thentian

The question is whether the word indicates a follower in the convert sense - strongly enough to preclude that this Mary can be Mary the mother of Jesus. What other word could Mark have used to indicate a group of people who were following Jesus around -not in the negative stalking sense- but either neutrally just tagging along, or somewhere between that and as-good-as-disciples sense?

Ben C Smith

My view of this verse does not depend only on this one word; it is the following, the ministering, and the fact that these women are singled out as witnesses of the death, the burial, and the empty tomb.

There are several options. The word επιδιωκω would work; look at how it is used in Genesis 44.4 (LXX):

They had just gone out of the city, and were not far off, when Joseph said to his house steward: Up, follow [επιδιωξον] the men; and when you overtake them, say to them: Why have you repaid evil for good?

Here the following is not positive, and only barely neutral; the steward pursuing the brothers is about to get in their faces, so to speak, much as Mary was going to do in Mark 3 (what on earth do you think you are doing?). Verbs on the διωκω stem in general would better convey the sense Gerard wishes to find.

Ben.

thentian

Well... "ministering" I'll grant can be taken to point in that direction, but not necessarily so; It is also used in the sense of waiting upon menially.

Otherwise, the only thing I find curious is that Mark doesn't simply call her the mother of Jesus if that is what he means. Doesn't he know or isn't he sure, or is he just being enigmatic? Or should we consider the fact that he doesn't have a birth narrative...?

It's not just Gerard, you know. I'm pretty sure all the main denominations identify this Mary with Jesus' mother. And I'm not sure following in the sense of [επιδιωξον] is what he has in mind. Isn't that more like "pursue"?

Ben C Smith

I already floated the possibility (not my preferred option) that this Mary originated as the mother of Jesus in the tradition, but Mark did not realize it.

What are the main denominations, in your view? I frankly have no idea which denominations do and which do not make this connection. I grew up in a wide variety of low and middle church traditions and never had the idea that this Mary was actually his mother (the notion struck me as quite odd when I first heard it (well, read it, actually); my thought was, why does he not just say so?); but maybe I was just not paying close enough attention.

Ben.

aa5874

Mark did not realize what? And which Mary was the mother of Jesus? And what was the tradition? And what are you floating?

Is your preferred option based on evidence or information, or just what you want to imagine?

You are all over the place. You are floating.

thentian

Well, if we're allowed to throw out our ideas here, maybe I can mention an idea I had when I was a young xian: It does work if that is the way Mark heard the story, and he could have heard it like that if the persons telling it were James and Joses! Sort of like: James: "This was related to us by our own mother, Mary, who was there when it happened. Isn't that so, Joses?"
(And then James completely fails to inform Mark that he happens to be the brother of Jesus, perhaps because he doesn't want to appear to be bragging about it! :Cheeky: )

Catholics, Orthodox, umm... and anglicans? In my bible study group (norwegian state church, protestant) it was pretty much taken for granted, but then we had of course already read the accounts of the other evangelists, like John.

neilgodfrey

She is nowhere described as a follower in chapter 15. Rather, she is like all the rest, including God himself, who had either deserted totally or were "looking on from afar off". Many passages from the Psalms and Prophets are alluded to to stress this point.

Why no reconciliation? Don't know. But maybe because she represents the seed in thorny ground? Hears the word but cares of this life choke it? She only lives in the world of this life, the physical -- her physical family needs and understandings? caring for the dead and the "this worldly" instead of the "truly living", which she cannot find nor even see?

Neil

neilgodfrey

This explanation, while commonly repeated and assumed, really raises bigger questions than it answers.

1. If it were the custom to identify people by the kinfolk best known to an audience, then how do we explain why it was so very unusual to identify parents by their children? If it were so reasonable and obvious to identify individuals by their offspring because those offspring were known to the ones addressed, then surely this form of identification would not be so unusual, as in fact it is. Surely we could expect to find enough other instances of parents being identified by their children to leave no room for the converse becoming the norm.
   
   
2. The parents so identified are given some central roles in the narrative. So central (or theologically charged? -- another "eyewitness" evangelist flatly denied the role of Simon) that subsequent evangelists repeated their names and functions from their reading of Mark's gospel. Yet only Mark's gospel identifies them by their sons. Are we to assume that only Mark's audience and Mark's audience alone knew all these four sons? Matthew and Luke copy Mark's gospel. Presumably they also must have had some awareness of his audience, if not being a part of his original audience. Did none of Matthew's and Luke's audiences also know of any of these sons at least by reputation from their significant role in Mark's Christian community? How plausible is it that such famous children in Mark's audience could generate such a lack of interest among audiences for whom Matthew and Luke sought to write a revised version of Mark? (And why did John find it necessary to deny outright Simon's place in the narrative, and does the answer to this question shed any light on the reasons for the name-omissions of the other evangelists?)
   
   
3. To argue that "Mark identified Simon and Mary by their children rather than by their fathers or other typical identifiers because his readers knew who those children were" actually misrepresents, or at least slashes in half, the original problem. Mark does not simply identify Mary by her children, but curiosly identifies her by different children at different times of day when she is doing different things. A satisfactory explanation must resolve the whole question, not just a select part of it.
   
