Vorkosigan

Bede, your blog is shockingly white. IMHO you should change the sidebar color so it's not so....white. Add some color! Also, get a pic of your smiling self there too, with a natty background so you look authoritative. A key blog feature, you know.

Amaleq13

The fact that this comment by Bede suggests total ignorance of John Dart's work certainly renders his unnecessarily condescending "comment" about scholarly pretensions at the end of the article wonderfully ironic.

CJD

Folks, "John Dart" is rarely found in an NT scholar's bibliography. Wake up.

CJD

Toto

Dart is a journalist and primarily a popular writer. Decoding Mark was published in 2003.

John Dart

Peter Kirby

Many thanks to Vorkosigan! Shamelessly taking the outer brackets from his tentative page, I constructed a chiasm in 25 parts (center M). It may have some interesting parts for Vork and others looking at this, so I will scan it in when I get it back.

best,
Peter Kirby

Amaleq13

That is clearly irrelevant and entirely misses the point which, amusingly enough, renders the implied criticism of inattentiveness almost as ironic as the criticism it attempts to defend It was asserted that "no one" except Michael had ever made the observation of chiasms in Mark despite the fact that Dart is referenced by the individual criticized. One is forced to wonder if anything beyond a casual glance was involved on the part of the critic but, regardless of the amount of genuine consideration given, it clearly renders ironic any disparaging comment about scholarly pretensions.

Bede

I fear you misrepresent me. That there are chiasmus constructions in the bible is old hat (if still wrong) - I found them discussed in scholarly literature going back to the 1930s. But Michael is the first person to 'unravel' the structure he presents (he didn't copy it but figured it out for himself). Thus your point is invalid and mine is correct.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Bede

BTW and FWIW, the episodic structure of Mark makes it very suitable for splicing, slicing and dicing in all sorts of ways. None of this was realised by the author who simply wrote something that lends itself to be analysed in this way.

B

Amaleq13

Fear not, you have been quite accurately represented by me though apparently less so by yourself.

No kidding. You mean he isn't plagiarizing? Wow. I'm so glad you came along to point that out.

If you had actually intended to make such an unnecessary observation, you should have been much more specific in your sniping.

"Are we to believe that Mark has gone to all this trouble to create something that no one prior to Turton has noticed?"

This clearly suggests that no one has ever noticed chiasms in Mark, not just the specific ones Michael presents, and that is just as clearly untrue.

Feel free to rewrite it to change the error to a pointless observation but don't kid yourself that you've "debunked" anything.

Amaleq13

Interesting notion. Now go find a similarly structured text and show that chiasms are just as easy to present. Then you'll be on your way to actually debunking Vorkosigan's efforts.

Were you born with the ability to read the mind of the author or did you learn this extraordinary skill?