Once again Mark adds what would be Petrine reminisces (the whole of the party; speaking to Jesus about it; the "whole city" (!) being at the door -- and probably asking Peter for stuff to eat and drink!). The evidence here suggests that Luke has made more use of Mark (for he uses also the note about speaking to Jesus, and perhaps that the fever left instantly, and below the time when this happened), and also that he was not slavishly copying, but making notes that he used in his own composition. Is there any reason though to see Mark prior to Matthew? None -- the one surd is that Matthew displaces this episode from the Marcan order; this tells us perhaps that Matthew was not copying Mark or Luke, but it hardly keeps him from having the tradition independently and moving it on his own (or Luke from having it in the current order in a copy of Ur-Matthew).

Styler [Bell.2S, 80] creatively supposes that Markan priority is proven (indeed, he rather obnoxiously claims that this single example is "sufficient" to prove it!) in that Matthew leaves the "at evening" timing intact, which is pointless unless as in Mark it is shown that it took place on the Sabbath, for otherwise, people would not wait until sunset to bring their sick to be healed. This would work just as well work under a paradigm of Markan and Matthean independence, but it is wrong anyway. The heat of the day, not the Sabbath, functions just as well as an explanation of why the people waited. Indeed if Jesus healed on the Sabbath already during the day, Styler's objection is ridiculous.

One added thing of interest here is the same sort of purposeful compression/displacement we see in Matthew's use of the demoniacs. Luke has displaced the comments about what the demons cried out from a pericope paralleled in Matthew 12:15-21/Mark 3:7-12, which he himself skips over in the Markan AND Matthean scheme. This is a good illustration of the compositional freedoms considered normal in this day (and not to be called "errors" by critics). Matthew also adds his own redactive point from the OT as part of his teaching paradigm (and his version is from the Hebrew text as a matter of fact).

One argument made here for Markan priority is that Mark "might be interpreted" [Stein, 68] as "meaning that Jesus lacked sufficient power to heal 'all' and could only heal 'many'." Stein however admits that such a conclusion is "not necessary" because even in Mark "all" and "many" are synonyms (Mark 1:32, 34) and adds that "'Many' is a Semitism for 'all'." Stein's argument that Mark "could be misunderstood" is therefore without foundation by his own admission. Moreover it depends on a highly "paranoid" reading of Mark which reads "And he healed many who were sick" not as saying many came to him and were healed, but "And he healed many who were sick, but not all of them" and then must insert additional paranoia: "but not all of them, because he could not". And the only grounds for such a reading is based in Mark 6:5, which is commonly misread (see here).

An argument for a Q document is made in that Luke does not offer Matthew's fulfillment formula. Intelligibly this could be for one of two reasons without resort to Q:

1. Luke omitted the OT cite because it would not be intelligible or useful to his Roman reader.
2. The cite did not appear in the Ur-Matthew used by Luke, but was only used in Matthew's second, didactic edition.

Ur-Matthew Reconstruction