JoeWallack

Merchant Of Death

Introduction
JW:
The purpose of this Thread will be to explore the use of Irony in "MarK". We begin with one of the most famous stories in the Gospels, the cock crowing denial of Peter:

http://errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_14

JW:
Note that a cock crowing is literally associated with dawn and the sun rising and this is what "Mark" shows:

http://errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_15

The figurative use than would also naturally refer to "rising" normally as a positive description. Note that "Mark" as a whole is filled with the Contrast of the son/Sun rising Verses falling/sleeping. Indeeds the key explanatory Parable of the Sower uses just such a contrasting description:

http://errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_4

The failure here of Peter fits the prediction of the Parable of the Sower perfectly as "and when the sun was risen, it was scorched". The Ironic Contrast is that "Mark" uses a Marker, the cock crowing, which would normally be used to literally indicate rising and figuratively used as a positive, to Mark the "falling"/failure of Peter.

Ironically, Christians take Peter's crying as evidence that he was rehabilitated when the natural understanding is that it just confirms his guilt. In the related legal atmosphere that "Mark" has created, crying at the end of witness testimony would be the classic way that a witness would confirm their guilt as they would be the best possible witness against themselves.

The bonus Irony here is that in a story that is filled with instructions from the Instructor to the Instructees, the primary instructee never remembers anything he was instructed to remember, best illustrated by the Passion instructions:

http://errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_9

Remember Jiri? And the only thing Peter ever remembers in the whole Gospel is the prediction of his Failure:

http://errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_14

Now that's Ironic!



Joseph

PAST, n.
That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one -- the knowledge and the dream.

OutSourcing Paul, A Contract Labor of Love Another's(Writings). Paul as Markan Source

Solo

Well yes, but more to the point - and I hope Ben & Andrew see this : Peter's denial in Mark all but precludes the legend of Peter and Paul's reconciliation while they were alive.

1) In the absence of other historical material Mark establishes that in the traditions, Peter & Co. denied the cross and despite Peter's oath, were "offended" (verb of Pauline staple, 'scandalon') by Jesus martyrdom.

2) unless Paul was ready to compromise on the Cross as the warranty of Christ's messiahship, no reconciliation was possible with Cephas while Paul was alive;

3) since after Peter and Paul's deaths the latter's theology of the Cross prevailed and becames uncontested in the gospel texts,

there is no ground on which to claim that Peter and Paul reconciled their differences during their lifetime.

Jiri

Ben C Smith

That I should not immediately see what Andrew has to do with this is no surprise, since you and he may have had an exchange about it that I did not follow. But I do not see what I have to do with this. Have you and I discussed this purported reconciliation before and I have simply forgotten?

Thanks.

Ben.

Jeffrey Gibson

Joseph,

Once again you are attempting to reinvent the wheel. See

Irony in Mark's Gospel Text and Subtext (or via: amazon.co.uk)
Series: Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series (No. 72)
Jerry Camery-Hoggatt


http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogu...sbn=0521020611


Jeffrey (writing from Oxford)

andrewcriddle

The best evidence within Mark itself of Peter's future restoration is the combination of Mark 14:27-28 and Mark 16:7 Andrew Criddle

Solo

Hi Ben,

Remember this ?
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Solo: ....what do you think about my contention that Paul's target in 1 Cr 15 lecture on resurrection are not some Gnostics that rained from heaven on Corinth (as Schmithals seems to think) but none other than Peter's friends who duly followed the teaching of HJ ? Impossible ?

Ben: Nothing is impossible.
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For FWIW, I perceive you and Andrew as inclined to argue early church harmony that extends back to Paul's time, e.g. in some of your postings on Paul's use of dominical sayings (incidentally: this sounds strange coming from someone who claims he once was a Wellsian mythicist), or your dismissal out of hand of 1 Cr 15:3-11 as interpolation.

I don't hold the ECH argument to be a crime, btw. It is one thing to take the boy out of the church, it is another thing to take the church out of the boy.

Jiri

Clivedurdle

Welcome to Britain!

(So what are you doing here then?)

Solo

Hi, Andrew,

I think this argument assumes that Peter & Co. heard it the second time. But they did not if you accept the shorter ending of Mark. The first time they they contradict Jesus protesting they would not fall away and be the witness of the Passion. The second time the message does not reach them.

The statement "go before you in Galilee" in Mark 16:7 I think needs to be read as self-referencing. Intuitively, it suggests the self-fulfilment of the gospel : it is saying to the Petrine succession: it is written by the Spirit - you are coming to Galilee (i.e. to us, the Gentile church of the Crucified Messiah).

Jiri

Clivedurdle

Is Camery- Hoggart arguing Mark is very gnostic - the parables with their hidden meanings known only to those in the know, the use of Irony - you might think you are condemning Jesus but actually you are condemning yourselves.

If we are looking at a text that is deliberately contrived to elicit certain responses from the audience - we are the sinners in contrast to the righteous for example - we are in the realms of what in media studies is called hyper reality. We are looking at a tool for teaching and evangelising - in fact I used to give out the gospel of Mark with that express purpose.

A world of the play, of symbolic interactions, of creating stories and myth.

Maybe the Greeks had "got" post modernism a long time ago - gods descending on wet humans in the Jordan is pretty surreal!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

Ben C Smith

Actually, yes, I do remember that (now). But my vague nothing is impossible is surely impossible () to press as a definitive statement for anything, right? (In fact, it was specifically calculated in this case to avoid being definitive.)

I cannot speak for Andrew, of course, but I personally am inclined to think that Paul and Peter never really came to terms after their falling out in Antioch.

And why does speaking about dominical sayings in Paul sound strange for a former Wells mythicist? (Incidentally, I often use the term dominical sayings as a convenient tag to identify sayings that are attributed to Jesus in the gospels, without actually trying to argue by virtue of the very expression itself that Jesus really spoke them, because I usually use that term without distinguishing whether the saying came to Paul from dominical tradition or from dominical revelation.)

I distinctly recall dismissing out of hand several specific arguments that 1 Corinthians 15.3-11 is an interpolation; I do not recall dismissing the notion itself out of hand, though I may remember incorrectly and would welcome correction on that point.

I am not exactly sure what is being said here about churches and boys, but I do not think that either harmony or disharmony is a trend to be sought across early Christianity as a whole; the evidence seems to shift, depending on the topic and the groups being discussed. Some groups seem harmonious with others; some seem disharmonious even within themselves. Cephas and Paul seem harmonious to some extent in Jerusalem, disharmonious in Antioch (and quite possibly for the rest of their lives).

Ben.