rhutchin

Which are thought to be...suggestive of...!!!

Do you mean that people have just flagrantly thrown these out as examples without having a clue as to what is going on?

Maybe those making the claims against Mark are the ones who are not familiar with the geography of the region of Palestine and don't really know what they are talking about.

rhutchin

Confusing yes. But not in error nor offering support for a claim of geological ignorance by Mark, unless you, or someone else, can provide an argument for the claim. Have you done this yourself or read such an argument from someone else?

Why would you include something like this in your list of examples of geographical error?

spin

This is a good example of christian misinformation to deal with a problem. rhutchin believes it because of his apologetic commitment, but it doesn't derive from the text. It is read into it, eisegesis.

Both Bethphage and Bethany were on the Mount of Olives. Mark clearly says that Jesus was getting closer to Jerusalem, ie he was traveling and obviously along the road which went around the mount on its lower slopes, passing first through Bethany and onto Bethphage or as Mark would want it vice versa. The notion of Jesus from some vantage point reflecting on these towns doesn't deal with the indication of Jesus moving closer to Jerusalem. We still have the inverted order of the small towns.

Here are the attempts of the other gospels to deal with the problem.

Matthew 21:1	Mark 11:1	Luke 19:28-9
And when they drew near to Jerusalem	And when they drew near to Jerusalem	..he went ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
and came to Bethphage,	to Bethphage and Bethany,	When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany,
to the Mount of Olives	at the mount of Olives	at the mount of Olives

Matthew, by omitting Bethany, totally resolves the issue. Luke changes the sense by shuffling verbs, but doesn't resolve the travel order.


spin

Chili

Bethany is intuiton and Bethpage is reason.

Matthew 'rides' both Bethpage and Bethany (its colt) into Jerusalem but leaves Jerusalem again. Then he encounters the withered fig tree showing his loss of 'continuity' and 'clings' to prayer.

Mark just 'rides' reason and totally ignores intuition but later finds refuge there outside the city.

Luke 'rides' intuition only into the New Jeruasalem and laments that the 'traders' have lost it from view. To Jesus a house of prayer is for the contemplative and remains in Jerusalem.

rhutchin

rhutchin

Big assumption - We have the inverted order of the small towns.

Has anyone figured out a way to explain why the order must have been inverted by Mark and why Mark's order of the villages is a "problem"?

By Matthew's account, the group did not enter Bethphage but stayed outside while two disciples went in to get the colt. So, did they really have to enter Bethany (about a half mile away supposedly) and can we know or must we assume what happened in order to create a problem that otherwise does not exist?

spin

No assumption if you read the text with the itinerary in mind. You just don't like the evidence so you reclassify it to suit your beliefs. And I can understand that if you have a commitment to the rightness of the text.

The second why is easily answerable. Draw a line, put Jericho at one end and put Jerusalem at the other, then at two intermediate parts of the line put Benthany and Bethphage. The line either passes through one or the other first moving from Jericho to Jerusalem. As the text states it is Bethphage, which doesn't represent reality.

For the second question you need to contact the writer. (And it is a red herring.)

You don't get that from the text. You don't know what the village opposite is. The text does say that they came to (εις usually means "into") Bethphage. The road may merely have passed Bethphage and the village opposite is that village, or they may have been in Bethphage looking at another close by. But it doesn't really matter: it's another red herring.

Let's assume that they didn't enter Bethany, but merely passed it. They still had to pass it before going on to Bethphage, didn't they?


spin