Solo

No argument. But oikos in 2:1 (and in the other instances I have shown) really looks like having the connotation of the 'house of the Lord', the seat of Jesus' empowerment. The idea that probably inspired Mark is the 'carpenter' shaping the wooden figure of man and placing it 'en oikw' in Isa 44:13.

Best,
Jiri

spin

I have difficulty seeing the carpenter--who in Isa 44:13 is forming a wooden idol--having much to do with the issue (but then I've seen lots of de- & recontextualizations).

I mentioned Mt's decontextualization of the healing of the paralytic, which took place in Mk at Capernaum, but in Mt 9:1 it is his "own town" (την ιδιαν πολιν). The relationship between Capernaum and his own town is strengthened in Mt 4:13 with Jesus going to live in Capernaum. I think this is a good indication of how the Matthean writer understood Jesus being at home in Mk 2:1.

Solo

Unfortunately, even if you are right in assessing Matthew's understanding, it does not help understanding Mark's literary intents. I am very much on side with Mary Ann Tolbert who said that Matthew and Luke were not simply extending and "correcting" Mark. They were out to undermine him and defeat his purposes.

So if Matthew uses Capernaum to strengthen the association between Jesus and a locale advertized as his home stomping grounds, it is no guarantee that Mark actually wanted to do that and not - as I am led to believe - create an illusion of geographical reality to mislead outsiders about his true intents. In order to appreciate the issue of the original Mark's "context" you have to rely on Mark's text. I was bothered by the semantics of some of the "oikos/oikia" constructs and came to the conclusion that it is simply too obviously advertized as having a symbolic mystical meaning to have come to Mark from folk tales of Jesus' earthly progress.

In 2:15 the house is said to be Jesus' house which is obviously to strengthen the illusion set up in 2:1. There is no other indication in the story that Jesus is tied to that locale by some previous residence. If 'the house' in 10:10 was known to Mark as reference a specific structure in Capernaum you assume he had a written text in front of him and did not know how to fix the grammar to make it agree with his story. To say that the instances of εις οικον were gathered by redaction of originally unconnected stories derogates to the text. It's a way to avoid interpreting difficult issues.

Best,
Jiri

spin

Funny, all I did was point out the philology of the idiom in Mk 2:1, ie that Jesus had his home in Capernaum at least according to that verse, and I pointed out that Mt supports this Capernaum home.

If you want to read Levi's house (different word from 2:1) in 2:15 as the same house as 2:1 you'll need not only to explain the change in word, but why Levi is the last person mentioned as grammatical subject at the end of v.14, so should be subject at the beginning of v.15 with Jesus only mentioned later to change subject.

As to 10:10, different noun again, not an idiomatic structure, your interpretation seems to be theory dictating meaning despite the text.

Solo

As I said, 'no argument', spin. The small example of Mark's use of 'oikos/oikia' is to illustrate why I believe Mark's gospel is a symbolic allegory, i.e. creative fiction and not redacted traditional accounts of Jesus' actions and pronouncements.

What is important syntactically and semantically about the 10:10 use of oikia is that it is offered as reference to an object supposedly mentioned previously (it has a definite article) but without a clear indication which object is being refered to. This referential uncertainty occurs regularly with 'oikos/oikia'.

Now having observed this uncanny regularity, I ask myself how likely it is that Mark would want to say something else than he actually says in multiple instances. I am reluctant to conclude that this has occured because Mark was working from a list of incidents that happened in a particular house where Jesus lived and scattered them throughout his gospel ignoring or unaware of the grammar. Observing this feature is similar in kind to what Mark does elsewhere, i.e. misattributing or 'abducting' objects to create paradoxical subtexts, I am led to believe that the semantics here are idiosyncratic rather than common usage. It is observations that drive my theory, spin, not the other way around. I am not forcing an interpretation on a verse that has a clear and unambiguous meaning in a story that has a clear an unambiguous meaning.

Best,
Jiri

spin

Rather than simply conflating οικος/οικια, you should be wondering why these two different words are being used. One doesn't just randomly use one and then the other. People tend to use words more consistently. In ordinary conversation some people tend to use "ladies" while others use "women" and they don't simply mix usage. Some use "until" while others use "till" and it tends to be preferential. You should consider the differences.

Then you refer to the definite article in the phrase in Mk 10:10 and try to make something of it, when in other times these "house" phrases that interest you have no article.

Looking into the mind of the author is not particularly convincing, but here you have no reason for assuming single authorship.

