Julian

That is an interesting observation and would explain Papias' rather curious statement, considering the fact that it in no way describes our Mark. It is noteworthy that GPeter contains 1st person pronouns, singular and plural. Of course, GPeter also contains a talking cross, if this story came directly from Peter, I would have him committed. Or accused of gnosticism.
Why Andrew? Where do you get this from?
Will I have to buy you book to find out where this comes from? Or could you give me a brief description as to this "Sayings of JtN?"

(I will be buying your book, no worries, but not for several months.)

Julian

Amaleq13

Do we have any early attributions of a gospel to Andrew?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Julian,

Why andrew? Excellent question.

Note this in Mark:

13.3And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately.

Mark includes Andrew in the select group of the 3 main disciples -- Peter, James and John. Now, in my book I demonstrate that this scene originally came directly after the transformation scene on the mountain (9.2-13).

Now look at the transformation on the mountain scene as presented in the Acts of Andrew:

20 On the next night he saw a vision which he related. 'Hearken, beloved, to my vision. I beheld, and lo, a great mountain raised up on high, which had on it nothing earthly, but only shone with such light, that it seemed to enlighten all the world. And lo, there stood by me my beloved brethren the apostles Peter and John; and John reached his hand to Peter and raised him to the top of the mount, and turned to me and asked me to go up after Peter, saying: "Andrew, thou art to drink Peter's cup." And he stretched out his hands and said: "Draw near to me and stretch out thy hands so as to join them unto mine, and put thy head by my head." When I did so I found myself shorter than John. After that he said to me: "Wouldst thou know the image of that which thou seest, and who it is that speaketh to thee?" and I said: "I desire to know it." And he said to me: "I am the word of the cross whereon thou shalt hang shortly, for his name's sake whom thou preachest." And many other things said he unto me, of which I must now say nothing, but they shall be declared when I come unto the sacrifice.

This material comes from the John the Christ cult, so it is very early, before the Jesus the Christ cult. Note that only three people go to the mountain. Jesus is not yet a character in the story. Jesus is just the angel/son of God in whose name John preaches.

In the Gospel of Mark, someone has replaced Andrew's name for the moutain
scene with James. On the other hand, when it comes to the questioning of Jesus scene directly afterwards, someone has kept Andrew in along with James, Peter and John.

My best guess is that the original scene contained James, John and Andrew.
(Peter may have been a knickname for James. James was probably the actual head of the Church of God in the 40's and 50's.) It is Peter who is really being added to the trio of James, John and Andrew in these scenes.

The linking of Andrew with Peter as a brother is quite suspicious and we may assume that Andrew actually had a rival following within the various Christian communities. Note that in the Gospel of John, it is Andrew who is Jesus' right-hand man.

There are other scenes in Mark involving James together with John, so I assume they were always together in the original.

Given the importance of Andrew and the connection of James with John, I would reconstruct the original Mark "Little Apocalypse" text this way:

13.3And as John sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, James and I asked him privately...

Now, when writing a gospel, it is clear that you would declare yourself an apostle to get the authority of an apostle for your writings. No-one would write a gospel in the name of an obscure, lowly scribe like Mark.

Now since we have a gospel of James, a gospel of Peter, a gospel of John, and even gospels of Philip and Mary, we have to ask, what important character here is missing a gospel? The answer is Andrew. The mystery is solved if we assume that someone has transformed the Gospel of Andrew into the Gospel of Mark by simply taking out most of Andrew and his first person accounts.

As far as "the Sayings of John the Nazarene" (which I actually, more properly, call "The Teachings of John the Nazarene" in the book), it includes a great deal of the sayings of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. To get all of it, I'm afraid you will have to see the book. I will say that it is quite long and runs from page 391 to page 407 in my book, over 600 lines, and it includes all of the Sermon on the Mount. To me it is the most solid proof I have ever found that Jesus was a literary character.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

jbernier

This is the so-called "Griesbach Hypothesis," so named because it was advocated first in modern scholarship by a guy named Griesbach. The work defending this hypothesis most recently is "One Gospel from Two," co-authored by about the scholars alive currently who think that Griesbach is plausible (the so-called "International Institute for Renewal of Gospel Studies"). The problem, fundamentally, is that Griesbach cannot account for why Mark would take two texts with birth narratives and post-resurrection appearances and remove both from his compilation (the earliest version of Mark ended almost certainly at 16:8, before Jesus' post-resurrection appearances). These do seem a strange omissions, indeed.

The Bishop

Wow. Great debate. Thanks mikem and PJ for providing the (d'oh!) obvious answer - it simply wasn't as popular!

S.C.Carlson

(Thinking out loud here...) What if Mark was an adoptionist or a precursor to it, as sometimes argued? In that case, the omission of the birth narratives is not particularly strange, but almost expected (cf. Marcion's omission of the Lukan birth narratives).

Stephen

JoeWallack

JW:
Have you seen this article?:

https://www.sbl-site.org/Publications/JBL/JBL1233.pdf

JBL 123/3 (2004) 495–507
THE SURVIVAL OF MARK’S GOSPEL:
A GOOD STORY?
JOANNA DEWEY
jdewey@episdivschool.edu
Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, MA 02138


JW:
The Article is naive in that it suggests "Mark" survived because it was a "Good Story". The First Gospel survived because it was the First Gospel. Copying by "Matthew" and "Luke" guaranteed substantial agreement.

The article does give some statistics that are relevant here. Fer instance, "Mark" has the most Textual Variation (surprise). Just what we'd expect with it's low christology. A good project here would be to list out the Textual Variation with Significant Theological difference here, such as:

1) No "Son" at beginning.

2) Disciples instead of Apostles.

3) Only "a" son of god instead of "the" son of god.

4) No resurrection sighting.

5) And as Gene Wilder said in the classic Young Frankenstein, "Etc. etc. etc.".



Joseph

Julian

Being first probably has very little to do with it, there were undoubtedly gospels around before GMark, but more likely logia type stuff. I believe that the copying, and hence, correspondence with the more popular gospels was far more effective.
It has the most textual variation probably because it got harmonized to the more popular gospels. This seems to be indicated in the studies I am reading. It is generally not christology that gets changed in GMark, but his crappy and clumsy Greek. Although some christological changes certainly occurred.
Attestation is weak on this point. I am not sure what to think.
This is far less significant in Greek than it is in English.


Still, it is a very interesting issue, one I shall have to spend more time on.

Julian

PhilosopherJay

Hi Amaleq13,

Good question. I was only able to dig up this on an internet search.

http://www.searchgodsword.org/enc/is...gi?number=T517

A so-called "Gospel of Andrew" mentioned by Innocent I (Ep, I, iii, 7) and Augustine (Contra Advers. Leg. et Prophet., I, 20), but this is probably due to a confusion with the above-mentioned "Acts of Andrew."

It is possible that both an early Pope (401-417) and Saint Augustine (419) were confused about the difference between a gospel and a book of acts, but also surprising. They were very separate genres of literature. It is a little bit like a film buff calling "The Godfather" a western, or calling "Brokeback Mountain," a gangster film.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

mens_sana

Disciples instead of Apostles, hence Mark was written before Apostolic Succession became a theological concern. Interesting.