Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
Anyone who has made an argument from undesigned coincidences in the Gospels has likely encountered hasty dismissal because of "Something something Synoptic problem." And no matter how often one makes it clear that one *does* understand the Synoptic problem, the skeptics (or snobby biblical critics, whether skeptic or Christin) will continue making this same claim: "These people don't understand the Synoptic problem." What emerges is that "understand" here means "agree with a particular view," and that view is the erasure of Matthew or Luke as real sources of additional content within any passages that are similar to Mark. In those passages, a hardline criticl scholarly view is that anything different or new from Matthew or Luke must be an outright invention without factual basis.
This video shows how internal evidence of independence and a connection between Matthew and Luke, in a passage where Matthew resembles Mark (are you following this?), calls into question this erasure of Matthew's status as a source in his own right. The phrase "to his servants," unique to Matthew (Matt. 14:2) in his account of Herod and John the Baptist, fits very well with a comment made by Luke in a completely different context.
Anyone who has made an argument from undesigned coincidences in the Gospels has likely encountered hasty dismissal because of "Something something Synoptic problem." And no matter how often one makes it clear that one *does* understand the Synoptic problem, the skeptics (or snobby biblical critics, whether skeptic or Christin) will continue making this same claim: "These people don't understand the Synoptic problem." What emerges is that "understand" here means "agree with a particular view," and that view is the erasure of Matthew or Luke as real sources of additional content within any passages that are similar to Mark. In those passages, a hardline criticl scholarly view is that anything different or new from Matthew or Luke must be an outright invention without factual basis.
This video shows how internal evidence of independence and a connection between Matthew and Luke, in a passage where Matthew resembles Mark (are you following this?), calls into question this erasure of Matthew's status as a source in his own right. The phrase "to his servants," unique to Matthew (Matt. 14:2) in his account of Herod and John the Baptist, fits very well with a comment made by Luke in a completely different context.
