Thanks for your reply, Ben.Ben C. Smith wrote:Christopher M. Tuckett wrote The Revival of the Griesbach Hypothes before Orchard, but he addresses this exact argument from order, since Orchard is merely passing it on from earlier times. Others have addressed the issue, as well.gmx wrote:For the last 50 years, this has been the main argument against Markan Priority. Is anyone aware of any credible refutation of this argument?The Order of the Synoptics (1989), p7, Bernard Orchard wrote:
There is one outstanding fact that emerges here: at every point where Matthew ceases to follow Mark's order, whether for a shorter or longer period, Luke continues in it; and wherever Luke ceases to follow Mark's order, Matthew in turn continues in it. There is surely an inescapable conclusion to be drawn from this. If Matthew and Luke were dependent on Mark for the order of events, they must have agreed together that they would do this. Without constant collaboration, the result would be quite impossible. That they followed such a course is incredible, and therefore the conclusion cannot be avoided that the hypothesis that they were dependent on Mark cannot be sustained.
No one can justifiably maintain the hypothesis of Markan priority as an "assured result of modern criticism" without producing a convincing, or at least plausible, explanation of the facts of order; it has yet to be produced.
Yes, Tuckett wrote before Orchard and certainly responded to Farmer's arguments. That he did so conclusively is very much debatable.
The alternating pattern of agreement / disagreement of Mark with respect to the order of Matthew & Luke has been noted throughout the trevails of modern NT textual criticism, and is yet to be shown to be a decisive argument one way or the other in terms of Marcan priority or posteriority.
However, if anything, the argument erodes Markan priority (as the "supposed consensus") purely on the basis that it demonstrates a significant, clearly observable synoptic characteristic that is no more likely on the theory of Marcan priority than on Marcan posteriority.
The "neo-Griesbachian" viewpoint is I think less enamored of its correctness than it is of the need to draw the "consensus" back towards the true position on synoptic priority, that is, that neither the two-gospel hypothesis nor the two-source hypothesis, at present, is provably more likely than the other.