Mark, Matthew, and Luke are known as the Synoptic ['seeing together'] Gospels because they share a great deal of text. However there are also places where each gospel is unique, some of which are places where one synoptic gospel does not contain text that is in the other two. The Great Omission is the name generally given to a point in the gospel of Luke at which there is no parallel to a long section (approximately 75 verses) of the gospel of Mark. There are several theories as to why this long section of Mark has no parallel in Luke, and the exact boundaries of the section vary according to which theory is favored, with the beginning variously given as Mk 6:45, 47, or 48, and the end located at Mk 8:10, 21, 26, or 27a. Most references give the boundaries of the omitted text as Mk 6:45-8:26, and in Luke this 'missing' text would best fit in the middle of Luke 9:18, as shown below:
The above translation is from the King James Version (KJV), while in contrast the NET gives the first half of Lk 9:18 as:
Once62 when Jesus63 was praying64 by himself, and his disciples were nearby…
with the following for footnotes 62 and 63:
62tn Grk “And it happened that.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated. Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
63tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
From these notes it is clear that the NET completely ‘disconnects’ Lk 9:18 from the prior feeding of the 5,000, and also distances Jesus from the disciples, while a more literal translation such as that in the KJV shows that here Luke is attempting to follow the text of Mark, in particular with regard to Jesus being alone, even though Luke omits everything from Mk 6:45-46 regarding both the ship and the mountain. However, what is left is an apparently pointless unique reference to Jesus praying, whereas it would have been much simpler to have simply had something like:
9:18 And it came to pass that he asked his disciples, Whom say the people that I am?
There is no natural transition like this at this point in Luke, such as would occur between pericopes. Although the narrative is somewhat continuous, there are clear signs that there is a ‘join’ in Luke (i.e. where the omitted section of Mark would seem to fit) that has been altered to try to smooth over the break. However, there is still a disconnect at this point, and in addition small fragments of the omitted section of Mark appear to have made their way into Luke both earlier in Luke chapter 9, and later, at the beginning of Luke chapter 12. As mentioned, several possible explanations have been put forward to explain why this section of Mark was not included in Luke, for example:
As an argument for the Griesbach or Two-Gospel hypothesis, that Mark was later, and intended to conflate Matthew and Luke;
That there was a proto-Mark without either most or all of Mk 6:45-8:26 that was used by aLuke (the author of Luke), while a later redactor added this section to canonical Mark;
This section of Mark was accidentally skipped over due to the phenomenon of homeoleuton (the omitted section begins with them going to and ends with them leaving “Bethsaida”);
aLuke had a defective copy of Mark that was accidentally missing this section;
aLuke wanted to reduce the number of doublets he saw in Mark (Mark 6:45-8:26 includes both a second feeding narrative and a second sea miracle);
aLuke chose to restrict Jesus’ mission to the Jews in Galilee (rather than Tyre, Sidon and the Decapolis);
aLuke found some features offensive, such as the comparison of the non-Jewish Syrophoenician woman to a dog in Mk 7:25-30, the use of saliva to heal both the deaf/mute man in Mk 7:31-37 and the blind man in Mk 8:22-26, the harsh depiction of the ignorance of the disciples (their hearts are hardened at Mk 6:52 in response to the Sea miracle and at Mk 8:17 in response to Jesus remark on the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod) or some obscure teachings (e.g. Mk 7:1-23 involves some pretty technical discussion of Jewish halakhah and purity laws in responding to the objection about eating with unwashed hands);
aLuke wanted to omit any discussion of clean and unclean (Mark chapter 7) until Peter’s vision in Acts 10.
Streeter (The Four Gospels) is generally credited with the suggestion that aLuke had a copy of Mark that did not contain the verses of the Great Omission:
My own mind has of late been attracted by a third alternative, that Luke used a mutilated copy of Mark. The case for this I state, but merely as a tentative suggestion. There are four features in Luke's narrative that cry out for an explanation.
Why does he place the Feeding of the Five Thousand at a "village [Reading κώμην for πόλιν with D Θ, discussed in Appendix I.] called Bethsaida," ix.10, when Mark, his source, expressly says that it was in a "desert place"?
Why does he omit the place-name Caesarea Philippi as the scene of Peter's Confession (ix.18)?
Why does he say that Jesus was "praying alone" on that occasion, while Mark distinctly says that the incident occurred "in the way"?
How is the reading of B in Lk.ix.18, which on transcriptional grounds looks the more original, to be accounted for? B is supported by 157 f. Goth, and three other cursives in reading συνήντησαν (f. occurrerunt) for συνήσαν "they met" for "they were with."
All these questions receive a completely satisfactory answer if we suppose that Luke's copy of Mark included merely the beginning of the "great omission," as far as the words αὐτὸς λόκος; in vi.47, and then went straight on to ἐπηρώτα τοὺς μαθητὰς, viii.27. Now, if a piece is torn out of the middle of a roll the mutilation is not likely to begin and end exactly with a paragraph which opens a new section; an accidental loss is far more likely to cut across the middle of a sentence at both ends.
