Timothy, thanks for reading my post. I appreciate your comments and the time you took to write them. I fully see your point, especially the part about avoiding the discussion. Seeing that my comment is not crucial to the point I am trying to make, I would rather leave it out than give a more lengthy explanation.  One of the common complaints I receive from people who know me is that I tend to complicate the issues by getting into too much detail. I happen to love the detail, but I do not want to lose my readers either.

At the same time, "big monkey scholars" are not my target audience. Yet, strangely enough, I would be amused to find a scholar had been examining my work.  Certainly a number of scholars would challenge many more of my statements if they read them.

Still, I will consider a better, more accurate way to point out that Mark was probably at least earlier than Matthew, Luke and John.

Dan