dimbulb

What you're missing is:

It's a written by an anonymous author about whom we know nothing including whether he knew anything about anything and you're worried about the details of what he said?

Why?:huh:

Iskander

I thought it would get you going,

I will now let you take a nap. Bye.

aa5874

You can take a nap. That is the very last thing I want to do. I will NOT ever sleep when there is so much work to be done.

It would appear that the forum has become inundated with Chinese Whispers and propaganda about Jesus, the disciples and Paul.

People need to know we have have EXISTING CODICES and apologetic sources of antiquity with the Jesus stories where the very Christians writer claimed Jesus was INDEED FATHERED by a Holy Ghost and was God the Creator.

There is NO Puzzle.

Jesus was Myth. It is Documented.

I will NOT go to sleep when people are spreading rumors and Chinese Whispers instead of the actual written statements of antiquity.

Duvduv

Well, I don't agree with your interpretation. Their repentance was incomplete without immersion in the Jordan overseen by the Baptist. Only a spiritual experience having no basis in Jewish practice.
But then again, such greatness from the Baptist doesn't even merit a single mention, even as an interpolation, in the epistles.......

LegionOnomaMoi

Your question might be answered if 1) you notice that I put scare quotes around "translating" (indicating that there was something particular about my usage and 2) you hadn't edited out the explanation/qualification:

My initial response was to the following:The problem with this statement is its ambiguity. Does Casey mean to imply that all, most, or much of Mark was Mark working with texts (in this case wax tablets) and copying what they said, only (as they were in Aramaic) he translated them instead of simply copying them? Or does he mean that Mark had the equivalent of notes of the type one might take during a lecture, business conferenece, or interview, and translated these in order to compose his work, but not necessarily even actually writing a translation of what he had (or even being able to)?

The work on this topic began before Casey and exists outside of NT studies (see, e.g., Kevin's Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece or Small's Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity). The idea christians had written material available to them apart from the gospels follows from Q (unless one either denies that Matthew and Luke had a common source outside of Mark, or argues, as some have, that Q was and "oral text"). From classical, hellenistic, Jewish, and early Christian studies, we know that a common method of writing was (unfortunately for us) to use wax tablets for the ancient equivalent of notepads or portable dry-erase boards: something upon which one could jot down things quickly, which was cheap, and which was reusable. If Q was written, it may very well have been on such material.

The notion that Mark did not just sit down and compose a gospel, either from (according to church tradition) Peter's account(s) or from any single coherent narrative (either a fictional one of his own creation, or an account given to him) was proposed well over a century ago. His gospel reads like a bunch of disparate sources awkwardly strung together in an attempt to make various sayings, stories, and so forth into one narrative account. The commonly accepted theory that Q was a similar type of source (a collection of sayings) and the discovery of GThomas (which, like Q, is just a bunch of sayings) support the idea that this was the type of tradition the earliest "christians" had to work with.

All Casey is arguing is that at least part of the collection of sayings/stories Mark (and Matthew and Luke) had available to him was written down on the common writing material used for this purpose. But the quality of these tablets was often poor, not just because they were difficult to read, but because from what we know of how they were used, more often than not they were not intended to be carefully articulated complete sentences but (again) akin to jotting down notes. In fact, in his monograph on Q, Casey specifically uses the word "notes" to describe what these tablets likely consisted of.

So when Casey states that: "Mark's best sources were in Aramaic. They were also written, and will have been written on wax tablets or perhaps sheets of papyrus, which were in widespread use. These could be difficult to read, and Mark translated them as he went along, as we must in infer from the same features as show that his Gospel is a first draft. If someone else had translated them for him, he would have been as likely to make Corrections as Matthew, Luke, and copyists of Mark can be seen to have done.

he is not saying that the author of Mark had a bunch of tablets/papyri which he translated to compose Mark, but that at times he likely made use of texts written in Aramaic which he had to translate in order to use. Later on, Casey discusses the range of possibilities, such as the possibility that parts of Mark could have been lengthy aramaic texts, but states that we really have no idea what the state of the material Mark used was.

More importantly, as Casey states, whatever he had, he did not simply "translate" it but "put it [all of his sources, not just Aramaic] all together" which "required him to do a considerable amount of editing." He also notes that Mark was an amateur translator, and thus "translating...as he went along" doesn't mean translating in the way the term is usually used. Mark at times (according to Casey) did actually translate a source in Aramaic, in that he read the aramaic text and rendered it as best as he could into his Greek text, but also that he "translated" meaning he read the Aramaic, thought of what it would be in Greek, and then altered this mental translation to fit into his "considerab[ly]" edited collection.

In other words, to simply say:is not accurate in that it misses most of what Casey argues. Not only did this "translating" often necessarily involve taking the Aramaic and not actually translating it (i.e., he did not simply render the Aramaic into Greek as best as he was able) but "translating" it before writing down some version of his translation which better fit his purposes and/or the structure of his edited collection. The latter isn't actually "translating" in the way the term is usually used, and by saying "translating as he went along" rather than just "translated" Casey is explaining a process of taking pieces of Aramaic of an unknown length and half translating/half altering them haphazardly to write his gospel. Apart from all the other things he said which Carr did not quote, the only reason for Casey to say "translating...as he went along" rather than just "translated" is because he is trying to indicate a difference between the two.

Now, Casey is also (in my opinion) making far too many assumptions about the quality (in terms of accuracy) of Marks material and about their source (Peter, other disciples, etc.) He's not along here either, but that doesn't make such speculations any more problematic. But the point is not whether Casey is right about the quality (both in terms of accuracy and coherence/readability), but why it is actually likely that Mark had written Aramaic sources available to him which he used, and a claim that his work should aramaic influences in the gospels should be discounted unless we find aramaic papyri/wax tablets supporting Casey's renderings of the underlying Aramaic is ridiculous. First, it doesn't matter if Casey is utterly wrong about the sources being written. Again, the Greek texts actually contain transliterated Aramaic, and across disciplines people working with ancient texts written in a lingua franca, texts written in communities where more than one dialect and/or language is spoken, etc., identify the influence of other languages on these texts. Therefore, what matters is whether or not Casey's knowledge of Aramaic and hellenistic greek, as well as the methods used by experts for linguistic analyses of texts, is adequate (in that he knows what he is doing), defensible in practice (in that, just because this is done by people across disciplines all the time, the methods used may be fundamentally flawed), and accurate (in that if we grant his expertise, and the validity of standard methods, does he apply these methods appropriately and make appropriate inferences).

andrewcriddle

This may be true but involves a lot of Frazerian speculation.

The main direct evidence is apparently Dio_Chrysostom (addressing the people of Tarsus and discussing snorting) Andrew Criddle

Vorkosigan

It does not. GMark is a carefully crafted text with a powerful major structure that controls how the narrative works down to the Temple incident, when it then shifts to the second major structure, the Passion. It is not a set of notes or an attempt to make a bunch of disparate stories into a narrative-- that position is not merely wrong, but laughably wrong. One of the most fundamental problems with Casey is that he simply does not understand GMark and likely deliberately, since actual understanding of the complexity of that text destroys the basis for his claims.

It should be a clue to readers that when people make claims that Mark is awkward or strung together, they don't understand the Gospel of Mark and may be safely ignored.

Vorkosigan

LegionOnomaMoi

So pretty much every scholar from Schmidt onwards? Ignoring his "string of pearls" metaphor (actually, his main word for Markan narrative was Sammelberichte) for Markan structure and the similar discriptions in late 19th and early 20th century scholarship (esp. Bultmann), let's look at some modern scholarship that, thanks to your timely warning, we can now "safely ignore":

"Much has been said about Marcan style (Elliot 1993b; Turner 1976:11:30). It is Semitic. It is unpolished. It is stylistically and grammatically flawed. We find examples of parataxis (as seen especially in frequent use of kai), redundancies...[list of passages], pleonasm, and the historical present (some 150 in all), and on one occasion use of the wrong word...Perhaps one of the most interesting and at times frustrating features of Marcan style is the evangalist's clumsy parentheses and delayed or mispladed qualifiers. This is especially noticeable in the use of gar clauses...Margaret Thall comments:'Writer's who use gar frequently, as Mark does, are not always logtical thinkers who develop an argument stage by stage...""

Evans, C. A. (2005). "How Mark Writes." in Bockmuehl, M., & Hagner, D. A. (Eds.) The Written Gospel (pp. 135-148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A slightly more postitive appraisal from Christopher Bryan's Preface to Mark: Notes on the Gospel in its Literary and Cultural settings (Oxford University Press, 1993):
"...while Mark does not combine his materials into a continous whole with anything like the grace of Plutarch or tacitus, still he does make considerably more effort in this diection..." Yet still the author admits just a few pages later "It remains true that Mark's written style is among the least literary of the New Testament..." although he attributes this to the Mark's oral nature.


But what about a work specifically on Markan theology? After all, a work arguing about a coherent theological argument within Mark would be quick to point out the author's literary/rhetorical skill in crafting his narrative. So naturally, were we to (for example) read Telford's Theology of Mark (Cambridge University Press, 1999), we'll no doubt find...oh wait:
"But how can we be sutre that Mark did not invent the basic material in his Gospel but used sources? This subject I have treated at greater length elsewhere, but in general a number of factors would indicate this, namely, considerable disjunction in the narrative especially when read in the original language, obvious insertions (e.g., 7.3-4), puzzling parentheses (e.g., 11.13c), some lack of logical coherence, especially in passages where what appears to be offered is an amalgom of originally seperate sayings..." (p. 18).

In fact, one can pick up just about any major work on Mark and find the same thing: "Other than these theories concerning the passion narrative, however, there have been few attempts to posit a substantial connected narrative behind Mark." p. 18 from Wills' Quest of the Historical Gospel (Routledge, 1997). Painter's commentary on Mark (Routledge, 1997) actually gives us numerical data on the poor construction of disparate pieces: "The use of 'and' (1,078 times), especially opening sentences, paragraphs, and pericopae. Eighty-nine of Mark's 105 rhetorical units set out in our 'Outline' of the Gospel begin with 'And....'" (p. 8). Ong's The Oral and Written Gospel (Indiana University Press, 1997) says much the same: "The many stories are linked together by stereotypical connective devices: peonastic archestai with infinitive verbs, preferably of action....[verses]...and speaking...[verses]..., the adverbial euthys and kai euthys, the iterative palin and kai palin...[other examples of poor use of literary devices to connect disjoint material]... The connectives are for the most part derived from the oral repetoire of the gospel's primary building blocks." (p. 65)

Actually, I can't understand how you can read greek and at the same time assert that Mark somehow weaves an elegant, or even logically structured and coherent, narrative. For me, the constant use of kai gets to sound like nails on a chalkboard. "And [verb]" "And suddenly X" "And then" "And..." this and that and on and on.
Major themes, certainly. Carefully crafted? As much as the author was able. Well constructed, such that we have a artful (or, again, at least logically coherent) flow? Hardly.

From Wrede onwards, the notion that Mark attempts to provide certain overall themes and crafts his material in a particular way has been well covered. That says nothing about his ability to do it well.

Adam

Fine, you've covered "awkward". What I had most disagreement with Vork about was the "strung together". He did not like at all what I said about six sources in Post #230 in my thread "Gospel Eyewitnesses":
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....306983&page=10

Ur-Marcus in John: Mark 6:30-52; 11:15-17; 14:3-9, 27-30; Passion Narrative 14:43-
Ur-Marcus Greek: Mark 1:1-3, 21-39; 2:18-3:4; 5:1-43; 8:27-9:7; 9:30-32, 38-42; 10:13-10:34; 11:27-33, 12:18-23, 38-40; 12:18-23, 35-44; 13:1-17, 28-31; 14:1-2, 32-42
Twelve-Source from Levi: Mark 1:40-2:17; 3:7-19; 3:22-4:41; 6:2, 4-5; 9:14-29, 33-37; 10:35-11:11; 12: 1-17, 24-34; 14:10-25
Twelve-Source from Qumraner: Mark 1:9-15; 6:14-16, 13:18-27
Additions by Qumraner: Mark 1:5, 16-20; 6:1,3; 6:17-29, 6:53-8:21; 9:9-13, 33-37, 9:43-10:12, 35-40; 11:12-14, 20-25; 14:55-60;
Final Edition: Mark 3:20-21; 8:22-26

Diogenes the Cynic

He uses "suddenly" a lot too - kai euthus verb...kai euthus verb.... Nothing ever happens leisurely for this guy.

Matthew goes nuts with the tote's. They do have their quirks in the Greek.

I think it might be better to say that it's deliberately constructed. Mark at least orders some of his material in chiastic structures. That doesn't mean it's artfully written. Mark's actual Greek is workmanlike at best, but there is intention in how he arranges his material. It isn't chronological, but it isn't random either. That can make it look disordered or inept if the reader is looking for a conventional chronological plotline, rather than seeing the chiasms.

ETA just to add a bit to this. When I first studied Mark in college, my NT prof told us that the key to reading Mark was understanding that the "climax" was not at the end, but in the center. He said the central event in Mark was the healing of the blind man, and everything else moves chiastically in either direction from that.