Solo

Mark's Jesus himself indicates in a passage, which since Wrede has drawn attention of Markan scholars as the key to the gospel, that he is acting in a melodrama rather than history.

4:10-12 And when he was alone, those who were about him with the twelve asked him concerning the parables.
"And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven."

This is vintage Mark: (1) "when Jesus was alone (kata monas= by himself), those who were with him....". How can anyone be with him when he is alone ? This is a blatant contradiction in terms but one fully intended to assert privileged access to Jesus by Markan gnostics (2) "the secret of the kingdom" is in singular (Matt and Luke use plural) (3) Mark uses recursion when he says "everything" (ta panta). He simply says : to those on the outside the whole gospel is a parabolical allegory (with subtext : "you, the initiated into the mysterion of the kingdom understand the experiences and their correct Pauline interpretation which are hereby allegorized.)

In other words: there is a secret to this tale which the uninitiated reader will not understand unless he/she joins up with proclaimers of the gospel. There was only one gospel in Mark's time and it was Paul's.

Note: euangelizō (preach the gospel) is by all indications a Pauline neologism. TMK, no such verb has been documented as having currency before Paul. It is one of several words and turns of phrase which shows the tendency of mythopoetic manics to experiment with established semantic content in new contexts. Other examples of such in Paul would be desmios Christou (prisoner of Christ - indicating imprisonment not for Christ but by him ), systauroō (to be crucified with - in the sense of sharing in the crucifixion), and the weirdest of them all thēriomacheō ('fighting with wild beasts', meaning fighting inner demons, in a mythopoetic rendering similar to GThomas(7), 1 Pe 5:8).

Best,
Jiri

Iskander

The New Oxford Annotated Bible says,

Mark 4:10
When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables.


Footnote 10; the rest of the teaching is directed to the twelve



Jesus continued to teach the small group that remain with him when he was no longer in the company of the crowd

Solo

That is just what you would expect The New Oxford Annotated Bible to say, would you not ? In effect, it says that Mark could not have meant what he said, i.e. that Jesus was by himself, and there were people with him. People don't understand this saying because Mark is pulling their leg: Jesus was alone but there was the body with him that would go missing after his crucifixion. What was this body ? Paul's church. :huh:

Best,
Jiri

Iskander

I don’t expect anything.
It is a pity the Aramaic words have been lost and we have to do with Greek and English words, but the item makes sense as it is read by the Oxford Bible.

It does not say what you seem to be saying at all.

It says that when Jesus was at last free from the maddening crowd they took the opportunity to approach the teacher to ask the questions that only PhD student will ask.

What do you think 4:10 means, what is mark saying, and what social interaction is he describing?

andrewcriddle

The same language is used in Luke 9:18: to indicate that Jesus was alone with his disciples.

I doubt if Luke has a symbolic or allegorical meaning here.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

Mark was "pulling their leg"? Please show what source makes such a claim.

The body was Paul's Church? Please show what source claimed Paul's Church was the missing body.

If you have NO sources for what you IMAGINE then it is pointless. I do not tolerate IMAGINATION.

On BC&H you MUST have credible historical SOURCES to discuss the history of the Past.

The Gospels are simply FOUR versions of Myth fables of Jesus that was BELIEVED in antiquity.

The Pauline writers may have been VICTIMS of deception or had intended to deceive.

Solo

But who is they ? Who has privileged access to Jesus when he is alone ?

I think the puzzle of Mk 4:10-12 exists only if the interpreter insists there was a single church at Mark's time that worshiped Jesus as Messiah right from the start. It is then incomprehensible why Jesus would be concealing the true meaning of his parables, in effect, purposely misleading his listeners for obscure cultic purpose. If however, Mark approached his audience as different groups and his Jesus considers only one of the groups he addresses fit to receive the spiritual nourishment, then the problem seems to go away quickly. I propose reading the 'quibble' of Mark exactly in this fashion. It illustrates Paul's saying of 1 Cr 2:14 The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Mark's allegorized gospel of Paul had three intended audiences: 1) the core Paulinist community which understood the symbolisms of the narrative, 2) the recently exiled Nazarenes (Mark likely wrote after 70CE) who had their own version of Jesus as a proclaimer of messianic kingdom (on earth) and whom Mark sought to convert to Paul's theology of the cross, and 3) the contemporary Pharisee interpreters of the halakha.

Mark transparently condescends to and lampoons the two outsider groups. The disciples, led by Peter and the Zebs are shown as faithless, (therefore) clueless and cowardly bunch much as Paul portrayed the James' missions in Galatians. They, or rather the followers of their traditions, were the intended target of the Isaiah 6:9-10 allusion in Mk 4:12.

The Pharisees are mocked in a different way. Mark affected primitive, semi-literate narration, purposely made errors and misattributed sayings in reading the OT, and had Jesus argue against them in a patently illogical manner. But beneath this mimesis of primitivity and ineptitude lurks Mark's prodigious intellect and learning which is used tactically in creating complex structures to further confuse the learned reader. Mark creates this make-believe to illustrate Paul's rhetoric of 1 Cor 1:21 & 27 :

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
....
but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,

Hope, it's getting clearer.

Best,
Jiri

Solo

I'd say you are right, he most likely does not. Matthew and Luke do not grant access to Jesus extra-temporally, as Mark does implicitly and John explicitly. Only the disciples in Tiberius' time have the apostolic intimacy. I suspect Luke created this verse - giving 'kata monas' a proto-orthodox meaning - against the 'hard core' Marksists in the community who claimed they talked to Jesus when he was by himself through the Spirit.

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

You are telling Myth fables. You have NO source to corroborate a single claim about Paul.

Presumptions about Paul are utterly useless when arguing against a person who does NOT accept presumptions.

Please get credible non-apologetic sources for Paul.

This is the 21st century.

It is time to stop telling MYTH fables of Paul.

Iskander

What is clear is how easily religious wars can start.

It is a very personal interpretation of a very simple verse 4:10.---[11,12]

There is only a man preaching to anyone who might listen and he is accompanied by a small group of followers and this itinerant preacher explains to his followers why he is not having the success his teaching deserves and what those unresponsive listeners are missing.


An itinerant would- be- holy- man and his group of students would have been a very common happening in antiquity everywhere in the Middle East, India, and China...

There is no puzzle.

I thank you for your replies