Ben C Smith

About the gospel of Matthew he says that it was a collection of words or oracles. This is one thing that makes me shrink from identifying this text cleanly with our canonical Matthew. But about Mark he says that it consisted of things said or done by the Lord. If this text described what the Lord did, then it seems it would almost have to have some narrative structure, even if loose (and Mark has even been called pearls on a string). Or do you see another way of interpreting this?

That depends. If by incorporated you mean used as a source, then the concern is still live. Matthew and Luke each incorporated Mark as a source to a great degree (especially Matthew), yet Matthew and Luke are still Matthew and Luke, not Mark II and Mark III.

If, on the other hand, you mean that the existing text of Mark was interpolated, but not used as a source for a new work, then the concern vanishes... but we are in this case still talking about a recension of Mark. I am quite willing to countenance that the text the elder John was talking about may have differed from our canonical Mark in some ways. Did his version have the Bethsaida section? Did it have Mark 1.1 in its present form? Which ending did it have? And so forth. But we need to be clear that we are still talking about a recension of our canonical text.

For the reasons outlined above (to wit, that sources do not usually bestow their authorial names on the texts that used them as sources), I object to the talk of sources in this paragraph. I also object to the term secretary, since that might imply the dictation model so popular among the later fathers. Last, while I believe that chronology probably has something to do with the not in order comment in Papias, I doubt that is the only thing it is referring to.

But what if it was believed that Mark, as interpreter for Peter, had written things down from memory and had collected them into a single text, but without care for the correct chronology, as the elder viewed it (and I suspect the correct chronology in his mind was that of John)?

That is an interesting point. But it raises some equally interesting issues. For example, the gospel of John really stands out from the synoptic three, and a lot of early Christian ink seems to have been spilled over its apparent conflicts with those three, yet it was still (against all odds, in my mind) attributed to the good apostle John, son of Zebedee.

And the only problem of which I am aware that was attached to Mark is the very one that we are discussing, namely its order. But if Mark is not in order, does not this same criticism apply to Matthew, who follows Mark most of the time? Yet Matthew was (again against all odds, in my mind) attributed to an apostle, too.

With only a brief glance back at my caveats about the term source here, I see an interpolated Mark as a live possibility. Once, however, we begin doing this kind of literary criticism, we are kind of committed to analyzing the extant text in a literary fashion for this incorporated document. What would be all too easy is to say that the text Papias had in mind was not quite what we have in our hands today... then use that as an excuse to excise all the parts that disagree with our own views of early Christian tradition history. I would hate to see a genuine literary question turned into a mere display of bias that everybody besides the cutter and paster can see.

Ben.

Vorkosigan

The point is that the character Papias is a literary invention that took place in an era when Acts was accepted history. It could well be that the Mark Papias refers to is ours. Or another. Who cares? Whoever it is, he was invented long after both Mark and Acts had been written, and thus, can't be used to date either.

Michael

Ben C Smith

Waiting for evidence for this assertion. At your convenience, of course.

Ben.

Vorkosigan

I gave it earlier in the thread. Not only does Papias twice insist he is telling the truth, a clear sign of literary invention, but he meets the fictional daughters of Philip from Acts. It is conventional in historical fiction of the second century for invented characters to meet "historical" figures.

Clearly someone invented him at a time when Acts and Mark were accepted as history -- after the middle of the second century. Papias cannot be used to date the gospel of Mark.

Michael

jjramsey

Insisting that one is telling the truth is sometimes a tell that one is lying, but it is not a clear sign of anything.

And your evidence that these daughters are fictional is?

Ben C Smith

I am stumped. Anybody who says I am telling you the truth is, not only lying, but in fact fictional?

It is also quite common for real historical figures to meet other real historical figures.

Sakes alive.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Perhaps a source text that was subsequently incorporated into canonical Matthew?

"But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them."

Peter did not present a narrative but taught stories about things Jesus said or did which apparently varied according to his audience. Mark wrote them down as he recalled them. IMO, that sounds like something more similar to Q than to a Gospel.

They rewrite Mark more than incorporate it as a source but why should anyone have ignored the other tradition Papias repeats when confronted with a new version of Mark's story? Especially if that new version was already connected to Papias' other tradition because incorporates a collection of the Lord's sayings collected by Matthew. That he was simply wrong about the language doesn't seem to much a stretch.

Luke's text explicitly describes itself as a new version of the efforts of others and the author has his own connections.

