Holy Writ as Oral Lit Quotes

“The Gospel of Mark has some major shortcomings: It contains no birth narrative; it implies that Jesus, a repentant sinner, became the Son of God only at his baptism; it recounts no resurrection appearances; and it ends with the very unsatisfactory notion that the women who found the Empty Tomb were too afraid to speak to anyone about it. Moreover, Mark includes very little of Jesus' teachings; worse yet, (from Matthew's point of view) he even misunderstood totally the purpose of Jesus' use of parables. Indeed, by the last two decades of the first century, Mark's theology seemed already old-fashioned and even slightly suggestive of heresy. So, working apparently without knowledge of each other, within perhaps twenty or thirty years after Mark, two authors (or Christian groups), now known to us as "Matthew" and "Luke" (and even a third, in the view of some-"John') set about rewriting and correcting the first unsatisfactory Gospel.”
― Alan Dundes University of California, Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore