I'm grateful to Richard Bauckham for permission to quote his response to the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis videos as follows:


"Brilliant videos! ...

My only serious query is that you accept 'alternating primitivity' without question. On the usual 2DH account, Luke is more primitive far more often than Matthew is. Judgments about what is 'more primitive' are, of course, often debatable. I am inclined to question whether there is ever a compelling argument for Matthew's version being more primitive. Or if we do conclude that just occasionally he is, then it may only be a case of Matthew's occasional awareness of an oral tradition of the same material. I am really dubious whether the evidence requires anything significant enough to be called a 'common source' or 'common sources.' Matthew certainly has sources other than Mark and Luke and maybe just occasionally they overlapped with Luke, but that doesn't really have to mean that Luke knew the same source as one of Matthew's. ... 

The two scribal practices - scroll and codex - is an excellent idea. Of course, working with scrolls needn't be quite as impractical as you suggest - because one could use notebooks and/or assistants with different sources open in front of them. ... 

Anyway, your arguments are compelling."

In my reply I made the following response wrt alternating primitivity:

"Everything you say about alternating primitivity is true. In the next set of videos I'll show why, on one or two occasions at least, it looks as though Matthew has conflated Luke with Luke's own source."

Thanks Chris Tilling for blogging about my take on Matthew's use of Luke. This type of solution is, of course, not new to the blogosphere. Mark Goodacre responded to a question about Matthew's use of Luke a few years ago. I've added some 'one line' responses to his arguments in the comments after that blog post. If you'd like more detail on any of Mark's points, or have other objections of your own, then please post them here.