I recently read Delbert Burkett’s “The Case for Proto-Mark.” That was after someone on the AcademicBiblcal subreddit recommended his previous book, “Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark,” where he first broaches his idea of TWO Proto-Marks.

I wound up two-starring the book, as described two weeks ago here on site.

This is the second of a couple of more extensive posts on issues I found with the book. It's partially in notes form, not full sentences. It's rough version. The first review part is here.

I reject his version, and other anti-two sourcers’ version of Minor Agreements. Things like Mk 6:34 vs added Mt/Lk material on page 47, for example? This is a minor similarity, not a minor agreement. And, to turn Burkett’s own claims, and cites of modern two-sourcers backpedaling from Streeter, against him? The most that can be claimed from minor similarities is that both Luke and Matthew had access to something besides Current Mark.

Agreements of omission is the term I will continue to use rather than lumping them under minor agreements as “agreements of absense.” The most they can prove is that, if Mt/Lk were working off a version of Mk first, that they were both were using a copy that happened to be missing that verse. Can’t say whether that’s proto-Mk, deutero, or final. And in some cases, like Mk 2;27 missing, this is almost certainly scribal transmission.

The use of verbs with/without specific prepositions and details of how these are counted or not counted? I reject. I know the issue of prefixed verbs is big in authentic Paul vs Pastorals, which is part of why I reject his methodology.

I do agree with Burkett that oral tradition’s influence on minor agreements has probably been overstated by many two-sourcers. I disagree that it’s been as overstated as he claims, and I disagree with what I think is part of WHY he claims that, and this is his lumping of “minor similarities” with “minor agreements.”

Finally, the fact that Burkett, after presenting arguments against Final Mark or Standard Mark versions of Markan priority, doesn’t address deutero-Mark, but just goes on to say “then proto-Mark must be it,” doesn’t sell me.

That’s especially after reading Kloppenborg’s “Q,” reviewed here, where he notes that Deutero-Mark is one of four ways of explaining minor agreements, along with oral tradition, scribal harmonizing and the human nature of a common editorial solution. It's almost as if Burkett knows that no one single explanatory factor is needed for all the minor agreements (and we'll tackle a related issue in the next post) but that he tries to look at each one individually (or look by silence with deutero-Mark) and insist it must address all of them, then shoot it down.