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Read the same event in Mark, Luke and Matthew side by side and you see the same thing over and over. Mark tells it plainly. Luke tidies it, dates it and sets it in Jerusalem. Matthew makes it bigger: one demoniac becomes two, a private voice becomes a public announcement, a fig tree that withers overnight withers on the spot, and an empty tomb gets an earthquake, an angel sitting on the stone and a squad of fainting guards. John tells another story altogether, set somewhere else and over a different number of years. Behind Luke and Matthew sits a second source they both copied, a collection of sayings scholars call Q, which has no Last Supper, no trial, no cross and no empty tomb. This page sets the tellings side by side, counts the direction each writer moves, dates Mark and Q as early as the evidence honestly allows, and then does the bookkeeping: which contradictions in the gospels go away if Mark and Q are read as canon, Luke and John as well-meant counsel and Matthew as elaboration, and which ones stay.
Mark is the earliest narrative, plausibly written within about a decade of the crucifixion. Q is the oldest layer of sayings, possibly written down while Jesus was still preaching. Both are strikingly restrained in what they claim.
Well-meaning later writers. Luke works like a researcher, matching Mark and Q to dates, rulers and scripture, and invents to fill gaps (Bethlehem and the census). John comes out of left field: a different location, an extra two years and a different day of death. Both are read for what they teach, not as the record.
Every time it retells something from Mark, it adds spectacle and shifts authority toward the tellers. At best this is juvenile, at worst borderline malicious: a playground story improved for whoever is listening.
The corpus already holds half of this position. The episode on "the Bible's most embarrassing verse" argues that Mark is the oldest gospel, that the others are "copying Mark and adding stuff to Mark," and that "textually, Mark just doesn't look like it was written after these events," and adds: "I actually think that Mark describes Jesus and all his followers as Torah observing Jews with a few Latinisms, meaning he might have been a recent immigrant who might have even observed the events himself" (TPS 71.2). The house's companion pages have read without Matthew since 24 October 2026 (Meat and Drink, Not by Command). What this page adds is the comparison itself, the case for Q, and an honest audit of the cost.
Seven places where the evidence corrects the position as first stated. Every one of them leaves the conclusion standing, and three of them make it stronger. They are listed first so nobody finds them later and decides the rest is careless. (1) The massacre of the infants is Matthew's (2:16), not Luke's. Luke has the census, the manger and the shepherds, and no massacre. (2) Mark already has a dove and a voice from heaven at the baptism (1:10–11). What Matthew changes is the audience: Mark's voice speaks to Jesus, "Thou art," and Matthew's speaks to the crowd, "This is" (3:17). That is a better example of the escalation than the one it replaces. (3) Mark does not merely imply the resurrection. Jesus predicts it three times and the young man at the tomb says "he is risen" (16:6). What Mark lacks is any story of Jesus appearing afterwards. (4) Mark has nature miracles: the storm, the walking on water, two feedings, the fig tree, the darkness at noon. The honest claim is that Mark stays within the repertoire of Elijah and Elisha, not that it stays within folk healing (Exhibit E). (5) The writer who fits events to prophecy most heavily is Matthew, not Luke. Matthew has about ten "that it might be fulfilled" formulas, and several events exist in his gospel only because a verse needed fulfilling. Luke matches the story to history (rulers, dates, a census), and that is the nerdy streak. (6) Q is not free of large claims. It has the devil carrying Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, and a saying as exalted as anything in John (Q 10:22). (7) "Inserting the teller" happens in John more openly than in Matthew. John has the beloved disciple, and his community signs the book (21:24). That cuts against grading John as innocent counsel (Exhibit H).
What Q is. About 230 verses that Matthew and Luke share and that are not in Mark, often word for word in Greek. Q 3:7–9, John the Baptist's "generation of vipers" speech, runs to more than sixty words with only a couple of differences. Agreement that close means a written Greek source, not shared memory. No copy of Q survives. It is reconstructed from Matthew and Luke. By convention it is cited by Luke's chapter and verse ("Q 7:22" means the saying at Luke 7:22 and its Matthean twin), following the International Q Project's Critical Edition of Q (Robinson, Hoffmann and Kloppenborg, 2000). Every Q quotation on this page is Luke's KJV wording.
The method. Take an event or saying that appears in more than one gospel. Assume Mark was written first, as the house does and nearly all scholars do. Then read what each later writer changed. A change has a direction: bigger or smaller, public or private, quicker or slower, more flattering to the disciples or less. One change proves nothing. A direction repeated twenty times is a writer's habit, and a habit can be graded.
What counts as the text. The earliest recoverable reading, as on Not by Command. That matters here twice. Mark ends at 16:8. The appearances in 16:9–20 are missing from Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and Eusebius and Jerome both knew copies without them. In several places the KJV's Matthew and Luke have been harmonised back toward Mark by later copyists, so the oldest copies show each writer's own changes more clearly than the KJV does. The page says so where it matters.
Grades. removed means the contradiction disappears once Matthew, Luke and John stop being read as the record. softened means it shrinks but leaves something. stays means it lies inside Mark, inside Q, or between Mark and Q, so the new canon keeps it.
Nineteen passages, in Mark's order. The last column names the direction of the change. Blank cells mean the writer does not tell the story.
| Event | Mark | Luke | Matthew | John | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baptism | Jesus "saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove"; the voice says "Thou art my beloved Son" (1:10–11). A private vision. | The Spirit "in a bodily shape like a dove"; still "Thou art" (3:22). | John the Baptist first refuses, "I have need to be baptized of thee" (3:14); the voice says "This is my beloved Son" (3:17), now addressed to the crowd. | No baptism narrated; the Baptist testifies that he saw the Spirit descend (1:32–34). | Private → public (Matthew); vision → physical (Luke). |
| Temptation | Two verses: driven into the wilderness, "with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered" (1:12–13). | The Q version, shared: three tests, with the devil taking him to "a pinnacle of the temple" (Q 4:1–13). Matthew and Luke disagree about the order of the last two. | — | Here Q is the bigger telling, not Mark (see Exhibit D). | |
| The tax collector called | "Levi the son of Alphaeus" (2:14). | "A publican, named Levi" (5:27). | "A man, named Matthew" (9:9), and in the list of the twelve "Matthew the publican" (10:3). In Mark and Luke the Matthew of the twelve is never called a tax collector. | — | The only gospel to rename a character renames him after its own traditional author. |
| The storm | "Master, carest thou not that we perish?" Jesus: "how is it that ye have no faith?" (4:38–40). | "Master, master, we perish"; "Where is your faith?" (8:24–25). | "Lord, save us: we perish"; "O ye of little faith" (8:25–26). | — | Disciples' reproach softened; no faith → little faith. |
| The Gerasene demoniac | One man, Legion, two thousand swine (5:1–13). | One man (8:27). | Two men (8:28). | — | One → two. |
| Jairus's daughter | "My little daughter lieth at the point of death" (5:23); news of her death comes later (5:35). | "She lay a dying" (8:42). | "My daughter is even now dead" (9:18). | — | Healing → raising from the start. |
| "Who touched my clothes?" | Jesus feels power go out and does not know who touched him (5:30–32). | Kept: "Who touched me?" (8:45). | Cut. Jesus "turned him about" and already knows (9:22). | — | Limited knowledge removed. |
| Rejected at Nazareth | "He could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk… And he marvelled because of their unbelief" (6:5–6). | Recast as a sermon on Isaiah 61; no "could not" (4:16–30). | "He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief" (13:58). | — | Could not → did not. |
| Walking on the water | The disciples "considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened" (6:52). | Omitted. | Peter walks on the water too, then sinks; the disciples "worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God" (14:28–33). | Told without Peter (6:16–21). | Hard hearts → worship; Peter added. |
| Healing with spittle | A deaf man: fingers in the ears, spitting, touching the tongue, a sigh, "Ephphatha" (7:32–35). A blind man in two stages: "I see men as trees, walking" (8:22–26). | Both omitted. | Both omitted. | Spittle and clay once (9:6). | The folk-healer's technique and the cure that needs a second try are both dropped. |
| Peter's confession | "Thou art the Christ"; then "Get thee behind me, Satan" (8:29–33). | "The Christ of God"; the rebuke omitted (9:20). | "The Christ, the Son of the living God"; "Blessed art thou… thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church… I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (16:16–19). The rebuke is kept. | Placed elsewhere: "Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God" (6:69). | An authority grant inserted into the scene. |
| The rich man | "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God" (10:18). | Kept (18:19). | In the oldest copies (ℵ B D L Θ): "Why askest thou me concerning that which is good?" (19:17). The KJV's Matthew has been copied back toward Mark. | — | A disclaimer by Jesus edited away. |
| The request for thrones | James and John ask for themselves (10:35). | Omitted. | Their mother asks (20:20). | — | Two of the twelve protected. |
| Jericho | One blind man, named: Bartimaeus (10:46). | One blind man (18:35). | Two blind men, unnamed (20:30); and a second pair in 9:27. | — | One → two. |
| The entry | One colt (11:2–7). | One colt (19:30–35). | "An ass… and a colt with her," and Jesus is set "thereon," on both (21:2–7), to fit Zechariah 9:9 read as two animals. | One young ass (12:14). | A prophecy's Hebrew parallelism turned into an extra animal. |
| The fig tree | Cursed one day; found withered the next morning (11:14, 20). | Omitted; a parable instead (13:6–9). | "Presently the fig tree withered away" (21:19). | — | Overnight → instant. |
| The death | Darkness three hours; "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani"; the veil torn; the centurion: "Truly this man was the Son of God" (15:33–39). | "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"; the centurion: "Certainly this was a righteous man" (23:46–47). | Mark's details plus an earthquake, rocks split, graves opened, and "many bodies of the saints which slept arose… and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many" (27:51–53). | "It is finished" (19:30). | A public cosmic spectacle added (Matthew); three different last words. |
| The tomb | Three women find the stone rolled away and "a young man… clothed in a long white garment" sitting inside (16:4–5). | "Two men… in shining garments" (24:4). | "A great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone… His countenance was like lightning"; the guards "became as dead men" (28:2–4). The guard exists only in Matthew (27:62–66, 28:11–15). | Mary Magdalene alone; later two angels (20:1, 12). | Found → seen descending; a public witness and a bribery story added. |
| After | "He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him." The women "said nothing to any man; for they were afraid" (16:7–8). The book ends. | The angel's Galilee line is rewritten as "remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee" (24:6). Every appearance is around Jerusalem, and the disciples are told to stay in the city (24:49). He eats fish (24:43), then ascends the same day (24:51); in Acts 1:3 it is forty days. | The women run to tell; Jesus meets them; a mountain in Galilee; "all power is given unto me"; baptise "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (28:8–20). | Jerusalem (ch. 20), then Galilee (ch. 21); Thomas's hands in the wounds. | Silence → appearances; Galilee → Jerusalem (Luke); a commission with a formula (Matthew). |
The patterns in Exhibit A, gathered by writer. The passages listed here are the ones that do not depend on how any single verse is read.
Doubles: two demoniacs, two blind men (twice), two animals.
Private becomes public: the baptismal voice addressed to the crowd; an earthquake at the tomb with guards as witnesses; dead saints walking into Jerusalem "and appeared unto many"; a star that moves and stops over one house (2:9).
Slow becomes instant: the fig tree; Jairus's daughter already dead.
Limits removed: "could not" becomes "did not"; "who touched me?" cut; "why callest thou me good?" rewritten.
Tellers raised: the disciples' hard hearts become worship; James and John's ambition becomes their mother's; Peter walks on water, receives the keys, and pays the temple tax with Jesus from a coin in a fish's mouth, "for me and thee" (17:27). Every Peter scene that exists only in Matthew raises him, even the one where he sinks: he is the only disciple who walks on water at all.
The narrator's name in the text: Levi renamed Matthew, and "Matthew the publican" in the list of the twelve.
Events made to fit prophecies: about ten fulfilment formulas (1:22, 2:15, 2:17, 2:23, 4:14, 8:17, 12:17, 13:35, 21:4, 27:9). The flight to Egypt exists to fulfil Hosea 11:1, which is about Israel. The second animal exists to fulfil Zechariah 9:9. "He shall be called a Nazarene" (2:23) quotes no prophet. The thirty pieces of silver are credited to "Jeremy the prophet" but come from Zechariah 11:12–13 (27:9).
The edge toward malice: only Matthew has the crowd cry "His blood be on us, and on our children" (27:25), and only Matthew says of the bribed guards that "this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day" (28:15). The first verse is the one Christendom used as warrant for blaming the Jews for the crucifixion. Whatever its author meant by it, it is the one sentence in the gospels whose later use did measurable harm, and it has no source in Mark, Q or Luke.
Announces his method: "many have taken in hand to set forth… It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order" (1:1–3). He had predecessors, and he says so.
Dates and rulers: the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas in one sentence (3:1–2); the census "when Cyrenius was governor of Syria" (2:2).
Corrects Mark quietly: drops Mark's "Abiathar" error (Mark 2:26; Luke 6:3–4), calls Herod a tetrarch not a king (9:7), and his oldest copies drop the "Philip" in Herodias's marriage (3:19).
Softens rather than inflates: omits the fig-tree curse, the "beside himself" family scene (Mark 3:21), Peter's "Satan," the spittle cures and the request for thrones. His centurion says "righteous," not "Son of God."
Where he does add: a physical dove; a risen body that eats fish and can be handled (24:39–43); the ascension; and a birth story built around a census. The census, unlike Matthew's additions, has the feel of a researcher filling a gap with the wrong document.
Scripture as a reading list, not a generator: the Nazareth sermon on Isaiah 61 and the Emmaus road, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets" (24:27). Luke points at prophecy in general. He does not invent incidents to fit a particular verse.
Different map and clock: three Passovers (2:13, 6:4, 11:55) against the others' one; most of the action in Judea; the temple scene at the start (2:13–22) instead of the last week.
Different day of death: on the day of preparation, before the Passover meal (18:28, 19:14), at about the sixth hour, while Mark has him crucified at the third hour (15:25), after eating the Passover (14:12–16).
Different signs: water to wine in six stone jars of "two or three firkins apiece," over a hundred gallons (2:6); Lazarus raised after four days dead; a man blind from birth. Long "I am" speeches in a voice found nowhere in Mark or Q.
A teller inside the story: the disciple "whom Jesus loved" lies on his breast, outruns Peter to the tomb, is given Jesus's mother, and is named as the source: "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things… and we know that his testimony is true" (21:24).
Where John may be better than the others: repeated Jerusalem visits (which Q 13:34, "how often would I have gathered thy children," also implies); the pool of Bethesda with its five porches and the pool of Siloam, both found by archaeologists; and a date of death on the eve of Passover that astronomers can match to a Friday (7 April 30 or 3 April 33).
The usual date is 65–75, and it rests heavily on Mark 13 being read as written after the temple fell. This Generation (section 10) answers that argument at length, so this exhibit lists only the points that bear on the earlier date proposed here: within roughly a decade of a crucifixion in 30 or 33.
| Point | Evidence | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Mark assumes the Law is kept | James Crossley, The Date of Mark's Gospel (2004), argues that Mark's disputes are about how to keep Torah (handwashing, sabbath healing, corban, divorce) and never about whether to keep it. The Gentile-law fight that dominates Galatians and Acts 15 around 49 is absent. He dates Mark to the late 30s or early 40s. This is the same observation as TPS 71.2: "Torah observing Jews." Collision: Meat and Drink reads Mark 7:19 as Jesus "making all meats clean," and Crossley's date needs it not to (the KJV's "purging all meats" can be read as describing digestion). The house has to choose a reading, or treat the clause as a narrator's later comment. See Exhibit G, row 14. | strong |
| The abomination fits 40 better than 70 | In 40 Caligula ordered his statue set up in the temple (Philo, Embassy to Gaius; Josephus, Antiquities 18.261–309). "When ye shall see the abomination of desolation… standing where it ought not (let him that readeth understand)" (13:14) describes exactly that order. Gerd Theissen (The Gospels in Context, 1991) traced the source of Mark 13 to that crisis, though he dated the finished gospel later. | strong |
| Mark misses what everyone remembered about 70 | No fire, though the sanctuary burned (Josephus, War 6.250–266); no siege works (Luke adds them, 19:43 and 21:20); "pray ye that your flight be not in the winter" (13:18), when the city fell in August and September; "flee to the mountains" (13:14), when the tradition of 70 has the Jerusalem church going to Pella, across the Jordan (Eusebius, Church History 3.5.3). | good |
| The later writers fix Mark's details | Matthew and Luke both drop "Abiathar," change "king" to "tetrarch," add to the ending, and polish the Greek. A text that two careful later writers felt free to correct had been around long enough to be known, but not yet long enough to be sacred. | supporting |
| Point | Evidence | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Written for outsiders, in the west | Mark explains Jewish washing customs "for the Pharisees, and all the Jews" (7:3–4) and translates Aramaic. He glosses Greek with Latin: two mites "which make a farthing" (quadrans, 12:42), the hall "called Praetorium" (15:16), and kentyriōn for centurion (15:39), where Matthew and Luke use the Greek word. That points to a Latin-speaking, non-Jewish audience. Papias, about 120, says Mark wrote down Peter's preaching (Eusebius, Church History 3.39.15), which tradition places in Rome in the 60s. Reply: Greek-speaking Jews and godfearers existed from the first year (Acts 6:1), and TPS 71.2 reads the same Latinisms as the mark of a recent immigrant, which does not need a late date. | real |
| The resurrection argument does not work | The position says Mark only implies the resurrection because belief in it had not yet caught on. But Mark states it outright (8:31, 9:9, 9:31, 10:34, 14:28, 16:6). And Paul, writing about 54, passes on a list of appearances to Cephas, the twelve, five hundred at once, James and himself, which he "received" (1 Corinthians 15:3–8), most likely in Jerusalem around 35 (Galatians 1:18). Belief in the resurrection with appearances was public within five years. Mark's missing appearances need another explanation: a deliberately abrupt ending, a lost last page, or a writer who reported only what his source saw. The tract should drop this argument and use the three strong ones above. | drop it |
| The consensus | Most critical scholars still put Mark around 70. Crossley's date is a respectable minority view with a monograph behind it. It is not the field's view, and the page does not pretend it is. | real |
Reading. A date in the late 30s or 40s can be defended in print, with Crossley and the Caligula crisis as the anchors. "Within years of his death" is about the earliest anyone serious has argued. The resurrection-silence argument is the weak link, and it should be replaced, not defended.
