spamandham

After some searching, I was surprised that this idea does not seem to be more prevalent. Granted, my googling skills seem to be quite weak.

What I find interesting are the following:

- Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but no-one believes her, just as Jesus' predictions fall on deaf ears over and over

- Cassandra has the ability to understand animals, just as Jesus communicates readily with a heard of demon posessed pigs

- In the Greek epic tragedy, the protagonist has both great wisdom and is also powerless. Who better exemplifies this than Jesus - who aside from a few parlor tricks, is depicted as powerless where it counts

- Just as Cassandra foresaw the destruction of Troy, yet could not prevent it, Jesus foresees the destruction of Jerusalem and is equally powerless to stop it

The idea is not that Jesus morphed from Cassandra, but rather, that the Gospel Jesus was nontrivially influenced by Cassandra mythology. Of course, this is best explained by viewing the Gospel genre as a Jewish version of a Greek tragedy than as a biography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra

Toto

Check out the thread on Mark as Greek Tragedy. There do seem to be some common Hellenstic themes.

avi

Thanks s&h, very interesting.

yeah, a wonderful thread, thanks Joe, well done.

I was especially impressed by two posts in Joe's thread, of Philosopher Jay, both really excellent.

In his second comment, post 14, Jay illustrates, convincingly, that the Jesus story began as a "comedy", and Jay draws our attention to parallels in a story with both elements of comedy and tragedy in the brilliant film Jules and Jim by Francois Truffaut.

So, now, with this revelation about Cassandra, a third element of Greek drama to consider in evaluating the earliest Gospel, Mark.

I wonder if any of the omissions in the oldest extant copy of Mark, i.e. Papyrus P45, can assist in resolving the question of tragedy/comedy?

Here's an example:
Mark 6:40 (King James version)
And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.

Mark 6:40 Codex Sinaiticus:
τω και ανεπεϲα πραϲιαι κατα εκατο και κατα ν (πεντήκοντα)
English: And they reclined in oblong squares, by hundreds and by fifties.

Same passage, P45:
τω και ανεπεϲα πραϲιαι

In other words, P45 does not include the notion of hundreds of people being fed from the five loaves of bread. Isn't it a more dramatic presentation, in the version of one hundred years later, to offer groups of hundreds sharing the same five loaves of bread and two fish?

Later, in the same story, Mark 6:44, here is the English:
A total of 5,000 men and their families were fed from those loaves!
P45 omits "those loaves".

Is it not more convincing, as a story, to include "those loaves"? One wonders which other bits of text were added, or subtracted, as the gospels were revised by subsequent generations....

avi

andrewcriddle

I think this is a misunderstanding. The wiki article says: This is not a claim that Cassandra could understand animals, but that her story has similarities to other Greek myths in which the hero/heroine becomes able to understand animals.

Andrew Criddle