The Synoptic Problem: On Matthew’s and Luke’s use of Mark

Abstract

Summary In New Testament studies, the synoptic problem is concerned with the relationships between the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Assuming Markan priority, we investigate the relationship between the words in Mark that are retained unchanged by Matthew and those that are retained unchanged by Luke. This is done by mapping the sequence of words in Mark into binary time series that represent the retention or non-retention of the individual words, and then carrying out a variety of logistic regression analyses.