Ted Hoffman

That is my claim.
I have not. I do not regard it as a Biography anymore than I regard Job as a biography. To me, it is "scripture" whatever that means. Whether it was for liturgical purposes or for recruiting converts, I don't know. We have Biographies of people like Truman, can you place the Gospel (cringe) of Mark alongside them?

Ben C Smith

All boldfacing is mine in the following quotations.

Cambridge Ancient History, page 769 (Judaea, Roman Administration):

This passage [in BJ II.434] contains a doublet of BJ II.408 about the seizure of Masada, which suggests that Josephus, who was hidden in the Temple throughout those exciting times (Vit. 21), was confused about their chronology.

Shaye J. D. Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome, page 89, note 14:

Even Laqueur’s oft-repeated dictum about doublets (material sandwiched between doublets is interpolated) is uncertain. For example BJ 2.531-532 seems to be repeated in 2.539 but there is no reason to believe that the intervening material is an interpolation.

Timothy Peter Wiseman, Death of an Emperor, page xii:

It has always been taken for granted, even by the best scholars, that Josephus’ Gaius narrative in Antiquities XIX is based on a single Roman source. I confess I cannot understand how that opinion could survive a close reading of the text. There are numerous doublets and inconsistencies which it seems to me can only be explained by the assumption that Josephus was working from at least two sources....

Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees, pages 23, 25, 45:

Hölscher’s criteria for identifying the two sources in books 1 and 2 [of the War] included the presence of doublets, differences in style, and and distinct preferences for certain terms.

....

[Josephus] was, according to Hölscher, a compiler and not a historian, who allowed tensions and doublets to stand unresolved in his presentation.

....

The source-critical movement, it will be recalled, proposed various evidences that Josephus was a rather dull copyist who failed to impart any independent judgement or outlook to his material. These evidences can be grouped under three rubrics:

A. Material inconsistencies, such as unfulfilled cross-references, doublets, dissonant chronological systems, and conflicting high-priest lists.
B. Stylistic variations, such as Hölscher observed between War 1:31 – 2:116 and 2:117ff.
C. Circumstances that suggest Josephus’s use of large, secondary or intermediate sources.

Lisa Kallet, Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides, pages 260-261:

Scholars have long objected to the first section [8.45], in which Alkibiades reduces the daily rate of pay from 1 drachma to 3 obols, on the grounds that it is a doublet of 8.29, in which the rate began at 1 drachma a day but then was reduced to slightly more than 3 obols.

Dov Gera, Judaea and Mediterranean Politics, 219 to 161 B.C.E., page 269:

Polybius states explicitly that Polycrates was loyal to his king, and his discussion of Ptolemy Macron indicates the same. The numerous parallels indicate that one of the passages [18.55.3-7 and 27.13.1-4] is a doublet of the other. Was this doublet the work of one of Polybius’ sources or that of the historian himself? If Polybius was responsible, was the original passage that describing Polycrates or that dealing with Macron?

Note that the doublets in view in all of these remarks are of the kind potentially useful to source criticism; that is, they are doublets of scenes or pericopes, not merely words or short phrases.

Note also that the presence of a doublet in an historical work often leads scholars either (A) to suspect that one element of the doublet has been artificially modelled after the other (as in the cases of Polybius and Thucydides above) or (B) to posit different sources for the two elements (as in the cases of book 8 of Thucydides and book 19 of the Antiquities of Josephus), just as some scholars suspect that Mark has artificially doubled his feedings while others suspect that Mark has used two different sources.

If you did not search biographies for doublets because you do not regard Mark as a biography, why did you search histories for doublets? Do you regard Mark as a history?

Of course not! And my apologies for abbreviating my thought. I meant, of course, ancient biographies, which differ markedly from modern ones in many key respects.

Ben.

Ted Hoffman

This is easy Ben. I cant believe you are trying to be difficult just like Jeffrey because I have specifically referred you to my review to find what I mean by doublets. Yet you still say you somehow are constrained to wait as if I am not forthcoming with an answer. Oh well, lets do a copy-paste: In literary criticism, a doublet is a parallel narrative, parable, or saying which grew out of, or alongside, an original narrative. For example, Matthew 16:19 is a doublet of Matthew 18:18--the two miracles of loaves and fishes in Mark 6:35-44 and Mark 8:1-9 are probably two accounts of a single event or narrative. See Richard N. Soulen and R. Kendall Soulen (eds.), Handbook of Biblical Criticism (1989), p. 50. The Sanhedrin trial (Mark 14:53-65) and the trial before Pilate (Mark 15:1-20) are doublets among several other passages in Mark that are also doublets. See Gerd Lüdemann, Jesus after 2000 Years: What He Really Did and Said, (2001), p. 101. Raymond Brown shows that Mark 14:32-43 is a doublet of the Mount of Olives scene and the Gethsemane scene. See Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, Volume 1 & 2 (1994), pp. 219-220.

Are we clear?

You left (C) The author is confused about the chronology as you cite from Cambridge Ancient History, page 769 (Judaea, Roman Administration). And I have added (D) One or both of the events has been fictionalized.

Are you saying we have to restrict our thinking to the thinking of scholars?
I was evaluating Mark as a source of history, not classifying it.
Good point. Note that your examples above treat doublets as anomalies that need to be accounted for. The scholars just don't consider other possibilities.

Ben C Smith

Are you joking? You must be joking. I can only assume that you are joking.

You are quoting my words from post #127, while I was still waiting for you to respond to my specific question about whether you thought there were repeated scenes in ancient histories. As soon as you answered and gave your position that ancient histories lacked repeated scenes (in posts #130 and #131), I gave you my short list of repeated scenes in the ancient histories (in post #132, my very next post). To claim that I am still waiting for a response from you when I have already responded to your response is just... bizarre.

Yes, that is true. C is an option.

This is basically the same as (or a variant of) my letter A. So, to recap:

A. One element of the doublet has been artificially (the word I used) or fictionally (the word you used) modelled after the other.
B. The two elements have different sources.
C. The author was confused on the chronology and listed the same event twice.

No, I am saying that scholars of Thucydides and Polybius often struggle with the same issues in their sources as scholars of the gospels do in theirs.

Since it is far more common to regard Mark as an ancient biography than as a history, do you think it might be worthwhile to evaluate Mark as an ancient biography (by searching ancient biographies for doublets), too?

Yes, they are anomalies to be accounted for. Whether they appear in Josephus or in Mark, they are anomalies to be accounted for.

Do you withdraw your implicit claim to Crossley and your explicit claim to me that the ancient histories lack doublets?

Ben.

Ted Hoffman

Okay, my bad. I didn't get the order of the posts.
You mean they also struggle with this issue. I don't believe they struggle with anonymity of the authors, multiple redactions, dating issues of the gospels, the nature of the being in question (divine, godman, mythological etc), synoptic problem etc.
Such books don't have a similar context as the gospels but your point is well taken.
I know this is Potter's view in Literary Texts. Well, I don't agree for the reasons below and it is an assumption that assumes as resolve what is at issue. Regarding it as an ancient biography imports a lot of baggage into the matter:

A) It assumes Jesus existed. Ancient biographies were about lives of certain influential people - mathematicians, philosophers etc. Examples: Isocrates (Evagoras), Xenophon (Agesilaus), Cornelius Nepos (Atticus), Tacitus (Life of Agricola), Lucian (Demonax), Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Eminent Philosophers). Do you have examples of ancient biographies of people whose historicity is unknown? I know most biographies were hagiographies but do we have biographies about people like Jesus who are not independently attested outside the same same "biography"? Particularly divine saviour figures?

B) It assumes that the author was a biographer. But the author of Mark is unknown. Porphyry was a known biographer so his Life of Plotinus is easy to get a handle on - besides other things about the text itself. But who was Mark? If we don't know Mark, and we can see that his gospel is some sort of kerygmatic literary form with some biographical content, we cannot just group it under ancient biographies. Not knowing him makes knowing his intentions more difficult. He does not follow a number of the ancient biographical conventions: he does not identify himself, he does not cite his sources or use eyewitness testimony, his "hero" is not a hero but a deranged character who is nailed on a cross like a criminal, his "gospel" is about the eschatology and the violent nut head is used as a mere vessel of Gods good word.

C) It ignores what the text actually is. A biography is an account of the life of a man from his birth till his death. Thanks to adoptionist Christology, Mark starts with an adult Jesus. Mark is about how JBap announced that the time has come and then Jesus enters with a gang of 12 and dies in an embarrassing manner and the resurrection of Jesus is about the time having come, his message is apocalyptic and he shows that the Jews didn't get it. Most ancient biographies had titles like "Life of..." or had the name of the main character as the title (Plutarch's Lives, Alexander, Appolonius of Tyana etc) - they were often a prestigious item (stuff for Kings and army generals - like Sutonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars and Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans) and were a vehicle of Political or Philosophical ideas. And often, the ideologue presenting his ideas in the hagiography was proud to identify himself as the author.