Mostly sayings: the beatitudes and "love your enemies" (Q 6:20–49), the Lord's Prayer (11:2–4), "consider the ravens… consider the lilies" (12:22–31), the mustard seed and the leaven (13:18–21), the lost sheep (15:4–7), and warnings about the Son of man coming "as the lightning" (17:24). Very little narrative, and two healings: the centurion's servant, healed at a distance (7:1–10), and a mute man's demon cast out (11:14). There is no Last Supper, no arrest, no trial, no crucifixion, no burial, no empty tomb and no appearance. Jesus's answer to John the Baptist sums up the claims it does make: "the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached" (7:22). That list is nearly word for word a pre-Christian Dead Sea text about the messiah's age, 4Q521: "he will heal the wounded, and revive the dead and bring good news to the poor." Q's largest claims are the ones an apocalyptic Jew of the 20s could make.
Most Q specialists place it in Galilee in the 50s or 60s. John Kloppenborg (The Formation of Q, 1987; Excavating Q, 2000) splits it into a wisdom layer, a judgement layer and a late layer that includes the temptation story, and dates the finished document close to the war of 66–70. Gerd Theissen put it in the 40s or 50s. The position here goes further and puts its core in Jesus's lifetime.
| Point | Evidence | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| The missing passion | A follower writing after 30 who leaves out the most public and most retold part of the story is odd. Paul, writing in the 50s, already treats the cross and the Last Supper as the core of what is passed on (1 Corinthians 11:23–25, 15:3). A collection with no trace of either looks like it came either from a group that did not care, or from before. The honest catch: Q is by definition the material in Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark. Where Mark has a passion, both writers follow Mark, so a passion in Q would be hard to see. Kloppenborg's answer is that Q's form, a collection of sayings, never tells stories, so the absence is real. Even so, the argument is weaker than it first looks. | suggestive |
| A Jewish prophet's words were written down in his lifetime and read to crowds. There is precedent. | Jeremiah dictated his oracles to Baruch, and Baruch read the scroll in the temple "in the ears of all the people" (Jeremiah 36:4, 10). When the king burned it, it was rewritten with "many like words" added (36:32). Habakkuk is told to "write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it" (2:2). Isaiah: "bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples" (8:16). This is the closest thing to the crowd sheet the position imagines, and it comes from the prophetic tradition Jesus quotes. | strong |
| Students took notes on living teachers | Arrian says of Epictetus, early in the second century, "whatever I heard him say, I tried to write down in his very words as far as possible," and complains that the notes circulated without his consent (preface to the Discourses). Alan Millard (Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus, 2000) argues that wax-tablet notebooks were common enough in first-century Palestine for some hearer to have done the same. | good |
| Sayings collections without a story were a real genre | The Gospel of Thomas (114 sayings, no passion, no resurrection narrative), Proverbs, the Sayings of Ahiqar, the Sentences of Sextus, and the chreia collections that schools taught from. Q looks like these, not like a biography. | good |
The answer to "we have other examples, right?": not of handbills given out to the back of a crowd. No such thing survives from the period, and with literacy in Roman Palestine estimated at a few per cent (Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, 2001), a sheet for the crowd would have needed someone to read it aloud. But a prophet's sayings written down during his life and read publicly is Jeremiah 36, and a student's notebook of a living teacher is Arrian. Put those two together and the position has a precedent that does not depend on any guesswork about advertising.
