Marcan priority (or Markan priority) is the hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark was the first of the three synoptic gospels to be written, and was used as a source by the other two (Matthew and Luke). It is a central element in discussion of the synoptic problem—the question of the documentary relationship among these three gospels.
Most scholars since the late 19th century have accepted the concept of Marcan priority, although a number of scholars support different forms of Marcan priority or reject it altogether. It forms the foundation for the widely accepted two-source theory.
History
thumb|200px|[[Gottlob Christian Storr]]
The tradition handed down by the Church Fathers regarded Matthew as the first Gospel written in Hebrew, which was later used as a source by Mark and Luke. It is seen as early as in Irenaeus's book Against Heresies. Augustine of Hippo wrote in the 5th century: "Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four, ...are believed to have written in the order which follows: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John." And: "Of these four, it is true, only Matthew is reckoned to have written in the Hebrew language; the others in Greek. And however they may appear to have kept each of them a certain order of narration proper to himself, this certainly is not to be taken as if each individual writer chose to write in ignorance of what his predecessor had done...".
This view of Gospel origins, however, began to be challenged in the late 18th century, when Gottlob Christian Storr proposed in 1786 that Mark was the first to be written.
Storr's idea met with little acceptance at first, with most scholars favoring either Matthaean priority, under the traditional Augustinian hypothesis or the Griesbach hypothesis, or a fragmentary theory (according to which, stories about Jesus were recorded in several smaller documents and notebooks and combined by the evangelists to create the Synoptic Gospels). Working within the fragmentary theory, Karl Lachmann in 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.
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 Marcan priority won general favor.
There was much debate at the time over whether Matthew and Luke used Mark itself or some Proto-Mark (Ur-Mark). In 1899 J. C. Hawkins took up the question with a careful statistical analysis and argued for Marcan priority without Proto-Mark, and other British scholars soon followed to strengthen the argument, which then received wide acceptance.
Most scholars in the 20th century regarded Marcan priority as no longer a hypothesis but an established fact. Still, fresh challenges from B. C. Butler and William R. Farmer proved influential in reviving the rival hypothesis of Matthaean priority, and recent decades have seen scholars less certain about Marcan priority and more eager to explore all the alternatives.
Dependent hypotheses
203px|thumb|The [[two-source hypothesis, one of several built upon Marcan priority, holds that a hypothetical document (the Q source) was used as a source by Matthew and Luke independently.]]
If Marcan priority is accepted, the next logical question is how to explain the extensive material, some 200 verses, shared between Matthew and Luke but not found at all in Mark—the double tradition. Furthermore, there are hundreds of instances where Matthew and Luke parallel Mark's account but agree against Mark in minor differences—the minor agreements. Different answers to this question give rise to different synoptic hypotheses.
- The most widely accepted hypothesis is the two-source hypothesis, that Matthew and Luke each independently drew from both Mark and another hypothetical source, which scholars have termed the Q source. This Q, then, was the origin of the double-tradition material, and many of the minor agreements are instances where both Matthew and Luke followed Q's version of a passage rather than Mark's.
- The foremost alternative hypothesis under Marcan priority is the Farrer hypothesis, which postulates that Mark was written first, then Matthew expanded on the text of Mark, and Luke used both Mark and Matthew as source documents (Mark → Matthew → Luke). The double tradition is then simply portions of Matthew that Luke chose to repeat, so there is no need for Q.
- A hybrid of these two hypotheses is the three-source hypothesis, which posits three sources for Luke: Mark, Q, and Matthew.
- The Matthean Posteriority hypothesis is similar to the Farrer hypothesis but has Matthew using Luke as a source (Mark → Luke → Matthew), rather than vice versa. This hypothesis has found a resurgence of support during the 2010s and has entered the mainstream of scholarship.