gstafleu

I'll come back to your other observations later (probably tomorrow). The good that such a bridge is, is that it makes it sound likely that there was such a bridge: "While I may not know who these kids were, apparently there must be some old geezers around who did know them." Remember, the bridge is a literary device. You have to make the audience feel that there is something spanning the gap between them and the events described in the story.

Gerard

aa5874

That is certainly not correct.

The author of Mark did not say that Mary the mother of James, Joses, Simon and Judas.

The author asked a question which he NEVER really answered and the author had at least 3 opportunities to answer his own question directly.

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary.....? Mark 6.3

Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother Mary?.....Matthew 13.55

Is not this Ben, the son of Mary?


Ben, is the son of Mary, correct?

Ben C Smith

More questions than observations, really.

Ah, so the device is possibly, in your view, an intentional attempt to make an unhistorical story seem more historical.

Now, are the intended readers buying it (thinking that there really are old geezers around somewhere who know these kids), or would these references rather be recognizable to them as nothing more than a literary device? If the former, what are the implications for genre, IYO? If the latter, do you have examples of this literary span the gap device in other ancient works?

Thanks.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

This is where one must consult the Greek. There is no way around it. If one does not know Greek, one must consult those who do (lexicons, commentaries, and so forth).

I doubt the following will have any impact on aa5874, but for those who like to learn stuff, here goes. Mark 6.3a:

Is not [ουχ] this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not [ουκ] his sisters here with us?

Including the word ου (which means no or not and is spelled ουκ when it comes before a nonaspirated vowel and ουχ when it comes before an aspirated vowel) in a question turns that question into one which expects an affirmative answer. Had the author used the other Greek word for no or not (μη), the anticipated answer would be negative. Had the author wished to avoid anticipating any answer at all, he would not have used any word for no or not in the question.

IOW, Mark portrays the Nazareth crowd as affirming (with a rhetorical question) that Mary was the mother of Jesus, that he had brothers, and that he had sisters, and he never denies that affirmation; indeed, he further affirms that Jesus does have a mother and brothers in Mark 3.31.

Ben.

Jeffrey Gibson

Really? I take it you have no clue of what the import of using οὐ (οὐκ, οὐχ) to introduce a question is.

Heck, it's donuts to dollars that you have no idea what the work οὐχ means, let alone that it appears in Mk. 6:3.

Jeffrey

the_cave

If the same author composed Mk 6:3, 15.40, 15:47, and 16.1, why was he so inconsistent in the way he names Mary? First he names four sons. Then he names only two, and calls one "the less". Then he uses only one--and the second in the list at that. Then he uses the first, but without "the less". If the same author composed all four verses and made up the character on the spot, it's much more likely he would have picked one phrase and stuck with it.

I find it unlikely that canonical Mark preceded all the other gospels. (In fact I find it unlikely it preceded any of them--they all seem to have used versions which differed in some way from canonical Mark.) Therefore the author of canonical Mark relied on prior texts just as much as any of them did--even if that prior text was a gospel called "Mark". He therefore could have found some of these names in a text he had, and assumed they were real characters. That is a textual reference. What was the original author of those names refering to? We don't know, but first we need to figure out which verses are from the author of canonical Mark, and which are from an earlier layer. IF there are at least two different authors, there could have been two different intentions.

Jeffrey Gibson

And perhaps you'd be gracious enough to tell us the nature and the degree of the depth of your study into the use of names, and the naming conventions used, by Hellenistic authors that underlies your knowledge and certainly of what would and would not be likely (let alone "much more likely", in any given Hellenistic author's use of names?

Jeffrey

Ben C Smith

That epithet the less or the little is telling; it seems designed to distinguish this James (in 15.40) from other men named James. In the gospel of Mark, then, it would serve to distinguish this James from James the son of Zebedee, James the brother of Jesus, and James the son of Alphaeus.

Ben.

gstafleu

This takes us a bit outside the scope of this thread, so I've given it its own thread.

Gerard

gstafleu

Correct.
Hard to say.
I'm not that well read in ancient lit, but how about the genealogy of Matthew? Here the author wants to establish a link with David. He does that by building a bridge between David and Jesus. Granted, he also goes back past David, but the bridge-via-descendants part is there. Maybe someone who is better read knows another example? Then again, maybe this was a Mark-original. (Isn't the "gospel" genre supposed to be a bit of a Mark original ?)

Gerard