Steven Carr

The anonymous author of Matthew used 90% of the stories in Mark's Gospel.

He omits the story of Jesus healing the blind man in Mark 8, by spitting on his eyes.

Can we conclude that the author of Matthew was embarrassed by this story?

Can we only use the principle of embarrassment on stories which are not copied from one Gospel to another? If it was copied, can we conclude that it was not embarrassing?

Timetospend

I do not think that we have enough information to make any conclusions as to exactly why Matthew left out this episode out. Therefore, much speculation is possible.

Thanks,

spamandham

...another possibility is that the story in Mark was added after Matthew was originally written. There's no reason to presume Mark was set in stone at the time Matthew was written.

Julian

First off, I should say that I don't buy the whole idea of the principle of embarrassment as it relates to Christianity. However, I am not sure as to why you think that this principle is relevant here. Could you be more specific?

Julian

Julian

There is even less reason to believe that it wasn't in Mark when Matthew was writing. Do you have any reason to suppose that it was absent? Considering Mark's interest in the Romans we can understand why he may have wanted to draw a parallel to Vespasian and, in contrast, why Matthew wouldn't. Matthew certainly has Jesus healing blind people but he may just be uncomfortable with any Roman connection.

Julian

spamandham

Yes, because it isn't in Matthew. If you're satisfied to merely assume the reason it's missing, you're welcome to do so. But it isn't a compelling argument unless you at least rule out other simple alternatives.

Ben C Smith

Besides this healing of a blind man, the only other miracle that Matthew omits from Mark is the exorcism of the demoniac in Capernaum. However, Matthew doubles the number of blind men healed at Jericho and doubles the number of demoniacs exorcised in Gadara. For my money, this is good evidence that Matthew knew pretty much the gospel of Mark that we know.

Ben.

Johnny Skeptic

Matthew says that an angel told Mary et al that Jesus has risen from the dead. John says that when Mary saw the empty tomb, she thought that the body had been moved. If both accounts are true, does that mean that Mary made two visits to the tomb, and that John's account had to have happened first?

Matthew says that the angel told the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, but John says that Jesus first appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem.

Julian

Matthew omits other things as well. The alternative would be that someone goes back to Mark, post Matthew, and adds a passage without any obvious reason to do so. And in the same crappy Greek that we have come to expect from Mark (referring, in this case, mostly to the ubiquitous initial conjunction). It is better to accept a text as it is unless there is good reason to do otherwise. Since Matthew picks and chooses we cannot use his omission as evidence to emendate Mark. Also, we have no textual variants, as far as I can tell, that omits the passage.

Julian

PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

Nice work. This seems a reasonable conclusion. Matthew has cut two miracles that he finds in Mark, but kept the number of cures the same by adding a blindman and demoniac cure to the other miracles.

One might suggest that he wanted to keep the length of his gospel down, so he cut the two miracles and just added two cures to keep the number of miracles the same. He may have felt that his text was getting too long. However, that does not seem to have saved him very many lines, and he does add half a dozen more miracles than Mark.

On the other hand, there might have been something in the cures themselves that he did not like. But one would expect him to change them, rather than leave them out altogether.

My best guess would be editorial fatigue. He left them out without realizing it. When, he realized his mistake, he felt the best way to correct it, without the labor of rewriting everything again, was to just make the minor number changes in the other similar miracles.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay