much participation. The question-question method of teaching was so prominent in Jesus’ time that a sage often began a study session by putting a question to his disciples. Luke 20:41-44 may be the only example of such an opening question in the Gospels. Perhaps Jesus posed it at the beginning of a study session for his advanced, full-time students. The question is a typical rabbinic riddle based on a seeming contradiction in a passage of Scripture (Pss. 110:1). This pattern of answering questions with questions was so common that in the Hebrew of Jesus’ day the word for “question” came to be a synonym for “answer.” For example, twelve-year-old Jesus was lost and finally found by his parents, “sitting in the temple among the rabbis, listening to them and asking them questions.” The Gospel writer comments in the following verse, “and all those listening to him were amazed by his wise answers” (Luke 2:46-47), in other words, Jesus’ questions were not questions but answers. Another saying of Jesus hinges upon the meaning of the word “question.” After being arrested, Jesus was interrogated by the high priests who demanded, “If you are the Messiah, tell us” (Luke 22:67). Jesus gave his answer in two parts: “If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I ask [a question], you will not answer” (Luke 22:67-8). The first part of Jesus’ answer seems clear enough, but the second part is difficult to understand: one might wonder why Jesus would wish to ask the high priests a question. The second half of Jesus’ answer is a repetition of the first half, and means exactly the same. Jesus simply phrased his answer elegantly, using a basic feature of classical Hebrew poetry known as parallelism. The first half of Jesus’ poetic reply means the same as the second half because the phrase “ask a question” can be a synonym for “answer a question.” “If I ask, you will not answer,” refers to the rabbinic style of discussion that consisted of answering questions with questions. Jesus answered a question with a question on many occasions. When he was asked by the temple authorities what right he had to do “these things” (i.e., cleansing the temple), he answered by saying, “I will also ask you something. Now tell me, was John’s baptism of God or of men?” (Luke 20:3-4). Jesus’ response to the authorities’ question was not simply an evasion intended to silence them, but was directly related to what they asked and mirrored their question exactly. They asked whether Jesus had any authority beyond his own, and Jesus asked whether they felt John had any authority beyond his own. When a lawyer asked Jesus a question, Jesus responded, “What is written in the Torah? How do you read?” (Luke 10:26; another example of a question posed in Hebrew-like parallelism). ↩
• ^[42] The question, “How can one say that the Messiah is the son of David?” may represent the Hebrew, כיצד אומרים שהמשיח בן דוד. ↩
• ^[43] In Hebrew, the third person, plural, active form of the verb is used in an impersonal sense to avoid a passive construction. Understood Hebraically, כיצד אומרים (How they say…?) contains no reference to specific individuals. ↩
• ^[44] Throughout the Church’s history, Christians have remembered 1 Cor. 11:23-29, with its manifold bread-wine references, and all too often overlooked the brief wine-bread reference in 1 Cor. 10:16. Usually unaware of Jewish practice, Christians have not realized that Paul was referring to the third of three cups of wine drunk during and after the Passover meal. Notice that “after supper” Jesus “took the cup” (1 Cor. 11:25). Thus, there appears to be a bread-wine order, although the order followed by Jesus was wine-bread, the usual Pharisaic order for festive meals. Didache, one of the earliest (second century A.D.) church documents, also preserves the wine-bread order (Did. 9:2-3). Idiomatically, the Hebrew order is bread-wine. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the phrase “bread and wine” is found in Gen. 14:18, Jdg. 19:19 and Neh. 5:15. The bread-wine order is found in Hebrew parallelism in Prov. 4:17; 9:5 and Eccl. 9:7; 10:19. The phrase “wine and bread” does not appear in Scripture, nor the parallelism “wine…bread.” Also, “eat and drink,” which appears five times in 1 Cor. 11:23-29, is a Hebrew idiom, “eat” and “drink” always in that order. ↩
• ^[45] Flusser suggested that it is the order of the Qumran meal that lies behind the Markan account of Jesus’ celebration of the Passover-Last Supper. See David Flusser, “The Last Supper and the Essenes,” Imm 2 [1973]: 23-27; repr. in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988): 202-6). ↩
• ^[46] See R. Steven Notley, “The Eschatological Thinking of the Dead Sea Sect and the Order of Blessing in the Christian Eucharist,” in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels, 1:121-38. ↩
• ^[47] Also arguing against the originality of Mark’s text are the plethora of Hebraisms in the Lukan passage: “and he said to them” (sentence and account begin with “and”); “I have earnestly desired (ratso ratsiti; representing the Hebrew infinitive absolute]”; “eat this passover” (i.e., the Passover lamb, not the festival); “suffer” in the Hebraic sense of “die”; “and he took a cup”; “gave thanks” (the rabbinic blessing included the words “fruit of the vine,” which Jesus used immediately afterwards); “I tell you”; “from now on”; “fruit of the vine”; “took bread” (the unleavened bread used in the Passover service is referred to as לֶחֶם [bread]); “and gave thanks,” “and broke”; “and gave it to them.” ↩
• ^[48] If we accept Luke’s version of events, there was no trial, but only an interrogation for the purpose of finding a charge against Jesus that could be brought before the Roman governor Pilate. In Luke, the Jewish authorities do not formally condemn Jesus to death (see Flusser, The Sage from Galilee, 139). ↩
• ^[49] John C. Hawkins included this Matthean-Lukan “minor agreement” in a list of twenty-one “certain other alterations from, and additions to, the Marcan narrative, as to which it seems almost impossible that Matthew and Luke could have accidentally concurred in making them” (Horae Synopticae [2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1909], 210). For the agreement’s place in catalogs of minor agreements, see Finley Morris Keech, “The Agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark in the Triple Tradition” (M.A. diss, Drew University, 1962), 97-9; and Frans Neirynck, ed., The Minor Agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1974), 179. ↩
• ^[50] The Markan version, “Prophesy!” does not even make sense. Apparently, the author was trying to heighten Jesus’ prophetic identity: “Be a prophet. Show us your prophetic ability. Prophesy on a grand scale!” In the Matthean-Lukan version it was more of a parlor trick that Jesus was asked to do. ↩
• ^[51] Burnett Hillman Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (2nd ed.; London: Macmillan, 1930), 325. ↩
• ^[52] Streeter, The Four Gospels, 325-28. On the textual problems in Mark 14:65, see Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 571. ↩
• ^[53] It is very probably that these heartless guards were Gentiles, since by Jesus’ day there were no longer Jewish slaves in the land of Israel (Flusser, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity, 606-9). ↩
• ^[54] For references to the game in ancient and modern times, see Flusser, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity, 606-9. Flusser states: “Only Luke cites all the components of the game” (Flusser, Judaism and the Origins, 606).) ↩
• ^[55] According to Luke’s account, no night session of the Sanhedrin took place. In capital cases a night session of the Sanhedrin was forbidden by Jewish halachah: “In capital cases they hold the trial during the daytime and the verdict also must be reached during the daytime” (m. Sanhedrin 4:1 [trans. Danby]; cf. b. Sanhedrin 32^a). See the chapter “Death” in Flusser, The Sage from Galilee, 138-61. See also former justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, Haim H. Cohn, “Reflections on the Trial and Death of Jesus,” Israel Law Review (1967): 332-79. See also Cohn’s book in Hebrew, משפטו ומותו של ישו הנוצרי [The Trial and Death of Jesus], (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1968). ↩
• ^[56] Flusser, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity, 605. Writing on the Jesus before the Sanhedrin story, Taylor asserts: “The basis of the story is assured by the two independent narratives. Of these, that of Luke stands nearer to the actual facts” (The Gospel According to St. Mark, 571). “But,” Flusser complains, “Why not admit that it was Mark who altered the original account of Jesus’ last night, and was thus compelled to distort the episode of the humiliating game of Jesus’ guards?” (Flusser, Judaism and the Origins, 606). ↩
• ^[57] In Lindsey’s opinion, “…since Mark has changed the original order, he must get Jesus back into the hands of those holding him (he [Mark] has named them ὑπηρέται). So what he [Mark] is saying is that they ‘received him back with blows’” (a handwritten marginal note in Lindsey’s personal copy of Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 571). Flusser classifies καὶ οἱ ὑπηρέται ῥαπίσμασιν αὐτὸν ἔλαβον as “colloquial Greek” (Judaism and the Origins of Christianity, 606). ↩
• ^[58] Notley has detailed Mark’s portrayal of Jesus as an abandoned holy man in “Anti-Jewish Tendencies in the Synoptic Gospels,” 23-7. ↩
• ^[59] I assume that at this point Mark has reworked his source; however, some authorities view “despair” as a claim for authenticity supposing that the note of despair was an embarrassment that Luke “cleaned up” secondarily: “Luke 23:46 and John 19:30 substitute Christologically inoffensive last words of Jesus” (Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993], 966). Based on their understanding of 2 Cor. 5:21 and Gal. 3:13, many Christians believe that God turned his back on Jesus, at least momentarily, while he was hanging on the cross; or, alternatively, that Jesus felt forsaken, and in his pain began to harbor doubts about God’s care and protection. Such popular understandings are illustrated by a sentence in the song, “Sympathy for the Devil,” which the Rolling Stones recorded on June 6, 1968. One of the Devil’s lines is: “I was around when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain.” Commentators, too, echo the assumption that God turned his back on his son: “The darkness of the land signifies judgment; that Jesus cries out the way he does suggests that divine judgment has in part fallen on him…. Darkness covers the land as God looks away from the obscenity that has taken place” (Evans, Mark 8:27-16:20, 507); “Jesus clearly feels abandoned…. Jesus as the sin-bearing sacrifice…must endure the temporary abandonment of his Father, i.e., separation from God” (Donald A. Hagner, Matthew [WBC 33A-33B; Dallas: Word Books, 1993-1995], 844). ↩
• ^[60] Evans (Mark 8:27-16:20, 507) takes Mark 15:34 as a parallel to the “concluding utterances” chosen by Luke and John (Luke 23:46; John 19:30). ↩
• ^[61] In contrast to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Aramaic words are a feature of Mark’s Gospel, for example: βοανηργές (Mark 3:17); ταλιθα κουμ (Mark 5:41); εφφαθα (Mark 7:34); and αββα (Mark 14:36). Mark’s insertion of Aramaic words into his text should not surprise us since inhabitants of first-century Israel lived in a trilingual environment. See Chaim Rabin, “Hebrew and Aramaic in the First Century,” in The Jewish People in the First Century, 1007-39; and Gerard Mussies, “Greek in Palestine and the Diaspora,” in The Jewish People in the First Century, 1040-64. Compare “Language Backgrounds” in the Introduction to Buth and Kavasnica, “Temple Authorities and Tithe Evasion: The Linguistic Background and Impact of the Parable of the Vineyard, the Tenants and the Son,” in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels, 1:54-58. See also Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, 2:20-28. On the languages used in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (trans. Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr. and Edward Cook: New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 8-10. ↩
• ^[62] Still today, Pss. 31:5a is the conclusion of the Jewish death bed confession. See The Authorized Daily Prayer Book, rev. ed., ed. Joseph H. Hertz (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1948), 1065. On Jesus’ last cry, see Flusser, The Sage from Galilee, 161, n. 78; cf. 4, n. 4. ↩
• ^[63] Here, as in the Temple Cleansing, Mark used a bracketing technique: “He [Mark] accomplishes this feat [i.e., redacting it in ways that make it an object of faith] by means of a double emphasis on superhuman loudness, by framing the cry between the supernatural signs of darkness and veil-rending, and by citing the favorable effect on the centurion of the way in which Jesus expired” (Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross, 966). ↩
• ^[64] The cry from the cross as recorded in Matt. and Mark is complicated textually. For a short survey of the Greek witnesses to the Gospel of Mark, see Evans, Mark 8:27-16:20, lviii-lx. For a discussion of the textual variants of the cry, see R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 649, 652; and Hagner, Matthew, 842, n. b-d. For a summary of the deliberations of the editorial committee of the United Bible Societies’ The Greek New Testament on the texts of Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Societies, 1975), 70, 119-20. Taylor (The Gospel According to St. Mark, 592-93) prefers Ἐλωὶ ἐλωὶ λαμὰ σαβαχθανεί in Mark 15:34; however, the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (27th ed.) and the United Bible Societies’ The Greek New Testament (4th ed.) read ελωι ελωι λεμα σαβαχθανι (λεμα, representing the Aramaic לְמָה, instead of λαμα, representing the Hebrew לָמָה). There are manuscripts that show ηλι ηλι (Hebrew: אֵלִי אֵלִי) instead of ελωι ελωι (Aramaic: אֱלָהִי), as there are manuscripts that preserve just the opposite at Matt. 27:46. Assuming that Mark’s text was indeed ελωι ελωι λεμα σαβαχθανι, why would the author of this Gospel have Jesus quote Hebrew Scripture in Aramaic? The author of Mark may have been motivated to use Aramaic to give Jesus an other-worldly, divine quality, with the centurion, in effect, saying, “Amen! Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39). Perhaps the Aramaic words “Eloi,” “lema” and “sabachthani” were “divine power” words; Mark sometimes had Jesus use Aramaic words after Jesus performed a miracle (e.g., Mark 5:41 and 7:34). Significantly, speaking in Aramaic was characteristic of the bat kol (heavenly voice) (t. Sotah 13:5 [cf. Josephus, Antiq.. 13:282]; t. Sotah 13:6; b. Sotah 48^b; b. Sanhedrin 11^a; j. Pe’ah 15^d; b. Bava Batra 3^b. See Shmuel Safrai, “Literary Languages in the Time of Jesus,” JerPers 31 [1991]: 5-6). ↩
• ^[65] In this instance, too, as Lindsey suggested, it would appear that Mark substituted a synonymic equivalent for Luke’s more original text (see Lindsey, A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark, 40-41). Nor is this the only instance of Mark’s replacing a Scripture quotation in Luke with a substitute Scripture quotation. According to Luke 3:22, at Jesus’ baptism a heavenly voice said, “You are my son, today I have begotten you,” a quotation of Pss. 2:7. However, for this same scenario, Mark substituted, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11, a combination of Pss. 2:7 and Isa. 42:1), the utterance of the heavenly voice at the transfiguration. ↩
• ^[66] As Taylor comments, “If Mark is using Palestinian tradition, it is natural that he should give the saying in an Aramaic form, but it is more probable that the cry was uttered in Hebrew, for the comment of the bystanders, ἴδε Ἠλίαν φωνεῖ (xv. 35), is intelligible if Jesus cried ἠλεὶ ἠλεί or ἠλὶ ἠλί rather than ἐλωί” (The Gospel According to St. Mark, 593). ↩
• ^[67] Perhaps Mark did not intend to imply despair by highlighting Jesus’ cry from the cross. Walter E. Bundy states, “This cry…has no psychological value as a clue to Jesus’ frame of mind when death came. Mark does not seem to think of it as an exprerssion of despair or dereliction. This seems clear in the reaction of the centurion (39) who sees in Jesus the Son of God, not a frustrated human being. The death story was written for the edification of Christian, ‘not for their bewilderment’ [R. H. Lightfoot, History and Interpretation in the Gospels (New York: Harper, 1934), 159]. The resort to Scripture in the hour of death is in itself an act of faith” (Jesus and the First Three Gospels: An Introduction to the Synoptic Tradition [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955], 543-44). ↩
• ^[68] Advocates of the Griesbach Hypothesis would probably agree, although they would assume that Mark was reworking Matthew, as well. The Griesbach Hypothesis (see Johann Jakob Griesbach, Synopsis Evangeliorum Matthei Marci et Lucae una cum iis Joannis pericopis: Quae historiam passionis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi complectuntu [2nd ed.; Halle: J. J. Curtii Haeredes, 1797]) was revived in 1964 by William R. Farmer (see Farmer, The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis [2nd ed.; Dillsboro, NC: Western North Carolina Press, 1976]). Farmer’s students (Lamar Cope, David L. Dungan, Thomas R. W. Longstaff, Allan J. McNicol, David B. Peabody and Philip L. Shuler) have renamed Farmer's theory the Two-gospel Hypothesis (2GH). The 2GH posits that the Gospel of Matthew was written first, that Matthew was used by Luke in writing his Gospel, and that Mark’s Gospel was a conflation of Matthew and Luke. Etienne Nodet also rejects the Two Source Hypothesis and is sympathetic to the Griesbach Hypothesis. He considers Mark the most recent of the Gospels, and believes, like proponents of the Griesbach Hypothesis, that Mark depended on and synthesized Matthew and Luke (Le Fils de Dieu: Procès de Jésus et des Evangiles [Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2002], 317). ↩
• ^[69] A revised and abbreviated version of this unpublished article (written in 2004) was published as “Evidence of an Editor’s Hand in Two Instances of Mark’s Account of Jesus’ Last Week?” in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels (ed. R. Steven Notley, Marc Turnage and Brian Becker; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), 1:211-24. The “Evidence of an Editor’s Hand in Two Instances of Mark’s Account of Jesus’ Last Week?” contains rewriting carried out by the volume’s editors. Where there are contradictions between the two versions, the text of the original, longer version, here published for the first time, represents the author’s view. I am greatly indebted to Randall Buth for his guidance in writing this article. On numerous occasions we discussed the passages here dealt with and Mark’s theological penchants. Without Buth’s help, I could not have written the article. ↩
