Peter Kirby

Okay, I'll bite. Why?

Since I said it, I consider it probable, but I don't know how to be more precise than that. How does one measure?

Does it move from premises to a conclusion in a logical way? If so, please summarize it for me. I don't feel like abstracting an argument out of Bernard's writings right now (if it could be done), and "others" are unspecified.

I think that this whole line of thought is predicated on the unexamined presupposition that there is a determined date by which a document "should" be quoted by another extant text. I know of no procedure for establishing such a time limit, and indeed there is little precedent for such a dating technique in other fields of study in antiquity, where noone bats an eye at finding the first quotation of a work centuries later. Since it is your argument, you will have to move beyond "I find it odd" and the mere construal of "so much later."

Break it down. Was Papias said to be stupid? So what. Was Papias in a manuscript or in a quotation? Neither is an autograph; they both involve copying. In this case I accept it as an accurate quotation. Then, is the elder "essentially unknown"? Yes, but this is again irrelevant to the question of how early the Gospel according to Mark was being mentioned. However slim the pickings are, it is of no use coming up with empty complaints, when there is something there to chew on.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Amaleq13

Well, a Gospel according to Mark anyway. After all, there really isn't anything in "our" Mark that suggests the author was Peter's secretary or that it was created from his recollections, is there?

Peter Kirby

That depends on what you find suggestive. I suggest that the internal indices against authorship of Mark by a disciple of Peter are no stronger than those adduced in favor. (If you dispute this, present the indices against, and I will compare them.)

Since Iasion's argument hangs upon the premise that there was another Gospel of Mark known only from Papias (or some other rejoinder--but this is the one you've brought up), it is upon him to demonstrate this premise. (The relationship is asymmetric--a first century Gospel of Mark can do without the reference from Papias, but a second century Mark must dispense with it.) Since there is only one Gospel of Mark known to us from all our [other?] references, and since there is no data to contradict the ascription of Papias's remark to "our" Mark (or something subsantially like it), to withhold the identity of Mark's gospel in Papias with the Gospel of Mark is a case of special pleading.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

Mark cannot possibly be from Peter's mouth.

This case of "special pleading" is the mainstream position, Peter. Papias claims that Mark wrote down Peter's remembrances. "Peter's remembrances" consist of attacks on the apostles, fictions created off the OT, Josephus, and Paul, and a completely fictional Crucifixion scene based on the OT. These are not recollections but fictions. Neither evidence nor methodology supports them as dictated remembrances. As Schnelle points out, if this quote from 'Papias' did not exist, then nobody would ever imagine that the theology of Peter lies behind Mark. Mark is NOT Petrine gospel, it's a Pauline gospel.

Neil Godfrey posted to another list the other day

Luise Abramowski has a chapter in "The Gospel and the Gospels"
(1991) which cites E. Shwartz in the context of the tendency for
biblical scholars to rely on Papias for historical information (but
it is noted that the same methodology applies even more to the
gospels) --

"With regard to the recurrent inclination to pass off Papias's
remarks about the first two Synoptists as "ancient information" and
to utilize them in some fashion or other, a somewhat more general
observation may not be out of place. The history of classical
literature has gradually learned to work with the notions of the
literary-historical legend, novella, or fabrication; after untold
attempts at establishing the factuality of statements made it has
discovered that only in special cases does there exist a tradition
about a given literary production independent of the self-witness of
the literary production itself; and that the person who utilizes a
literary-historical tradition must always first demonstrate its
character as a historical document. General grounds of probability
cannot take the place of this demonstration. It is no different with
Christian authors. In his literary history Eusebius has taken
reasonable pains; as he says in the preface he had no other material
at his disposal than the self-witness of the books at hand ..... how
much more is this not the situation in the case of the Gospels,
whose authors intentionally or unintentionally adhered to the
obscurity of the Church, since they neither would nor could be
anything other than preachers of the one message, a message that was
independent of their humanity? ....."

from an academic paper delivered in 1904 by E. Schwartz: "Uber den
Tod der Sohne Zebedaei. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des
Johannesevangeliums" (= Gesammelte Schriften V, 1963,48-123).

Vorkosigan

Roland

I guess for the same reason that modern day preachers do when they're edifying their flocks - because the events of Jesus' life were so extraordinary and so entwined with who Jesus was and what he stood for that it would be natural for anybody writing about him to mention them.

Peter Kirby

You certainly overstate your case.

Nope, you've confused two issues, and you're not necessarily right even after the confusion is cleared up. Amaleq13 suggested that the Gospel of Mark known to Papias is not the Gospel of Mark known to all other church writers but rather was another Gospel attributed to Mark that has subsequently been lost. That is not a mainstream position at all. You are thinking, I guess, of the view that the Gospel of Mark wasn't written by an associate of Peter. Since many scholars do think that the author of Mark knew Peter, this may be a mainstream view but it is not the mainstream view. It is chosen as such (the, one and only, mainstream view here) because of your personal critical judgment and tendencies on the matter.

