Rick Sumner

I was a little rushed yesterday, so I'll try and clarify my position a little more, as I didn't do so previously.

What is always addressed in arguments such as these (though the temple, in particular, seems to be prone to it), is the how. What is seldom discussed is the why. Why would Mark make the temple incident up? Nehemiah's oracle isn't Messianic, it isn't necessary, and the incident plays no role in subsequent events in Mark.

Mark was, I should think, quite clearly a talented writer. What he certainly wasn't was prone to wasting words. And therein lay the problem, because the temple incident, if a wholly Markan creation, has done just that--wasted words. There is simply no reason for him to do so, adding color isn't something Mark wastes much time on.

Thus, what I would suggest is most reasonable, is that the temple incident represents a pre-Markan tradition of a disturbance at the temple. One associated with "Christianity" (I hope that's sufficiently vague so as to avoid a "hijacking" of the thread). Mark took that vague tradition, and made it specific, using the source he liked best, the OT.

Writing in OT terminology does not mean that the event is based on the OT. In fact, that argument alone is all but worthless--we know of several people who described events in such a fashion (Philo and Josephus spring immediately to mind). We cannot simply assume that scriptural citation is the source of a story, rather than the story the source of scriptural citation. What we need is not the how, it's the why.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

It is my understanding that they were stationed on the walls.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

Such a use of prophecy is thoroughly in keep with Matthew's redactive tendencies. I'd be interested in seeing why the temple incident should be viewed as in keeping with Markan redactive tendencies.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

The problem is that it doesn't lead to any obvious conclusion, it leads to confusion--to Crossan's infamous dichotomy of "prophecy historicized" vs. "history remembered." There's no inherent way to tell which is which, one must analyze and argue, not fall back on default positions and "obvious conclusions."

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

My methodology is pretty straightforward. John is dependent on Mark. If they tell roughly the same story, it's because John is copying Mark's version.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

Motive is absolutely irrelevant. Obviously we need not answer why, for it is clear that the story is taken from the OT.

However, fortunately, we ARE in a position to answer why, and the answer is provided by Thomas Brodie on p93 of The Crucial Bridge: the Elijah-Elisha Narrative as an interpretive synthesis of Genesis-Kings and a literary model for the Gospels. The reason is that the foundation of the Jesus legend is the Elijah-Elisha cycle. At the climax of the two legend cycles, both E and J cleanse Temples, Elijah in the purging of the priests of Baal with fire, and Jesus of the moneychangers. Both are annointed (2 Kings 9), accession with cloaks on the ground (2 Kings 9), waiting before taking over (2 Kings 9:12-13, Mark 11:11), challenge the authorities (2 Kings 9:22-10:27), Mark 11:11 - 12:12), and money is given to the Temple (2 Kings 12:5-17, Mark 12:41-44). As Brodie puts it (p93), ..."the basic point is clear: Mark's long passion narrative, while using distinctive Christian sources, coincides significantly both in form and content with the long Temple-centered sequence at the end of the Elijah-Elisha narrative."

In other words, Rick, there are two OT sources, one the Elijah-Elisha narrative and the other, Nehemiah. The structure of the OT Elijah-Elisha narrative determined the structure of Mark, and shows us why Mark chose to invent this story of the Temple cleansing. Nehemiah nicely accounts for some odd details, the Elijah-Elisha narrative for both the content of the story and the larger structure. Taking Crossan's dictum that a story which can be shown to be fiction on every level, from the details like carrying the vessels out of the Temple to the intermediate structures like the plot (Elijah-Elisha narrative), to the larger overall framework (again Elijah-Elisha narrative), must be taken as a fiction, it is clear that the Temple Ruckus is fiction, pure and simple.

No one is "falling back on default positions" here, and the only one who has shied away from providing an argument is you. Can you explain why anyone should take this event as having a historical kernel?

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

Please give instances of Philo and Josephus describing events in such a fashion.

Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan: I'll get back to you after I check Brodie's argument. Do you have specific page numbers?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Steven Carr

Why then does John move the incident and take the trouble to date it to a time when it clashes with the date for the other Gospels of the incident?

Is John's Temple incident as unhistorical as my putting Reagan's Presidency in the 60's would be? Or would saying that Reagan was President in the 60's still be 'historical', in some strange Biblical way?

Rick Sumner

A much better argument than simply screaming "Midrash," incidentally, is the epistolary silence on the matter--not on the temple incident itself, that's irrelevant, really, Paul wouldn't need to mention it to his Gentile audience--rather the silence on any indication that any early Christian had a problem with the temple. You'd think with all the apparent disputes about the Law such a thing would come up.

Another key point is that nobody--Jew or Gentile--seems to have seen temples as a bad thing. The implausibility of a Jew lashing out at the temple is considerably more problematic for the historicity of the event than the fact that Mark's version is clearly scripturally oriented.

Both of these points are raised by Fredriksen in _Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews_.

Regards,
Rick Sumner