Vorkosigan

Wow! If had known what a nerve tracing the Temple Ruckus out would strike, I would have done it sooner.

"So many sources?" Bede, I didn't build that story. All I did was synthesize what different scholars have written on the Temple Ruckus to show that the whole thing on every level is a literary construction. Source identification is by other scholars, not by yours truly. But I thank you for the implied compliment.

<SHRUG>
You're right Bede, it is probably all coincidence that the two stories both feature displaced wives and a head carried in on a platter....and that Mark reproduces the doublet in Esther almost exactly -- wish --half of kingdom -- reinforcement (One of the nice things about Mark is that he often leaves you a clue about what story he is ripping off.)

Rick Sumner

This is frequently (read: Always) the problem I have with long lists of parallels. They're only discernible to twentieth century critics, which leaves me more than a little skeptical about how they would have been seen by first century Christians.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

Why would they have needed to see them? I suspect the vast majority of moviegoers are clueless about the meaning of the Princess' cell number in Star Wars. Just tonight I talked about Cold Mountain to my lit students. They had all seen and loved that movie, but none could spot that it was the Odyssey recast. People love the science fiction of H. Beam Piper, but you'd have to be a pretty serious military aficionado to spot the fact that he is paralleling obscure historial battles in his stories. How many viewers of Donnie Darko connected it to The Last Temptation of Christ?

Like all people who write literature, Mark was writing for two audiences: those who like a good story, and those who can see more deeply. The ignorance of the first does not cancel out the wit of the second. Those who know can smile to themselves, like those few in the audience who catch the eye-in-the-pyramid in Toy Story 2, and the rest can still enjoy the show. That's how literature works.

As an argument, this is a non-starter.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

Because Mark's text needed to speak to his audience in a way that no text today does.

Because even allowing the generous definition of "Midrash" used to include this in it, there are still rules Midrash follows--there is no point to it if nobody understands.

If you would have it that Mark was writing things that did not speak to his audience, you need to establish reason to believe that to be true. Reason that doesn't retroject twentieth century stories onto first century ones. Reason that will have to be paired with method to discern what is intended to speak to his audience and what isn't.

What you have outlined above is precisely what Bede condemned--parallelomania, because you have given no reason to believe it to be true, simply declared it so, and because you have provided no method to tell the good parallel from the bad--the same caveat I've raised throughout your excercise, and which you confess is there but continue nonetheless. You have, thus far, established nothing except that Mark's narrative has OT parallels--by your own admission it is reversible (as in the case of JBap's execution). Thus by the same pen I condemn Crossan, Meier, MacDonald, Doherty, and our own Vinnie Sapone, I am likewise forced to condemn you.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

Rick - have you read MacDonald's discussion of mimesis? The process here is not so much midrash as mimesis, a well documented Hellenistic phenomenon.

Rick Sumner

I found it decidedly unpersuasive, as I noted on another thread where nobody seemed prepared to defend it. MacDonald's criteria is likewise reversible.

And what we're looking at with what Vorkosigan has indicated is far more analogous to Midrash--it's a designed copying, not an unconscious influence.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

[editted to add]I've since sold MacDonald's book, which I found to be utterly useless and as guilty of what Vork aptly termed "The Criteria of Declaration" as everybody else. Without a use for the Homeric parallel, there's not much left of the book worth salvaging it for. Thus if someone decides they want to defend him after all, I'll need a few weeks to order a new copy.

Toto

Just saying that you find it unpersuasive doesn't give a lot to work with.

Are you unconvinced by the historical evidence that pupils learned to write by emulating Homer, that they were encouraged to retell things in their own words while retaining enough of the original material to let the educated know that there was a link? Or do you think that Mark must not have been part of this culture for some reason? Or that he is based entirely on Hebrew or other sources?

Mimesis itself seems to be generally accepted, although there is debate over how well Mark fits the model.

Rick Sumner

I am unpersuaded that "mimesis" qualifies as a criteria for anything, particularly for works as broad as Homer, or Hebrew Scripture. Finding parallels between the two doesn't do a lot of good without explanation--it needs to be argued on a case by case basis. Alice in Wonderland has a lot of scriptural parallel too, that doesn't mean it was based on the HB.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

Do you accept or reject the idea that students in Hellenistic times learned to write by imitating Homer?

DramaQ

No, but if most/many of Lewis Carroll's contemporaries customarily wrote their stories as derivatives of the HB, it would make for a pretty strong case.