Newton's Cat

And rising up very early in the night he went out and went away to a desert place, and there prayed.

Verses 36-39 were interpolated into the text by another hand - someone who was "hostile" to the imagery of the original.

The continuation was:

And comes to him a leper ....

Verse 43 begins a "reaction" to the imagery of Jesus' response to the leper - by someone who was "offended" by what he read.

Furthermore - the Greek text of verse 35 & verses 40-42 is "structured". The author carefully arranged his text in a way that an observant reader would perceive ... the interpolator did not structure his text - and was not aware of the structure in the text he was fraudulently altering.

I strongly suspect that the interpolator responsible for verses 36-39 was a different person to the one who appears from verse 43 onwards.

There seems to be three principle minds involved in the text of Mark as we have it today.

Julian

And, as usual, you provide no evidence for your assertions.

Julian

Doug Shaver

How do you know that?

Newton's Cat

Matthew, Luke, and John are are pretty much in their original state - but Mark has OBVIOUSLY been subjected to major interpolation, alteration, and addition. Mark is earlier than the other gospels.

My understanding of Mark is derived from the fact that I did not read the New Testament, knew next to nothing about what was in it, until my late 20s - then, one day, I sat down and read the whole of the New Testament in one sitting. When I'd finished I was absolutely convinced that Mark had been subjected to major "tampering" - by someone, or some persons, hostile to the original.

I then set about reading Mark in the Greek ... and became even more convinced that I was right.

The original author of Mark did not intend his readers to believe they were reading a true story based on historical fact. It comes across to me as a play, performed before an intellectual audience - a vehicle for criticism of the contemporary Jewish world.

The voice that spoke out of the heavens in verses 9-11 was supposed to be understood as that of Jesus' deceased father ... who was buried at Gethsemane. Why else would Jesus go there to pray to his "father"? What does the GREEK word 'Gethsemane' mean?

Julian

They have all been subjected to alteration. We have thousands of manuscripts that attest to that. It is also fairly clear that major changes were done to the gospels at a time before we have manuscript evidence. So what? Matthew, Luke and John are probably not as close to their autographs as you think, the Western Non-interpolations come to mind.
I grew up in an almost exclusively agnostic/atheist country, and all I knew was that the bible was a religious book about some guy named Jesus who got himself crucified. That pretty much sums it up. That certainly helped me read the stuff with fresh eyes but the detection of tampering is highly non-trivial, frequently counter-intuitive, and rarely obvious even when ham-handed. Since I know a thing or two about statistics and have done extensive stylometric comparisons on various parts of the NT, I can categorically state that, while there is no question that editing and copying errors are prolific, there is no definite way that anyone can state what, and to what extent, the NT has been altered. Anyone who speaks out with complete assurance has much to learn. Like Bertrand Russell (I think) said, "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
The fact that you are convinced does nothing to convince anyone else about anything other than you seem to know little to nothing about textual criticism. If you did, I am certain you would have presented us with even the smallest piece of evidence. We are still waiting.

Due to a project I am working on, I get to read GMark in Greek every day and I have to do a complete grammatical analysis on every sentence. At this point I have, I believe, a pretty decent grasp of Mark's style and grammatical usage. What, exactly, is it that has you convinced? That which you can somehow not find it in yourself to convey to the rest of us? What is that elusive something that has escaped everyone else for centuries on end? I have, at this exact moment (pause while counting...) thirteen books open on my desk, all of them pertaining to Greek grammar, stylistic constructions and the gospel of Mark. What did I miss?
I never bought into the 'it's a play' angle before but I have lately noticed a variety of interesting grammatical constructions that are quite hard to piece together, unless the reader was prepared and was going to be reading them out loud. Now, see, unlike you I won't run out and proclaim to the world (φωνὴ βοῶντος, I crack myself up) that it is a play. Why? Because I am unable to provide a sufficient amount of credible eveidence and, no matter how I may feel about it, there is a large chance that I am entirely wrong. I would hate to embarrass myself, see? But even more importantly, I understand that evidence is everything and opinion nothing.
Hmmm, as far as I know, Γεθσημανῆ is of Chaldean origin and means 'oil press,' referring, no doubt, to olives. So?

Mark reads very badly. He makes some bizarre grammatical constructions that I am not convinced are entirely legal. It is most definitely not an orthodox christian gospel. How it made it into the bible is beyond me. Many call it adoptionistic, and there is some of that, but, more importantly, I believe that it is a separationist document.

Why did Mark write the gospel as he did? Why does he attack the disciples and, by plain inference, the orthodox church or, at least, what it was at the time he wrote? I could ask a thousand questions about this topic but I have frightfully few answers. For this reason, I study and learn. I do not go out and proclaim some theory for which I have no evidence other than my very human and fallible intuition.

Now, present some evidence or be prepared to be ignored because you fail to do the most basic thing anyone who studies needs to do: provide evidence or stay silent.

Julian

Vorkosigan

Expound, please.

Vorkosigan

Julian

In a nutshell (please note that I don't feel like adding IMO all over the text below, but consider it added to every sentence):

Nothing is said about Jesus at all until the encounter with JtB. This means that there was nothing to tell about him, i.e. he was just a regular guy. I am sure we can assume that he was extraordinarily righteous and so on, but even so, just a guy. Once the voice boomed he becomes endowed with the spirit (πνεῦμα ὡς περιστερὰν καταβαῖνον εὶς αὺτόν). Now, I realize the adoptionist tones of the following line (καὶ φωνὴ ὲγένετο ὲκ τῶν οὐρανῶν, Συ εἶ ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν σοὶ εὐδόκησα) and I readily grant this point but I think it is secondary. Notice the use of εἰς which was altered in most manuscripts to ἐν, which changes the meaning to 'descending upon him.' Clearly Mark meant to indicate a transition from outside to inside and not merely 'upon.' This is the moment that Jesus the man joins with the spirit, i.e. separationist, two entities, two separate manifestations. From this point on we follow Jesus who does great stuff and conveys the mind of god to the people. He attacks those with orthodox tendencies, again noting that we would have to debate what that meant at the time and this is not the time for that debate, and continues doing his thing. This is all well and good until he gets crucified. He is doing okay until he is on the cross and then the spirit, having done his job, leaves Jesus and he becomes, once again, just a man. Hence the terror and fear that was kept from him now suddenly strikes him and he says, explained in Greek by Mark, Ὁ Θεός μου ὁ Θεος μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με. So the man Jesus was separate from the spirit, hence separationist. I think that the adoptionism is correct but it is indicental because he becomes adopted because god has chosen him to inhabit with his spirit.

I could go on at length, but there it is in a nutshell.

Looking back over it, I will add my translations for the non-Greek speakers (habit, doing too much Greek these days):

πνεῦμα ὡς περιστερὰν καταβαῖνον εὶς αὺτόν = [the] spirit like a dove descending into him.

καὶ φωνὴ ὲγένετο ὲκ τῶν οὐρανῶν, Συ εἶ ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν σοὶ εὐδόκησα = and a voice came from the heavens, You are my son, the beloved, in you I am pleased.

Ὁ Θεός μου ὁ Θεος μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με = My god, my god, why did you forsake me?

Julian

Vorkosigan

Ah, right. Yes, that's my analysis too. Good.


Michael