Of course, Streeter’s suggestion applies at least as well to a codex, perhaps as a result of leaves falling out or being torn out, as we see in other mss (See The Contents of Codex P46) as it does to a roll. However, his suggestion did not meet with general approval, as indicated in An Aramaic Approach to Q by Maurice Casey:
Streeter’s second argument is that Luke used a mutilated copy of Mark. This omitted most of the ‘Great Omission,’ going straight from Mark 6:47 ‘autos monos’ to Mark 8:27 ‘kai en tē hodō.’ Streeter’s arguments for this view are absolutely arbitrary. For example, he suggests that it would explain Luke’s omission of the place-name Caesarea Philippi as the scene of Peter’s confession (Luke 9:18). But this is the only mention of Caesarea Philippi in the Gospels, and it is a long way north of Galilee in an area which Jesus is not otherwise known to have visited. Luke may therefore have omitted it because he thought it must be a mistake. In short, Streeter’s argument assumes his result: he regards this view as probable only because he thinks sources are more likely causes of changes than editorial alterations. It is, however, most unlikely that so assiduous a collector of information as Luke would be unable to obtain an unmutilated copy. We would therefore require strong evidence to believe this, and we have none at all.
However, Casey here fails to make anything other than a different ‘arbitrary’ counter argument himself in suggesting that aLuke would have had no trouble obtaining an ‘unmutilated copy’ of Mark. As we have no knowledge of how and where aLuke got his copy of Mark, and how many copies were even available at the time, this is pure speculation, and so Casey assumes his own result. Then, in Luke and the Law S.G. Wilson claims exactly the opposite to Casey, with what amounts to an appeal to Occam’s Razor:
Broadly speaking there are two types of explanation: that the omission is accidental since Luke did not know this section of Mark, or that it is deliberate because he did not approve of it. The former view, given its classic expression by Streeter, is by far the most persuasive if only because it is almost impossible to construct a convincing case for the latter. On the one hand, since no single explanation is sufficient to explain the omission of all the material, several explanations must be combined – and the more they multiply the less they convince. On the other hand, it is hard to find a plausible explanation for the omission of such a large block of continuous material. The notion of deliberate omission would be initially more plausible if the pericopes had been scattered throughout Mark but, as things stand, accidental omission is the simplest and neatest explanation.
It has also been suggested that aLuke omitted these 75 verses in order to ensure that he left enough space (assuming that he was writing on some fixed length material, e.g. a scroll) for everything else that he wanted to add. However, as a little further on in Luke there is a continuous stretch of 350 verses (from Lk 9:51-18:14) of which only 23 have any parallel in Mark, it seems hard to believe that aLuke could not have included some of the Great Omission verses by the simple expedient of not including some of the detail in the 350 verses that he had yet to write before completing his gospel. In addition, it is hard to see how aLuke, after having written little more than one-third of his text, would have been able to tell with any degree of accuracy how much more space he would need for all the material from Mark, Matthew and/or a (hypothetical) non-Markan second source (SS) such as Q (as defined by the IQP or an expanded version) or an early version of Luke, his own additions, and possibly other unique sources that he still wanted to add.
Overall, there are significant issues with most of the suggested explanations for the Great Omission, centering on the unprecedented length of the omitted section, the difficulty of explaining why aLuke would have wanted to omit all of it, and the apparently very rough join in Luke. For example, if aLuke knew this text in Mark but chose (for whatever reason) to not use it, he could very easily have arranged a much cleaner transition from Mark Chapter 6 to Chapter 8, and also have included portions of the omitted text to which he had no apparent reason to object. This makes it unlikely that aLuke simply chose to not include this long portion of Mark in his gospel.
The 'bad join’ also makes it unlikely that Luke preceded Mark, since under that scenario there would not have been any ‘join’ in Luke for us to see. It is also unlikely that this section was known to aLuke but omitted as a result of him skipping over it by mistake. While it is well known that if two adjacent lines end with the same word the eye can skip from one to the other by mistake (thus missing a line), this same phenomenon cannot be invoked when skipping 75 verses. The only viable alternative that then seems to be left is that aLuke had a copy of Mark in which this section of text was missing, and he just made the best of it.
