davidstarlingm

Or was mocking someone by putting a fake crown and a robe on them a fairly common and nonchalant practice?

We may never know....

jgoodguy

Yea it was all part of the plan according to Paul.

There are other possibilities. The attack on the 'money changers' would not sit well with the authorities, nor the attraction of crowds, and he could have said the wrong phase at the wrong time. He could have planed his whacking with the idea that God would send his angels to save him and wipe out the Roman oppressors. Maybe Pontius Pilate was having a bad day.

There are lots of possibilities, human life was not well regarded.

Evidence is non existent however to decide which.

yalla

Well apparently, so I understand, it was.
The Feast of the Saturnalia had several of the elements common to Philo's description of the Alexandrian event and "Mark's" gospel depiction of JC's procession.
So it was a common theme/motif of the time.

Here is just one description.

"The community selected one person to be King of Saturnalia. This mock king directed his subjects to get drunk, dance, carouse and be blatantly lewd and lascivious. At the close of the festival he was expected to cut his own throat on Saturn's true altar and thus restore order"

From here:
http://peterconrad.tripod.com/season...aturnalia.html

But the similarity between the names Carabbas, from Philo's account, and Barabbas from that of "Mark" was probably unique and only in those two accounted and cannot be explained by a general common mocking.

That suggests some borrowing going on.

davidstarlingm

I don't have any way of comparing the source documents, so I don't know how similar the Greek "Carabas" was to the Greek "Barabbas". But I would note that "Barabbas" is an easily recognizable Hebrew name, comprising "Bar-" (son of) and "Abba" (father). I'm not certain that this is anything more than a coincidence, but if borrowing was going on, then it at least makes sense that "Carabas" was a corruption of "Barabbas" and not the other way around.

yalla

Well Philo was known as a highly literate hellenic Alexandrian Jew and if we accept that he wrote earlier than that work by the author of the gospel of "Mark", by at least a few decades, then there is a case that the events of Alexandria denoted the citizens basing their criticism of Agrippa on the customs related to the Roman Saturnalia and this was later appropriated by "Mark" for his own purposes.

In the Alexandria event the 'fool' nominated as "King", as a parody of Agrippa, was named Carabbas.

Later, some decades later, perhaps many, the author of "Mark" borrowed not only the mocking and crowning of the king JC by the crowd in Jerusalem from the Saturnalia in general but from the previous writing of Philo [perhaps directly having reading such or just having heard of Philo's story] and utilised the name, with a slight change, for another of the characters, that of the released prisoner, in his story.

The nearly exact similarity of the names seems to be too close for it just to be a coincidence doesn't it?

If the above possible sequence is valid then we have a case where an early historian has his work being co-opted into the non historical story of "Mark's" gospel.
This becomes a case where the lack of silence viz the presence of close congruity between the historian and the gospel writer is evidence that the gospel account is not history but has, at the least, borrowed names from the historian to be inserted into the gospel story.

andrewcriddle

The idea that the mock king of the Saturnalia was expected to kill himself (or be killed) at the end of the Festival goes back to Frazer's Golden Bough but the evidence is IMO rather flimsy.

Andrew Criddle

yalla

Andrew
Maybe, I don't know enough to have a strong opinion.
But this site limked below gives contemporary Roman sources for such customs as the low status people being allowed to wear badges of rank on their heads and the election of mock kings and the topsy turvy nature of the festival with respect to ranks.
And we have Philo's account in Flaccus where Agrippa was parodied in the personage of Carabbas and that has very close similarities to "Mark's' gospel story..
I don't think there is too much dispute that his story of the ridicule of Agrippa is credible and as such it contains several elements later used by "Mark" so the borrowing is on the part of the gospel writer.
It all depends, of course, on when you [generic] decide to date the writing of the gospel of "Mark".
Even the traditionalists seem to be coming around to a near consensus of post Roman Jewish War tho' some still try to keep it as early as the very late 60s CE.
If we [generic again], for arguments sake and being in a generous mood, accept that then that places the authorship of the first of the gospels [presuming "Markan" priority] some 2 decades after the death of Philo, as commonly stated, and even longer after the date of the Agrippa event in Alexandria.
It would be pretty hard to argue for Philo being the borrower.
And the common elements between the events as described in Philo's Flaccus and the later gospel are very close and strongly [IMO] hint at literary dependence.
Thus we have a case of a gospel story being based on an earlier work and thus diminishing its credibility as history.
Much the same as the link between Josephus being a source for "Luke".
And all the prophecy fulfilled etc from the Hebrew writings that saturate the gospels.

