Vorkosigan

It's compatible with either model. Mark did not know the HJ, or Mark did not care, which is why everything in there is invented. But then we have two early authors who were not very knowledgeable/indifferent to the HJ. I'd say that something smells there.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

This, and your later comments about the absence of a Markan community, seem to point to a dillemma (apologies if someone else has said something similar, my 'net time is limited, seeing as I'm logging in through someone else's dial-up account until Friday).

We should reasonably expect a Pauline community to have their own traditions (Paul himself observed problems with alternate "Christianities" emerging in communities he established). We can suggest this quite solidly because, as just noted, Paul commented on them. What you leave us with is the position that either

a) Paul discussed every tradition held by every community, and thus there existed no Christian tradition that is pre-Markan, but not mentioned by Paul or

b) Mark evinces some form of "pure" Pauline Christianity, which is spelled out only in his letters, and in no way altered by Mark or any Christian between Paul and Mark who influenced Mark's Christianity. or

c) Mark was converted solely by the Pauline epistles and OT, and had no interaction with a Christian community. Given Paul's heavy emphasis on proselytizing, this seems to border on ludicrous to me.

These all seem quite unreasonable to me, which seems to point to the contrary conclusion. Whatever the nature of Mark's Christianity (I can allow it as based largely on Pauline epistles/communities, for our purposes here, though as I've mentioned previously, I am not persuaded), it contained traditions that emerged either after Paul, or that emerged without being noted by Paul, but were shared by Mark, or Christians known to Mark (community may or may not be overstating the case). Thoses traditions are pre-Markan, no matter how one cuts it.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

Me too. They don't seem to take into account (d) Mark wrote an outward looking piece that is aimed at outsiders and does not reflect his community at all.

Yes, I believe you might be correct. But that is irrelevant because none of those traditions crop out in Mark's gospel. Everything in Mark can be traced back to the common culture, the OT, or information contained in the Pauline epistles. Mark may have a community with traditions, or he may not. Either way, no traditions appear in the Gospel of Mark. Either the writer didn't know them, or he ignored them. But the fact that everything in Mark is reasonably demonstrated to be fiction seems to support the conclusion that Mark's community had no traditions about Jesus' life.

Several assumptions here:

Mark is from a community of (proto) Christians
Mark's community had some traditions about Jesus
Mark knew these traditions
Mark incorporated these traditions into his gospel

(1) is perhaps reasonable. (2) is reasonable. (3) is reasonable (4) is simply unprovable, neither reasonable nor unreasonable.

But what if?

Mark is from a community of (proto) Christians
Mark's community had no traditions about Jesus (they believe in a sketchy Pauline Cultic Christ figure whose return is imminent)
Mark thus does not know any traditions because there are none.
Mark invents a narrative as a recruitment tool, inventing a tradition along with it, and sourcing information from the only pre-Markan source, the letters of Paul.

That's just as reasonable, and gets us directly to what we see: an actual gospel with no observable traditions.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

Where would you suggest we should be able to trace traditions from? It seems that we can't know if they are observable, since we don't have any prior source, if such a source existed. As we've agreed, there probably were traditions of some sort, how do we know where they are?

Isn't it possible, for example, even allowing the full strength of your other hypotheses (which I don't, generally, but another issue, for another thread), that it wasn't Mark, but a pre-Markan tradition, that used the Old Testament, or Paul, in the manner in which Mark's gospel does?

In other words, since we don't know what traditions were available to Mark, and thus can't know what those traditions looked like, and we've both agreed that such traditions probably existed, how do we identify a Markan redaction rather than someone else's redaction adopted by Mark?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

We don't! But that's not a problem for me, Rick. There's no evidence of these traditions.

I suppose that if there were a tradition, one would expect something without significant OT parallels. And one would be quite unable to trace the parallels across the Gospel following the stories in 1 & 2 Kings. And there would be no direct citations of the Septuagint text.

Isn't this like arguing that Odyssey wasn't written by Homer, but by another Greek of the same name? Why would I need to attribute this creativity to a community, when the citations of the OT have repeated themes (plundered and destroyed temples: a temple focus) that indicate a single person put them together?

I don't know. But that's not a problem for my view. If you think Mark has incorporated traditions about Jesus from his community, what tangible evidence can you adduce? There might be many reasons why Mark might exclude such traditions, even if he knew them (which I doubt).

Consider recruiting that goes on today. How often are you told about anything the community really believes in? Things are spoken in generalities. Difficult ideas are downplayed (Mormons deny that they wear magic underwear, my favorite example) etc. That's Mark. Where's the Kingdom? And what is it?

Another problem with the idea that Mark has pre-Markan traditions is not only that Mark does not know anything about Jesus outside of OT parallel stories, the community does not reflect on him anywhere in Mark either. There are no praise hymns. No philosophical reflections on his meaning. No apologies for his failure to return.

It's also worth repeating: if Mark is writing to/about a community, where are the commands to the community? Where is the use of Jesus to legitimate the community order and authority? And so on.....Both ends of the community are missing, Mark to the Community, and the Community reflecting back to the gospel.

Jes 'ramblin.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

Why? Why, for example, couldn't Mark take a pre-existing tradition, spice it up with some OT citation (a common practice at the time), and send it on its way? And how do you purport to tell the difference?

Homer wrote the Odyssey, he didn't create it, and it's undergone several redactive phases over retellings. There are definitely pre-Homeric traditions underlying it.

This probably isn't the best analogy for you--I'd have gone with Shakespeare/Marlowe :P

Do they all have such themes?

You're getting ahead of yourself. See my reply to your first question--we can't definitively discern that he hasn't included them.

Every time you hear someone recite from the Catechism, for an easy example.

The more bog-standard picture of Mark as simply stringing pericopes together fits that just fine. He's simply repeating what he's been told, not offering a new liturgy. This seems to argue against you more than for, as if Mark were offering his own thoughts, or his own creation, why isn't he trying to make that creation clear?

I haven't suggested that he's writing to/about a community.

This is debatable, though perhaps best left to another thread, because, as I've noted above, my questions pertain to a pre-Markan tradition. Whether there is a "community" per se, that Mark is writing for or about is another question entirely.

Food for thought in passing, however, is another rather standard position: That virtually all characters in gospels, to varying degrees, are representative in some form of the community the author writes for. That being the case, "Mark to the community" abounds.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

neilgodfrey

A belated footnote suggesting a possible fourth reason:

Mark has little ethical content. It is about a heroic deliverer Jesus, not a philosophical one who discourses in sermons on mountains or plains. His few words are predominantly about his status as heroic deliverer and his stories seem to suggest that mere faith was enough for deliverance. Matthew and Luke sought to bring Mark under control by re-writing his Jesus and his followers into a more orderly, controlled and authoritarian philosophical/ethical position.

Come to think of it, sounds a bit like reasons some suggest for Paul’s letters also “vanishing into obscurity� for a time.