Although it is readily acknowledged that the above-mentioned 75 verses of Mark are not present in Luke, little is generally made of the fact that more than a third of the text of these verses is also not present in Matthew. Only half of these verses have complete parallels, and the rest either have no parallel at all, or only some parts of them are present in Matthew. The portions of the text of Mark that are missing (or in a few places are heavily edited) in Matthew are:
Mk 6:45-56 Jesus walks on the sea – 6:47d-48a, 48d, 51b-52, 53b-54a, 55b-56a (Approx 5 verses out of 12)
Mk 7:1-23 What defiles a man – 7:2-7:5a, 8a-9a, 13b, 16-17a, 18c-19a, 19c, parts of 7:22-23 (Approx 8.5 verses out of 23)
Mk 7:24-30 A Greek woman’s faith – 7:24b-26a, 27b, 29b, 30 (Approx 4 verses out of 7)
Mk 7:31-37 A deaf mute healed – 7:31b-36, 37b (Approx 6 verses out of 7)
Mk 8:1-10 The four thousand fed – 8:1a, 3b, 7b (Approx 1 1/2 verses out of 10)
Mk 8:11-21 Pharisees ask for a sign – 8:12b, 13b, d, 14c, 17d-81a, 19b, 20b-21a (Approx 5 verses out 11)
Mk 8:22-26 A blind man healed – All verses omitted (5 verses out of 5)
On the assumption of Markan priority aMatthew (the author of Matthew) removes many small details from Mark in every single pericope in the area of the Great Omission, plus the whole of the last pericope. The lack of some or all of the text of half of these verses could be considered to be simply legitimate editorial activity by aMatthew, either to remove extraneous detail from Mark, or in some cases simply choosing not to include particular pericopes, but if aMatthew edited Mark then he appears to have made some very strange changes to the text of Mark, changes that in some cases make little or no sense.
Not only does aMatthew appear to have removed completely innocuous details from the text of Mark, but he then added different details, also seemingly innocuous, and swapped some of the Markan verses for no apparent reason. Rather than than this being purely editorial choices by aMatthew, an alternative explanation is that aMatthew also saw major damage to his copy of Mark (although less extensive than that seen by aLuke), and from this he was able to piece together around half of what we see in this 75-verse section of Mark, while aLuke had to omit virtually all of the same section. This possibility is examined in The Not So Great Omission.
The key issue is whether there really is a bad join in Luke, or whether the text is just unusual, but no more so than at other places. There is, perhaps, a natural tendency to want to explain the text as we see it as being original rather than to suggest that something has been 'lost,' and this tendency also comes into play at the end of Mark (see Mark 16:9-20 - The Origin of the Long Ending). Although many people believe that the original ending of Mark was 'lost,' (or perhaps it was not finished), others believe that Mk 16:8 was meant to be the original end, despite the awkwardness of the text at this point. However, the existence of various different endings of Mark does indicate that many people believed that something else needed to be added. Although various different explanations for the Great Omission and the different endings of Mark have been provided, a single common explanation (damage of some kind) has significant appeal.
In Luke the feeding of the 5,000 (a triple tradition passage, i.e. it is also in Mark and Matthew) ends at Lk 9:17, as follows (from the KJV):
And they did eat, and were all filled: and there was taken up of fragments that remained to them twelve baskets. [9:17]
This is a close parallel to both Mk 6:42-43 and Mt 14:20, omitting only the mention of the fish (which is unique to Mark) from the end of Mk 6:43:
And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. [Mk 6:42-43]
And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. [Mt 14:20]
After the actual number fed (5,000) is noted next in Mk 6:44 and Mt 14:21, but not (at this point) in Luke, and then in both Mark and Matthew Jesus makes his disciples go (without him) by ship to ‘the other side,’ with (only in Mark) Bethsaida mentioned as the destination:
And straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people. [Mk 6:45]
And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. [Mt 14:22]
None of this appears at the corresponding point in Luke, which instead in Lk 9:18 has:
And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: [9:18a]
and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am? [9:18b]
Kai egeneto en tō einai auton proseuchomenon kata monas synēsan autō hoi mathētai …
As Lk 9:18b is a clear parallel to Mk 8:27b (and the parallels then continue in subsequent verses), at first sight Luke does not appear to contain any text from Mk 6:44-8:27a. Instead of this long portion of Mark, we have nothing apart from Jesus being alone praying with his disciples! However, the question that then naturally arises is how in Luke could Jesus have been praying alone (as is clearly the case in Mark, where he is on the land and the disciples are in the ship), and yet have the disciples with him? Is this a deliberate ‘edit’ by aLuke in order to omit a large portion of Mark, or instead an attempt to join together two non-matching pieces of text left either side of a missing section?
It is certainly the case that if this was an edit by aLuke he could have created a much smoother transition. For example, he could either have avoided any suggestion that Jesus was alone (as in Lk 11:1), or have indicated that the disciples went away by ship and then joined him later after he had finished praying (as in Lk 22:45). It has also been suggested that ‘alone’ does actually allow for others to be close by, as perhaps in Ex 18:14 where Moses’ father-in-law asks:
… why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?
Nevertheless, aLuke does not use ‘alone’ in this way elsewhere, and if he was editing from a mss that included the text of the great omission he would have known that Mark made it clear that Jesus really was by himself on land, and so would have avoided this confusing construction. It therefore appears most likely that aLuke was trying to join different pieces of text, that individually referred to Jesus being alone and praying, together with some or all of Mk 8:27.
