joelr
Well-Known Member
Mark, John, Pauls letters and Acts are all independent sources and they all mentioned the existence of “disciples” as real historical persons…………………………demining secular sources form the 1st century is raising the bar unrealistically to high.
By your logic, we can’t conclude that Alexander the Grate existed because there are no “non Greek” sources from the years -300s
Paul only knows of a Jesus who rose from the dead. He knows of no earthly Jesus or any of the material from the gospels. The narrative starts with Mark. For a time academia believed there was a Q gospel, a common source. But Mark Goodacre wrote an excellent book that pretty much ended that idea. Now scholarship is confident that Mark is the source gospel.
So the reason they mention disciples is because they were mentioned in Mark. Not because each author knew of the story from other sources.
The Synoptic Problem | Bible.org
The Synoptic Problem
Any serious discussion of the Synoptic Gospels must, sooner or later, involve a discussion of the literary interrelationships among Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is essential in order to see how an author used his sources (both for reliability’s sake as well as for redactional criticism), as well as when he wrote.
Robert H. Stein’s The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction1
The remarkable verbal agreement between the gospels suggests some kind of interdependence. It is popular today among laymen to think in terms of independence—and to suggest either that the writers simply recorded what happened and therefore agree, or that they were guided by the Holy Spirit into writing the same things. This explanation falls short on several fronts.
a. Historical Naiveté
b. Naiveté Regarding Inspiration
When one compares the synoptic parallels, some startling results are noticed. Of Mark’s 11,025 words, only 132 have no parallel in either Matthew or Luke. Percentage-wise, 97% of Mark’s Gospel is duplicated in Matthew; and 88% is found in Luke.
Among other things are mistakes Mark made which are copied verbatim into other gospels:
"
Stein lists three broad categories of Mark’s poorer stylistic abilities: (1) colloquialisms and incorrect grammar, (2) Aramaic expressions, and (3) redundancies. The first and second arguments are significant for pericopes which Mark shares with either Matthew or Luke; the third is valuable for considering material omitted in Mark."
The most favored solution in scholarship is the Markan priority or that Mark was first and the source of the others.
To sum up reasons for Markan priority, the following eight arguments have been given.
(1) The argument from length. Although Mark’s Gospel is shorter, it is not an abridgment, nor a gospel built exclusively on Matthew-Luke agreement. In fact, where its pericopae parallel Matthew and/or Luke, Mark’s story is usually the longest. The rich material left out of his gospel is inexplicable on the Griesbach hypothesis.
(2) The argument from grammar. Matthew and especially Luke use better grammar and literary style than Mark, suggesting that they used Mark, but improved on it.
(3) The argument from harder readings. On the analogy of early scribal habits, Luke and Matthew apparently removed difficulties from Mark’s Gospel in making their own. If Matthean priority is assumed, then what is inexplicable is why Mark would have introduced such difficulties.
(4) The argument from verbal agreement. There are fewer Matthew-Luke verbal agreements than any other two-gospel verbal agreements. This is difficult to explain on the Griesbach hypothesis, much easier on the Lachmann/Streeter hypothesis.
(5) The argument from agreement in order. Not only do Luke and Matthew never agree with each other when they depart from Mark’s order, but the reasons for this on the assumption of Markan priority are readily available while on Matthean priority they are not.
(6) The argument from literary agreements. Very close to the redactional argument, this point stresses that on literary analysis, it is easier to see Matthew’s use of Mark than vice versa.
(7) The argument from redaction. The redactional emphases in Mark, especially in his stylistic minutiae, are only inconsistently found in Matthew and Luke, while the opposite is not true. In other words, Mark’s style is quite consistent, while Luke and Matthew are inconsistent—when they parallel Mark, there is consistency; when they diverge, they depart from such. This suggests that Mark was the source for both Matthew and Luke.
(8) The argument from Mark’s more primitive theology. On many fronts Mark seems to display a more primitive theology than either Luke or Matthew. This suggests that Matthew and Luke used Mark, altering the text to suit their purposes.