Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 10-20-2011, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

...

I think the first option may be the original.

Are you hypothesizing a scribal error? An interpolation? Or blaming it on Mark's bad Greek? None of these have any support that I know of.

archibald · 10-20-2011, 11:53 AM

Toto, you know perfectly well I can't tell you unless you give me the secret password.

Toto · 10-20-2011, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

Toto, you know perfectly well I can't tell you unless you give me the secret password.

Shall I wait for your third revision of this to get a straight answer?

archibald · 10-20-2011, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

Toto, you know perfectly well I can't tell you unless you give me the secret password.

Shall I wait for your third revision of this to get a straight answer?

My point is that for a figure to say, 'all (these analogies that I use) are parables (to the unconverted/uninitiated)' entails that the writer means, 'my figure using parables is an indication (hint hint, I am being post-modern) that my whole gospel (glad tidings) is itself a parable, and that these parables my figure uses are therefore parables within my parable' is tenuous. If one wants to convince that the writer was knowingly writing a parable (or allegory, make one's mind up), one needs to do better than that, I think. The extant texts of Matthew, Mark and Luke all give much more of an impression, one way or another, that they are writing about a figure they believed to have existed. Mark starts with J the B announcing his arrival, Matthew starts with a geneaology and Luke says he is writing about events which were said to have happened.

Toto · 10-20-2011, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Shall I wait for your third revision of this to get a straight answer?

My point is that for a figure to say, 'all (these analogies that I use) are parables (to the unconverted/uninitiated)' entails that the writer means, 'my figure using parables is an indication (hint hint, I am being post-modern) that my whole gospel (glad tidings) is itself a parable, and that these parables my figure uses are therefore parables within my parable' is tenuous....

How does your point relate to the OP - Why is Jesus "alone"? scribal error? interpolation? Mark's bad Greek?

archibald · 10-20-2011, 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Shall I wait for your third revision of this to get a straight answer?

My point is that for a figure to say, 'all (these analogies that I use) are parables (to the unconverted/uninitiated)' entails that the writer means, 'my figure using parables is an indication (hint hint, I am being post-modern) that my whole gospel (glad tidings) is itself a parable, and that these parables my figure uses are therefore parables within my parable' is tenuous....

How does your point relate to the OP - Why is Jesus "alone"? scribal error? interpolation? Mark's bad Greek?

The wording in the text is, at best, a possible ambiguity, nothing more, easily explained without recourse to what the OP is suggesting. My point is that the OP emphasises certain....matters...which he suggests may be drawn from this ambiguity (by putting them in bold typeface) and it is, IMO, tenuous to draw these....provisional conclusions, from the ambiguity.

My reference to interpolations was just irony.

(and in case of confusion, I don't really think Jesus was a woman either. I may or may not put forward my alternative hypothesis that he was a winged donkey. I'm torn between that and my 'Undercover Roman double agent' hypothesis.)

Solo · 10-20-2011, 04:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

Toto, you know perfectly well I can't tell you unless you give me the secret password.

Shall I wait for your third revision of this to get a straight answer?

I would not hope to get much from archibald, Toto. You are dealing with a compulsive troll. He probably can't help it. He said himself he keeps posting on FRDB against his will.

Best,
Jiri

Sheshbazzar · 10-20-2011, 04:45 PM

(Pssst, ain't supposed to ever use that "t" word to describe anybody around here!)

mountainman · 10-20-2011, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

I'm torn between that and my 'Undercover Roman double agent' hypothesis.)[/SIZE]

I think the advertisement for the Imperial Internal Revenue and Tax department is a dead give away ....

"Render tribute to Caesar first, then think about God second"

I didn't know you had this reserve hypothesis.

Sloncha !

Solo · 10-20-2011, 09:30 PM

Just as an attempt to save yet another thread from being hijacked by the obssessed contrarians, self-admitted clowns, and compulsive pub debaters:
In the article I posted above in response to tanya, George Aichele offered this:

Quote:

Like J. R. R. Tolkien's fairy-stories, the myth of Jesus at the center of Christian belief concerns a secondary world. The miracles, resurrection, and birth stories represent a narrative realm to which one might want to escape. This secondary world is constructed in the reader's imagination from her experience of the primary world, but she believes it to be even more real than the primary world is. For the believer, the secondary world of heaven is not imaginary or pretended; it is the real, eternal place of God and of those who love God. It is not a fantasy.
Such a reading overlooks fantastical elements which play an important role in the reading of the Gospels. (It reads the Gospel stories as Christian myth--as something to be believed or disbelieved, as the case may be.) An irreducible, opaque remainder of the text is not finally consumed and absorbed along with the rest. A stupid monument, a marker of the limits of meaning, appears at points at which the Gospels resist interpretation and reading becomes difficult. This undigestible remainder, this unexplainable residuum, marks the fantastic.

Naturally, we all read the text with a different view of what it says. Some people – among them well- educated professional exegets - believe Mark is a simple report on what was believed about Jesus compiled by a clumsy, uneducated writer. They read the gospel with the assurance that smart people went over it many times before and therefore there is not much new to be found in it. When they do find strange stuff they consult Matthew’s and Luke’s parallels and assure themselves that what Mark says or does with the narrative is not really all that strange and interpret Mark as saying basically the same thing as the later gospels except as a somewhat retarded member of the team.