Mk 6:14-16 / Mt 14:1-2 / Lk 9:7-9 all contain the beginning of the story of John the Baptist and Herod. At Mk 6:17 / Mt 14:3 the narrative continues with the beginning of the events leading up the the beheading of John, and while there is also a parallel in Luke, it is re-located to the much earlier position of Lk 3:19-20, i.e. just before John baptizes Jesus. The remainder of the story of the beheading of John (Mk 6:18-29 / Mt 14:4-12a) has no parallel anywhere in Luke.
There appears to be no rational reason why aLuke would write Lk 9:7-9, continue with the narrative at Lk 3:19-20, and then omit the rest of the story. However, if aLuke did not see this part of the narrative in Mark (because of damage), or perhaps had just small fragments of text, then his decision to move the note regarding Herod imprisoning John forward to his earlier references of John is understandable. This suggestion is supported by the fact that aMatthew also seems to have seen damage to Mark in this area, as Matthew has no parallels to Mk 60:17c, 20c, 21b, 22b, 24b-25a and 27b, and omits many details from the other verses. In addition, there is a very odd parallel at Mk 6:14 / Mt 14:1-2a / Lk 9:7.
All three are clearly parallel, except that Lk 9:7 contains an odd addition regarding Herod being perplexed, even though there is nothing that has been added to Luke to suggest why he might have been perplexed. However, a few verses later in Mark we find a curious variant:
and when he heard him, he [was baffled] [did many things], and heard him gladly. [Mk 6:20c]
Neither Matthew nor Luke have a parallel to Mk 6:20c, so this variant cannot be due to assimilation from the other synoptics. Instead, it appears to simply be due to misreading of a single word. Either: πολλὰ ἠπόρει (greatly perplexed), or πολλὰ ἐποίει (doing many things). If one or more scribes had difficulty reading this one word it could be an indication of damage that later became serious enough that aMatthew altered much of Mk 6:19-21 when writing Mt 14:5-6, and aLuke, perhaps seeing a disconnected fragment with a reference to Herod being perplexed but not knowing to what it related, added it at the closest point that made any sense, ie. where we see Lk 9:7b.
And he took them, and went aside privately into a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida. [Lk 9:10]
This verse has parallels in both Mark and Matthew, which respectively read:
And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. [Mk 6:32]
When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart: [Mt 14:13a]
The problem here is that while both Mark and Matthew refer to “a desert place,” neither refer to Bethsaida, and, of course, Lk 9:10 has no mention of a ship. It is not in fact until Mk 6:45 (and later in Mk 8:22) that Bethsaida is mentioned (and not at all in this context in Matthew), so why is it named in Lk 9:10? This verse actually has many variants, which the NET summarizes as follows:
The variants can be grouped generally into those that speak of a “deserted place” and those that speak of a place/city/town called Bethsaida. The Byzantine [e.g. KJV] reading is evidently a conflation of the earlier texts, and should be dismissed as secondary. The variants that speak of a deserted place are an assimilation to Mark 6:32, as well a harmonization with v. 12, and should also be regarded as secondary. The reading that best explains the rise of the others – both internally and externally – is the one that stands behind the translation [to a town called Bethsaida] and is found in the text of NA27.
Unfortunately the NET provides no explanation as to why Bethsaida would appear at this point in Luke in the first place, as this reference puts the feeding of the 5,000 in (or at least close to) a center of population (Bethsaida), which is not the case in either Mark or Matthew. It is also very strange that Luke then contains no mention of travel to or from any other location until Jesus, Peter, John, and James go up the mountain in Lk 9:28. However, in Mark many locations are mentioned between the feeding of the 5,000 in the desert place in Mk 6:32, and the mention of the same mountain in Mk 9:2 (the parallel of Lk 9:28), as given below:
Mk 6:45b - The disciples go by ship to Bethsaida;
Mk 6:46 - Jesus departs to a mountain;
Mk 6:48 - Jesus walks on the water;
Mk 6:53 - They ‘passed over’ and came to the land of Gennesaret;
Mk 6:56 - He entered into villages, or cities, or country;
Mk 7:24 - He went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon;
Mk 7:31 - He left the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and came to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis;
Mk 8:10 - He entered into a ship with his disciples, and came into the parts of Dalmanutha;
Mk 8:22 - He comes to Bethsaida;
Mk 8:27 - Jesus and the disciples went into the towns of Caesarea Philippi;
None of these intermediate movement details are included in Luke, except for the anomalous mention of Bethsaida in Lk 9:10. Although Bethsaida is mentioned in Matthew, it occurs only in the ‘woe’ that Jesus pronounces at Mt 11:21, which already has an almost exact parallel at Lk 10:13. For this reason it is very unlikely that aLuke took his reference to Bethsaida from Matthew (even assuming he knew Matthew), but instead saw it in either Mk 6:45b or 8:22. These two verses are respectively close to the beginning and end of the Great Omission, and therefore it is possible, even with a damaged ms, that aLuke saw one or other of these references to Bethsaida in Mark.
