Toto

The book was the subject of a lot of discussion in this forum when it came out. It should be mentioned, however, that MacDonald, the author, is a practicing Christian and not a mythicist, and was somewhat taken aback by the meaning that infidels and Christians found in his work. He did not mean to suggest that Mark ripped off Homeric stories, or that the Homeric influences show anything about the historical Jesus.

He intended his work as an exercise in literary criticism, not history or theology. As literary criticism, it has some value, but you have to draw some inferences to get any conclusions from it as to history.

Ted Hoffman

Sounds like postmodernist piffle and reminds me of the Sokal incident.

In the spirit of abstruse obfuscation, I would respond to the statements above as follows:

Karl Olav's obscure hyphenation between broadcasted intertextuality and subtle emulation is an umbrated rearticulation of the structuralist approach that sought to treat structural totalities as discrete theoretical objects, purposefully for a diacrititical dismemberment of any theoretical stand. In this case, the theory under surgery is McDonalds fluid and hybridized exposition on mimesis. It seeks to disturb McDonald's form-critical discourse by roughly immersing an extratextual object from a rhetorico-critical sphere, in it. This extratextual object, the mechanism by which a reader is alerted about a textual phenomena, properly belongs to the domain of rhetorical criticism. It now crouches on McDonald's work, staring back at us, like a frog on a table napkin. Naturally, we have to fling it away.

Olav's univocal predication about the necessity of a broadcasted intertextuality as a basis of subtle and concealed emulation is hatched in a husk whose membrane exhibits absentation of a supporting textual framework. In essence, by failing to provide textual support for his intertextual broadcast argument, his enunciatory claim stands uprooted from the very medium it claims to be grounded upon, his critique stands ineffectual and isolated, like a mirror whose object of reflection is in the dark.

By faulting McDonald for failing to demonstrate authorial intention, Olav inadvertently pays pornographic homage to textual and rhetorical criticism in an arena of form criticism by attempting to fecundate a moist form-critic womb with a phallic textual-critical concept. McDonald's hypertextual exposition is underpinned by a form-critical foundation, even though it wears a textual veil. The OT intertextuality does not preclude Homeric influence and thus to advertise it whilst elbowing the untouched Homeric influence argument out of the way is an attempt at annihilation through the introduction of a red herring. Supplanting one theory in place of another, in the cover of profuse ineffable expressions, without thoroughly addressing the disfavored theory mimics the effects of rigor and profundity without actually doing any serious intellectual work.

His glib, long-haired lexically profligate remarks, and obverse preoccupation with textual-critical and rhetorico-critical concepts fail to camouflage the fact that he has focused on marginal issues while lamentably failing to touch the central pillar or MacDonald's thesis.

dog-on

That was pretty funny! And true.

jjramsey

Please. The guy uses a few three-dollar words, but the meaning is clear. Loosely translated, the author is saying that if Mark meant to emulate Homer, he would have given clear cues that he was doing so, much as other authors engaging in mimesis have done. He is also saying that MacDonald's comparisons are too strained to demonstrate his point.

Ted Hoffman

He says many things but illustrates nothing. Perhaps the required examples are included in the article in JBL. Does Mark give "clear cues" that the temple ruckus is based on the OT?

Malachi151

I don't think the central thesis is all that important anyway. Who cares if the intent was to alert readers that he was emulating Homer or not?

I think that McDonald's thesis can be thrown out and the information gained is still important.

It certianly shows how the Gospels compare to other works of the period, and gives many instances of events and circumstances that are reflected in earlier Homric works.

Ho cares if it was intentional or unintentional? The fact remains that the Gospel of Mark compares favorably to the fictional works of the time.

But, as has been pointed out, so do other historical works from the same period, but I think that in this case its clearly more fictional than other historical works, and indeed other historical works also have their flaws too. That doesn't make their inventiosn more real, it only points out that inventions were more widely used during that time to move narrative along, fictional or historical, and, by definition, inventions are not historical, so their existance, in either the Gospels or the works of Tacitus, Heroditus, or Pliney are just as much extranious as they are in the Gospels.

gregor

MacDonald's book was much discussed here two years ago when it came out. But I think it suffered from too much focus that caused too fast a fall - by that I mean that too much emphasis was placed on the assertion that Homeric influence equated to mythic Jesus.

When meritorious challenges were made to MacDonald's primary thesis of literary influence, the topic seemed to drop quickly. Then, the interesting literary analysis was ignored (at least in this forum).

robto

DRM clearly lays out his methodology (something many scholars fail to do), but IMO one point is pretty suspect: "transvaluation". This concept allows him to see parallels when the texts agree and also when they disagree. In the latter case, the author is "transvaluing" the source, changing it in order to make his character stronger or more noble than the source character. While DRM is certainly correct that this happens (think of how Matthew uses Mark, e.g), his examples using the epics seem pretty shaky.

The fact that Mark uses the OT extensively doesn't rule out that he also uses Greek epics. But here's another problem: why are the OT references so explicit and the epic ones so hidden? Why are there no verbatim quotations?

It's an interesting study, but not convincing IMO.

jjramsey

Well, there is Mark 11:17,

Jesus purportedly said this, a quote from Isaiah 56:7, while cleansing the temple.

Rick Sumner

One must wonder if any of the people lambasting Sandnes critique of MacDonald (a similarly critical review also appeared on the Bryn Mawr Classical Review) have bothered to read it. JBL 124.4 (in which it appears) is available online

MacDonald's approach has failed to impress classicists in general. His work on The Acts of Andrew was fairly crucified. His book on Acts was somewhat better received.

Just out of curiousity, how many books does he get to say are based on Homer before it begins to look a little suspect? At the rate he's going, he'll have the NT, the NT apocrypha and the NHL covered in another few years. It might bear citing perhaps the most oft-quoted article to come out of the Journal of Biblical Literature:

Regards,
Rick Sumner