Marcan Priority a Protestant Thing, acc. to Duncan Graham Reid

[hansgeorg]

But still, you don't have Prussian theologians using Markan priority as an anti-Catholic tool. I keep using Von Harnack as an example, but there are other ones. Basically, the various "lives of Jesus" attacked Catholicism as untrue to the historical Jesus' message. Those "lives" were largely dependent on Markan priority, but I think the issue is also tied to the idea that Mark is not a particularly Jewish gospel.

If Marcan priority were openly used in formal theological discourse, the Catholic hangers on might have taken a hint and dropped it.

How about conversations all over any University in Germany "have you heard, while professor so-and-so is sensible, his Pope clings to Matthaean priority!"

And similar.

The Great Omission is that Luke excludes Mark 6:45-8:26, whereas Matthew largely doesn't. So let's say that Luke is ignorant of Matthew (which I think very unlikely, by the way). How do you explain that Luke makes reference to accounts written by others?

Probably as they came along with exact wording about occasions he knew from own research.

That's not how writing and reading worked in the ancient Mediterranean. You'd be commissioned to write a work and then you'd have it read at a gathering of some sort. You wouldn't be commissioned to write a work for someone's own edification. It seems that Theophilus was the patron of a Christian community of some type, or otherwise a catch-all name for a community of believers.

Hmmm .... I am a Latinist and half and half Grecist. You'll do well to check that with Classics literature ...

I take it he was a patron, but even so there would still be a reading before those whom he patronised (perhaps Jews up to the reading), while a publication in Church as canonic Gospel is another thing.

I must've missed it. Generally, translations do a poor job of idiomatic expressions or puns, which were fairly common in Second Temple literature (esp. in the Qumran community).

OK, if Matthew had written in Aramaic it would have contained puns, which are however not bungled in Matthew's Greek.

Why would Matthew have written like Qumran communty itfp?

This is what Clement says, according to Eusebius:

OK, but this was not quoted straight from stromata or anywhere else.

Seems to concur with Augustinian, so much the better.

Agrammatos generally means unlearned or illiterate, so it's generally meant to mean that Peter was illiterate. The other issue is that the vast majority of people were in fact illiterate (somewhere from 3%-10% were literate, most of whom were probably not Galilean fisherman). Knowledge of the Hebrew Bible was primarily through hearing it preached, not direct reading. That fact makes sense of the errors made in the gospels with regard to Hebrew prophecy.

"Illiterate" according to WHAT standard?

Acc. to the Temple one.

Does not equal analphabetism, nor imply he was if so still an analphabet when in St Mark's company.

I think the dates of the gospels are more or less arbitrary. They could've been written at any point between the 40s/50s and the early second century. There's been an increasing tendency to date Luke-Acts to the late first/early second century, which I don't see the evidence for. Anyway, to address your point, the reason I say that Mark could be linked to the late first century is that some elements of Mark seem more closely tied to apocryphal literature than the other Synoptic gospels.

What about the traditional dates, simple as that?

What if that in Mark is confirming "apocryphal literature" rather than dating Mark late?