But more and more often, serious students of Mark come to appreciate the complexity of his writing, his stoic wit, and penchant for dark existential comedy, things which are mostly absent in his counterparts. Professor Aichele rightly points to the fantastic in Mark, the opaque remainder of the text which cannot be processed by the reader’s belief or disbelief. In other words, there are some things in Mark which do not make any sense at all (and never made any sense) when measured by conventional standards of storytelling and/or meaningful discourse. Here are some of the truly opaque, weird things in Mark which will always pose a challenge:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo (from an unpublished essay)

…….The gospel stories self-validate and self-propagate athwart logic and meaning, and at times seem to veer off the deep end. This is not as much about play-acting or minor slips in logic. The saying of the strong man (3:27) which is offered as sort of a triumphal segue to the tautology [of devil defeating Beelzebub], appears to be suggesting by a suspect formula that if a devil can’t drive out a devil, then [unknown] may plunder the devil’s house by binding the devil. How that follows logically, Jesus does not explain to the Pharisees. In the next two verses, the text declares a taboo on blaspheming the spirit, which is said to be holy and which the reader is to take on faith is the [unknown] driving out the devil. One gets a vague sense that Mark wants to present Jesus as something of a scandalous deceiver to one of his three audiences.

In 9:40, Jesus declares a rule of who is not against us is for us, in overruling his disciples and allowing someone who does not follow his group to cast out demons in his name. Unfortunately one cannot use the example given to formulate such a principle, as there is no ‘not against us’ exposed in the incident. Jesus’ edict uses circular reasoning unless one allows a silent assumption there was one or more different Jesus-professing groups already in his own lifetime, with a different group ethos. Only then the not-against us-is-for-us split can be meaningful in the invocation of Jesus’ name. An apparent slip, but it is of no great consequence in our present query. These two examples whatever they are do not look overly difficult to interpret, even if they lack presentation. These would not be exhibits of opacity in Mark, if I understand professor Aichele correctly.

Jesus going into Jericho and coming out of there without incident in the same verse (10:46) would be. Morton Smith had an explanation for that one – a fragment of Secret Mark which records some action that took place there; alas, the letter of Clement to Theodore protests too much and is best set aside until the page Dr. Smith claimed he discovered at the Mar Saba monastery re-appears and can be examined. Luckily for my own thesis, nothing is remembered also of Jesus’ visit to Bethany (11:11-12), ergo the question remains. If Mark was recording actual events which took place and were remembered what would be the purpose naming the locations without memories attaching to them ? Those are obscure intents.

And there is more: people around Jesus can’t eat and it is taken as a clue by his family that it is Jesus who must be out of his mind and needs to be restrained. Clearly not an absorbable idea. Further, this loopy canard that people around Jesus are so busy they can’t feed themselves is advertised also in 6:31 and 8:1. When Jairus’ daughter rises from her death, Jesus orders casually that she be fed. Why would she not ask for food herself if we dare to presume she was happy to be alive again ? Further, the mourners in her house burst out laughing when Jesus minutes before offers that she is not dead but only sleeping. That, I am afraid, would not be an appropriate response in the solemn occasion, where human life is claimed to have been lost and hope for it was re-kindled. Of course, Jesus expels the offenders from the house, but still, what is the meaning of this surreal intermezzo ? And what is with the throngs of people who physically converge on, and oppress, Jesus in the most bizzare fashion (2:4, 5:31), even threatening to crush him (3:9) ?

Jesus tells his apostolic angels in private to go by themselves to a secluded place to rest, but people from all over the place run there ahead of the party, as if they knew Mark’s story already.

Jesus, the authority over everyone and everything in the first part of the story, charges the crowds not to tell anyone about his cures, but the more he charged them the more zealously they proclaimed it (7:36). How could that be ?

The storyteller says there is one loaf of bread in the boat but the disciples deny there is bread in the vessel – after arguing around it. Mark says Jesus said, what is there to discuss ? Yeah, I suppose, but what does that mean ? Mark wrote the story. There either is a loaf of bread in the boat or there isn’t. If there is, you show the loaf to those who do not see it or explain why it cannot be done. And that would be the end of that mystery. But wouldn’t Mark know that ?

Bartimaeus throws away his cloak when he is invited to join Jesus’ entourage. Obviously, that would be an important act to record for posterity in a slim volume of twenty modern pages. Jesus, after passing through Bethany of which Mark can't remember anything, curses a fig tree because it did not yield fruit to him a few weeks ahead of market.

The mocking Sanhendrin counsels slap Jesus around cupping his eyes asking him to prophesy. What does that mean ? We don’t know, but the incident was apparently in place because both Matthew and Luke made their own exegesis of it. Matthew writes the men told Jesus to prophecy who hit him, i.e. to entertain them with a little vaticinium ex eventu. He even removes the captor’s hands from Jesus’ eyes to make it plain he sees no occult designs in Mark at all . Finally, Jesus’ body disappears from the tomb apparently without a hint of what is to follow but with a baffling ending conjunction (16:8) which apparently signals the story is not finished.

So, obviously if we find that Mark often obfuscates things and appears to do that intentionally, then we will be sensitized to other obscure verses and attempt to read them in a way that is in keeping with the text as a whole. Now, I realize some of the web chat room desperados here in habit of acting on random brainwaves which they have the overwhelming urge to share with similarly afflicted individuals, will not admit the idea that the NT texts may be interpreted above their comprehension level. But I suppose we will always have the poorly informed with us, and there is not much else we can do than learn not to react them.

Peace,
Jiri

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10-20-2011, 11:53 AM	#22
archibald Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Northern Ireland Posts: 1,305	Toto, you know perfectly well I can't tell you unless you give me the secret password.

10-20-2011, 04:45 PM	#28
Sheshbazzar Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: On the path of knowledge Posts: 8,889	(Pssst, ain't supposed to ever use that "t" word to describe anybody around here!)

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