Peter Kirby

:notworthy:

I am fairly satisfied that my fiction is not Mark's. The main query I have then is...

Could Mark have originally narrated a "failure to appear" story?

Clouseau

I take it that Jesus' putative failure to appear is meant. It is possible- but why, if so, would the author have written fifteen chapters beforehand?

Peter Kirby

I don't know...in fact, I've often wondered why Mark doesn't just start with chapter 14 and the anointing of Jesus there.

Clouseau

The fact that he doesn't points to his assumption that Jesus did indeed rise, as Jesus himself promised to do in Mark's account.

Peter Kirby

Well, ok...and a "failure to appear" story would mean that Jesus didn't rise?

Clouseau

Not necessarily. There were many at the time who would have preferred that ending.

spin

Why have an angel in the tomb at all, let alone one that says Jesus has risen and that his disciples would see him in Galilee? How would a failure to show story fit with the darkness at noon or the rending of the temple curtain? With such portents and angelic information, who necessarily needs a resurrection portrayed?


spin

Solo

Right on, spin.

Mark was evidently writing before "church consciousness" set in. Mark, like Paul, worked with what I call psychic "proof" of resurrection, i.e. a loosely organized core of believers (the saints) which had photic experiences. Once the church structure of authority begins to set in, the scriptural "evidence" of Jesus quickly displaces the experiential "apostolic" witnessing of the resurrection. This is where Jesus begins to rise bodily after his death in the gospels.

Evidently, Jesus walking/talking/eating after his death, was designed to "wow" the largest believer mass, with the mystery managed by the church. The transition to church hierarchy and discipline is put into Jesus' mouth in John 10, in the parable of the "good shepherd". They are referred to as "the gatekeeper" and "sheepfold", respectively.

The "bodily resurrection" narrative structure is alien to Mark, therefore I do not believe that his putative gospel ending had any w/t/e post-mortem Jesus interacting with his disciples.

Jiri

Clouseau

What was the motivation for this deceit? Who was responsible for it?

Solo

Clouseau, please consider it possible that what appears to you as "deceit" was not that at all to the gospellers. Jesus was not coming back. They were convinced in the rightness of the apostolic tradition, and as I indicated in previous posts, I believe the Matthean and Lucan Sermon shows their own psychic "pneumatic" experience (or acute awareness thereof) which ties them to the earlier traditions. When they created Jesus as a dead man alive they knew they were creating a mystic paradox, whose true meaning would be available only to a few but that could touch everyone.

Jiri