Vorkosigan

I don't know and I refuse to speculate. Mark's gospel was redacted, so there is more than one hand at work here, so justifying an argument about motives is hard. It just seems to me that an error here does not indicate ahistoricity, as some skeptics are wont to claim. I mean, there is no obvious reason that there should be an error. The scene is constructed by Mark,that much is clear. So why did he get the name wrong?

The more I look at this gospel, the more impressed I am with how difficult and complex it is. So I have been asking myself what, if anything, he might have been trying to indicate by this error -- I mean, what if he did it purposely? Mark is so subtle sometimes it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Vorkosigan

the_cave

If you're going to try this, Vork, and you want to keep your argument simple, I would avoid a lot of guessing about stratums and documents and the like. I don't see a lot of consensus on the issue.

For example, you could I suppose claim that this is a Markan invention, but probably saying it's because there is no pre-Markan literary tradition is too speculative. You could I suppose argue that there's no natural reason for believing the story, so there's no need to assume that it's based on an acutal event. But that has nothing to do with whether there was a story behind it.

? What about a PN that is neither of these things?

gregor

Vork

I concluded from you summary that Mark knew it was an error - a conclusion that you might not be drawing. There seems to be a number of alternatives with this event:

1. An oral tradition that HJ said it (incorrectly), and Mark carried on this mistake, either knowing it to be a mistake or not. Knowing it was a mistake but keeping it in would be interesting.

2. An oral tradition that HJ said something generally about a prior highpriest, but Mark got the name wrong.

3. There was no oral tradition, and Mark invented it but got it wrong accidently.

4. There was no oral tradition, and Mark invented it and intentionally listed the wrong person for some other motive.

I simply interpreted you conclusion as #4.

Rick Sumner

You're missing my point. I wasn't taking issue with the statement that redaction was fiction. Nor was I suggesting that there wasn't redaction. It was the qualifier "Markan" redaction that isn't going to bode well, because the only way we know that any redactive tendency is "Markan" is through presupposition. There could have been a dozen redactors. Five dozen. Three redactors a pericope. We simply don't know, hence my suggested reduction of "Markan redaction" to "redactive tendencies."

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

That's not me writing! It's Jacob Aliet. I am avoiding the whole stratum issue. It's impossible to say, the dating isn't good enough, and depedence can run in many directions.

I think a lot of people don't quite grasp this point. If your only source for an event is document X, and the event A in X is a clear fiction, there is no reason to believe that event A ever happened. If you want to set to prove A occurred, you cannot use document X to do it. You need a reliable outside vector.

I am not really interested in proving whether or not certain events happened. That is not necessary. I only want to see what can be ruled out as invention. Whatever cannot be rubbed away can then be addressed by some other method, what, I cannot say.


Someone invented the PN, that much is clear.

Vorkosigan