http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-dgra/1016.html

davidstarlingm

The names seem somewhat similar, but as I said before, I would be interested to see the original language; the apparent similarity may be a trick of Anglicanization.

How many accounts of this sort exist? Apparently this practice was fairly common, what with the feasts of Saturnalia and whatnot. Besides, it's not terribly imaginative. Putting a robe on a beggar or criminal and mocking the scene is the sort of thing that could have arisen independently.

Another point: the gospel accounts are are thoroughly different in setting, details, and actors. Very thoroughly different. If the author of Mark borrowed the account from Philo, he edited extensively, determined to make the account seem like an actual event. It doesn't seem likely that he would edit so many tiny details to synch it with his JC account, yet leave the one distinguishing element that would mark it as borrowed: the name of the central individual. As long as you're changing everything else about the account, why leave the same name? It doesn't make sense.

andrewcriddle

I was specifically commenting on this point I think there would be a shortage of candidates for mock king on this basis.
At face value the stories do not look like literary dependence but as expressing widespread cultural attitudes about ritualized mockery.

The point that might indicate literary dependence is the similarity of the names Barabbas and Karabas. (Unless one holds with a few scholars that Barabbas/Karabas was a title of the mock king rather than a personal name.) However a/ the names are not IMO all that similar b/ Barabbas in the Gospel story is not treated as a mock king even if Jesus is.

I find it hard to see a literary dependence that would a/ change the name from Karabas to Barabbas and b/ apply the role of Karabas in Philo not to Barabbas in Mark but to Jesus.

Andrew Criddle

yalla

I on the other hand not operating from a position of disbelief based on personal incredulity ["I find it hard to see ..."] and given the fact that there are several points of similarity between the two stories give the possibility of literary dependence greater weight than you obviously do.

That they are both "expressing widespread cultural attitudes about ritualized mockery" is quite probable but the double significance of the Philo incident is that is probably the predeccessor in time to "Mark's" adaptation written some decades later and that it is widely accepted [or so I understand] as a credible historical account.
Both chronology and credibility are important.

That "Mark"'s account bears many of the features that figure in Philo's should be grounds for suspicion that borrowing was occurring but that an element unique to Philo's account should be repeated adds strongly to the suspicion.
Of course with the main character in "Mark's" story having a predetirmined name, Jesus Christ, the option to call him Carabbas is closed so there is nothing strange about giving the name to another character associated with JC in the story.

Several items of similarity plus one outside the theme of ritualized mockery and, apparently, because I have not heard of any specific examples other than that of Philo where the name Carabbas, or close variant, has been used would, I submit, be normally taken as evidence for borrowing.

Particularly when a third aspect is noted.
Namely that "Mark's" gospel borrows material from other easily recognized sources frequently viz the Jewish scriptures which feature so prominently at all levels in "Mark's" story.
Was it Crossan who noted that most of the Passion story in "Mark" is derived in greater or lesser degree from the Hebrew sriptures, or some such similar comment?
My copy of the RSV has convenient footnotes that show some of the allusions and references and even direct quotes from the Hebrew texts that are used by "Mark", the number of such is legion for they are many.

That "Mark" borrowed and adapted is not in question.
The question is did he do so in this instance?