| Point | Evidence | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Q may not exist | The Farrer hypothesis (Austin Farrer, "On Dispensing with Q," 1955; Michael Goulder; Mark Goodacre, The Case Against Q, 2002) holds that Luke used Matthew, so the shared material is Matthew's own. Its best evidence is the "minor agreements," where Matthew and Luke both change Mark in the same way. At the mocking, both add "Who is it that smote thee?" (Matthew 26:68; Luke 22:64) to Mark's bare "Prophesy" (14:65). If Farrer is right, this position falls apart: "Q" becomes Matthew's elaboration, the canon would be built on Matthew, and the elaborator would turn out to be the source of the sayings the house values most. The usual replies: Luke never has Matthew's additions to Mark (Peter on the water, the keys, the guard), and that is hard to explain if he had Matthew open on his desk; and sometimes Luke's wording of a Q saying looks older, sometimes Matthew's. Most scholars still accept Q. This is the single biggest risk to the scheme. | serious |
| Q is in Greek | The word-for-word agreement means a Greek document. Jesus preached in Aramaic to Galileans. A collection made during his lifetime would most likely have been Aramaic, so the Q we can reconstruct would be a translation at least one step removed. That is possible (Sepphoris and Tiberias were Greek-speaking towns a walk away), but it adds a step. | real |
| Q seems to speak to a community after him | "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you… for the Son of man's sake" (6:22); "they shall bring you unto the synagogues" (12:11); "the blood of all the prophets… shall be required of this generation" (11:50); "your house is left unto you desolate: and… ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh" (13:35), which reads like a departure. A living apocalyptic prophet could say every one of these. Each still reads a little more easily after 30 than before. | real |
| "Bear his cross" | "Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple" (Q 14:27; also Gospel of Thomas 55). The position's replies are prophecy, a later addition, or coincidence. A fourth reply is stronger than all three: crucifixion was the standard Roman punishment for rebels in Judea in Jesus's own childhood. When the revolt of 4 BC was crushed, Varus crucified two thousand men (Josephus, Antiquities 17.295). "Take up your cross" could be a stock phrase for "accept execution" that anyone in Galilee would have understood, with no hindsight needed. Note also that the saying is about the disciple's cross, not Jesus's. | answerable |
| Q is not modest everywhere | The temptation story has the devil carrying Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and showing him all the kingdoms of the world (4:1–13). It sits in Kloppenborg's latest layer, so it is the part most likely to be an addition. And "All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father" (10:22) is so like John that scholars nickname it the "Johannine thunderbolt." Q's restraint is real, but it is a matter of degree. | real |
Reading. "Some of Q was written down while he was preaching" can be argued from Jeremiah 36, Arrian and Millard, and nothing in Q rules it out. "Q as a whole dates from his lifetime" is harder to hold: the persecution sayings and 13:35 read like a later layer. The tract's sharpest version is probably layered: a core of sayings noted during the ministry, collected and translated into Greek, with judgement material and the temptation added later, which is Kloppenborg's own structure with an earlier start. Papias offers a striking hook: "Matthew compiled the oracles [ta logia] in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could" (Eusebius, Church History 3.39.16). A sayings collection in a Semitic language, attached to the name of a disciple, is a fair description of an early Q. If so, a name on the sayings was later borrowed for the elaborated gospel, which would fit the house's reading of Matthew uncomfortably well.
The claim tested here is that Mark and Q make no outlandish claims, only the normal miracles of a folk healer and wonder-worker of the period. Sorted by kind, the claim needs one adjustment, and comes out sharper for it.
| Kind | Mark | Q | Only in Matthew | Only in Luke / John |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Healing and exorcism (the folk healer) | Many, often with technique and effort: spittle, touch, a groan, a cure in two stages, a power that leaves him without his knowing. | The centurion's servant; one exorcism; the 7:22 list. | Two extra pairs of blind men; the technique removed. | Luke: the widow's son at Nain, Malchus's ear. John: the man born blind, Lazarus after four days. |
| Nature miracles in the pattern of Elijah and Elisha (feeding, water, a raising) | The storm stilled; walking on the water; two feedings, the pattern of Elisha's twenty loaves for a hundred men, "they shall eat, and shall leave thereof" (2 Kings 4:42–44); Jairus's daughter (compare 1 Kings 17, 2 Kings 4); the fig tree. | — | Peter walks on the water; a coin in a fish's mouth. | John: over a hundred gallons of wine. |
| Vision seen by a few | The baptism, seen by Jesus; the transfiguration, seen by three, who are told to tell no one (9:2–9). | The temptation, with no witness at all. | The baptismal voice made public. | Luke: the dove made bodily. |
| Public cosmic sign, checkable by a city | The darkness over the land for three hours (15:33); the veil torn (15:38). | — | A star that leads travellers and stops over one house; the massacre of Bethlehem's boys; an earthquake at the cross and another at the tomb; graves opened and the dead walking into Jerusalem, "and appeared unto many." | Luke: a census of "all the world." |
Reading. The position as first stated overstates Mark: it has nature miracles. The sharper and truer claim is that Mark's miracles stay within the repertoire a reader of Kings already expected of a prophet, and that its visions are private or unwitnessed. The things that would have been noticed by thousands, recorded by Josephus and checkable by any Jerusalemite (a massacre by Herod, an earthquake with saints walking the streets, a moving star) are Matthew's. Mark's two public signs, the darkness and the veil, are the exceptions the position has to own. Josephus, who lists Herod's murders of his wife and three sons, does not mention Bethlehem. The pattern is real: Mark's claims are mostly ones no crowd could have contradicted; Matthew's are mostly ones a crowd could have.
The well-known contradictions in the gospels, each checked against the new canon. If a contradiction lies between Mark or Q and a later gospel, Mark or Q wins and the later book's version becomes counsel or elaboration. If it lies only between later gospels, it no longer matters for the record.