   
4. We don't just have one very unusual form of identification at the end of the gospel, but two (Simon and Mary). That makes it doubly unusual in my thinking. And even more curious is a comparison with the converse at the beginning of the gospel: compare Mary mother of Joseph/Mary mother of Jacob with Levi son of Alphaeus/Jacob son of Alphaeus -- both sets of descriptors are equally curious. Mark is perfectly capable of describing pairs of sons as pairs of sons, so why does he tease them out not only in the case of Mary at the end of the gospel, but also in the case of Alphaeus at the beginning. All this smacks of artifice, of course. Not historicity.
   

My own views on what is a more satisfactory explanation would involve more time than I have to discuss here now. But these questions ought to signal that what is so commonly assumed to be "the obvious" explanation is really less obvious than superficial.


Neil

Ben C Smith

If you mean that she is not necessarily described as a current follower, I agree. If you mean that chapter 15 contains no notice of her having been a follower, then 15.41 says you are mistaken.

This is part of it; the other part is that she, along with the other women, are being portrayed as witnesses to the key events; in 15.40 (the crucifixion), 15.47 (the burial), and 16.4-6 (the empty tomb) the women are looking, watching, seeing.

I cannot tell from this whether you think the Mary in Mark 6.3 is the same as the Mary in Mark 15.40, 47; 16.1 or not.

I am not claiming it as a custom. It is an explanation for the very fact that this way of referencing someone is unusual. Look at 1 Chronicles 2.26:

Jerahmeel had another wife, whose name was Atarah; she was the mother of Onam.

Why is Atarah, already identified as wife to Jerahmeel, also called the mother of Onam? If readers do not already know who Onam is, why mention him?

You are mistaking what is customary for what is reasonable. Lots of things are reasonable without being customary, and lots more are customary without being reasonable.

What is reasonable (to connect actors in a narrative with people the readers already know about) is capable of countering what is customary (to name actors by their fathers or places of origin).

That John was able to deny that anybody bore the cross for Jesus disproves your assertion that Simon of Cyrene plays a central role in the narrative. He occupies a single verse; he plays a peripheral role, not a central one. Even the women are more central than he is.

We are not to assume that the Marcan readership constituted the only group in all of antiquity who knew (of) these people, but it is more than reasonable to suppose that, of the three groups in question (readers of Matthew, readers of Mark, readers of Luke), only readers of Mark could be safely assumed to know who they were.

Why must Matthew and Luke have known any of the Marcan readership? Texts spread further and last longer than the original readers of those texts. I do not understand this objection; it seems misguided from the start.

I do not think these children were famous. I think they were known to readers of the gospel of Mark.

I think John cannot stand that Jesus did not live up to his own dictum of bearing his own cross. I doubt it has anything to do with the other evangelists omitting names; the other evangelists often omit Marcan details.

It does not slash any problem in half. There are two separate problems (why Mark mentions the sons, and why Mark varies his mentions of the sons), and this explanation solves one of them. If there is an hypothesis that would solve both problems simultaneously, it would carry some attraction on that account alone, besides whatever other merits it may have.

I am not convinced, however, that the variation of names is actually a problem. The pattern is just too easy to discern. Mary starts out as the mother of James and Joses (the fullest identification); she then gets named more simply as the mother of Joses, and then again as the mother of James. The key to understanding this is to recognize that there is another Mary on the scene in each of these cases: Mary Magdalene. Mark is keeping the two Maries straight, but does not wish to do so in full all three times, so he abbreviates in the second and third instances.

I am not sure what you are doubling. If the Marcan readership knew who Joses and James and Alexander and Rufus were, then why not use the same identification method twice?

But I have to protest here; Simon of Cyrene is not identified only by his sons; the use of a place name already identifies him conventionally (compare Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary of Magdala, or Judas the Galilean). Why, then, are the sons there? That is the issue, especially in this case with Simon.

I do not understand. How is Levi of Alphaeus or Jacob (James) of Alphaeus curious? It is customary to identify people by their fathers.

I do not think they are the same Alphaeus.

I do not find one objection that sticks here. Some of these attempts seem even downright counterintuitive to me. Showing surprise that Matthew and Luke do not assume their readers will know people that Mark did expect his readers to know, for example, turns probabilities on their head, but I suppose this comes from mistaking my position that these sons were known to readers of Mark for a position that the sons were famous. If I ever conveyed the idea that I thought they were famous, my apologies; that is not my position.

Ben.

the_cave

It's certainly not the case that Catholics identify this Mary with the mother of Jesus. Some Catholics may, but the traditional (if technically non-doctrinal) interpretation has always been that this is a different Mary. Some Catholics might assume that either James and Joses were adoptive children of Jesus' mother, or that she had children of her own afterwards--but these are just popular opinions, and are not at all taught by the Catholic church.

But why different sons the second and third times? And why the second son (Joses) the second time, and not the first (James)? Wouldn't it have been more efficient and more clear if he had identified her as the mother of the same son the second and third times?