Gospel Synopsis Commentary, Part 5
Matt 7:28–29 // Mark 1:21–22 // Luke 4:31–32
(avg. read time: 7–14 mins.)
Part 1: Matt 4:23 // Mark 1:39 // Luke 4:44
Part 2: Matt 4:18–22 // Mark 1:16–20
Part 3: Matt 4:1–11 // Mark 1:12–13 // Luke 4:1–13
Part 4: Matt 3:1–17 // Mark 1:2–11 // Luke 3:1–9, 11–15, 21–22 // John 1:19–34
I know my last entry in this series was quite convoluted. Fortunately, things get simpler this time as we return in the cycle to “free-floating” texts that are one sentence in length in at least one of the Gospels and appear in a different relative position to the parallel in at least one of the Gospels. This time, the focus is on Matt 7:28–29 // Mark 1:21–22 // Luke 4:31–32.
For all texts, plain font words are absolute similarities between texts, regardless of where they appear in word order and without repetition (if one word appears once in one text and twice in another, it is only counted once, and so on). Italics signify either a different form of the same word or a synonymous word paralleled in each text. Bold font signifies what is unique to each text. For texts with three parallels, single-underlined words signify elements shared between two of the three texts. The Greek is taken from NA28 and the similarity scores outlined below are based on this text. Brackets include variants attested in at least five Greek witnesses that make the text closer to parallels. Alternatively, brackets may feature text-critical notes on what the majority of texts include or lack.
For each text, I will give two scores of similarity to each of the other Gospels: one will be cases of absolute matching and the other will be cases of “weighted” matching, not counting variants (assigning a value of 1 to absolute matches, 0.75 to alternate forms of the same word and 0.5 to synonyms). There is no easy way to account for variation in word order in these similarity scores, thus my only solution to make note of these variations is to put a < symbol next to scores to signify that the verbal similarity is actually less than the calculated score would indicate because of the difference in word order where the wording is otherwise similar.
Text-critical Observations