Mark 5:27 - A Small Clue to Consider in the Synoptic Mystery

In Mark 5:21-43 (chapter 21 of the Greek text) and Matthew 9:18-26 and Luke 8:40-56 the testimony of Saint Veronica is related - the woman who had suffered for twelve years from hemorrhages until the day she met Jesus.

In Matthew 9:20, and in Luke 8:44, after the word ηψατο, both read του κρασπέδου του ιματίου αυτου.  Mark 5:27, though, reads του ιματίου αυτου,  without του κρασπέδου . . . or did he?

There's instability in the text of Mark 5:27 - WH1881  Souter1910 and  NA25 had τα after ακουσασα but this was changed; NA27 does not have τα in the text.  Thee pertinent variant involving του κρασπέδου is not included in the textual apparatus of the UBS and NA compilations.  The text of family-1, 021 (M - Campianus), 33 and 579  include του κρασπέδου in Mark 5:27!   

It's a natural harmonization to Matthew (and Luke), and entirely benign - but the majority of manuscripts do not have it.  Apparently more than one scribe working independently, including the scribe responsible for the archetype of family-1, felt led (erroneously) to add του κρασπέδου to Mark's account.  

This means something regarding the literary relationship between the texts of the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Luke as we know them (the Synoptic Problem).  Advocates of the Two-Source Solution and the Four Source Hypothesis operate on the premise that Matthew and Luke borrowed material from Mark's account - Matthew enlarging Mark's account via the inclusion of his transcripts of Jesus' discourses, and Luke enlarging Mark's account via the inclusion of the testimonies of various eyewitnesses.  

Matthew closely followed Mark's report about Jairus' daughter and Veronica - but not in this little detail about specifying that she thought about touching the hem of his garment.  Why did Matthew and Luke both mention this detail and not Mark?

I propose that neither Matthew nor Luke had copies of the Gospel of Mark in front of them when they composed their Gospels.  Instead, they had two forms of Proto-Mark - Mark's collections of Peter's remembrances about Jesus as the written collection existed in the early 60s, not as the Gospel of Mark existed when officially released in Rome c. 67-68.  And in Proto-Mark, the words του κρασπέδου were present in the text, eliciting their inclusion by Matthew and Luke.  When preparing  the definitive text of his Gospel, Mark himself committed parablepsis:  his line of sight drifted from the του of του κρασπέδου to the του of the following phrase (του ιματίου αυτου).

An interesting lesson in how the Holy Spirit bears with human weakness even in the production of the Word of God.

For reference:  My solution to the Synoptic Problem: