Re: OT: Mk is shorter (was What texts are most translated?)

caeruleancentaur wrote:
>>Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:
>
>
>>Actually Mark is second-shortes; Matthew is shortest.
>>However Mark has the fewest chapters.
>
>
> In the seminary Scripture classes we learned that Mark was the
> shortest of the four gospels.  All my post-seminary teaching of the
> Scriptures tells me that Mark is the shortest of the gospels.
Yes, of course Mark is the shortest.

> When comparing length it is important not to compare apples with
> oranges.  The length of chapters and verses is not uniform so
> knowing which one has the fewer chapters is of no help.
>
> Can we use the number of words?  Does the Greek text of Matthew
> contain fewer words than that of Mark, while the English text
> contains more?
No, the Greek text does not.

The Greek text of Mark has 11304 words, while the Greek text Matthew has
18345 words. Mark is more than 7000 words shorter!

Matthew indeed is longer than John which has 15635 words in the Greek.
Luke is the longest with 19482 words.

> Does the Greek use fewer words than the Latin, which
> uses fewer words than the English?
I doubt it. Latin lacks the definite article, for one thing. But the
precise number of words would depend on which Latin version; likewise
the English statistics will vary according to version. But I cannot see
how the end result is going to be different from the Greek in that Mark
is shortest, followed by John, then Matthew, with Luke being the longest.

[snip]
> gospels.  I went to my old copy of the KJV which has no footnotes.
> The Gospel of Matthew begins on page 1 and ends on page 23, for a
> total of 23 pages.  The Gospel of Mark begins on page 24 and ends on
> page 38 for a total of 15 pages.  The font in both gospels is the
> same.  That's a difference of eight pages!  One would have to do
> some serious monkeying with the text of the Gospel of Mark to make
> it longer than the Gospel of Matthew.
Yes, indeed, whichever way one looks at it, there would need to be some
serious monkeying with the text of both Gospels to make Matthew shorter
than Mark.

--
Ray
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
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