Whether aLuke had a damaged copy of Mark or not, if he saw Bethsaida in either verse, why would he want to move the location of the feeding of the 5,000 from a “desert place” in Mk 6:32 and Mt 14:13 to Bethsaida? It is conceivable that he thought it more appropriate to have 5,000 people gather in a town/city rather than a desert, but the whole point of the feeding passage was that the crowds could not feed themselves because they were in a desert. In addition, we know that Jesus had just tried to get away from the crowds by ship, but the people found him anyway, and came “out of the cities” (Mk 6:33) and followed him into the desert. Therefore, if aLuke saw either of the two references to Bethsaida in situ in Mark (at Mk 6:45b or 8:22) then he would have had no reason to move the mention of Bethsaida forward in his narrative and locate the feeding of the 5,000 either in or near Bethsaida.
Conversely, if aLuke saw neither reference he would have had no reason to mention Bethsaida at all. The only alternative is that he saw Bethsaida in one of the verses, but that the reference had lost its context because the piece of text containing the name ‘Bethsaida’ was dislocated, or the ms was damaged or fragmentary at this point. Knowing that the ms did contain Bethsaida, it would be natural for aLuke to want to include it, but where? The most reasonable place would be at the closest point at which travel had been mentioned, i.e. just before the feeding of the 5,000. However, knowing that it had to be a desert (or deserted place), instead of just changing “desert” to “Bethsaida,” he satisfied both requirements by making it a desert place belonging to Bethsaida (this then being the original reading here).
As shown above, both Mark and Matthew have Jesus and the disciples (or apostles) going by ship, while this detail is not present in Luke. This may be aLuke omitting a seemingly unimportant detail, but it is more likely to be a reaction to not having any other of the travel details from the text of the Great Omission, and so not wanting to suggest that Jesus made an unnecessary one-way boat trip.
For they were about five thousand men. [Lk 9:14a] And he said to his disciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company. [Lk 9:14b]
The story of the feeding of the 5,000 exists in all three synoptics, and in all three the narrative runs in virtually the same order, except that the actual reference to the number of people comes earlier in the narrative in Luke than in either Mark or Matthew:
And they that did eat [of the loaves] were about five thousand men. [Mk 6:44]
And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children. [Mt 14:21]
What would induce aLuke to place the number of people before Lk 9:15? In both Mark and Matthew these verses follow the mention of the twelve baskets of fragments, which is paralleled at Lk 9:17, so that the ‘natural’ place for this information in Luke would be between Lk 9:17 and 18, i.e. at the place where we would expect to see the text of the great omission. Instead, in Luke this mention of the 5,000 comes three verses earlier, before the feeding takes place. While the text has not been omitted in Luke, it has been relocated, as if aLuke was not sure where it was meant to be. As with the relocation of the reference to Bethsaida, this is suggestive of damage to the ms of Mark from which aLuke was working.
Although in Lk 9:18 (see above) the disciples do not leave Jesus before he prays, this is exactly what happens in Mark:
And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. [Mk 6:46] And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. [Mk 6:47]
Is it therefore possible that the references in Lk 9:18 to Jesus praying and being alone (but apparently with his disciples) derive from these verses? In Lk 9:17 Jesus is in the company of his disciples and the 5,000, so it is very jarring to see aLuke's favorite ‘scene switch’ phrase: “And it came to pass” (Kai egeneto) at the beginning of Lk 9:18, with no prior closing words regarding the feeding. It is as though aLuke had no idea how the narrative continued after Mk 9:43, with Jesus being alone because he had sent the disciples away by ship. Assuming he had the text of Mark in front of him, it is almost inexplicable that aLuke would terminate the feeding of the 5,000 so abruptly, and then re-start his narrative showing no apparent knowledge of what had taken place in Mk 6:45-47.
The most natural conclusion from this is not that aLuke chose to omit the text of Mk 6:45-47, but instead that he simply did not see these verses, and, by extension, that perhaps he did not see any more verses in Mark before Mk 8:27b. However, a closer examination of the evidence suggests that his ms of Mark did not simply stop cleanly at Mk 6:44 (which as we have already seen above, was re-located in Luke), but may have still contained a few fragments of some of the verses under discussion.
A reasonable supposition for the verses described above being missing is that aLuke’s copy of Mark was in codex form, and one of more leaves were missing (either resulting from accidental damage or deliberate action). However, if so then it is possible that one or more fragments (e.g. a top or bottom corner ) of the missing leaf or leaves were still with the rest of the ms, and in this scenario what was left of Mk 6:43b-47 in aLuke’s copy could have read approximately as follows (Note: words in italics denote text missing from the fragment):
tōn ichthyōn kai ēsan hoi phagontes tous artous pentakischilioi andres Kai euthys
ēnankasen tous mathētas autou embēnai eis to ploion kai proagein eis to peran pros
Bēthsaidan heōs autos apolyei ton ochlon kai apotaxamenos autois apēlthen eis to
oros proseuxasthai Kai opsias genomenēs ēn to ploion en mesō tēs thalassēs kai
autos monos epi tēs gēs ...