Mark has eschatology, messianic secret motif, apocalyptic material, reversal of expectations, allegorical elements, biographical elements etc. We cannot say that it has a biographical focus. This is a problem.

Ancient biographers used rhetorical elements, genealogies and sources (direct citations) as Momigliano, Development of Greek Biography points out. Mark lacks the last element and instead relies on the OT which is an old Jewish text not written by a contemporary of Jesus. This is a sharp diversion from the biographical form.

I withdraw it. But my contention that they are not to be expected in a proper historical narrative stands. Because as we can see, whenever they are found, scholars seek to account for them because they are anomalies. So far, NT scholars are happy to think that doublets indicate one event is being recasted in the terms of another event.

When you remove doublets, triptychs, miracles, fictional birth and death and other non-historical elements, what remains of Mark Ben?

PS: For this post, I relied a lot on Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels (available online) By Thomas R. Hatina particularly the chapter titled The Use of Authoritative Citations in Mark's Gospel and Ancient Biography: A Study of P. Oxy (p116)

Ben C Smith

Is there more to your belief that historians do not struggle with the issues on this list than there was to your belief that ancient histories lack doublets?

From your discussion of ancient biographies I glean the following claims:

• No ancient biographies deal with nonexistent people or with people whose historicity is not known.
• No ancient biographies fail to identify their authors by name.
• All ancient biographies deal with the entire lifetime of the subject from birth to death.
• All ancient biographies bore the name of the main character in the title.
• All ancient biographies cite their sources.
• All ancient biographies bore genealogies.

Are you claiming all of these things? If not, why did you bring them up, or (if applicable) in what way did I misunderstand you? If so, how carefully have you investigated them? How easy or difficult do you think it will be for me to produce, say, two or three ancient biographies about people of dubious historicity?

I do not understand your contention that Jesus is not independently attested outside of his biography. I regard Paul as independent of, indeed prior to, Mark. Do you not? (If your response is going to be Dohertyan, to the effect that Jesus is not earthly or such in Paul, I am not interested in rehashing all that; just so you know.)

But let us assume for the sake of argument that nobody who mentions Jesus does so independently of Mark. Are you claiming that no ancient biography deals with a subject who is not independently known apart from the biography itself? Can I add this to your list of claims?

No, it falls and shatters. Even the most proper of ancient histories (Thucydides and Polybius, after all!) could bear doublets. Perhaps what you meant to say is that doublets tend to compromise the historicity of that part of the history. With that I would agree.

(Unless by proper you meant modern, in which case I might agree, but the point would be worthless, since by definition no modern history existed in antiquity.)

I am not sure I am understanding you here.

First, why would I have to remove a fictional birth from Mark? Second, how many doublets and triptychs do you find in Mark? Do you have a list?

The short answer is that I do not yet know how much remains once one accounts for these and other phenomena. That is still an open question for me.

Ben.

Jeffrey Gibson

Could you please tell us where online it's available?

Jeffrey

Toto

Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels on google books (amazon link (or via: amazon.co.uk))

Jeffrey Gibson

Thanks for this. But it makes me ask -- just as I did previously with respect to Jacob/Ted's famliarity with the Odyssey and O'Nolan's article on doublets -- whether he's actually read what he claims he has.

The article on Mark that he refers to is by Stan Porter, not, as Ted/Jacob seesm to believe, Tom Hatina.

Moreover, and more importantly, what Porter does there (if I understand him correctly) is not only to compare the use of authoritative citation in Mark and in Satyrus’s Life of Euripides (P.Oxy. 1176) as a means of deterrmining the question of the literary genre of the Gospel, but to come to the conclusion on the basis of what he discovers in this comparison, that Mark's genre is indeed a form of ancient biographhy.

Jeffrey

fatpie42

I don't know about hallucinating. You are certainly reading in things which are not there. Dawkins may be adverse to a neutral stance in such interviews and have trouble being polite as a result, but that doesn't mean he is trying to 'save the world'. I'm far from being Dawkins' biggest fan and I hated the first half of that programme ("Root of all evil?") in which the scene you are pointing to came from. Nevertheless, I do not think that Dawkins comes across as anything other than someone strongly dismissive of religion.