Malachi151

This is complete nonsense.

There are plenty of better explanations for the patterning of these events than "the author was pressed by the fact that he had two slightly different sources which he decided to merge into a single source."

You're thinking too much along the lines of two source tradition in the Torah.

Mark 8:14-21 strongly undermines any notion that the two feeding scenes were just thrown in because there happened to be two sources.

Mark 8:14-21 makes it clear that there was some purpose behind the use of these two scenes.

As for the healing of the deaf and then the blind, again I point to the Hebrew scritpures:

There was every reason for someone writing a scripturally based story to include two scenes, one where a def man is healed and another where a blind man is healed.

spin

Gosh, really falling all over yourself to be a pedant, because you confused physical experience with experience shaped by society. Talking about cutting the crap!




spin

Ted Hoffman

The quibble doesn't really matter Jeff, K O'Nolan notes in the footnote that "doublet has been used in a broader sense to chracterize the rehandling or recurrence of analogous thematic material" and Raymond Brown shows that Mark 14:32-43 is a doublet of the Mount of Olives scene and the Gethsemane scene. See The Death of the Messiah, Volume 1 & 2 (1994), pp. 219-220.

My point is that its a style of writing and not necessarily evidence of something being handed over to the author.

Ted Hoffman

This is a good argument against the idea that Mark would have known or verified what may have actually happened.
But why would someone in Rome have believed that a story he wrote about a peasant from Galilee paralleling Elija/Elisha narratives was true?
Why would someone who had a very vague notion of the geography and topography of Galilee dare to take it upon himself to piece together and write and actually proceed to believe a story of 2000 pigs racing over unrealistic distances to drown in a sea after his peasant character has held a dialogue with a demoniac with a Roman name?
Leaving aside the question of how and why parallel sequences are evidence of a story being handed over, why should the two feedings in Mark be regarded as unique and therefore not be treated the same way we would treat other doublets in Mark and other ancient texts like Homer's Odyssey?

spin

I really can't answer such a "why". All I know is that there would have been some overlapping with the Jewish community, perhaps christians being seen as not to different from ordinary Jewish proselytes. The Elijah/Elisha parallels are inconsequential to the believing, but only to the construction of narratives. What one thought to have happened doesn't necessarily change the forms one uses to tell the stories. Was Patton an Alexander like figure? Writers of popular history will cast figures as though they were earlier ones, whether the audience gets the idea or not, and it doesn't change the historicity in the mind of the writer.

Another "why" I can't answer. People have always got allured by stories that stimulated them from long ago and far away. Where the stories come from though is another matter. Are we dealing with stories that have arrived with an itinerant preacher who made his living out of keeping christians happy long enough to have them continue to feed him? You believe him and you remember the stories and they become absorbed into the tradition that you pass on.

As to believing wild and woolly things, you've seen the willingness of some of our more literalist religionists to not only believe long-odds material, but to purvey it with their own embellishments.

You've got me here. I don't know how applicable someone theorizing about material in Homeric texts is to the works of Homer, let alone to the gospel. If you'd like to make a case on 1) how accurate the analysis is to Homer and 2) how Homer is sufficiently comparable to Mk, then I might understand a little more clearly.


spin

youngalexander

Just trying it the other way around.

If what you assert is the case, is it not extraordinary that the funerary art of Early Christians (200 - 250 CE) was exclusively OT and exhibited not one whit of the NT story?

Solo

It's a simple question, spin ! You can cavort all you want and call me whatever, but the question stands. Is human brain today what it was two thousand years ago ?

Jiri

spin

Why not you admit that you made a silly mistake? Or do you want to do an encore in case people missed it the first time?


spin

spin

I see I forgot to post this...
Talking about complete nonsense, I did try to wade through the stuff you cited in your last little attempt at a tirade, though you didn't deign to point to the material that you thought would be appropriate. In fact you didn't deal with the current issue at all. But I am glad you have a web page.

There may be plenty, but funnily, you don't seem to know of any.

You haven't got a clue what I was thinking, so try to stick to the subject at hand.

Really? What do you imagine?

We know that there may well have been other factors involved in the inclusion of healings of a deaf and a blind person in parallel. Most things we do are overdetermined. But what has citing the fact that

You will note that I said,

How can you otherwise imagine the simplest way for the texts to have gained this form of parallel sequences? Ordering and jiggling point to construction from existing fragments rather than creation.

You've not responded to this.


spin

Ted Hoffman

What has the wiring of the human brain got to do with the discussion? Even modern Christians believe sticks can turn to snakes and snakes can talk. Are you disputing the dynamics of authorial intent or belief systems?