Here is the quote (translation via S. C. Carlson): "And the presbyter would say this: Mark, who had indeed been Peter's interpreter, accurately wrote as much as he remembered, yet not in order, about that which was either said or did by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but later, as I said, Peter, who would make the teachings anecdotally but not exactly an arrangement of the Lord's reports, so that Mark did not fail by writing certain things as he recalled. For he had one purpose, not to omit what he heard or falsify them."

Although somehow you have conflated this either with assumption or with later accounts of Mark's authorship, there is nothing here that implies dictation. Quite the opposite, Papias says that (the elder says that) Mark heard the occasional teachings of Peter, as anecdotes to suit the occasion, and later wrote all that he heard down, though not in order. This belies the idea that Papias's account involved a narrative coordinated at Peter's direction.

If I were to attempt to make order of your argument, it is that (1) Mark's Gospel is complete fiction, (2) Peter would not be a source for a gospel that is complete fiction, and so (3) Peter is not a source for 'Mark'. It is at the first premise that you and most others part ways.

Of course the idea of a radical theological divide between the gospel of Peter and the gospel of Paul is nineteenth century in origin. It has no firm basis because of our few direct lines of information about Peter's ideas, mostly in Paul and, if it be accepted, Acts. Indeed, given the paucity, it would be reasonable to inquire whether Mark's Gospel may give us some clue as to the theology of Peter.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Natural, maybe, but to be expected, no.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

vsop44

Don't you believe that if one or more of the gospels ' authors had been a witness to the crucifiction and the resurection , he or they would have written I WAS THERE I saw it with whoever else was there ,
That would have given credibility to the story .

And for your info , no guy named Luke ,John , Matthew or Mark one day sat down with a feather and parchment and said to himself : I am going to write a gospel ! The gospels are an amalgamation of ancient writings some much older than 2000 years that were hashed and rehashed to fit the mood and politics of the time .

S.C.Carlson

The whole dictation idea is a late development in the tradition, culminating with Jerome. If Peter truly dictated the gospel to Mark, it never would have been attributed to the mere scribe, Mark.

Furthermore, two of the earliest witnesses, Papias and Irenaeus, both state that it was written without any of Peter's actual involvement in the composition of the gospel and, implicitly, after Peter's death. Irenaeus states that Mark handed down in writing "after Peter's departure," most likely after Peter's death, which occurred no later than 65 or so.

Papias characterizes Mark's relationship with Peter as men hermeneutes Petrou genomenos (μὲν ἑÏ?μηνευτὴς Î*έτÏ?ου γενόμενος), which I have translated as "who had indeed been Peter's interpreter." Interestingly, Moulton and Milligan's study of the papyri discovered that genomenos should mean "former" or "ex-" (p. 126), even use to in the phrase τῆς ... γενομένης γυναικός ("of his former wife" or "of his ex-wife") (P Flor I.99.4 c. AD 100). Thus, according to Papias's informant he calls the presbyter, Mark was Peter's former interpreter.

If we believe the notice in Acts that John Mark was a disagreeable person, it is possible to understand Papias that the Mark's writing as an ex-interpreter could have occurred in Peter's lifetime after some falling out, but coordinating this with Irenaeus's candid statement that Peter was out of the picture, it seems best to conclude that it was after Peter's death.

The sources of Clement of Alexandria's information about the origin of Mark are unclear, and I doubt he knew Papias. In Hypotyposeis, Clement certainly places the writing of Mark during Peter's lifetime but curiously claims that Peter only heard about it after the fact and neither encouraged or discouraged it. That astonishing statement is just a guess on Clement's part but it remains a valuable concession about Peter's non-role in the composition of Mark.

(NB: My position is that the letter supposedly from Clement to Theodore that quotes Secret Mark is a fake, so its claim that Mark composed the gospel in Rome before Peter's martyrdom based on Peter's notes is not evidence for early Christian views.)

So, my reading of the earliest Church tradition is that a former, perhaps even disgruntled, interpreter of Peter composed the Gospel According to Mark at some point after Peter's death. The latter part of my conclusion (regarding the time of composition) is standard scholarship, but the first part is not, mainly due to the assumption that Mark should have more respectful of Peter.

Stephen

Yuri Kuchinsky

Nonsense!

All Ignatius' letters are fakes.

Here's an interesting quote for you, Peter,

"There is nothing more abominable than that trash which is in circulation under the name of Ignatius!" -- Calvin

Yuri.