Vinnie

What does he make of the disciples negative portrayal in Mark?

Vinnie

Toto

He thinks it is analogous to the way Odysseus' crew were all somewhat incompetant and unable to bear suffering - a literary device to play up Odysseus.

Vinnie

So Mark is making Jesus look better by having disciples be idiots? I could point out quite a few flaws with that one!

Vinnie

Toto

Hey, it worked for Homer.

You might enjoy the book, Vinnie. It is not what you might think it is from reading Layman's reviews, and I doubt that it will change your basic views on much.

Vinnie

One: Jesus specially picked these programmatically dennigrated idiots (in Mark). If they were meant to make him look better how does him picking a bunch of failing idiots to spread his message accomplish this?

Two: Mark trashes the apostles for theological purposes. I demonstrated this in my article:

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/markmary1.html

THat means Mark must be doing more than "making Jesus look good" through contrasting him with idiots. Maybe it plays a small part but it doesn't look like the best way to view the negative portrayal of the discples in Mark.

Moe appropriately, Mark is presumably trashing the apostles for some apologetical purpose othr than using them to make Jesus look good. Maybe he needs to given his theology which may have differed. Or maybe he was piting their failure as inspiration to a rebounding community that had failed. For example, maybe Mark is saying, "Even the best failed there is hope." It oculd be a micture. Plus Mark features the most "human" Jesus of any Gospel IIRC.

This is why I said "I could point out a few flaws with this." Mark trying to make Jesus look better would be the last solution to cross my mind.

Vinnie

Toto

The advantage of literary criticism is that everyone can be right. All interpretations add to the meaning. I doubt that McDonald claims to have solved a problem once and for all.

Vorkosigan

I have to agree with Toto. You'd like McDonald a lot. There isn't really any fundamental contradiction between your point and McDonald's about the disciples. It's not exactly uncommon in literature for a writer to make a parallel do double duty, referring both to the work alluded to, and to the world the writer creates.

Vorkosigan

gridleyjason

Excuse me, but WHAT? Oath Sworn? Where on earth do you get this?

Jason

gregor

Towing the line.

Well, Baylor (one of the Universities employing a reviewer) just kicked out a seminary student who was a professed Xian but was gay. DO you think Baylor would permit an atheist to study at its seminary?


Second, Bede's guest's commentary was filled with some howlers. Two just jumped off the page:

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"I can say with confidence that, even if it were proved that Mark had, as a creative artist, taken literary and/or historical liberties with [historical facts], that fact would not even come close to proving that the creation of his text was not inspired by God."
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Thus, assume God's inspiration ab initio, and no amount of evidence will dissuade you.


Also:
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"Many non-Christians seem to believe that, in order to be true, Christianity must be unique. This is utterly fallacious - if anything, the precise opposite is the case. If Christian doctrine were strange and deviant and had no similarities at all to that of other religious systems, it would be more likely to be a weird, aberrant construct, not less."
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Reminds me of someone (Augustine, perhaps) asserting that Satan created the earlier religions with elements similar to the later Xianity to confuse the faithful. What bit of logic supports the claim that similarity enhances authenticity?

Nom

Mark is not "making Jesus look good through contrasting him with idiots." He's making him look good by contrasting him (and portraying him as more able, powerful, etc.) with Odysseus. The disciples in Mark repeatedly act like dimwits, McDonald argues, because Odysseus' crew repeatedly act like dimwits. But whereas Odysseus was often helpless to rectify his crews' mistakes, Jesus could (thus demonstrating Jesus' superiority over the great Greek hero, not his disciples).

This is what McDonald means when he talks early on of Mark as a "tranvaluative hypertext." The book's purpose, he holds was at least in part to place Jesus is situations similar to those faced by familiar heroes -- and have Jesus come out better than they did. It's actually a very flatering reading of Mark, at least from Mark's point of view, because it gives him far more literary credit than usual.