Ancient Rhetoric as a Guide to Literary Dependence: The Widow’s Mite (Mark 12,14-44 par. Luke 21,1-4) in a recent book i argued that knowledge of ancient rhetorical con- ventions for improving upon literary sources can help us determine more plausible relationships among the Synoptic Gospels. i concluded also that such conventions strongly indicate that mark’s Gospel is earlier than, and adapted by, the Gospels of matthew and Luke 1. As such, this book sought to advance the study of the synoptic problem by grounding itself in the ancient context in which the evangelists worked. Earlier this year, a review essay by Andreas Lindemann of recent studies in the syn- optic problem commented that “Er ist sehr zu wünschen, dass D[amm] in weiteren Untersuchungen den so begonnenen Ansatz weiterführt” 2. in this essay, i wish to take up that invitation. more precisely, my purpose is to extend the conclusions of my earlier work by examining further evidence that the Gospel of Luke has rhetorically improved mark’s Gospel. To achieve this, we proceed in two steps. First, i wish to show briefly how insights in educational texts entitled progymnas- mata, and the rhetorical handbook tradition generally, can contribute to solving the synoptic problem; how they can help us infer which of the synoptic evangelists has more plausibly adapted the others’ work. Second, i shall test the aforementioned proposition by applying pro- gymnastic insights to gauge whether mark has more plausibly adapted Luke’s Gospel, or whether Luke has more likely adapted mark’s Gospel, in a rhetorical unit, a chreia, known as the Widow’s mite (mark 12,41-44 / Luke 21,1-4). Our study proceeds in two parts. in the first part, we discuss the value of the progymnasmata for inferring literary dependence. Here i shall summarize insights presented in my earlier work. in the second part, we shall appeal to mark 12,41-44 / Luke 21,1-4 as a test case for the relevance of classical rhetoric, underwriting the conclusions reached in my dissertation. 1 A. DAmm, Ancient Rhetoric and the Synoptic Problem. Clarifying markan Priority (BETL 252; Leuven 2013). All references will be to this work, not (with a few exceptions) to the primary and secondary sources which have informed it. 2 A. LinDEmAnn, “neuere Literatur zum ‘Synoptischen problem’”, ThR 80 (2015) 242. BiBlica 97.2 (2016) 222-243