The variants fall into several patterns. Matthew and Luke frequently agree against Mark in word choice across numerous passages, from Matt 4:1//Mark 1:13//Luke 4:2 through Matt 27:59//Mark 15:46//Luke 23:53[1]. More significant differences occur where Matthew and Luke use different word forms than Mark, including passages like Matt 9:17//Mark 2:22//Luke 5:37 and Matt 26:14//Mark 14:10//Luke 22:3[1].
Matthew and Luke also rearrange material from Mark, creating transpositional minor agreements[1]. A striking example involves Jesus’ language about “this generation.” Both Matthew and Luke removed Mark’s phrase “in this adulterous and sinful generation” from Mark 8:38, altered the wording—Matthew to “an evil and adulterous generation” and Luke to “an evil generation”—and then conflated it with Mark 8:12, where Mark has “this generation” without those descriptors[1].
Gospel manuscripts contain numerous harmonizations where scribes altered parallel passages in Mark, Matthew, and Luke to match one another, with the Western and Byzantine textual traditions especially prone to this practice[2]. For instance, in Matthew 9:11, some manuscripts add “and drink” after “eat” to conform to Luke 5:30, while in Mark 2:16 the majority of later manuscripts add “and drink,” yet Luke 5:30 appears in only one manuscript without these words[2].
[1] Ward B. Powers, The Progressive Publication of Matthew (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2010). [See here, here, here, here.]
[2] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006), 59–60.
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