Vorkosigan

Hiya, folks. On page 91-92 of The Jesus the Jews Never Knew Frank Zindler makes an "argument" for the interpolation of the passage in which Herod beheads JBap. This "argument" actually depends on a single thread, Zindler's claim that there is a seam between 6:13 and 6:30.

I've been bothered by that passage for a couple of months, but couldn't pin down why until in a conversation the other day on another web forum. Here are the largely literary and stylistic reasons I've come up with for this passage being interpolated:

1. The author of Mark nowhere else mentions the Book of Esther, which is odd because he has a habit of citing a book which he parallels elsewhere in the Gospel. 6:14-29 is big, and it would be unusual for a structure of this size not to pop up somewhere else. There may be wrong, as at least one scholar claims to have found Esther 2:18-23 parallels Mark 15:6-7 (I couldn't see any parallels myself, but I haven't read the argument, just the statement).

2. The story is intercalated between the two halves of the sending of the disciples but not in the writer's usual deft way in which one story comments on the other when they are sandwiched together. A good example of the typical style is Peter's denial, in the A-B-A' format. While Jesus affirms who he is Peter is out in the courtyard, denying who Jesus is. Then even as the soldiers mock Jesus and tell him to "Prophesy!" as if he can't, his prophecy of Peter's denial is coming true out in the courtyard. There just doesn't seem to be that same structure here where one part speaks to the other.

3. Another strike here is that while Mark often writes off the OT, and sometimes off Jewish legends and stories, it's rare that a passage of such length is entirely without allusions to OT verses in the details. For example, in the Cleansing of the Temple, the story frame is Jehu's cleansing of the Temple of Ba'al, but the verses themselves are not taken from 2 Kings, but from Zechariah, Nehemiah, and Jeremiah. Similarly, in the Annointing of Jesus at the house of SImon the Leper, the frame is again the Elijah-Elisha cycle, but the structure of the story is from Samuel, and there are cites of Deut and other texts in the verses. The writer of Mark likes citing the Psalms, Prophets, and Daniel, and these are nowhere in evidence in this story of Herod.

4. the writer of Mark does not use the novelistic Jewish literature like Esther at all, except perhaps a bit of Tobit in Mark 16.

5. Mark 6 is an inverted parallel of Mark 3. Guess what story is not paralleled in Mark 3? You guessed it: JBap's death.

All in all, I think I am leaning toward the interpolation explanation for Mark 6:14-29

the_cave

Depends on what you mean by "interpolation". Again, we're kind of at odds here--but it's really just our different approaches: I look at Mark and see many sources that have been assembled (or that was rewritten before it became the Gospel of Mark) and you see a narrative (the Gospel of Mark) that has been edited. It just depends on your emphasis--if you think there was an "original" Gospel of Mark that was nothing more than an Elijah-Elisha parallel, and that it forms the backbone of the gospel, then you could say it's an interpolation (I would at least agree the material was added into another text). But if multiple sources came together, or were simultaneously used in the writing of the "Gospel of Mark", then I guess you could call it an interpolation, but it would seem a little misleading.

Vorkosigan

That's a very good point. So you think the monolithic nature of 6:14-29 represents the fact that the writer of Mark simply stuck in his source without much editing? It's certainly true that GMark is assembled out of many components.....