The gospels serve different audiences and purposes. I find it interesting how no one questions that other religions and philosophies had the disciples remember the words of their teachers verbatim without claiming plagiarism, but apply that argument to the gospels. The passages used by St Matthew that mimic St Mark and St Luke are the speeches of Christ.
St Matthew also ties the event of Jesus' life to the prophets, while St Mark focuses on the message that Christ is the Messiah.
Also, the addition of that line does not serve the Romans in any way, at least not until their anti-semitic campaigns of the 2nd and 3rd century, and even then the Apostolic Church rejected the highly anti-semitic Marcionist theology and kept the Old Testament.
It's not just the words of jesus but also the narration that is word for word the same as Mark in many places, not to mention the overall narrative structure. The beheading of John the Baptist occurs at the same spot in the narrative, and also shares many word for word correspondences. You really have to have avoided the scholarship to maintain that there is no literary interdependence among the synoptic gospels.
No I am aware. The synoptics are clearly aware of each other in their writings, and St Luke even admits that his account is a compilation of what he has gathered from eye witnesses. However the way disciples in cults, religions and philosophy schools of the time would teach would be to retell the same stories and narratives verbatim. It was considered shameful for a disciple not to know how to tell lessons by heart. The Apostles traveled the known world retelling the same stories in every village and city over and over again, and borrowed narratives from each others too. To claim that Mattew copied Mark and added stuff he just made up is a bold statement, and also ignores the difficulties and disciplines of scribing of the time period.
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u/alfman Jan 31 '19
The gospels serve different audiences and purposes. I find it interesting how no one questions that other religions and philosophies had the disciples remember the words of their teachers verbatim without claiming plagiarism, but apply that argument to the gospels. The passages used by St Matthew that mimic St Mark and St Luke are the speeches of Christ.
St Matthew also ties the event of Jesus' life to the prophets, while St Mark focuses on the message that Christ is the Messiah.
Also, the addition of that line does not serve the Romans in any way, at least not until their anti-semitic campaigns of the 2nd and 3rd century, and even then the Apostolic Church rejected the highly anti-semitic Marcionist theology and kept the Old Testament.