• ^[70] William Lockton, “The Origin of the Gospels,” CQR 94 (1922): 216-39. Lockton subsequently wrote three books to substantiate his theory, all published by Longmans, Green and Co. of London: The Resurrection and Other Gospel Narratives and The Narratives of the Virgin Birth (1924), The Three Traditions in the Gospels (1926), and Certain Alleged Gospel Sources: A Study of Q, Proto-Luke and M (1927). ↩
• ^[71] Robert L. Lindsey, “A Modified Two-Document Theory of the Synoptic Dependence and Interdependence,” NovT 6 (1963): 239-63. Lindsey’s theory postulates four non-canonical documents, all of which preceded the Synoptic Gospels in time, two that were unknown to the synoptists—the original Hebrew biography of Jesus and its literal Greek translation—and two other non-canonical sources known to one or more of the synoptists. Here is how Lindsey described these latter two non-canonical sources: “Anthology (or, Reorganized Scroll). Before the Greek Life of Jesus was widely circulated, its contents were reorganized: opening incidents were collected from teaching-context stories and, together with miracle and healing stories, placed at the beginning of the new scroll; discourses were collected from the teaching-context stories and placed in the second section of the scroll (these discourses were often grouped on the basis of common key words); twin parables, normally the conclusion to teaching-context stories, were collected and placed in the third and final section of the scroll. Thus, parts of the Greek translation were divorced from their original contexts and the original story outline was lost; First Reconstruction. Not long before Luke was written, an attempt was made to reconstruct a chronological record by excerpting units from the Anthology. This resulted in a much shorter version of Jesus’ biography (a condensation of about eighteen chapters), as well as a significant improvement in its quality of Greek” (“Conjectured Process of Gospel Transmission,” Jerusalem Perspective [henceforth, JerPers] 38-39 [1993]: 6). In Lindsey’s theory, Matthew, Mark and Luke were acquainted with the Anthology, but Luke alone was acquainted with the First Reconstruction. Mark used Luke while only rarely referring to the Anthology. Matthew used Mark and the Anthology. ↩
• ^[72] Priority of writing order does not necessarily imply originality of text. ↩
• ^[73] David Flusser, “Jesus,” EncJud 10:10. ↩
• ^[74] M. H. Segal, “Mishnaic Hebrew and Its Relation to Biblical Hebrew and to Aramaic,” in JQR (Old Series) 20 (1908-9): 647-737. See also Segal’s A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford, 1927). ↩
• ^[75] In the Triple Tradition there are approximately 800 Matthean-Lukan minor agreements, and a similar number of Matthean-Lukan agreements in omission (where Matthew and Luke agree to omit words from Mark’s account). ↩
• ^[76] One potential type of Markan rewriting is the changing of the order of events, for example, the placement of the tearing of the temple curtain after Jesus’ death rather than before it (Mark 15:37-38; for a fuller discussion, see the section, “Jesus’ Death on the Cross”); or, the placement of the guessing game the guards played after a meeting of the council rather than before it (Mark 14:53, 55-65; for a fuller discussion, see the section, “Jesus before the Sanhedrin”). ↩
• ^[77] Two of the examples I will consider (numbers 2 and 5) are Matthean-Lukan minor agreements (against Mark). Such agreements are extremely significant. If, in Triple Tradition, Matthew and Luke, supposedly working independently, agree to disagree with Mark, this would appear to be evidence that Matthew and Luke had a common source other than Mark; however, according to the Two-document Hypothesis, the only source for their Triple Tradition materials was Mark. The improbability that at these points of agreement Matthew and Luke were copying from Mark creates a challenge for proponents of the majority view. ↩
• ^[78] “As it was prescribed that the roasted lamb be eaten within the walls of the holy city [m. Zevahim 5:7-8; cf. m. Pesahim 7:9], on the last evening Jesus did not return to Bethany, but remained in Jerusalem [Matt. 26:17-20]” (David Flusser, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007], 134). ↩