Vorkosigan

The Chiasm in Mark 15

Instead of running over the usual arguments for Markan priority, I've decided to start with something unusual: the literary structure of Mark 15:20-39. This is both an argument against the priority of other texts, and a thing of beauty in and of itself that I offer for your pleasure and enjoyment. Let's look at the elements of this little essay.

Soldiers mock Jesus as King
compel passerby to help carry cross to golgotha
offer wine
crucify him
divide his garments
3rd hour
Title on Cross: King of the Jews
Robbers are crucified
Passers-by mock Jesus
Chief priests and teachers of the law mock Jesus
Robbers mock Jesus
6th - 9th hour darkness
Jesus cries that God has forsaken him
bystanders think Jesus calls Elijah for help
offer vinegar
dies with great cry
temple curtain torn
centurion says Jesus is "Son of God"

What is interesting about these elements is that they form a neat chiastic structure whose parts are internally parallel and center on an A-B-B'-A' chiasm (I have expanded this idea from Tolbert's original but incomplete chiasm in Sowing the Gospel p279). A nice neat whole. let's take a look at this structure. It should line up clearly enough....

A ...Soldiers mock Jesus as King
..B....compel passerby to help carry cross to golgotha
........offer wine
........crucify him
........divide his garments
....C....3rd hour
..........Title on Cross: King of the Jews
........D...a..Robbers are crucified
.............b..Passers-by mock Jesus
........D'..b'..Chief priests and teachers of the law mock Jesus
.............a'..Robbers mock Jesus
....C'....6th - 9th hour darkness
...........Jesus cries that God has forsaken him
..B'....bystanders think Jesus calls Elijah for help
........offer vinegar
........dies with great cry
........temple curtain torn
A'...centurion says Jesus is "Son of God"

Note that each element is parallel. A and A' represent identifications by Romans, one ironic, one (maybe) for real. The four elements of B, help, a drink, a death, and torn cloth, are replicated in B'. C offers us a time reference followed by an identification/inversion of identification. I have indicated the intercalated chiasm in D so that the A-B-B'-A' elements should be clear.

ASIDE: I think there might be another way to construct the C-D-D'-C' chiasm but I can't quite wrap my head around it. A lot depends on how one views the darkeness from the 6th to 9th hour. Can anyone tell me what word order in Greek is? In English it is represented as "15:33: And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour" so that the darkess is sandwiched between the two time references. Is that the way the Greek works as well?

Now, the same scene in Matthew 27:31-54 copies virtually every element from Mark. There is only one that is not present.

Mocked as king
Help from Simon to Golgotha
vinegar
Crucifixion
Garments divided
third hour
and sitting down, they were watching him there
Title: king of the Jews.'
Robber crucified ,
Passers-by mock
Chief priests/scribes mock
Robbers insult him
And from the sixth hour darkness came over all the land unto the ninth hour,
`My God, my God, why didst Thou forsake me?'
Calling Elijah
vinegar
Jesus dies
veil torn
earth did quake, and the rocks were rent,
tombs were opened, and saints walk
Truly this was God's Son.'

Now we have problems. The neat chiastic structure of Mark has been torn here in two ways.

(1)Matthew has no reference to the third hour. That's actually revealing, because if you return to Mark 13 you will see....

• 13: 35: Watch therefore -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning --

....that the writer of Mark has been kind enough to list exactly the time schedule of the arrest, trial, denial, and trial of Jesus, setting up carefully in three hour intervals that are finished up in the Crucifixion. This passage is not in Matthew 24-5, which parallels Mark 13. Instead, there is a whole slew of parables. In other words, in Mark we have a carefully wrought structure that extends back through the Gospel two chapters earlier; while in Matthew we have his usual lurching didacticism. Which of these two came first?

