stephan huller

This is a very good point. The gospel is written from the POV of a fairy tale. It is not eyewitness testimony. The Marcionites explicitly denied that it was associated with a particular person. The only reason we think it is, is because Luke tells us so. But the gospel of Mark doesn't even reveal itself as a gospel 'according to Mark' - its just in the heading that was added to the manuscript, undoubtedly deliberately.

It is also worth noting that τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μᾶρκον is only improperly translated as 'by Mark.' It actually is better translated as "the gospel in Mark's version" which doesn't imply eyewitness testimony. Indeed the Catholic tradition goes out of its way to say that Mark was not there as an eyewitness.

PhilosopherJay

Hi stephan huller,

Yes, the title of Mark's Gospel indicates a writer attributing the gospel not to himself, but to somebody else. We should expect a title of "The Gospel that Jesus taught me by Mark of ____, if this was actually the writing of somebody claiming to be an eyewitness.

Good point about Luke. As I have noted before in posts, it is the mistranslation of αὐτόπται as "eyewitness" in the prologue of Luke that has messed up people's understanding of the work. The word means something like a self-envisoning or self-seeing usually after a long journey or long study. So after being told about the magic mountain all night, you might finally see it in a dream or vision for yourself. That is what αὐτόπται seems to mean most often in ancient works. It is probably what the writer meant.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Adam

Thanks, Jay and Stephan,
But titles added decades later are less relevant to me than what internal criticism of the gospels show me. Here's an example: In Mark 16:7 the quote reads, "Go and tell his disciples and Peter.....
What a kick! Peter tells young Mark, "The angel said to go and tell me and the rest of the disciples...." and soon enough it reads "disciples and Peter" and then in Matthew 28:7 just "tell his disciples".

Sheshbazzar

Big deal. Horse shit in, horse shit out. What else should one expect ?
Different day, but still that same old line of horse shit.

Adam

I'm returning to my basic thesis with the details I added in my Post #11 here. My Posts #12 and #17 through #19 were exploratory. I'm even quoting the above from #11 to tie in with authors I elaborate below. Both are being added to my basic

Gospel Eyewitnesses Post #74 text.

Heretofore I have argued for the Apostle Matthew as the author not just of Q1 but of qT.
However, a stronger argument supports Q-like narrative (I call qT) coming from a different person that he who wrote Q1. The fact is that no name but Jesus (if even Jesus) is mentioned in Q1 at all, yet qT has lots of names. We expect more names in narrative, of course, but the complete contrast is too sharp. Even in the shorter Q2 the name “Peter” occurs at Luke 12:41. Looking at the qT material in Luke reveals the names “Peter” or “Simon” occurring at several places where “Andrew” has been added in the comparable passages in Mark: Luke 4:38 and 5:1-11 vs. Mark 1:29 and 1:16.

In the contrasting variant headed towards Mark (qTM) as above there is the clue from the names that John or Andrew may have been the source. However, this likely got associated with the document along the way to its form as we see it in canonical Mark and Matthew. Apparently it adhered to a subculture in Galilee that recognized Resurrection appearances of Jesus only in Galilee, based on a misunderstanding of what the earlier text had said. Thus the variant of qT in Mark and Matthew (qTM) needs to be read with caution, especially where it diverges from the comparable text in Luke.

About Q2 there is the hint that Peter’s name occurs at Luke 12:41. That he was associated (as above) with Q1 makes it more likely that he would have been accessible for the later stage when Greek was the language used in editing. Similarly, Peter’s involvement in Ur-Marcus (basically the part of gMark that had no connection to the q1 or qT process) facilitated the eventual merger of the two documents.

Here is additional argument on Q I believe I have only linked to in the past:
One commonly hears that there are no Q passages in the Gospel of Mark. This is incorrect. The discovery of the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas at Nag Hammadi in 1946 revealed sayings in it that are in Mark, and not just from Matthew and Luke. Although this could mean that the text of Thomas was based on the completed Synoptic Gospels, close study shows that it is more likely that the parts of Thomas that overlap the canonical Gospels are based on a source text they share in common, namely Q or some variant thereof. Unless the writer of Thomas also had access to Ur-Marcus, this shows that Thomas picked up some of the same parables from Q that Mark included. It thus seems that Ur-Marcus was almost completely narrative text with even fewer sayings than we commonly attribute to Mark.

The Q Source could have been written very early. It was [mostly] written in Aramaic, judging by the sections that Mark and Luke have in common that lack verbal exactitude. The word “Twelve” (meaning the 12 Apostles) appears so often in this that it is commonly called the Twelve-Source. The name Matthew (or Levi) occurs where this text begins (as at Luke 5:27), and early external tradition names the writer as this Matthew, so this material could have been from an eye-witness or could even have been first put in writing during the lifetime of Jesus.
(source: http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common )