Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Solo · 06-20-2010, 07:38 AM

Professor Aichele hits on a very important theme which is too often forgotten or simply not understood. It is the element of fantasy in the gospels, and especially in Mark. Aichele speaks of the irreducible, opaque remainder of the text which simply cannot be de-fantasized by "belief" or "disbelief" of the reader. The quote comes from an essay from Cross Currents (linked on Mark Goodacre's web site).

Quote:

In the creeds and established theologies of the Christian churches, Jesus of Nazareth is identified with the second Person of the Holy Trinity, an historically incarnate divine being, who although innocent of any sin freely gave his life as a sacrifice so that people who believe in his divinity and follow his ways will be granted salvation in this world and the next. For the typical contemporary reader of the Gospels, Jesus and his words and his deeds are "fantastic" only in the sense that they are extraordinary. Where supernatural events or revelations occur in the Gospel stories, they appear as eruptions within the everyday "primary world" of a "secondary world," the world of the marvelous.(n3)

Like J. R. R. Tolkien's fairy-stories, the myth of Jesus at the center of Christian belief concerns a secondary world. The miracles, resurrection, and birth stories represent a narrative realm to which one might want to escape. This secondary world is constructed in the reader's imagination from her experience of the primary world, but she believes it to be even more real than the primary world is. For the believer, the secondary world of heaven is not imaginary or pretended; it is the real, eternal place of God and of those who love God. It is not a fantasy.

Such a reading overlooks fantastical elements which play an important role in the reading of the Gospels. (It reads the Gospel stories as Christian myth--as something to be believed or disbelieved, as the case may be.) An irreducible, opaque remainder of the text is not finally consumed and absorbed along with the rest. A stupid monument, a marker of the limits of meaning, appears at points at which the Gospels resist interpretation and reading becomes difficult. This undigestible remainder, this unexplainable residuum, marks the fantastic.

The reader's belief (or disbelief) seeks to de-fantasize the text. The desire to explain this remainder, either in terms of a history of the text's production (fragility of tradition, editorial sloppiness, problems of translation) or in terms of theology (pre-understandings of terms such as "son of man" or "kingdom of God," of what or whose spirit was "in" Jesus), or in terms of the reader's response (what may be assumed regarding the "naive" or the intended or the implied reader)--all of this is denied satisfaction.

The fantastic lies at points of indeterminability between two narrative genres, the marvelous and the uncanny.(n4) These genres represent two different worlds; each genre points to a mythic reality which grounds the meaning of its literary instances. In the world of the uncanny, very strange events occur, but no matter how strange they are, they can always be given a natural explanation. On the other hand, the world of the marvelous is a supernatural one, in which gods, angels, or demons are quite real. The fantastic occurs when the identity of a character, the explanation of an event, or some other feature of a story is suspended between the marvelous and the uncanny, having no obvious natural or supernatural explanation. The reader is then unable to determine the generic identity of the narrative, as well as the nature of the reality to which it refers. Fantasy foils belief.

This is very true. Most people don't blink an eye when they read something like:

Mk 3:20-21 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, "He is beside himself."

(why is Jesus out of his mind if it is the people who want to be with him who cannot or will not eat ?). Further, Mark is insistent about this:

Mk 6:31 ...For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

Mk 8:1 In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat

I am sure that the great exegets notice (alas do not tell us) that even Jairus daughter just back from the dead has the problem ...:

Mk 5:43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Why won't they eat when they are interacting acting with Jesus ?

How about the bizzare crowding of Jesus in the story ?

Mk 2:2-4 And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him;

Ok, but the same thing happens with the woman with the issue of blood:

Mk 5:30-31 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, "Who touched my garments?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, 'Who touched me?'"

And Jesus even takes precautions:

Mk 3:9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they should crush him; for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him.

What is this ? a healing frenzy ?

What do people here figure these things are saying ? Are they completely random ?

How about Jesus attempting to feed of a tree out of season ?

Or Timaeus, the beggar throwing off his shirt when told to join in ?

Or the cupping of Jesus eyes by the nasty guards who demand that he prophesy while they slap him around ?

What do you think ? What is your sense of this ? One is Mark was inserting these events simply as nonsense themes to increase the drama in creating (recreating ?) the unreality of a protracted inner experience with altered mentation. Another one - or a complement to the first purpose - is that Mark is simply pulling the leg of all those readers who are not in the know.

The interesting thing about Jesus addressing the fear of the disciples that they have seen an apparition walking on a stormy lake, is that he does not deny the spiritual nature of his appearance. His reassurance could be read as : 'don't worry, it's the one you know'. And even if he was denying he was a ghost; it was merely a suggestion, not a guarantee.

Let me know what you think.

Jiri

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