I hold rather strongly to the Markan priority thesis. I’m also convinced by Ehrman’s argument for the Q source based on the varying ordering of the purported Q-material in Matthew and Luke.
I also find myself accepting the idea that Mark was likely written around 66 A.D. at the diction of Peter in Rome. I know Bauckman has adduced some evidence for Peter’s direct involvement in the form of suggested literary device that betrays the diction Mark received, but I don’t know how moved I am by this evidence. I think that the mention of Simon of Cyrene’s children also points to a Roman origin. Mark used “Latinisms,” or Latin phrases that explained some Greek terms. Church tradition supports these data points. I’m also moved by the idea that Mark would be an unlikely candidate to be randomly claimed as an author unless there was some strong reason to think that he did, in fact, write the gospel. There’s good evidence from Paul’s later epistles and 1 Peter that Mark would have been in Rome at the appropriate time. And, as adduced by Dan Wallace, there seems to be a slight hint in Acts that John Mark was an “assistant,” which gives connotations of one who keeps and maintains records.
But taking Markan priority together with an approximate date of 66 A.D. leads to some problems. It would lead, if taken in a straightforward way, to dating Luke-Acts and Matthew to sometime in the 70s and 80s. Most scholars are fine with this result, but I’m not sure. There are some decent reasons to believe that Luke-Acts was written in 62 A.D., such as Luke neglecting to mention Paul’s death. Further, Paul seems to quote a unique passage from Luke’s gospel, suggesting that Luke’s gospel may have existed even earlier.
Of course, we can posit that these various texts existed in preliminary and draft stages. Some of these stages may well have been oral, and that may lay behind Paul’s quoting of Luke. I’m not sure. And perhaps Luke used a proto-Mark as a source. There is, after all, the Great Omission in which Luke skips a significant chunk of Mark. Perhaps he does this because he only had a draft version of Mark, what scholars have termed Ur-Markus. But most doubt this theory - so that whatever form of the Gospel of Mark used by Matthew and Luke, it must have been complete or virtually so. So it looks like we’re back in the 70s or 80s.
So I’m just not sure. Still, I find myself accepting the traditional story and authorship concerning the composition of Mark and of Luke. Matthew is a bit harder for me to swallow. First - Matthew would have been quite old if his gospel was written after 70 A.D. It’s possible that he lived this long and wrote the book at that point, but it seems to diminish the probability. Second, the main tradition claiming Mathew’s authorship is clouded by the weirdness of the Papias quote: In Hebrew? Logia, or sayings? That just isn’t Matthew’s gospel. I once thought that Papias may be referring to Q, but Q was written in Greek - so probably not. Third, why would an apostle not contribute more original material? Why depend upon Mark’s gospel? Fourth, there seems to be more accretions in Matthew's Gospel (the rising of the saints, the guards at the tomb). Fifth, there are little phrases that seem to indicate a greater passage of time ("to this day").
So now I’m more inclined to think that Matthew originated from a community affiliated with that apostle, and that the unique material does stem from the apostle Matthew - and, perhaps, some of the edits that seem to point towards Matthew (Levi being rendered as Matthew; “the house” instead of “Levi’s house”, the excessive interest in taxation and proper nomenclature for currency) may have been made at the behest of the apostle. I do believe these pieces of evidence are suggestive of Matthew’s authorship, or at least his standing behind those particular pieces of the gospel or its tradition.
So I accept traditional authorship for Mark, Luke (and John), but I fudge a bit on Matthew’s. Matthew is most likely behind the gospel that bears his name in *some* way, both due to the unique calling of Matthew, the claims of the early church, the book being affiliated with such an otherwise obscure apostle, the title of the book itself, and the unique material that seems to point towards a tax collector. But honestly, I'm not satisfied with this. I don't know if this hypothesis of Matthew "standing behind" the gospel can really explain these slight edits in a satisfying way, even granting that these slight edits point towards Matthew.
The old suggestion that, among the Twelve, it would be Matthew the tax-collector who would most likely, owing to his profession, be able to write might after all be a sound guess and a clue to the perplexing question of the role he might have played somewhere among the sources of the Gospel of Matthew. - Richard Bauckham
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