I don't see how this is enough to keep the concern alive.

I think that is what has happened for Mark, Matthew, and John.

Insufficient evidence. Overruled.

Sustained. I don't care if it is changed to "interpreter".

That is essentially the source text I'm describing. Peter didn't preach a narrative so why should his interpreter recall his preaching as one?

I would not advocate anything beyond the three periods.

Ben C Smith

Possibly. (And it was that possibility that started the whole Q thing, IIUC.) But I do not think that our Matthew was named Matthew because of one of its sources, even if one of those was the real, original Hebrew Matthew.

Yes.

I do not think the text means that he wrote them down in the order in which they cluttered into his brain. I think it means he remembered as many of them as he could.

Again, I do not think our Matthew got its name from one of its sources.

Well, nobody ever accused you of agreeing with me too much.

The author of Matthew, I think, named his gospel after Matthew. Hence the switcheroo between Levi and Matthew. Whether he did so because he had incorporated the original Hebrew Matthew is unclear to me at present. But, even if that was his reason, I do not think it was the reason that everybody else did it. I think they did it because he made it happen.

As for John, the gospel itself shows us (at least) two layers. We have the beloved disciple writing something down, and we have later editors (Asian elders?) adding to it at least enough to tell us that he wrote something down. Again, however, I think we are talking about recensions of the same work, or an original work that has been interpolated.

Perhaps you and I are simply disagreeing on principle here. You seem to be using the term source to cover two contingencies that I would keep separate. On the one hand, an author takes a source document, reworks it, adds to it, and then passes the finished product off as his own, under his own name. On the other hand, an editor takes a core document, reworks it perhaps, adds to it perhaps, and then passes the finished product off as that of the original author.

Peter preached what the Lord had said and done. This entails some degree of narrative, even if anecdotal. But let us suppose that Peter also gave summaries now and then:

You yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed. You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the holy spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of all the things he did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, They also put him to death by hanging him on a cross. God raised him up on the third day and granted that he become visible, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after he arose from the dead.

That is a Petrine speech from Acts 10. A summary speech now and again can also be to the needs of those listening.

Mark comes along and writes a bunch of snippets down. But on paper he has to settle on an order of some kind. He has two kinds of material, Galilean and Judean. So he simply puts the Galilean material first and the Judean material last,* since he knows from the summaries that Jesus started in Galilee and ended up dying in Jerusalem.

* I think he did a bit more than that, but we do not have to credit the elder John with our advanced knowledge of Marcan compositional practice.

The elder John, who prefers the Johannine order, notices that Mark has only one journey to Jerusalem (a necessary consequence of his having put all the Galilean material before the Judean material), the wrong chronological position for both the temple cleansing (by a couple of years) and the anointing (by a few days), and not much integration of the general storyline (the incidents before the passion could be largely rearranged without harming the meaning). To the elder, Mark has no (proper) order. To him, Mark looks more like the notes one starts out with in the process of composing a proper text.

Well, of course not. Not you. I was hoping certain others, who shall remain nameless, would be reading along. :angel:

Ben.

Vorkosigan

C'mon, Ben, you know perfectly well that's not what I mean. But the claim to be telling the truth, coupled with other signs and conventions of fictionality, suggests that Papias is someone's invention.

Papias doesn't mean any historical figures, just fictional characters out of Luke's novel about early Christian history.

Which of the ancient Greek novels are you familiar with?

Michael

Amaleq13

I'm not sure what the distinction is beyond more adjectives in the first but, yes, I understand it to mean he wrote them down as he recalled them. Apparently, with more interest in accuracy than order.

Only when you're right.

This is what I'm suggesting for Mark.

The presbyter describes a source used by the author of the Gospel but there is no indication Papias knows it as such. Unless logia can be understood to refer to a Gospel, he knows nothing about one Matthew had written, either. The oral tradition had apparently not kept up with the textual developments and it seems to have been spreading faster than knowledge of them.

This is how I understand John's development but it seems to me that the "core document" is still a source for the editor in producing the final product.

What did the presbyter mean by "...with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings..."?

Why not just as they came to him?

The elder John apparently made a point that Peter's teaching was not a regular narrative. Since he also tells us that Mark's efforts are based on recollections of those teachings but it seems to me he must be saying something about those efforts as well.

..."he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings..."

I don't know if the original language offers something different but I get the impression from this of something like a Q&A session.