ynquirer

Two birds, one stone. Not only would Ruth 1:1 prove that a central character - one in the bloodline of David - may be introduced by mentioning both town and land of origin, but also that Mark might have borne Bethlehem in mind, as guessed. Thus, he must have had a positive reason not to mention it rather than a negative one - ignorance.

Good point.

spin

You've seen how interested the Marcan writer was in David? Even when he mentioned David, he made no connection with Jesus. Bethlehem? You have nothing at all to support your bald conjecture.

The connection between Ruth 1:1 and Mk 1:9?? Ben C needs to be hopeful.


spin

ynquirer

The main point is clear: Ben has shown your claim, that a character may not be introduced by mentioning both town and land of origin, as in Mark 1:9 and Ruth 1:1, to be false.

spin

So a priori you've decided there's a relation between the two.

The problem with the Ruth verse is that you are making assumptions from translation Greek. Bad move.

All I said is that you cannot go from the Greek of Mk 1:9 to derive provenance if Nazareth had been in the verse.


spin

ynquirer

No, I haven’t. I simply use Ruth 1:1 as evidence.

Is Mark written in Hebrew? Aramaic, perhaps?

apo Nazaret in Greek is translated into “from Nazaret.” Is that what you say I cannot interpret?

spin

Of what, exactly?

No. That's why the relationship with the LXX translation is dubious. It is translation Greek. You simply know what the Hebrew of Ruth says, so you import it into your understanding of the LXX version.

You can interpret it however your fancy takes you. However, you have a verb which deals with provenance either implicit or explicit and destination. When interpreting the phrase one normally considers the verb which governs it.


spin

ynquirer

Of a pattern, commonly used by writers of the Jewish scriptures in Greek, - that includes the Septuagint as well as the NT, - in which a central figure in the narrative is introduced while s/he is moving from one place (identified as town + land of provenance) to another located in a different land.

Thus, Ruth and his family is said in Ru 1:1 to move from Bethlehem in Judea (town plus land of provenance) to Moab (land of destination). Likewise, Jesus is said in Mk 1:9 to move from Nazaret in Galilee (town plus land of provenance) to the Jordan, which in Mk 1:5 has been unequivocally placed in Judea (land of destination).

Psssss… Not really. The only overtone in Greek which is worth mentioning is that the ruling verb eporeusqh (h=eta, q=theta) is passive voice. Yet poreuomai is another very frequent verb in Greek, with a number of possible meanings, most of them related to motion or change, whether literal or figurative. In this particular instance, the voice is used by the translator to convey the meaning that Ruth’s family was moved by famine - limos - to settle anew in a different land.

Could you be more specific?

spin

He's back in Galilee after five verses, so obviously we have a quick trip to the Jordan specifically to be baptized. The parallel with Ruth is false.

This is a sad waste of misguided effort. You know from the wider context what to extract from the verb in Ruth 1:1. It's not in the verse itself.

It's better not to confuse you with too much input. Just try telling how the Greek of Ruth 1:1 says what you want it to say, then find the same elements in Mk 1:9, remembering of course that he's back in Galilee in 1:14.


spin

Ben C Smith

Hi, spin.

I was (slowly) preparing a response to you on the Nazareth-Capernaum issue(s) when I noticed two things in Luke that had not occurred to me before.

I have in the past been sympathetic to, though not entirely convinced of, the idea that Luke was composed the first time through without chapters 1-2. Well, I just noticed the following:

1. Without chapters 1-2, Luke first introduces Jesus to us in 3.21: When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was also baptized.... Does this sound like it was intended to be the first reference to Jesus in the entire book?
2. Without chapters 1-2, the first mention of the messiah is in 3.15, where the people are speculating whether John might be the one. John in turn promises that one greater will come (though even here he does not actually call the greater one the messiah, but perhaps we are supposed to gather that much). Thus the first time Jesus is called the messiah is in 4.41, where he is silencing demons because they know him to be the messiah. Does this look like it was supposed to be the first clear connection of Jesus to the messiahship? Luke 3.22 may not do it for me, since John promised that the coming one would baptize with spirit and fire, not be baptized with water.

Just wondering how you would treat these things, since they took me a little by surprise.

Ben.

spin

Mk 1:1 sets the tone as a beginning for that gospel. It is not supported by the other gospels, so one might complain that it might not have been in the synoptic core, being unsupported, but, assuming that the Mk never started at 1:2, something was necessary before it and 1:1 is certainly a most economical introduction, so I find its presence convincing in and of itself.

This means that both Matt and Luke have removed this brief introduction, but the question is when? The first obvious answer is when the birth narratives were grafted onto the front. If there were two stages (at least) of redaction, then it or something like it was there, wasn't it?

I think that Luke has just extended the John material, and in so doing he has both pushed the introduction of Jesus back, but given a much more time localized intro to John, which I guess could just as easily have stood as the replacement beginning I was thinking about earlier. It's much more ostentatious:

"In the fifteenth year of the reign of emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip was ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas..."

If you know that the story is about Jesus, then the delay is a literary mechanism to make the reader (and the listener) anticipate. (Shakespeare for example did this a lot.) You then get the baptism and you are delayed again by a genealogy before you get any more. This is writing technique.


spin