Rick Sumner

A reversible criteria is one that leads to false conclusions. It's objective value is non-existent. You stated at the outset that your goal was to ferret out what was pre-Markan, by eliminating everything that was Markan. Except your method for doing so is reversible, and sometimes demonstrably eliminates that which is pre-Markan.

That makes it useless.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

You'll forgive me if I don't think this is quite analogous. Or laughably different. You don't get to compare the overt and obvious with the subvert and claim they're on equal footing.

Besides which, I could argue without a great deal of difficulty that Mark didn't base his on Jonah, but on Psalms, with Jonah being a Matthean addition.

This is almost laughable. If these are the same angel, then every angel scene in the NT is dependent on Elijah. We'll look at how well Mark matches Elijah on this point when you get there.

How exactly did he do that? And how exactly is this rather flagrant use of prophecy analogous to any more obscure use? And why is what Luke does in this remotely surprising, given that Matthew told Luke exactly where his colt came from? This is grasping.

I stand by them. Purest eisegesis. A reversible criteria has no merit, because employing it may lead to false conclusions.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Bede

Vork,

I do appreciate you are using the work of several scholars. I refered to your "presentation" for that reason.

I fear we must just disagree. I don´t think Mark was a literary genius nor that many of the parallels you have suggested actually exist. But unless we can come up with some statistical and agreed method we will just have to disagree. I think the use of undated sources for the left hand column, as Nostri mentioned is also a serious mistake but not your fault but Gundry´s.

B

Ted Hoffman

Doherty? Parallels?

As far as Rick's use of deletomania to prove that parallelomanic criteria are reversible, I think deletomania does not even qualify as method. Its a method akin to sculpturing: you take unfashioned wood and remove what you dont need and from what remains, you get what you want.

Parallels often go down to lexical levels, plot structure and characters.

Between Vorks parallel and MacDonald's parallel, which one fits better and why?

Ted Hoffman

Comparing Homer's Murder of King Agamemnon, Mark 6:17-29 and Esther

I think Haman is a spanner in the work's for Vork's parallel, which should pit Vishta against Esther just like Mark pits Herodias and daughter against JBap and Homer pits Clytemnestra against the King.

Compared to MacDonald's parallel and Markan plot, Haman is incongruous because Haman is a man (unlike Clytemnestra and Herodias) and gets hanged in the end. Plus, he helps Esther ascend to queenship, then Esther junks him later and hands his ass to the King who later hangs him.

The roles of Haman and Vashti kind of criss cross and their confluence and interaction tangles Vork's parallel's compared to MacDonalds and messes it up somewhat.

I will look at the matches that clearly fit and will provide the reasons as to why I have excluded some below. I will score like a referee of a boxing match. 2 points for exact parallel. 1 for thematic or wider parallel. [V2] means 2 marks for Vork. D2 means 2 Marks for MacDonald.

On Having an Affair
King Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, has affair with his cousin. King Herod has affair with Herodias, his brother's wife. [D2]

On someone threatening the affair getting murdered
The king is about to discover the affair and gets murdered. John the Baptist opposes affair and is murdered. [D2]

Murder during a feast
Both King Agamemnon's and JBap's murder occur during the feast. Esther and the King are at a banquet. [D2,V2]

Attendance by influential persons is mentioned
In both King Agamemnon's, Esther's and JBap's, this happens. [D2,V2]

Victim is Beheaded
King is beheaded. John is beheaded. Vashti is Beheaded (though, from a different perspective, it's Haman, Esther's 'enemy', who should be beheaded) [D2,V2]

Wife Is involved in the Beheading
Clytemnestra does the beheading. Herodias orders JBap's beheading. Here, Esther should have ordered Vashti's beheading for a parallel to work for Vork. [D2]
Haman suggest's Vashti's Killing, but is not a wife. Vork gets one Mark because Haman is on Esther's side[V1]

Head Brought on a Platter
Vashti's head is brought on a Platter, just Like JBap's. This is spot on. [V2]

The King is pleased
Herodias' daughter pleasing King by dancing and the King seeing Esther standing in the court are parallels though weak [V1].

King asks Women to Make Any Petition
Esther was asked by the King to make her wish and so was Herodias' daughter. [V2]

The person that Bring's about the Murder asks (woman) for Advice
Haman does ask his wife for advice. So does Herodias' daughter. Vork loses a Mark because Haman's wife is far outside the characters involved. She crowds the stage.[V1]

Problems with Vork's (and by extension Meier and Gundry) Parallels

IMO, the lineage of Vashti and Herodias, with reference to Nebuchadnezzar and Herod the Great respectively, cannot be considered as part of the parallel as the author of the hypertext has no power to manipulate them. I think we should consider them coincidences. Because JBap's death is a small subplot in the GMark.