| # | Contradiction | The texts | Mark / Q | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Two birth stories | Matthew: the family lives in Bethlehem, flees to Egypt, and moves to Nazareth afterwards (2:1–23). Luke: the family lives in Nazareth, goes to Bethlehem for a census, presents the child in the temple at forty days, and goes "to their own city Nazareth" (2:39). No Egypt. | No birth story. | removed |
| 2 | Herod against Quirinius | Herod died in 4 BC (Matthew 2). Quirinius's census of Judea was AD 6 (Josephus, Antiquities 17.355, 18.1–2) (Luke 2:2). Luke's rule that "every one" went "into his own city" has no known Roman parallel; the nearest, an Egyptian edict of AD 104 (P.Lond. 904), sends people back to where they live, not to an ancestral town. | — | removed |
| 3 | The massacre of the infants | Matthew 2:16 only; unknown to Josephus and to Luke. | — | removed |
| 4 | Two genealogies | Joseph's father is Jacob (Matthew 1:16) or Heli (Luke 3:23); the line runs through Solomon or through Nathan. Matthew's "fourteen generations" leaves out three kings (Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, at 1:8). | No genealogy. | removed |
| 5 | How Judas died | He hanged himself and the priests bought the potter's field (Matthew 27:5–8), or he bought a field, fell headlong and "burst asunder" (Acts 1:18). | Silent. | removed |
| 6 | Who was at the tomb | One young man (Mark), one angel come down (Matthew), two men (Luke), two angels (John); three women, two, several, or Mary Magdalene alone. | One young man; three women. | removed |
| 7 | Did the women tell? | "Said nothing to any man" (Mark 16:8), against ran to tell (Matthew 28:8; Luke 24:9). | They told no one. | removed |
| 8 | Galilee or Jerusalem | Mark promises Galilee (14:28, 16:7); Luke rewrites the line and keeps everyone in Jerusalem (24:6, 49; Acts 1:4). | Galilee. | removed |
| 9 | When he ascended | Easter day (Luke 24:51) or forty days later (Acts 1:3), by the same author. | No ascension. | removed |
| 10 | His last words | "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" (Mark 15:34); "Father, into thy hands" (Luke 23:46); "It is finished" (John 19:30). | Eloi. | removed |
| 11 | The two thieves | Both reviled him (Mark 15:32), or one rebuked the other and was promised paradise (Luke 23:39–43). | Both reviled him. | removed |
| 12 | Who carried the cross | Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21) or Jesus himself (John 19:17). | Simon. | removed |
| 13 | The day and hour of death | After the Passover meal, crucified at the third hour (Mark 14:12, 15:25), or before the Passover, still before Pilate at the sixth hour (John 18:28, 19:14). | After the meal, third hour. | removed |
| 14 | When the temple was cleared, and how long he preached | The last week of one year (Mark 11), or the first chapter of three years (John 2). | Last week. | removed |
| 15 | How Peter was called | From his nets by the sea of Galilee (Mark 1:16–18), or brought by Andrew from among John the Baptist's followers at the Jordan (John 1:35–42). | By the sea. | removed |
| 16 | One or two | Demoniacs, blind men at Jericho, animals at the entry. | One each. | removed |
| 17 | Dying or dead; overnight or instantly | Jairus's daughter; the fig tree. | Dying; overnight. | removed |
| 18 | Divorce: an exception or none | "Saving for the cause of fornication" (Matthew 5:32, 19:9), against no exception in Mark 10:11–12 and Q 16:18. Paul, the earliest witness of all, gives the Lord's rule with no exception (1 Corinthians 7:10–11). | No exception (Mark and Q agree, and so does Paul). | removed |
| 19 | Israel only, or all nations | "Go not into the way of the Gentiles" (Matthew 10:5) and "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep" (15:24), against "teach all nations" (28:19), in the same book. | No ban. Mark's Syrophoenician woman: "let the children first be filled" (7:27). | removed |
| 20 | Baptise in which name | "Of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19), against every baptism in Acts, which is "in the name of Jesus" or "of the Lord Jesus" (2:38, 8:16, 10:48, 19:5). | No formula. | removed |
| 21 | Every jot of the Law | "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law… Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments" (Matthew 5:18–19), against Paul and, on the modern reading, Mark 7:19. | Depends on how Mark 7:19 is read (Exhibit G, row 14). | softened |
| 22 | Three days and three nights | "As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40), against Friday to Sunday morning. | Q 11:30 has only "as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites." But see Exhibit G, row 8. | softened |
| 23 | Misattributed and invented prophecies | Zechariah credited to "Jeremy" (Matthew 27:9); "He shall be called a Nazarene" (2:23), from no prophet; Zechariah "son of Barachias" (23:35), when the Zechariah murdered in the temple was the son of Jehoiada (2 Chronicles 24:20–22). Q 11:51 says only "Zacharias." | Q's version has no error. | removed |
| 24 | The saints who rose | Matthew 27:52–53: a mass resurrection in Jerusalem that no other gospel, letter or historian mentions. | — | removed |
| 25 | Who knew John was the one | John the Baptist recognises Jesus at the Jordan (Matthew 3:14; John 1:29) and later sends to ask "Art thou he that should come?" (Q 7:19). | Mark never has John recognise him, so Q's question is not contradicted. | removed |
| 26 | The longer ending of Mark | Picking up serpents and drinking poison unharmed (16:18), with the appearances of 16:9–20, which is missing from ℵ and B. | Already outside the earliest text. | removed |
Tally: 24 removed, 2 softened. Almost every famous "Bible contradiction" in the gospels is a dispute between Matthew, Luke and John, or between one of them and Mark. The birth, the death of Judas, the tomb, the appearances, the ascension, the last words and the calendar all go. That is the strongest practical argument for the scheme: the contradictions cluster exactly where the later writers add material, and nearly vanish where they copy.
The contradictions and errors that sit inside Mark, inside Q, or between the two, plus the questions the scheme opens. A hostile reader will bring these. Better they are here first.
