spin

I have been considering the actions of the author regarding his text and what we can make out of that. When an author says something like "leaving Tyre, he came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee", he sees nothing out of the ordinary in his narration. Anyone who knew the geography would see that it was not ordinary and in need of either more information (or less, by not mentioning "through Sidon", the approach taken in Mt 15:29).


spin

Walrus

Nice avoidance of the question, which is: Are you rejecting the possibility that Mark, in writing what he did, was thinking that his readers would know that Jesus was traveling around preaching, and that being in the vicinity of a large city like Sidon, if he travelled there, his readers would be smart enough to assume he went there to preach as long as he was in the area?

spin

We are dealing with a text. You are trying to shift the discourse onto some presumed set of real events behind that text. That would involve some attempt to show that the events narrated reflected such real events. You can't do that because you have no way to do so. Stick with what we can talk about, ie what the narrator tells us.


spin

JoeWallack

JW:
See if you can find what Apologist Glenn Miller is hiding in the following picture regarding Original "Mark's" Jesus departing from Tyre and going by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee:

Walrus

That's 2. The claim is that Mark is in geographical error because Jesus would have no reason to go to Sidon on leaving Tyre if his final destination was another direction. I have provided a plausible, logical reason, both for the detour (Jesus, a preacher, went there to preach) and why that wasn't spelled out (Mark's readers would know that Jesus' ministry was being a travelling preacher, thus any travelling would be to preach, thus no reason to tell them what they already knew). The question is whether you are denying the possibility. If so, on what grounds?

What the narrator tells us is where Jesus went, not why, yet your objection is based on why someone would go that way. Refusing to consider a reasonable explanation of the why means that this is a <edit>, agenda-driven discussion on your part.

spin

That is not the claim. It is that Mark seems to think that he can move Jesus from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee via Sidon without knowing he needed to explain such a trajectory, as someone who knew the geography would. It's a bit like the Monty Python claim "she turned me into a newt" without the addition "I got better".

Eisegesis is no meaningful response. What you are attempting to do needed to have come from the author of the text. Nothing you can say in the matter will change that or be relevant.

Not telling the reader why is telling the reader that the narrator doesn't understand the issues.

Inventing explanations as you do has nothing to do with the text.

<edit for consistency>

spin

Walrus

Well, since nothing I can say is relevant, I guess you win, don't you?

spin

Don't take things out of context.


spin

avi

Notwithstanding Toto's relative displeasure at the progress, or lack thereof, on this thread, I find it very interesting. Thank you Joe, for your most recent link to the provocative web site of Glenn Miller:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/giddygaddy.html

I have profited from studying his photographs, one of them, in particular, is fascinating, because it shows the topography of precisely the region under discussion: Southeastern most corner of Lake Galilee, and unmistakeably, the extreme Southeastern border of Lake Galilee, which apparently is included within the domain of Decapolis, has NO MOUNTAINS.

There is a cliff, for the pigs to fall over, looks maybe 20 meters high??? -- but no mountains.

It was also interesting that his map, with all the various pink and red arrows, fails to illustrate Decapolis, anywhere, nor should it, since Lake Galilee is almost exclusively north of Decapolis. Point is: Lake Galilee is nowhere near the middle of Decapolis.

However, if spin is correct, (and, of course, if I am wrong, as usual!) then, Papyrus 45, supposed third century origin, with nearly identical text to "W", the fifth century document with comparable handwriting, then our earliest extant copy of Mark 7:31 asserts "Tyre and Sidon", contrary to Hort & Westcott, and therefore, we do not know which is the correct version. Logically, the road which travels, as spin has illustrated previously, to Damascus, originates a few kilometers north of Tyre, and thus several kilometers South of Sidon, therefore, a generous person could argue that Mark was writing Tyre and Sidon, i.e. in conformance with the Byzantine version. Most interesting point: Maybe this issue was subject of long debates, 1800 years ago, hence the two oldest sources, P45 and Vaticanus, have such distinctive, and such different, readings. Our argument is a recap of debates from long, long ago.

avi

Walrus

I wasn't taking things out of context, I was reading the text in the context of the larger work, i.e. the book of Mark, in which Jesus is clearly portrayed as a preacher that travelled around the area to preach. If you were reading a book about an American Major League baseball team from New York (say the Mets), and in the course of this book an interesting incident is noted to have happened during the season while this team was in Houston, followed by the following sentence: After this they returned to New York via (through, by way of, etc.) Los Angeles., you would not need to be told that they went to L.A. to play a series against the Dodgers, you would naturally assume that. That is known as exegesis, reading a text in the context of the work as a whole, not as an isolated statement.