Steven Carr

To be honest, I agree with Bede , that Mark was not such a genius. After all, we are talking about somebody who thought that 'Do not defraud' was one of the commandments.

How could somebody who wrote that , ahve such a grasp of the OT as is necessary for Vork's conclusions?

Steven Carr

For those of us who have not read A in W since childhood, could you give examples of how scripture influenced the Reverend Dogdson?

Vorkosigan

I haven't found why Mark wrote that, yet. <grrr> But I will! The dictum is: Homer may nod, but my man Mark never sleeps. You can take that one to the bank.

Vorkosigan

Toto

I always figured that having to believe six impossible things before breakfast was a direct commentary on Christiantiy.

Vorkosigan

Please clearly define what you mean by this bit of hyperbole.

Obviously people did understand. For in many cases Matthew, John and Luke extended and developed Markan parallels. For example, Mark's first miracle of Jesus stilling the sea has very little Septaugint language from the Jonah passage where the miracle was borrowed from, Matthew, by contrast, not only dug up the passage from the Septaugint, but added new language, and added more stuff from Jonah. See discussion in Helms (Gospel Fictions p 78-9). Similarly, in the Gethsemane scene, based in Mark on Elijah's fleeing from Ahab and Jezebel in Kings, Luke went back to the scene in III Kings LXX, and added one more element from the scene, the angel, and more Septaugint language. In the scene of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem both Matt (with his famous misunderstanding of Zech 9:9) and Luke extended and deepened the use of the OT source. They clearly understood exactly what was going on.

The fact is that not only are the parallels there, but other early Christians saw them, and deepened them. Your whole discussion below is simply in error. The lack of understanding does not lie in Mark's audience, for we know that the parallels were seen by others at the same time, but in you.

I did not say "did not speak to his audience." I said, spoke to different members of his audience in different ways. Good literature does that.

<shrug> Probably you just haven't noticed.

Why yes, I have. Once again, you didn't notice. Mark often gives us a clue as to what he is paralleling, often by quoting the exact language.

Ummm...no. Mark sometimes works real stories into his parallels, and sometimes he doesn't appear to. Reversibility is not really an issue.

I am sure that all of us will survive your condemnation. In the meantime I am off to ferret out more parallels!

Vorkosigan

Notsri

Hey, Vork. I just had a question and a few comments: First, I was curious to know which Midrash you were referencing with the Markan parallels? Second, I think the premise encounters an insurmountable obstacle: the Gemara to the Talmud in general and Tracate Megillah in particular is quite late, definitely well after the time Mark was composed. It seems impossible at this point, then, to show that late talmudic legends on Esther are based on early (1st cent.?) oral traditions. (One might even be inclined to argue that the relevant talmudic passages were influenced by the New Testament, however unlikely they probably is.) You encounter the same problem with the Midrash: all of the rabbinic literature that, strictly speaking, falls into the category of Midrash, was written well after the New Testament. So it may be a bit anachronistic to suggest that Mark used talmudic and midrashic traditions.

Toto

JP Holding (in an essay no longer on his site) says

Is there any basis for this?

And, of course, Leviticus 19:13 says "You shall not defraud your neighbor."

Intelligitimate

What do you mean by "reversible"? Are you suggesting Mark could have influenced Esther, and thus the parallel is meaningless? That is absurd.

Vorkosigan

Hahaha. I jumped around the net looking at various websites. This was only a preliminary run. If you search on Vashti you'll find the sites, but it was in Gundry where the midrashic parallels are mentioned, from Pesch and Aus. Meier also mentions Aus. I am trying to find a copy of that work here in Taiwan. Then I'll be in a position to tell you exactly where they found that stuff. But in Gundry on p313 he specifically mentions Vashti's head being brought in on a platter. it's there somewhere!

That was also Gundry's point and I think it has some serious force -- because the texts are late it may be impossible to show that Mark is based on them; one can only suspect. My own view is that the stories in the rabbinical writings are based on earlier traditions and stories that elaborated on the Esther story, and I don't think it very likely that Esther sat around in the Hebrew imagination having no effect at all for a couple of centuries, and then suddenly, after the Christians start writing, Rabbis start talking about Esther. We know that Esther was elaborated on because we have the deuterocanonical version with more stuff added, in Greek. So it would seem that the more reasonable view is that the traditions are old elaborations on items already inherent in the text and circulating, set down by the rabbis over time. Really the only strong parallel not inherent in the text is the one about Vashti's head being brought in on a platter; Esther 1 more or less implies that Vashti is to appear naked before the King's courtiers, though it does not directly say so.

Besides, the DNA is there -- Mark's text preserves the doublet from Esther (last parallel). Another reason I think this is valid is because Mark is often writing parody, and there seems to be a very ironic link established between Esther and Herodias under this reading of the stories.

edited to add: Also, this may be a later insertion into the text of Mark, so the time element may not be as bad as it looks.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

Do most of Mark's contemporaries customarily write fiction as derivative of the HB? I think you might misunderstand what real Midrash is.

Regards,
Rick Sumner