Mark's narrative seems to imply (vs. 46) that Jesus "meant to walk past them." Matthew implies, on the contrary, that Jesus was coming to their help. Matthew "spiritualizes" the account by adding the experiment of Peter: "Peter can do it so long as he has faith."[35] It has been observed that in this narrative, as in others which Matthew takes from Mark but which Luke omits, the verbal agreement is considerably closer than in the sections which Matthew and Luke both copy. Schmiedel has suggested that this points to a common document occasionally employed by Matthew and Mark but not by Luke. The hypothesis of a later assimilation of Matthew and Luke seems simpler. At all events, the very close agreement of Matthew and Mark in this narrative, up to the point where Matthew inserts the experiment of Peter, may possibly indicate that this latter is later than the body of Matthew's Gospel. Whether so or not, its presence is easily accounted for by Matthew's ecclesiastical point of view, the primacy of Peter being asserted by him in one other notable passage which occurs in Matthew alone. Probably Matthew has drawn these special passages about Peter from a source of his own, and, according to his custom, has here combined one of them with a narrative of Mark's.
This section is omitted by Luke. There are no sayings in it. Matthew's customary abbreviation is shown in his 44 words against Mark's 72; but there is much close verbal correspondence in spite of this.
Mark has an editorial comment about the scrupulosity of the Jews. It may be a later addition in his narrative, at least this may be the case with the words [Greek: kai pantes hoi Ioudaioi], which make it apply to the whole people and not simply to the Pharisees; or it may have seemed to Matthew to be somewhat exaggerated and have been omitted by him on that account. Its omission improves the connection in Matthew's narrative, and might be sufficiently accounted for by Matthew's tendency to omit superfluous or negligible portions of Mark's stories. In his vs. 11 (Matthew has transposed several verses) Mark has the Aramaic word [Greek: korban], omitted by Matthew. In Mark's vs. 19 occurs the phrase [Greek: katharizôn panta ta brômata]. The construction is loose, the nearest verb with which the participle can be connected being the [Greek: legei] of the first part of the preceding verse. This alone might have induced Matthew to omit it; still more, the implication, that Jesus had in this saying abolished the distinction between clean and unclean. Nor is it surprising that Matthew should omit, among Mark's list of the things that come out of a man's heart and "defile him," his mention of the "evil eye."