Note: Although this reconstruction includes spaces for readability, exactly the same alignment can be achieved without them.
If this represents all that was left from the top left corner of a codex page, then aLuke would have seen text approximating the following:
the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men. [Mk 6:43b-44]
he made his disciples get [Mk 6:45a]
Bethsaida, while [Mk 6:45b]
to pray [Mk 6:46b]
alone [Mk 6:47b]
If aLuke did see just these words, and the fragment was loose (i.e. not still physically attached to the rest of the ms in its original location), then it explains all the peculiarities we see in Luke in the text leading up to Lk 9:18b:
Mk 6:43b – The fish: Luke does not mention the fish after the baskets of fragments, as we see in Mk 6:43. As these words would have been unobjectionable, their absence is best explained either by aLuke not seeing them, or seeing them but not being sure where they should go in the narrative, and so not mentioning them in Lk 9:17.
Mk 6:44 – The 5,000: In Luke the parallel text is positioned as Lk 9:14a, before anyone had eaten, and at the closest suitable point following the reference to the fish in Lk 9:13. This makes complete sense if in the fragment aLuke saw the fish mentioned just before to the 5,000, and so placed his mention of the 5,000 just after the disciples had mentioned the very limited supply of food.
Mk 6:45a – Who was made to do what? In Mk 6:39 and Mt 14:19 Jesus makes the people sit down, while in Lk 9:14b Jesus tells his disciples to make them sit down. This (otherwise pointless) change can be easily seen as aLuke trying to follow his mention of the 5,000 by having Jesus get the disciples to perform some otherwise unknown action.
Mk 6:45b – Bethsaida: There is nothing in the feeding of the 5,000 that mentions a location, other than the desert place. It would therefore be natural for aLuke, seeing the name Bethsaida, to attach the name to the first mention of the desert place, at Lk 9:10.
Mk 6:46b, 47b – Praying alone: Seeing just references to praying and being alone (with no other context), the most natural thing for aLuke to do would be to assume that Jesus prayed on his own.
Mk 8:27b – Jesus with the disciples: After the missing leaves, the next text that aLuke saw in his ms of Mark had Jesus with his disciples and asking them a question. He attached this text to what he just written as best he could, and then carried on.
This illustration is of course speculative, but this single scenario explains all the unusual things described above that we see in Lk 9:10-18. In addition, if this re-construction of Mark is continued (using the same line length), then it corresponds exactly to a scenario in which aLuke's copy had four missing pages (or two leaves of a codex) with an average of 22-23 lines per page. The first began as shown above, and the following pages (if they had been present) would have begun with Mk 7:5, 7:25, and 8:6 respectively, with the next page (that was present in the ms) beginning with the last few words of Mk 8:27.
Assuming a codex, the second of the missing pages (on the other side of the first missing codex leaf) would have begun around 22-23 lines after Mk 6:43-44, at or close to Mk 7:5, so reading approximately:
And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unclean hands?” [Mk 7:5] So he said to them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written, * ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far, far away from me. [Mk 7:6] And they worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ [Mk 7:7] Abandoning the commandment of God, you hold fast to the tradition of men.” [Mk 7:8]
However, if the words from Mk 6:43-47 described above were on a fragment that was the top left corner of a codex leaf, then the other side of the fragment would represent the top right corner of the other side of the same leaf, and continuing the reconstruction given above the fragment (as seen by aLuke) would likely have contained the following (as before, the words in italics would not have actually been present in the fragment):
kai hoi Pharisaioi kai hoi grammateis eperōtōsin auton Dia ti sou hoi mathētai
ou peripatousin kata tēn paradosin tōn presbyterōn alla esthiousin ton arton
koinais chersin de ho eipen autois Ēsaias eprophēteusen Kalōs peri hymōn tōn
hypokritōn hōs gegraptai hoti Houtos ho laos tima me tois cheilesin de autōn hē
kardia apechei porrō ap’ emou de sebontai me matēn didaskontes didaskalias
entalmata anthrōpōn aphentes tēn entolēn …
If this represents all that was left from the top right corner of the second side of the first missing codex leaf, then aLuke would have seen text approximating the following:
… Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not [Mk 7:5]
elders, but eat their bread with unclean [Mk 7:5]
you hypocrites, as [Mk 7:6]
is far, far away [Mk 7:6]
Abandoning [Mk 7:8]
In this case aLuke would have no obvious place in his text in which to try to insert any of these words, but he would have at least known that they came later in Mark than the words on the other side of the fragment. It is conceivable that he would have attempted to use at least some of them later in his own gospel, and so is there any evidence that aLuke did see these words and attempt to use them in his gospel?
After Lk 9:18 (the point at which Luke re-joins the text of Mark at Lk 8:27b), Mark and Luke (and to a slightly lesser extent Matthew) parallel each other closely, with each containing the essentially same pericopes, in the same order. Luke does omit Peter’s rebuke (Mk 8:32-33), the last few verses of the transfiguration account (Mk 9:11-13), and several details of the exorcism in Mk 9:20-28, and there is a little additional text in Luke that has no parallel in Mark (e.g. in the transfiguration), but otherwise the accounts in Mark and Luke remain closely in step until Mk 9:41/Lk 9:51, with there being no indication of any attempt by aLuke to introduce the topics suggested by the above fragment. However, at Lk 9:51 there is a major change.
In the 350 verses of Luke from vv. 9:51 to 18:14 (often referred to as the Lukan Travel Narrative) there are many verses that have a parallel in Matthew, but only 20 that have any parallel in Mark, until Mark and Luke begin to parallel each other again at Mk 10:13 / Lk 18:15. In four of these 20 verses in Luke the parallels in Mark come from the Great Omission, and three of these are from the same passage (Mk 8:11-15). These three also have parallels in Matthew, where they are also part of the same passage (Mt 16:1-6). This means that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, although all three verses in Luke (vv. 11:16, 11:29b, and 12:1) could be based on Mark, they could instead be based on Matthew (if aLuke knew Matthew) or a second source (SS). However, the situation is somewhat complicated, as one of the parallels in Matthew is part of a doublet (Mt 12:39 and 16:4), as shown below (with the thick lines serving to mark non-consecutive verses):
As these verses in Luke have parallels in both Mark and Matthew, it is necessary to determine whether there is anything that Luke that could only have been derived from Mark, not Matthew:
Lk 11:16 – Seeking a Sign from Heaven: Mark, Matthew, and Luke all refer to people tempting Jesus and seeking for a sign. There is nothing in Luke that could not have come from Matthew, and while Matthew and Luke both have the tempting before the seeking, in Mark the order is reversed. Not only does Luke not depend on Mark, but the text of Luke is closer to that of Matthew than Mark.
Lk 11:29b – The Sign of Jonas: It is possible that both parts of the doublet in Matthew depend on Mark, but the text of Lk 11:29b is clearly closer to that in Matthew 12:39 than to Mk 8:12, and does not depend on Mark.
Lk 12:1d – The Leaven of the Pharisees: There is nothing in Mk 8:15 that aLuke could not have obtained from Mt 16:6 instead.
There is no evidence here that aLk saw Mk 8:11:15, but there is one more piece of text in Luke to be considered: After mentioning “the leaven of the Pharisees,” Luke adds “which is hypocrisy,” which does not exist in either Mark or Matthew.
In the last part of Lk 12:1 Jesus says that the leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy. However, unlike the parallel in both Mark and Matthew, in Luke the reference to leaven in Luke 12:1d is not preceded by the mention of the disciples forgetting to take bread with them, so why is this reference included here in Luke? Mk 7:5-6 is one of only two places in Mark in which Jesus indicates that the Pharisees are hypocrites (the other is at Mk 12:13-15, which has parallels at Lk 20:19-23 and Mt 22:15-18):
Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? [Mk 7:5] He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. [Mk 7:6]
These verses are both part of the Great Omission, and both have parallels in Matthew 15:
Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, [Mt 15:1] Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. [Mt 15:2] But he answered and said unto them, [Mt 15:3a]
Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, [Mt 15:7] This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. [Mt 15:8]
Matthew has some extra (underlined) details in Mt 15:1 and 8, while the intervening text in Mt 15:3b-6 contains additional material in whch Jesus states that they are transgressing “the commandment of God.” These additions make it likely that here Matthew depends on and expands Mark.
At first sight there is nothing obvious in Luke that could be said to be a parallel to this passage, but the closest approximation does seem to be the mention of the Pharisees and their hypocrisy at the end of Lk 12:1. This verse is odd, both because it contains two apparently unrelated pieces of information, and also because it is preceded by what appear to be equally unrelated verses at Lk 11:53-54.
Lk 11:1 begins a long passage in which Jesus is in an undefined (but probably in the open) “certain place” and talks to the disciples about many things, with bread being mentioned in Lk 11:5 (three loaves) and Lk 11:11 (bread/stone), until in Lk 11:37 he is invited into the house of a Pharisee. From then until Lk 11:52 he remains in the house, first pronouncing woes on the Pharisees, and then on the lawyers, after which we read:
And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things: [Lk 11:53] Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him. [Lk 11:54] In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, [Lk 12:1a] insomuch that they trode one upon another, [Lk 12:1b] he began to say unto his disciples first of all, [Lk 12:1c] Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, [Lk 12:1d] which is hypocrisy. [Lk 12:1e]
Although Lk 11:42-52 have parallels in Mt 23, Lk 11:53-12:1b appear to have no parallels, while, as shown above, Lk 12:1d (but not 1e) has parallels in both Mark and Matthew.
Both these parallels immediately follow a reference to the disciples having forgotten to take bread with them after the feeding of the 4,000, a context that is completely absent in Luke. It has been suggested that aLuke knew, but wanted to omit, this second feeding (after having already included the 5,000). If so, then in order to maintain a connection between bread and the leaven of the Pharisees the obvious place to locate this text would have been after the feeding of the 5,000, e.g. after Lk 9:17. Instead, we see it at Lk 12:1, suggesting that aLuke did not know the feeding of the 4,000 at all, although he (obviously) knew this saying, knew that in Mark it was not connected to the feeding of the 5,000, but still wanted to include it somewhere.
There is also text at the end of Lk 12:1: “which is hypocrisy,” that has no connection with the leaven in either Mark or Matthew. However, hypocrisy and the Pharisees are mentioned together in several places, most of which are in Matthew:
Of all the above verses, the only place where Luke connects the Pharisees and hypocrisy is in Lk 12:1, which is also the only verse in which the parallels in Mark and Matthew do NOT make this connection. Assuming that aLuke knew the above verses in Matthew, then he has gone out of his way to avoid calling the Pharisees hypocrites, either omitting complete verses from Matthew, or removing the reference to hypocrisy. Even if the above verses in Luke were written before Matthew (or aLuke did not know Matthew), then we are still left with this very unusual addition at the end of Lk 12:1. If aLuke knew the end of the feeding of the 4,000 in either Mark or Matthew then he would have been able to place this text in its correct context, so, again, the reasonable conclusion is that when this part of Luke was written the author knew neither version. Why then did aLuke include: “he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” and why did he place it at the end Lk 12:1, a verse that is constructed from two pieces of text that don’t seem to fit well anywhere?
As previously suggested, if aLuke’s ms of Mark was missing four pages (or two leaves of a codex) then this could exactly account for the Great Omission. In addition, if a small fragment from the first page was loose but still in the ms (e.g. between two of the pages), it could also account for all the unusual text seen in Lk 9:10-18. As indicated, and using the reconstruction shown above, aLuke would have seen text approximating the following on the reverse of the codex leaf that contained the fragments of text from Mk 6:44-47:
… Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not [Mk 7:5]
elders, but eat their bread with unclean [Mk 7:5]
you hypocrites, as [Mk 7:6]
is far, far away [Mk 7:6]
Abandoning [Mk 7:8]
Here we have a reason why aLuke would try to connect the disciples, bread, the Pharisees, and hypocrisy. If he also knew the saying “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” (in whatever context), then it is not too difficult to see how he could construct the second half of Lk 12:1 from what he saw here, while not knowing where it should be placed in relation to the other text in Mark. If so, where would he place it?
In Luke Jesus seems to be almost constantly ‘sparring’ with the scribes and Pharisees. In Lk 5:26 things seem OK, but they go downhill in Luke 6, so that by Lk 6:7 they are out to get him. In Lk 7:30 they ‘reject the council of god’ and in Lk 11:37-52 the ‘battle’ continues, again ending with them trying to trap him. At this point (only in Luke) Jesus goes outside, the scribes and Pharisees try to trap him again, and aLuke takes this opportunity to warn the people in Lk 12:1, using the words he found in the fragment of Mark.
The existence of The Great omission in Luke presents a problem. On the one hand, if the author of Luke did not see this text in Mark, why did his copy of Mark not contain it? On the other, if he did see it, why did he not include it in his own gospel? Although a number of explanations for both scenarios do exist, all have to suggest multiple different reasons to explain not only the omission of such a single long piece of text, but also all the unusual features of the text in Luke that surrounds the omission, in particular the well-known textual problem in Luke 9:10 regarding Bethsaida. However, the explanation given here presents a single coherent reason for all these features: That the author of Luke had a ms of Mark in the form of a codex that had two pages missing, except that a small fragment of one of the pages was still present in the ms.
Note that this scenario precludes the possibility that the author of Luke himself tore out the pages (perhaps because he objected to them), because in that situation he would have known the whole text and would have had no reason to try to fit the words on the fragment into his narrative. However, it does leave open the question of whether he would have seen Matthew’s shorter version of Mk 6:45-8:26 (in Mt 4:21-16:13), and if he did, why he would have also excluded any of this text. If, as argued here, the author of (at least this part of) Luke awkwardly joined together two sections of Mark then it strongly suggests that he did not know Mt 4:21-16:13 at the time, which in turn suggests that at least this part of Luke was written before Matthew, as described in The Mark-Ev Hypothesis.
Bacon, Ben J.W: The Treatment of Mk. 6 14-8 26 in Luke
Casey, Maurice: An Aramaic Approach to Q: Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, 2002
Godfrey, Neil (Vridar): Viewing Luke’s “Great Omission” in a context of Marcionite controversy
Muller, Bernard D: The great omission in Luke's gospel
Streeter, B.H: The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, Treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, & Dates, 1924
Wilson, S. G: Luke and the Law, 1983
If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. regarding this topic please email me at davidinglis2@comcast.net