Mark. Matthew, which for centuries had been viewed as a source for Mark and Luke, emerged as a substantive expansion of Mark. Mark, which for centuries had been viewed as an epitome of Matthew, emerged as one of two major sources for the composition of Matthew and Luke.

For the purpose of public assessment of MacDonald's work, Pervo and Stoops accept the criteria he sets forth and both question his particular application of them. Pervo praises MacDonald for setting forth "a general list of clear and explicit criteria," and Pervo considers this to be a significant advance over the work of previous scholars. He questions MacDonald's use of the criterion of "secondary improvement," asserting that his application presupposes a stable trajectory for the history of the apocryphal Acts alongside one another. The correlate of a secondary improvement is a mark of degeneracy, Pervo states, and here interpretation is especially open to the subjective judgment of the interpreter. Comparing the prison escape episodes in Acts of Paul 7 and Acts of John 72-73, Pervo questions MacDonald's interpretation of the keys in the two accounts, suggesting that his insights could be inverted, because the response in Acts of John is not at all theological. The Acts of Paul, in Pervo's view, could be dependent on the Acts of John, rather than vice versa as MacDonald views it. Then, turning to Acts of Peter and Acts of John, Pervo argues that, from a theological perspective, MacDonald's view could be inverted to suggest that Acts of John is prior to the best extant version of Acts of Peter. For Pervo, Acts of Peter 20-21 exhibits use of Acts of John 87-105. The topic of polymorphy in Acts of John appears to be a more original, integral theme, while in Acts of Peter it is more artistic. Also, the presentation of the Transfiguration appears to be more secondary in Acts of Peter. In addition, Acts of Peter is a consistently more "catholic" writing, a tendency that appears to be a "secondary improvement."

Pervo's argument that many of MacDonald's insights could simply be inverted calls to mind John Dominic Crossan's analysis a decade ago of the relation of Gospel of Peter to the NT gospels. For traditional interpreters, Gospel of Peter appears to be a compilation text that freely used and adapted portions of the Markan, Matthean, Lukan, and Johannine Passion accounts. Crossan displays a historical-critical and theological analysis and interpretation that inverts this process. For him, an early continuous narrative embedded in the Gospel of Peter, which he calls the Cross Gospel, was the earliest written account of the Passion. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John subsequently used various portions of this Cross Gospel as a resource when they composed their accounts (Crossan).

A major challenge for interpreters engaged in historical-theological interpretation is to break through "intuitive" presuppositions to display "counterintuitive" possibilities. The counterintuitive views that withstand rigorous public testing regularly set a new paradigm for research. The counterintuitive views that do not withstand rigorous testing function as catalytic, or