The Sources of Inspiration

The repetitions in Mark’s account of the Agony suggest to author Jerome Murphy-O’Connor that Mark was working from two earlier sources, referred to here as A and B. Mark apparently felt that he should not omit anything found in his sources, and thus combined them. Luke, too, had access to Sources A and B and tried to be faithful to them, but he strove to avoid repetition. That is one reason why his account is so much shorter than Mark’s.

Sources A and B are reconstituted in full at left. The phrases and ideas Luke borrowed from these sources appear in italics.

As Luke wove together passages from Sources A and B, he sometimes altered the phrasing and the order. So that you can see precisely what changes Luke made, in the central column we’ve isolated the passages that Luke adapted from Sources A and B and aligned them, side-by-side, with the originals (in italics in the left column).

In the right column, we see Luke’s full gospel account of the Agony, with the material he borrowed from A and B in italics.