Markan priority is the hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark was the first written of the three Synoptic Gospels, and that the two other synoptic evangelists, Matthew and Luke, used Mark's Gospel as one of their sources. The theory of Markan priority is today accepted by the majority of New Testament scholars, who also hold that Matthew and Luke used a lost source of Jesus's sayings called Q. Their conclusion is largely based upon an analysis of the language and content relationship between the various books. Conservative scholars, however, say the Markan priority hypothesis is not consistent with internal evidence and with the testimony of the church fathers. The Gospel of Mark is traditionally the second of the New Testament Gospels. ... The Synoptic Gospels is a term used by modern New Testament scholars for the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the New Testament in the Bible. ... The Gospel of Matthew (literally: according to Matthew, Greek: Κατα Μαθθαιον ) is one of the four Gospel accounts of the New Testament. ... The Gospel of Luke is the third of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament, which tell the story of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. ... The New Testament, sometimes called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures, is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written after the birth of Jesus. ... The Q document or Q (Q for German Quelle, source) is a postulated lost textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. ...

History

This is related to the synoptic gospels, so that is worth taking into considertion before you read this piece of text. Before the eighteenth century, the belief of many, including the Church Fathers Papias (c. 60-130), Irenaeus (c. 130-200), Origen (c. 185-254), Eusebius (c. 260-340) Jerome (c. 340-420), and Augustine of Hippo (c. 354-430), had been that Matthew was the first gospel to be written. Therefore, Matthew is the first gospel to appear in the chronological order of the four gospels in the Second, or New Testament. This traditional view of gospel origins, however, began to be challenged in the late 1700s, when Gottlob Christian Storr (1786) proposed that Mark was the first to be written. (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... The (Early) Church Fathers or Fathers of the Church are the early and influential theologians and writers in the Christian Church, particularly those of the first five centuries of Christian history. ... Papias (working in the 1st half of the 2nd century) was one of the early leaders of the Christian church, canonized as a saint. ... Saint Irenaeus (ca. ... Origen ( 182– 251) was a Christian scholar and theologian and one of the most distinguished of the Fathers of the early Christian Church. ... Eusebius is the name of several significant historical people: Pope Eusebius - Pope in AD 309 - 310. ... , by Albrecht Dürer Jerome (ca. ... St. ... Events and trends The Bonneville Slide blocks the Columbia River near the site of present-day Cascade Locks, Oregon with a land bridge 200 feet (60 m) high. ... 1786 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ...

Storr's idea met with little acceptance at the time, with most scholars favoring either Matthean priority, under the traditional Augustinian hypothesis, or the Griesbach hypothesis, or a fragmentary theory. In the fragmentary theory, it was believed that stories about Jesus were recorded in several smaller documents and notebooks and combined by the evangelists to create the synoptic gospels. The Augustinian hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, then Mark, then Luke, and each Evangelist depended on those who preceded him. ... The Griesbach hypothesis is a solution to the synoptic problem which gives priority to the Gospel of Matthew. ...

Working within the fragmentary theory, Karl Lachmann (1835) compared the synoptic gospels in pairs and noted that while Matthew frequently agreed with Mark against Luke in the order of passages and Luke agreed frequently with Mark against Matthew, Matthew and Luke rarely agreed with each other against Mark. Lachmann inferred from this that Mark best preserved a relatively fixed order of episodes in Jesus's ministry. Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm Lachmann (March 4, 1793 - March 13, 1851), was a German philologist and critic. ... 1835 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...

In 1838, two theologians, Christian Gottlob Wilke and Christian Hermann Weisse, independently extended Lachmann's reasoning to conclude that Mark not only best represented Matthew and Luke's source but also that Mark was Matthew and Luke's source. Their ideas were not immediately accepted, but Heinrich Julius Holtzmann's endorsement in 1863 of a qualified form of Markan priority won general favor and is still the dominant hypothesis today. 1838 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Christian Hermann Weisse (August 10, 1801–September 19, 1866), was a German Protestant religious philosopher. ... Heinrich Julius Holtzmann (May 7, 1832 - 1910), German Protestant theologian, son of Karl Julius Holtzmann (1804-1877), was born at Karlsruhe, where his father ultimately became prelate and counsellor to the supreme consistory. ... 1863 is a common year starting on Thursday. ...

See also