(2) The second problem is that there are two elements in Matthew that spoil the chiasm" and sitting down, they were watching him there and earth did quake, and the rocks were rent, tombs were opened, and saints walk. Matt firsters would have us argue that Mark has extracted that chiasm above from Matthew. Does that make sense? I mean, that Matt wrote what would be a neat chiasm if Matt hadn't screwed it up by adding two elements and deleting one, and Mark came along and said to himself -- "Hey! This is almost a chiasm! Now if I just add another parable to Mark 13 to signal the time, pop in the third hour there, delete the quake and the guards sitting, and VOILA! It's poetry!"

Ask yourself: Did Matt write an almost-chiasm adjusted by Mark, or did Matt delete and interpolate a beautiful Markan chiasm?

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

Why would Mark omit so much sayings material--much of which cannot be said to go against his story. The beautides and other things?

Also I would argue based upon other grounds that Mark (ca. 70) appears to date earlier than Matthew (ca. 95). Why would Mark omit a death of Judas? Surely such a feature most exegetes deem embarrassing that prompted two authors to describe conflicting codign endings for this figure should also be foun in Mark?

Also in most cases (but noit all!) Mark appears as the middle term. Carlson writes: """""In the triple tradition, the ordering of the passages is largely shared between Matthew and Mark, between Luke and Mark, or among all three. It is rarely the case, however, that Matthew and Luke agree against Mark in arranging the Triple Tradition. This pattern also extends to the content, extent, and the wording of the triple tradition passages."""""'


The real question we have to ask is whether or not extant, canonical Mark is the version used by Mt and Lk. It was similar to it at least.

Carlson lists 11 reasons.

http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/...index.htm#Mark

Number nine appears to ab an argument from fatigue. But why is fatigue convincing? If Matthew or Luke use an earlier source then fatigue could have crept in and Mark could have seen this and corrected it. Not sure how valuable "fatigue" is in determining synoptic relations unless we have something clearly redactional?

Vinnie

JoeWallack

The Vorkmeister:
"The Chiasm in Mark 15
Instead of running over the usual arguments for Markan priority, I've decided to start with something unusual: the literary structure of Mark 15:20-39. This is both an argument against the priority of other texts, and a thing of beauty in and of itself that I offer for your pleasure and enjoyment. Let's look at the elements of this little essay.
Soldiers mock Jesus as King
compel passerby to help carry cross to golgotha
offer wine
crucify him
divide his garments
3rd hour
Title on Cross: King of the Jews
Robbers are crucified
Passers-by mock Jesus
Chief priests and teachers of the law mock Jesus
Robbers mock Jesus
6th - 9th hour darkness
Jesus cries that God has forsaken him
bystanders think Jesus calls Elijah for help
offer vinegar
dies with great cry
temple curtain torn
centurion says Jesus is "Son of God"
What is interesting about these elements is that they form a neat chiastic structure whose parts are internally parallel and center on an A-B-B'-A' chiasm (I have expanded this idea from Tolbert's original but incomplete chiasm in Sowing the Gospel p279). A nice neat whole. let's take a look at this structure. It should line up clearly enough...."


JW:
I'd already mentioned the change of Markan structure by "Matthew" and "Luke" as sophisticated evidence for Markan priority in this Forum but still a very nice post on your part. I believe Brown has written the best (currently) detailed analysis of the "Passion", The Death Of The Messiah, 1,608 pages of detailed small print subjecting the Reader to more pain than Mel Gibson's Jesus) and in his discussion of the structure of the "Passion" narrative he completely misses the neat structure you have above. Brown actually goes the other way, distracted by "Matthew" and "Luke's" theological points, and concludes that "Mark" changed the order of existing "Passion" narratives that "Mark" used as Sources. I would guess though that if you looked long enough you'd find that one of the Germans already noticed what you have. I previously pointed out that the point of changed Markan structure was too sophisticated for Hawkins to notice in his classic "Horus Sinopticae" (he didn't need it anyway to prove Markan priority). Change in structure goes beyond Hawkins to challenge the Christian assertion that "Mark" was a simple Israeli fisherman who was simply writing History rather than a sophisticated Greek author who was writing complex literature. I'm still waiting for Yuri to explain how all this affects his theory of Not Markan priority.