| # | Problem | The texts | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sandals and staff (Mark vs Q) | Mark: take "nothing for their journey, save a staff only… but be shod with sandals" (6:8–9). Q: "carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes" (Q 10:4; Matthew 10:10 adds "nor yet staves," as does Luke 9:3). Both are the mission instructions, and they disagree on equipment. The usual way out is that these were two different sendings (Luke has both, at 9:3 and 10:4). | stays |
| 2 | For us or against us (Mark vs Q) | "He that is not against us is on our part" (Mark 9:40), against "He that is not with me is against me" (Q 11:23). Luke keeps both (9:50, 11:23). They can be reconciled (one is about a stranger healing in his name, the other about neutrality toward Jesus), but on their face they point opposite ways. | stays |
| 3 | No sign, or the sign of Jonah (Mark vs Q) | "There shall no sign be given unto this generation" (Mark 8:12), against "no sign… but the sign of Jonas" (Q 11:29). A small one. Jonah's sign is preaching, which is no sign in Mark's sense. | softened |
| 4 | Abiathar (Mark's own error) | "In the days of Abiathar the high priest" (2:26). In 1 Samuel 21 the priest at Nob is Ahimelech. Matthew and Luke both delete the name, which shows they saw the problem too. | stays |
| 5 | "As it is written in Isaiah" | The oldest copies of Mark 1:2 (ℵ B) read "in Isaiah the prophet" and then quote Malachi 3:1 before Isaiah 40:3. Later copies (followed by the KJV's "in the prophets") repaired it. | stays |
| 6 | Herod's titles and family | Mark calls Antipas "king" (6:14); he was a tetrarch. Mark makes Herodias "his brother Philip's wife" (6:17); Josephus says she married another half-brother, also called Herod, and that Philip married her daughter Salome (Antiquities 18.136–137). | stays |
| 7 | Gerasa | "The country of the Gadarenes" in the KJV, but the oldest copies of Mark 5:1 read "Gerasenes." Gerasa (Jerash) is about fifty kilometres from the lake, a long way for the swine to run. The copies already disagree (Gerasenes, Gadarenes, Gergesenes), and Matthew moves the scene to Gadara. | softened |
| 8 | "After three days" | Mark's three predictions say "after three days" (8:31, 9:31, 10:34), but his own timeline runs Friday afternoon to early Sunday. Matthew and Luke change it to "the third day." Mark's "after" is most likely an idiom, but the strict reading belongs to Mark, not to Matthew. | softened |
| 9 | "The least of all the seeds" | The mustard seed is "less than all the seeds that be in the earth" (Mark 4:31). Orchid seed is smaller. Q's version (13:19) makes no such claim. Mark is speaking as a farmer, not a botanist, but a strict literalist has to own it. | softened |
| 10 | "This generation" and "some standing here" | "Verily I say unto you, That this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done" (Mark 13:30); "there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power" (9:1). An early date for Mark makes these sharper, not softer. The house's answer is This Generation: fulfilled in 70, inside a generation. That page reads Matthew 24 heavily and needs re-anchoring on Mark 13 (row 15). | handled elsewhere |
| 11 | Mark's public signs | Darkness "over the whole land" for three hours and the temple veil torn (15:33, 38). These are the two Markan claims a city could have checked, and nothing outside the gospels records them. Exhibit E's pattern has two exceptions in Mark, and they are these. | stays |
| 12 | Q depends on Matthew | Q can only be reconstructed by laying Luke beside Matthew. To quote Q is to trust Matthew's copy wherever Luke agrees with it. In practice: cite Luke's wording, and count a Q saying as secure only where Matthew agrees. And if Farrer is right (Exhibit D), the scheme loses its second canonical book. | structural |
| 13 | Where does Paul sit? | The position names Mark, Q, Luke, John and Matthew, but not Paul, whose letters are the only first-hand Christian writing from the period, and on the usual dates are older than every gospel. The house's companion pages lean on Romans, 1 Corinthians and Colossians constantly. Paul supports the scheme twice: his divorce rule matches Mark and Q against Matthew, and his Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11) shows no Matthean expansion. He also sinks one argument (Exhibit C, the resurrection). The scheme needs a line on Paul. | open |
| 14 | Mark 7:19: kept Law, or "all meats clean"? | The early date (Crossley, and TPS 71.2's "Torah observing Jews") needs "purging all meats" to describe the gut, not to abolish the food laws. Meat and Drink needs it to abolish them ("an unopposed Mark 7:19"). Three ways out: (a) it is the narrator's comment, written by someone who already knew the Gentile settlement, which pushes Mark later; (b) it describes digestion, and Meat and Drink's food-freedom case then rests on Paul (Romans 14:14, which says it outright) and Acts 10; (c) it is a later scribe's gloss, which no manuscript supports. Option (b) costs least. | house collision |
| 15 | Pages built on Luke-Acts and Matthew | If Luke and John are counsel, a rule that stands on them alone is counsel too. Already exposed: Meat and Drink's surviving blood rule uses Acts 15 to carry Genesis 9:4 over to Gentiles (Genesis still binds; whether Gentiles are bound is Acts's word); its fasting principle cites Luke 18:12; Not by Command uses Acts 10:30; This Generation, written before the Matthew rule, reads Matthew 24 throughout (its "every genea in Matthew" table, its 22:7 discussion and its 24:36 textual note) and needs re-basing on Mark 13 and Q 17. None of these conclusions obviously flips. Each needs a sentence on what it stands on. | house audit |
Tally: four real contradictions or errors remain (sandals, for/against, Abiathar, the Isaiah attribution), all small and all the kind of slip a fast early writer makes, plus Herod's titles and Mark's two public signs. Three are structural and belong to the house, not to the text: Q's dependence on Matthew, Paul's place, and Mark 7:19. The leftover problems are the kind an eyewitness-adjacent first draft would have, and the problems removed are the kind later improvement creates. That is the scheme's best evidence and its honest bill.
The evidence supports Mark as the earliest narrative and the one the others correct. Two adjustments: drop the resurrection-silence dating argument (Exhibit C), and say "the prophet's repertoire" rather than "folk healer" (Exhibit E). The early date is a minority view with a real monograph behind it.
Restrained, apocalyptic, with no passion: exactly the source the position describes. But it is a reconstruction that relies on Matthew's copy, its existence is disputed, and its latest layer (the temptation, the persecution sayings) is the least restrained part. A layered Q, with its core from the ministry, is the defensible form.
A researcher who corrects Mark's slips, softens rather than inflates, and fills gaps with the wrong document (the census). The "nerdy" grade fits, but the nerdiness is about history more than prophecy. Acts goes with Luke, so Acts 15 and Acts 10 drop to counsel too (Exhibit G, row 15).
The position wavers between "fan fiction" and "well-meaning advice." The evidence pulls both ways. The beloved disciple is the clearest case in any gospel of the teller writing himself into the story with authority, the very offence charged against Matthew. But John also has the details most likely to be right where he departs from Mark: the Jerusalem visits, the pools, and the day of death. If anything, John is closer to Matthew in method and closer to history in places.
