Markan priority?
Today, nobody believes in Q (due to the abundance of Mark-Q overlaps) and practically every novice New Testament scholar favors the Mark Without Q hypothesis. However, is this hypothesis the one that fits the evidence best? Consider the difference between how Mark describes the temptation of Christ by Satan (from BibleGateway, NABRE):
At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.
and how Matthew describes it. Mark only mentions the bicameralization of Jesus’s mind (it is well known a period without food turns one into an unconscious orc/social liberal -on this see the Japanese Imperial Navy in WWII- and improves posture in general). The Markan verses also contain no teachings for the believer -not even to fast. It is quite impossible and unnecessary for the average believing Catholic to spend forty days in the desert. The “among wild beasts” and “tempted by Satan” sentences also sound like extremely brief abridgements of a substantially longer and vastly more useful gospel. Compare Matthew. I shall not quote the lengthy passage at the start of Matthew 4, but it is much more useful, logical, and interesting than the relevant Markan parallel. Suffice it to say, all too many people attempt to test God and believe, quite wrongly, that attempts at feeding oneself are more important than one’s submission to God. It does not end well for either the triune God or to them.
Compare another crucial pericope, the transfiguration:
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them. As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
-Mark 9, NABRE
Compare to the relevant Matthean passage:
While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and do not be afraid.” And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone. As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
-Matthew 17, NABRE
One does not “look around” to improve posture. One raises one’s eyes. It seems far more likely that the Matthean postural elements -simple, obvious, and useful- were removed from Matthew in order to shorten the text than that they were originally missing and added in by Matthew to make the text somewhat longer and vastly more useful for the believer in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Mark seems to be the Straussian gospel -that is, the gospel according to Tyler Cowen.
The Gospels all seem to have been composed in the third century, and, given early Christianity’s close connection to the Roman military, it seems likely that all the gospel authors knew each other. That Mark knew of the author of Matthew and deliberately abridged his gospel after lengthy conversations with him thus seems no more implausible than the traditional four source hypothesis -or even the Mark without Q hypothesis spread by Mark Goodacre -the Scott Sumner of New Testament studies.