In addition to detailed analysis of little scenes which indicate that "Matthew" and "Luke" screwed up the order of what "Mark" originally wrote (possibly without even seeing what we can see now - how Ironic is that?) there is simliar evidence in the big Markan picture. Behold:

Mark 1: (KJV)
10 "And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:"

Compare to

Mark 15: (KJV)
38 "And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom."

The English words "opened" and "rent" above have the same root word in the Greek. 1:10 comes after the Prologue and is the Start of the Mission, the Heavens open. 15:38 comes right before the Epilogue and is the End of the Mission, the entrance to Heaven on earth is opened. Hard to miss in the Greek (oh that's right, you don't know Greek. Even Hitler knew Greek). Now go to the related Greek of "Matthew" and "Luke". They use the same word as "Mark" for the "Passion" but use a different Greek word for "open" in the Beginning. Guess they missed it (This is also good evidence for a Gnostic "Mark" but I don't want to get Chilil Hashem started).

Traditionally Christianity has had relatively little interest in "Mark" as it's the least Christological and this has unwittingly helped protect "Mark" from all the editorial changes its Gospel relatives have had to endure. God's Providence? You be the Judge.



Joseph

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Yuri Kuchinsky

Yes, Vork, it would work the same in Greek.

Mk 15:33 kai genomenhV wraV ekthV, skotoV egeneto ef olhn thn ghn ewV wraV enaths

There are three clauses there in the same order, as follows,

And when the sixth hour had come,
kai genomenhV wraV ekthV,

there was darkness over the whole land
skotoV egeneto ef olhn thn ghn

until the ninth hour"
ewV wraV enaths

I have no opinion in this case whether it is Mk or Mt that preserves the earliest text here. You haven't considered Lk at all, of course.

But, in general, your argument doesn't seem like something that would produce any smoking guns dependence-wise...

Is there really a deliberately created chiasm there in Mk? If so, what would be the significance of this? What you're trying to point out is some sort of a sophisticated literary structure in Mk -- a structure so sophisticated that probably nobody before yourself has ever found it there... As such, this doesn't seem like something that would necessarily point to the originality in a document. Rather, this would indicate literary polish, I would say, which may in fact be antithetical to originality.

One would think that a document that is truly original is more likely to be rough and unpolished, and without any big literary pretensions.

Now, as to that 'Great Omission' in Lk, I would still like you to try and explicate it if you can.

Also, this material is quite relevant,

The Originality of Luke
http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/earluke.htm

All the best,

Yuri

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Joe,

I'm saying that literary sophistication in a document -- assuming it's really there, rather than just being read into the text -- is not something that would necessarily point to priority.

Best,

Yuri.

Vorkosigan

Actually, it's a trptych through Mark 9 and probably relates to Isa 64:1

• Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! (NIV)

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Theological speculation has been moved to GRD.

Chili

Hi Joe, I forgot to tell you that to use a different word for "rent" in the beginning and end of Mat. and Luke is to be 'super' gnostic because that shows that the narrator knows the difference between the beginning and the end. To them it was not good enough to have the entrance to heaven opened on earth but to actually 'be' in heaven while on earth.

Of course, they did have to go through Purgatory to get there and that is not exactly the same as heaven on earth, even if Galilee is in Israel.

JoeWallack

JW:
Well that explains it. Thanks.




I'm kidding!
JW:
Well which is it Yuri, the Wallack/Vorkosigan 21st century theory which no one ever noticed before or did "Mark" notice a near perfect pattern in "Matthew" 2,000 years ago that he perfected? Take your time this time.



With Metta, Joseph

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JoeWallack

JW:
Hmmm. I'm starting to feel like C. Thomas Howell in "The Hitcher".



Joseph

GNOSTICS, n.
A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.

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