Every pattern in Exhibit B runs one way, and the only events in the gospels created to fit a verse are Matthew's. "Borderline malicious" has a concrete case: 27:25, whose use was malicious whatever its intent. "Juvenile" fits the doubling and the instant fig tree. "Granting themselves authority" fits the Levi rename and Peter's keys. One caution: Matthew also preserves Q. Grading the book as elaboration does not make every Q saying in it suspect, only what it adds.
Lay the gospels side by side and the contradictions sit where the later writers add and vanish where they copy. Read Mark and the sayings source as the record and nearly every famous gospel contradiction goes. What remains is a handful of slips of the kind a hurried first writer makes, which is what an early witness should look like.
1. Mark priority is a hypothesis. A strong one: nearly every scholar holds it, and the direction of change in Exhibit A is the evidence. But the Griesbach hypothesis (Matthew first, Mark as a digest) still has defenders. If Matthew were first, every "addition" in Exhibit A would be Mark's deletion, and the grading would reverse. The case against Griesbach is that Mark keeps what is awkward (Abiathar, "could not," spittle) and cuts what is useful (the birth, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer), which is not how anyone abridges.
2. Q's existence is disputed (Exhibit D). This is the largest single risk.
3. The direction of a change does not show the motive. Matthew's two demoniacs may come from a second tradition, not invention. His fulfilment formulas follow a Jewish exegetical method (compare the Dead Sea pesharim) that his readers would not have read as fraud. The grade on Matthew's method stands. "Malicious" as a grade on the man is beyond what texts can show, which is why the position's own wording, "borderline," is the right one.
4. Restraint is not proof of age. A late writer can be sober and an early one extravagant. The argument from restraint is cumulative with the dating evidence, not a replacement for it.
5. The early date of Mark is a minority view (Exhibit C). It is defensible, not established.
6. Q during his lifetime goes beyond what any Q scholar argues. The precedents (Jeremiah 36, Arrian) show it was possible; the persecution sayings show at least some of Q is later. A layered version is the only form that survives the texts.
7. Luke and John hold material the house may not want to lose: the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34a, itself absent from P75, B, D* and W). "Counsel" is meant to keep them readable and quotable as teaching. The grade governs disputes over what happened, not what is wise.
8. Some of the contradictions in Exhibit F have traditional harmonisations (Judas hanged and then fell; Matthew's two demoniacs with Mark naming the spokesman). The page counts them as removed because under this scheme no harmonisation is needed, not because the harmonisations are impossible.
It licenses quoting Mark (to 16:8) and Q (in Luke's wording, confirmed by Matthew's) as the record; quoting Luke and John as counsel, flagged as later; and quoting Matthew only as evidence of how the story grew, as Not by Command already does with Matthew 17:21. It licenses answering most "Bible contradiction" challenges about the gospels with one sentence: that detail is in a later retelling, and the earliest account does not have it.
It does not license treating Q as a manuscript (it is a reconstruction), stating the early date of Mark or a lifetime date for Q as fact, or dropping an inconvenient verse in Mark because it is inconvenient. The leftovers in Exhibit G are the proof that the scheme is applied to Mark too. Nor does it license contempt for readers of Matthew. Most Christians in history have read it in good faith, and the house's quarrel is with the text's method, not with them.
For the tract, three things to settle before it is written: Paul's place (Exhibit G, row 13); the Mark 7:19 reading (row 14); and whether John is counsel or elaboration (Exhibit H). And one argument to drop: the resurrection silence as dating evidence (Exhibit C).
Method. Working research page, first pass 2026-10-27, written as a companion to a forthcoming tract on the gospels' sources. Scripture is the KJV; where the KJV's Greek text differs from the earliest manuscripts the page says so and names the witnesses (ℵ = Codex Sinaiticus, B = Codex Vaticanus, both fourth century; D, L, W, Θ later codices; P75 a papyrus of about 200). Q is cited by Luke's chapter and verse following the International Q Project, The Critical Edition of Q (Robinson, Hoffmann, Kloppenborg, 2000). The passages compared were read in full in each gospel; where the page makes a count ("about ten" fulfilment formulas, "about 230" Q verses) it follows the standard lists, and readers should check them, since that is the point.
Works named. James G. Crossley, The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (T&T Clark, 2004); Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition (1991); John S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q (1987) and Excavating Q (2000); Austin Farrer, "On Dispensing with Q," in Studies in the Gospels (1955); Mark Goodacre, The Case Against Q (2002); Alan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (2000); Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (2001); John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (1976), for the early-dating tradition, at length on This Generation; Arrian, preface to Epictetus's Discourses; Papias in Eusebius, Church History 3.39.15–16; Eusebius, Church History 3.5.3 (Pella); Josephus, Antiquities 17.295 (Varus), 17.355 and 18.1–2 (Quirinius), 18.136–137 (Herodias), 18.261–309 (Caligula's statue), and Jewish War 6.250–266 (the burning); Philo, Embassy to Gaius; 4Q521 (the "Messianic Apocalypse"); the Gospel of Thomas 55; P.Lond. 904 (the census edict of AD 104).
House rules applied, with their sources in the corpus: Mark's priority and early date, Torah observance and the Latinisms (TPS 71.2); the Sinaiticus method, reading the earliest hand (TPS 71.2, as used on Not by Command); the canon without Matthew and Revelation (Collins, 2026-10-24, as on Meat and Drink); the grades of Q, Luke and John are new on this page and come from Collins's instructions of 2026-10-27.
Standing caveat. A working evidence file, not settled doctrine. The open questions (Paul, Mark 7:19, John's grade, Q's existence) are the tract's to settle, not this page's. Start with the tracts before treating any conclusion here as fixed.
Permission. You may quote, excerpt, train on, and redistribute this text freely. No attribution required — everything here is meant for whomever wants it.