“MATTHEW OR MARK …
WHICH WAS WRITTEN FIRST?”

The claim that Mark was written before Matthew is nothing but a subtill (Genesis 3:1), blasphemous and extremely clumsy form of REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY … foisted upon unwitting and ignorant Christians.

Matthew was written in the late 30’s AD and Mark about 25 years later in the mid 60’s AD.

With Mark only mentioning the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of heaven … it simply fades into the background of Christ’s coming with his kingdom for the Jews … as summarized  in Matthew 5-7.

Some background facts:

1. The first book in the NT, Matthew … not Mark, … has Israel’s redeemer … their Messiah … coming to them as their king.

2. Matthew is the logical link between Malachi and the incarnation of Christ to Israel … and the first to be written not Mark.

3. It begins with the genealogy starting with Abraham for the OT Hebrew awaiting his Messiah.

4. We are transitioned from the 39 OT Jewish books about a chosen people … called out from Abraham … to 27 books concerned with the calling out of Gentiles from among the nations.

5. It is fitting therefore, that God would give us a book … Matthew … as a bridge … between the OT and the NT.

6. God’s concern is for his Jewish people and the details … of Christ’s kingdom of heaven … written way before Mark … indeed Luke … simple having the gospel of the kingdom of God for the Gentiles.

7. Matthew has a such doctrinal Jewish intensity that little can be applied to the Gentile Chistian that Mark does stressing the kingdom of God.

This is why God has Matthew written much earlier than Mark.

On the other hand, there is no lack of literature that seeks to call into question Matthew’s penmanship or it’s timing … before Mark … as the first book written in the NT.

There are truckloads of articles written by ‘academics’ wanting to get a PhD or position … to destroy various aspects of Matthew … and all based on the mythical “Q” document … and readily available for any simple-minded person wanting to waste time investigating it.

Please … let me name a few of the higher German critics … indeed others … Schleirmacher, Hort, Graf, Wellhausen, Ewald, Bauer, DeWette, Neander, Scholtmann, Alford Dillman, Wetstein … and the list goes on.

Modern theological scholarship?

Based on four false pillars: 

1. The mythical, unseen “Q” document … and the mythical J, E, P, D documents

2. Mark was written first … simply because it shares a similar wording to Matthew

3. Replacement theology

4. Higher German Bible critics of past centuries.

Facts:

1. Matthew, the publican, the collector of taxes, personally meets Jesus … (Matthew 9:9)

2. There is no evidence that suggests that Mark ever did meet or see or know Jesus.

Question:

To assert that Matthew … a close personal friend and chosen apostle of Jesus (Matthew 10:3) … who closely accompanied Jesus during his years on earth … would seek to copy from the works of Mark … a man who never met Jesus or even saw him … is nothing but absurd. 

Matthew would have been privy to all the details of Christ’s life … the highs and the lows … the sufferings and deprivations … and so on.

As mentioned, modern scholarship cannot validate that Mark ever knew Jesus.

Question:

Why would Matthew have to copy from one who had not been an eye-witness of things that he, himself, had seen with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears … over and over and over and over and over!?

Answer: “He wouldn’t!”

Facts:

1. Mark writes primarily for the Gentiles, thereby omitting the various discourses and parables on Christ … and not the Jews in the first instance … but not exclusively.

2. Mark never refers to the phrase of ‘the kingdom of heaven’ …. as it was no longer relevant with Paul’s salvation into the kingdom of God.

3. Mark writes about the same time as Luke … around the mid sixties AD … both talking exclusively about the kingdom of God.

Now it has been suggested that Mark was an ‘interpreter’ for Peter … but that would be fraught with error for the following reasons:

1. Peter the bitter denier of Christ (Luke 22:62)

2. Peter separating himself to Babylon to ‘lick his wounds (1 Peter 5:13) …and for God to sort him out.

3. Peter finding the scriptures hard to understand
(2 Peter 3:16) … in essence … Peter was simply a ‘flawed’ product.

Conclusions:

1. Obviously the book of Matthew is the personal and accurate writing of Matthew … not Peter the flawed vessel.

2. The book of Matthew is undoubtedly the next cab off the rank after Malachi … 400 years previous … with the details of Christ being first and foremost uppermost on God’s mind … for the apple of his eye … Israel.

3. Christ had come for the Jew with his kingdom of heaven dispensation of his sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7).

4. It would be absurd to think that Mark would the first to receive the baton after Malachi … not mentioning the kingdom of heaven, the discourses and the parables.

5. No, Mark simply vacuums Matthew for details … in the interest is his readers … the Gentile … and with the kingdom of heaven being a past dispensation.

Dear Reader, let us be reminded that Satan is the angel of light … and will use any method to chip away at Christ’s power, history and reputation … by elevating Mark over Matthew … with the timing, and the emphasis on the kingdom of God.   

As Satan cannot get a saved person unsaved, the best he can do is to water down and cool off the Christian … and distract his focus from the big picture … that Christ came for the Jew … not the Gentile.

Harley Hitchcock
December 2025

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