stephan huller

What do the rest of you think about Larry Hurtado? Here's what I have to say - he certainly seems to develop the same argument for 'Secret Mark' being a modern forgery that he does later in the same book for the long ending of Mark being an ancient addition. Can someone help me out what I'm not understanding about his point? First Hurtado uses the pastiche argument to demonstrate why Morton Smith had to be the forger of the Letter to Theodore:

Then later on he uses another scholar's study of the long ending of Mark to demonstrate that these kinds of 'pastiche' compositions were en vogue. Indeed it is how Hurtado says the ending of Mark was composed at the time of Irenaeus or earlier:

So why does the pastiche argument (or cento gospel to use Grant's terminology) 'prove' that the story about the resurrected youth in to Theodore is a modern fake? Please help me out ...

Bingo the Clown-O

Just curious: How many hours of sleep have you lost over this issue?

stephan huller

This is NOTHING compared to the amount of time I have spent dealing with Greek, Russian and every other lazy culture that has no conception of timely response to emails, faxes and phone calls. It took me fifty calls over four months to get through to one archive to get started on finding matching handwriting. When I get a moment I have to figure out a way to get funding to digitalize an annex worth of newly discovered documents Tselikas stumbled upon at the Jerusalem Patriarchate. Maybe that will have to be put off for a couple of months.

As I once told a Greek colleague (much to his displeasure) - 'this (i.e. the loss of the manuscript) would NEVER have happened at a German monastery."

There is much more to discuss and this is supposed to be a hobby let's not forget.

It really is just an elaborate mental game I play to keep myself from cheating on my wife Either that or I am planning to take a trip to one of these exotic locales with my mistress and I've just set up an elaborate ruse. Take your pick (although I can't imagine what a stripper would make of the Mar Saba monastery; or the monks of the lady - it might actually be counterproductive now that I think of it)

Doug Shaver

I cannot critique his argument without reading it in his own words, and I don't have time to do that. I have read a little bit of his work, and he seems competent enough, academically speaking, though with a definite conservative bias.

Vorkosigan

O thanks, I thought I was the only one.

stephan huller

Vork

I think a lot of atheists and even Christian miss this - namely that even as critics we function effectively as religious sages, whether we believe or not. What I mean by this is that while most of us are familiar with the 'church attendee' as the model for religious observance, the various monotheistic traditions all have the 'elite who spend great amounts of time reading scriptures.'

One can make the case that religion itself was made by sages and scribes for sages and scribes. That all the masses of idiots were just useful cattle allowing the sages to examine the scriptures. Why examine the scriptures? To divert one's attention from 'animal life' as such. It's being a moronic animal, asleep through life until death closes the door (and I say this having the deepest love for my dog). But that's what it is about - the text(s) become holy because the texts are not animal life. It's animal life and the avoidance of being a dumb beast that raises the distraction (= the text) to something holy.

I truly wonder if the concept of 'God' is secondary to the value of the text 'diverting the eyes' away from earthly things. This is all religion was really meant to be about. It's what the Muslims aptly call the Jews, Christians and Sabians أهل الكتاب‎ ‎ ′Ahl al-Kitāb.

andrewcriddle

Hi Stephan

At the time of publication of Lord Jesus Christ Larry Hurtado took the position that Secret Mark was somewhat more likely to be ancient than modern, but it was almost certainly secondary to canonical Mark. Hurtado's support for an ancient Secret Mark was influenced (maybe overinfluenced) by Thomas Talley's speculations about early Alexandrian liturgical practice, see p. 435.

Hence at the time of publication Hurtado dated both additions to Mark in the 2nd century, although he may well have changed his preferred date for Secret Mark since then.

Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

Even if the book was published in 2003 and his preface to Gospel Hoax in 2005 the question still stands. He presumably still holds that the longer ending is a pastiche. I doubt that he has stopped viewing the Secret Mark fragment as a pastiche. Watson and Evans reuse the same argument in recent papers. Can't we just agree that anyone who acknowledges the long ending of Mark is a pastiche of other gospel and then turns around and uses a similar pastiche argument to demonstrate to Theodore is a modern forgery is being inconsistent and putting forward a highly subjective criticism?

stephan huller

Here is Hurtado making the same Secret Mark is a modern forgery because it is a pastiche of other gospels argument as recently as May of this year:

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/20...2/secret-mark/

stephan huller

Interestingly Francis Watson, perhaps the critic most associated with the pastiche = modern forgery argument accepts at the same time that the longer ending of Mark was an ancient edition to Mark:

and look further at this statement in his Text and Truth:

But that's very curious given the lengths to which Watson argues that the pastiche nature of the addition to chapter 10 of Mark in Theodore is by its very nature proof of forgery:

http://rogerviklund.wordpress.com/20...rancis-watson/

It is entirely possible that the letter to Theodore is an ancient or modern forgery. Yet the fact the fact that the addition referenced therein is a pastiche cannot possibly be argued to be a proof in any sense that the material is forged. Indeed I am curious when the pastiche nature of the long ending was first recognized in scholarship. Was it before or after 1958?