“When one student is copying the work of another, changes are sometimes made at the beginning of an account, which are not continued throughout. The writer lapses into simple copy and paste. This leads to continuity errors, and just like in movies, these are unconscious mistakes, small errors of detail which arise when trying to keep all the changes straight in your head.

For example, a student finds a Higher English creative essay on Google and makes some changes to throw off the plagiarism check. Changes the location to Dublin, the main character to butcher, and his vehicle to a Transit Van. But he slips up, and in one paragraph the van becomes a Nissan NV200. Sure, that could just be a simple typo, but if we know a similar story featuring a Nissan NV200, then the veil slips and alarm bells start wringing that the student has copied his story.

This is particularly plausible when one notes that Matthew’s account is considerably shorter than Mark’s: Matthew has abbreviated Mark and accidently created continuity errors by removing or changing the place, time, or people involved in a story, but then later on referring to the missing material later in the story.

The obvious explanation for the inconsistencies of Matthew’s account is that he is copying from Mark.

Dr Mark S. Goodacre is a New Testament scholar and Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Duke University. Dr Goodacre earned his BA., M.Phil. and PhD in Theology at the University of Oxford. He is a leading scolar on the Gospels and a practicing Christian.