Quoted By:
>One of the more compelling proofs that Burkett has shown is that Mark 9:17-27 actually combined one exorcism story found in Matt. 17:14 and Luke 9:38 with a different exorcism story from a now lost source. If you remove all of the text unique to Mark, you will find that the shaved off parts actually form a relatively complete, internally consistent story completely different than the one found in Matthew and Luke. The story in Matthew and Luke is about an “unclean spirit” that throws a boy into the fire and water and the lack of faith in Jesus' disciples. The story that Mark combined that one with is about an “unspeaking and mute spirit” and the lack of faith in the boy's father. Combining the two stories has also caused an internal inconsistency in which a crowd forms in Mark 9:25 despite the fact that the crowd was already there in 9:17. Mark 9:14-16 also uses a very high concentration of characteristically Markan language (“around them”, “arguing”, “immediately”, “they were astounded”, “running forward”, “they greeted”, “he asked”, “around you arguing”) that both Matthew and Luke omit. The words are also used by Matthew and Luke in non-Markan contexts so there is no reason to believe that Matthew or Luke disliked these words and chose to edit them out all 24 times that Mark uses them
>These linguistic peculiarities of omitting Markan language are not limited that pericope either. Mark used the word “polus” (“much”) 58 times, of which Matthew fails to use the word or material 76% of the time and Luke fails to use it 84% of the time. Of the 13 times that Mark talks about Jesus looking around, the crowd moving around Jesus, Matthew appears to omit all 13 instances and Luke appears to omit 11 instances (3:5, 3:32, 3:34, 4:10, 5:32, 6:6, 6:36 9:8, 9:14, 10:23, 11:11, 3:32, 3:34)
