gstafleu

There is an interesting structure to this king-yes-no business in Mark 15. The structure is:

(a) statement of one answer (yes or no)
(b) action that confirms this
(c) negation of the answer just given

as follows:

15:2 (a) Yes--but weakly, serves also to introduce doubt
15:6-7 (b) Confirm Yes by offering royal substitute
15:11 (c) Crowd makes "wrong" choice, negating the Yes

15:11 (a) No--notice double function of this verse.
15:17-20 (b) Confirms No via mockery
15:21 (c) Yes--only a king gets a substitute, negating the No

15:21 (a) Yes--again double function for verse
15:26 (b) Confirms Yes via sign on cross
15:23-37 (c) Jesus dies unregally and kings are not supposed
to die, negating the Yes

No doubt this can be refined, but is seems interesting as is. We also have a surrounding structure, where we start with doubt (Jesus ambiguous answer to Pilate) and end with doubt: The sign on the cross clearly says "King" while the dead body proclaims the opposite. In between these bookends we're on a roller coaster.

Gerard Stafleu

neilgodfrey

Schmidt's article is online.

Unable to reply more fully at this point - perhaps on weekend.

Solo

...not to say, eisegetical

Jiri

Gamera

The tradition sprang up (and you're taxing my memory as to when and where it appears), that Paul's Rufus was the son of Simon. It doesn't matter so much that it is true or false but that people knew the tradition, which might have informed Mark or a later redacter to mention Simon's sons, not his father, since his son Rufus was "famous."

Gamera

Is there really a difference?

Gamera

Gadera was the original Japanese version

Ben C Smith

Thanks for the link, Neil. I have now read the article once through, and will print it out for further investigation.

In the meantime, one thing that jumps out at me is that Schmidt is operating under the rubric of Mark manipulating materials at his disposal, not necessarily composing freely:

Scholars have long recognized that the Evangelists do not simply report the events of Jesus’ life. They select, arrange and modify material at their disposal to stress important themes—like the connection between Jesus and the Old Testament, the inclusion of gentiles in the kingdom and the nature of discipleship.

Manipulating materials tends to restrict an author in a way that free composition does not. It is one thing to compose an allusion to a text or motif from little more than imagination, quite another to have to twist existing materials to make the same point.

Since Schmidt appears to assume that Mark is bending existing materials to his will, he is free to blunt many of the parallels with provisional language (may, suggest). Many of these parallels would not look very impressive if we assumed that Mark invented them for the very purpose of making the parallel.

The part about Simon of Cyrene is especially provisional; it even includes its own counterproposal:

The account of Simon’s requisition by the soldiers as cross-carrier may serve simply to suggest the wearying effect of a prolonged procession. But it may also suggest another formulaic element in a triumph. A consistent feature in the numerous monuments depicting triumphs is the sacrificial bull, led along dressed and crowned to signify its identity with the triumphator. But the bull is not alone. In nearly every one of these depictions, walking alongside the bull is an official who carries over his shoulder a double-bladed ax, the instrument of the victim’s death. The parallel might appear to be coincidental, but two remarkable details—Simon’s link to the community of faith via his sons and his having just arrived from out of town—suggest that Mark envisions his role as divinely planned. Like the official who bears the ax, Simon carries the instrument of the sacrifice’s—in this case Jesus’—death: the cross.

The relationship of the two remarkable details to the proposed parallel is opaque to me. First, how does the fact that Simon is a passerby suggest divine providence? Second, even if the sons being connected to the Christian community (did they convert because of what their father told them about this day?) points in some way to divine providence, how does divine providence in the selection of Simon of Cyrene to perform this task in any way show that the task parallels that of an axebearer in a procession? I do not understand this.

And yet again the explicit information in Mark that the Romans compelled Simon to do this interferes with the proposed parallel, since Simon is thus not really a part of the procession; he is an unwilling participant, a victim even. If Mark intended to bring a processional axebearer into his account, why include such a mitigating detail? Several better ways to do so spring to mind. Why not focus on a Roman soldier bearing the nails that would affix Jesus to the cross, for example? Why not something even less realistic? Schmidt has already used instances of unrealism to identify his parallels (such as the summoning of the entire cohort to beat a single prisoner). If Mark could use unrealistic features to signal connections to the triumph, he could make one of the soldiers carry the cross. If one of the soldiers carrying the cross seems to make a poor parallel with a processional axebearer, I submit that an innocent bystander pressed into service makes an even poorer parallel.

Suffice it to say that I find the whole parallel between the crucifixion and a Roman triumph debatable (is there even one feature that Schmidt does not introduce with a word like may or suggest?), though possible, and the parallel between the axebearer and Simon seems especially stretched.

But I would be interested in any comments you have on the matter.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Did that tradition spring up early enough to have influenced the composition of Mark? What is the earliest attestation for it? I myself am not aware of any such tradition.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

More fun to watch others getting beat up, I suppose.

Your hypothesis, which I hope I never have to see in print , would support the Mormon view that Jesus visited the Americas.

Ben.

spin

This is typical BAR crap. It depends on the necessity of a scribal error. The author wants QRNYT to be QRNYH, which the author wants to be a gentilic, Cyrene. We can be sure that the Aramaic found in the Peshitta provides QWRYN) for the place name and QWRYNY) for the gentilic. (Quirinius, in Greek kyrenios is QWRYNWS in Aramaic.) This means that the second letter is significant and would not have been omitted as in the theory of the author.


spin