[VoiceInWilderness]

1st a big thank you to Nigel for a thorough report on the subject. This gives a basis to fellowship about these things on an intelligent basis.

In the church in Detroit, where I am, we recently finished spending 3.5 years to go through the 4 gospels in harmony order, sharing on a portion every Lord's Day. I loved it, as did most, and it gave me a new view on Christ, myself and the Christian life than I had before.

Going through the gospels in harmony order, I could not help but notice the same wordings, OT quotations (yet different from LXX, MT & DSS) and side comments. However I did not want to think about that. Nigel has forced the issue, and I do agree that the synoptic gospels do have copying between them.

Now, regarding the priority of Mark, that is another matter. In our harmony study of the gospels, I found it clear that Matthew was written 1st. I'll give the reason later. Before I do that, I find the reasoning for the placement of Mark as the 1st written to be extremely weak. Nigel gives 7 extremely weak reasons for it. When you put together 7 extremely weak reasons you still have an extremely weak argument. Just look at reason #4, which is touted as the best argument. Besides being unsupported with data in Nigel's paper, the idea says the the writing of the gospels by their authors was at times dreary task without inspiration.

The problem with the German high-critics and their dumb Documentary Hypothesis on the Old Testament is not just that they did not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. Their science was pseudo-science. If their science was correct, they would not have come up with wrong results even if they did not acknowledge the Bible for what it is. Now if supposed Bible-believers apply this same pseudo science to the NT, the quality of the results will not be much better than the Documentary Hypothesis. (I say "supposed" Bible-believers because my experience is that most OT scholars, even though they believe in the inerrancy of God's word, do not give the word proper reverence as WL did [except for James, Proverbs, Psalms, Peter, Job]. NT scholars might be similar.)

The gist of the argument of the paper is that Mark adds very little to the NT. So it must have been first, because if Matthew already existed, there would be no reason to add Mark.
But then Nigel points out that Mark's stories are the most detailed, which I've also noticed, and this is supposed to be another reason that Mark is 1st. Mark's more detailed stories are a reason for adding his gospel after Matthew's. Also it provides another witness to the events. Events may be left out because Mark did not witness them or didn't pay attention.

Here is why I think Matthew's gospel was written 1st:
The 3 synoptic accounts of the resurrection seem to differ in a lot of details.
John 20:11- 17 gives the details of Jesus' extraordinary appearing to Mary Magdalene. Matthew records her experience as belonging to the group of sisters (Matt 28:9-10). He does not say it was to Mary M alone, but gives the impression, if there were no other accounts, that the Lord appeared to the whole group of sisters, when actually He appeared just to Mary M.
Luke does not mention the appearance to Mary M at all.
Mark says plainly that the Lord appeared first to Mary M (Mk 16:9). Why is Matthew ambiguous about it?
I think Matthew did not want to exalt Mary M while she was young (1Tim 3:6), which could ruin her. If Mark wrote 20 yrs later, then it would be ok for him to write it because Mary M has been in the Lord for a long time or may have passed. Mark also tells us the the Lord cast 7 demons out of Mary M, which may not be a proper thing to reveal about a young sister.
John writing 50 years later could give all the details for our edification.

I see this sort of thing more with John. For example, the biggest discrepancy between the 4 gospels is that only John tells of the great miracle of Lazarus' resurrection. How could the others have skipped that? WL said he did not understand that. The reason is given in John 12:10, because that would endanger the lives of Lazarus and his 2 sisters. Matt, Mk and Luke skipped it and left it to the HS to include it when the time was right. When John wrote, Lazarus, Mary and Martha had likely all gone to be with the Lord.

Mark 14:3-9; Matt 26:6-15 & Luke 7:36-50 tell of the nameless woman who broke the alabaster box on the Lord. John 12:2-11 tells us that this woman was Mary of Bethany, Lazarus' sister, and also provides details to link Luke 7 with Matt 26 & Mk 14. Luke tells us the woman was a known sinner, so her name was withheld until John wrote much later, after she was probably with the Lord.