Esther's marriage and Herod taking his brother's wife, IMO, are outside the central plot of the death of JBap. I think we can consider them out of scope, or rather, irrelevant to the sequence of events and manner of death for JBap.

Haman suggesting that Vashti be killed doesn't parallel Herodias suggesting that JBap be killed. It involves Haman, a man who is, in adition, not part of the family.

Esther wanting to stop Haman and Herodias wanting John dead, IMO, are not parallels. It should be Esther wanting to have Vashti dead for the parallel to be consistent. This is therefore a spurious parallel.

Haman being the King's favourite and John being righteous and holy, IMO, are not parallels. This is therefore a spurious parallel.

Haman asking for his wife's advice and Herodias daughter asking her mum what to ask for, IMO, are strained parallels. His wife is far outside the plot compared to Herodias. But I have awarded marks for this anyway.

Herodias' daughter pleasing King by dancing and the King seeing Esther standing in the court are strained parallels. But is kind of acceptable because in both cases, the kings are 'pleased'.

Problems with MacDonald's Parallels

Head landing among the mixing bowls and head being placed on a platter are very different. Both contextually and in terms of meaning. IMO, they don't qualify as parallels

King Priam's daughter being killed at beheading and King Herod's mistress carrying John's head is also not a parallel IMO.

Results

MacDonald 12
Vorkisigan 12

Its a tie. Bloody Hell. I thought I was going to offer a solution. Its time to look at it from a different angle. Mimesis and midrash can round their horses, gallop to the battlefield and leap madly at each other, swords held high, blood engorged in their sinewy veins and loaded guns firing for a final, bruising and decisive battle.

May the best 'method' win.

DramaQ

You're probably right that I don't have a full and clear understanding of it (yet).

But.... I never suggested that Mark's contemporaries wrote fiction as derivative of the HB.

I was just fleshing out your analogy to Lewis Carroll. You said:

If you accept (as Toto asked you) that "students in Hellenistic times learned to write by imitating Homer" then it seemed to me that your Alice analogy should be put on equal footing.

IF Carroll's contemporaries (not Mark's) routinely based their work on HB, then Carroll's parallels would be more significant.

Likewise, if Mark's contemporaries routinely based their writings on Homer, then parallels in Mark to Homer should be considered as (possibly) more than coincidence.

(Incidentally, I’m pretty skeptical about the parallels myself. I’m a long way from being convinced. I just don’t think there’s any good reason to reject them outright. They’ve been presented clearly and backed up with sources. I think the ball is in the opposition’s court to explain why they are wrong.)

Cheers,

DQ

Rick Sumner

We'll skip the Homer discussion, for the moment, a tangent seems to have developed regarding MacDonald and Homer, and I'd gotten confused as to which notion you were responding to. Apologies.

To clarify for purposes of the current thread:

The problem I have is that "prophecy historicized," in the sense that Mark preformed it was, to my knowledge, a previously unheard of phenomena--there is no prior incidence of it to gauge it against. Peshar has some similarity, midrash has some similarity, and it's closer to each at varying times, but neither is quite apt. What we're left with is no real way to tell what Mark is doing at any given time, and that despite his stated intention at the start, Vork isn't providing us with one.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

DramaQ

Oh that's ok. Looks to me like it happens all the time here. I'm probably just as guilty of it. Must be human nature.

However....

I'm thinking this is another tangent.

Vork started out with the notion that JBap's murder was some form of literary "borrowing" (whether intentional or subconscious, I dunno).

That's not the same as historicizing prophesy, is it?

Rick Sumner

Vork started his project, as he implies here, as a means of weeding out the fiction from Mark--determining what is pre-Markan. The problem I outlined is the reason I think he is failing--just because a story was influenced (whether it was or not is a separate issue for the moment), doesn't mean that it didn't happen, and doesn't mean that there is nothing pre-Markan behind it.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

DramaQ

OIC. You’re looking at a bigger context here that this thread is only a part of. Sorry, I’m still a rookie here and am not yet familiar with all the personalities.

If I understand your point here correctly, you’re saying that you can not ascribe as “fiction� a pericope in Mark simply on the grounds that a previous story shows its influence. That would follow (I presume) because Mark’s story could easily have happened BASICALLY as he tells it, and may only be “embellished� based on the earlier story.

Do I have that right?