Ted Hoffman

I remember.
They were literary doublets. A different sort of doublet.
Um, Tacitus? Induction problem anyone?
John is dependent on the synoptics. It is such a late document it most likely relied on the gospels for the story of Jesus and added the Christology of the Johannine community.

Ted Hoffman

Seriously though we see in articles like Doublets in the Odyssey, by K. O'Nolan
The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 28, No. 1, (1978), pp. 23-37 that most doublets are plays with words. Repeated imagery, ornamental formulaic expressions etc. They are not repeated scenes or scenes framed using earlier scenes as we see in Mark.

Jeffrey Gibson

I take it that you yourself have never actually read the Odyssey.

I'm also wondering if you are misusing the term "doublets". Could you point us to the places in GMark where we find the whatever it is you are calling "doublets"?

Jeffrey

Ben C Smith

Good to know. But your statement could be taken in two different ways; were the Marcan doublets the literary ones, or were the Josephan doublets the literary ones? And what kind were the doublets in the other body of work (whichever it was)?

Furthermore, could you please give some examples of doublets from Josephus and from Mark so that we can all see that they are of different kinds (literary and whatever label you see fit to give the other kind)?

What do you mean by an induction problem?

When you searched Tacitus, did you find no doublets at all, or did you find only the wrong kind of doublet?

Did you search Thucydides (particularly book 8)? Did you search Polybius? Did you search Livy?

That is certainly one view. There are others.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

In context, you are speaking about the doublets in the Odyssey here. But is it your claim that there are no repeated scenes or scenes framed using earlier scenes in the Greco-Roman historians?

One more thing. I myself do not tend to group Mark with the Greco-Roman histories. Rather, I see Mark as a form of biography. Have you perchance searched any of the biographies for doublets?

Ben.

Jeffrey Gibson

Ben,

You might wish to know that Ted/Jacob apperas to be engaged in equivocation when he cites O'Nolan as his authority for the supposed non existence of "doublets" in ancient literature, especially since there seems to be a vast difference between the way that NT scholars use the term and the meaning O"Nolan gives to it -- i.e. " a combination of two terms which are to all intents synonymous".

So in addition to wondering if Jacob/Ted has actually read the Odyssey to see if Homer employs there what I think Ted means by "doublets" (i.e., intercalations, and the literary technique known as inclusio), I have to wonder whether he's actually read the O'Nolan article he points us to. If he has, he has certainly misunderstood what O"Nolan is on about.

Jeffrey

Ben C Smith

We will just have to see what exactly Jacob means by doublets. The term has been used of many different phenomena. In the way Sir J. C. Hawkins classified doublets, for example, Mark actually contains very few of them. But I have seen the feedings of the 5000 and the 4000 classified as doublets, too.

I myself tend to view intercalations and its cousin the inclusio technique in a bit different light than I do doublets. But we shall have to wait and see what Jacob means.

Ben.

spin

Just so that we all have some sort of idea what O'Nolan was talking about with "doublet", it was not at the narrative level, but at the phrasal level. Ben C.'s use of doublet (as would be mine) is a narrative section that is used elsewhere, but to O'Nolan it is a combination of words, usually a noun and a descriptive word or phrase which are closely related to each other semantically, to me so much so that some verge on tautological. Examples include "hollow caves", "sea-surrounded islands", "many-holed sponges", "immortal gods". Others simply involve common descriptors that tend to become formulaic "stout spear", "sharp bronze", "Olympian Zeus"...


spin

Ted Hoffman

Read my review and search for the word "doublets." I have read the Odyssey but haven't studied it.

Ted Hoffman

They were all literary. One is stylistic (Homer) the other is also stylistic (words, epithets, expressions) but involves recreating an event for example based on an earlier one (Mark) - hence making certain events non-historical.
I cannot do this right now due to time constraints. You can look at the referenced article to see some of the doublets in Homer and for my article for the doublets in Mark. If you are not satisfied with that, I cannot help you.
Science - that an experiment is not necessarily predictable because we haven't tried it in all possible worlds. Well the historical books I know of don't have doublets in form of repeated events. I dont have to read all historical books to prove this. Badgering me about whether I have read all history books cant help. You present one that has repeated scenes and you have falsified my argument. Plain and simple.
I dint find the right kinda doublet.
Why should I do that? Do they repeat events and scenes? Or you don't know?

They are all wrong. Take it from me.