Trivializing things by referring to lists of incidents won't help. It is clear that the redactor orders his resources that were already units, as in the case of the two sequences of events beginning with the miraculous feedings, 6:30-7:37 & 8:1-26.

It might have been nice to present a few of these observations.

The only clear and unambiguous meaning I find is that you know what you want the text to say.

ETA: I really don't want to be in yet another dispute. I mentioned three diverse home indications that were to be seen in Mk, as a pointer to different sources used by a redactor. You decided to take exception with one of those. Then we get to beating up the evidence. Next we get to shouting. After that we hurl things at each other. It's all very dull. I'm filing for a divorce.

Solo

You are again talking past the points that I have made to you.
This is of course true. Mark is the NT text with the most variants which can only mean one thing. OTOH, if you stick with the text, there is a certain style of discourse and idiosyncracies which assures me and a long list of other people that the gospel did not originate in a committee.

It is clear to you but it is not clear to me. I am sure you are aware Markan scholars disagree profoundly about the significance of the two feedings, whether this was a report of a single event in two renderings that Mark misapprehended and duplicated, to a view that the feeding of the four thousand was the original from which Mark purposely carved out the first story to accentuate the misapprehension of the disciples, to a view that the two feedings were for Jews and Gentiles respectively. I have read a lot of books on Mark but have seen no scholarly agreement on "units" organized around ordered resources.

BTW, I am surprised to see you among the textual evolutionists, ie. theorists who as a rule recruit from the ranks faith-driven Christians who need a theory of pre-gospel tradition about Jesus sayings and doings to bolster their case for a "real" or "historical" founder. I hope you understand that there is no evidence that the gospel stories about Jesus written up in Mark were circulated before Mark. None. How the script originated, what it looked like before it was converted into our received text, and what it it actually meant is still open to debate.

But I did that already, spin.

Best,
Jiri

spin

You made claims which involved conflation οικος and οικια, though they imply different speakers or different purposes. The points you made need these two words to be transparently the same. You need to stop the conflation before you can make points I can talk past.

Who's talking about committees? I would advocate a notion that a community recorded the Jesus traditions that the community held, the work of perhaps one person, and that collection was augmented as more traditions arrived with itinerant preachers doing the rounds of the communities. The didache warns communities about such preachers.

What we see in Mk is the control of small units reflecting the work of a redactor ordering and contextualizing, at least up to the end of chapter 13.

I guess then you won't need to look at the text.

You can be surprised all you like. I'm surprised that you wasted your time typing this nonsense. The divergent stories of the feedings is evidence of a story circulating enough to end up in two forms. The three disparate indications of Jesus's home is further evidence. The fact that the structure of the passion narrative is so different from the rest of the gospel points a to separate authorship from the way the rest of the text developed.

It's a shopping list of hopes. You could just as easily have complained about the redactor not having a decent word processor.

Solo

I am too used to this sort of rhetoric to be impressed. I have pointed out that the in Mark οικος and οικια when used with Jesus in them or around them or as a member of (a household), have a strange consistency of vagueness or misplaced concreteness. Whatever the immedate narrative context, this feature seems regular fare. It is introduced in Mk 2:1, a verse which is difficult to translate since the reference is obscure. No matter how you you choose to render the passive aorist 'ēkousthē', cognitively it clashes with the idiomatic meaning of 'en oikō'. Why would Jesus being 'home' have had others 'hear' or 'report" that he was so situated. Why doesn't the narrator say plainly that after several days, Jesus 'went' home ? This is a good illustration of Frank Kermode's point he made in the The Genesis of Secrecy (or via: amazon.co.uk): if these texts in their very nature demand further interpretation and yet resist it, what should we expect when the document in question denies its own opacity by claiming to be a transparent account of the recognizable world ? Now, I have been struck by the rendering of 'en oikō' in Isa 44:13 precisely because there it is clear the phrase does not mean 'home' but 'in a house' in which the craftsman (tekton) seats a model of human beauty. I reason that a Paulinist Christian reading the Isaiah verse after his death, not only would immediately seize Isaiah's purpose in placing the carved figure in a shrine but also recall that Paul had called himself 'master craftsman' (architekton) who founded the movement of the crucified Messiah and invited people to imitate him. And if he the follower was a creative Paulinist Christian, he might have been struck by the evocative Isaian metaphor and created a cultic "figure" and placed it in a short symbolic narrative that breathed life into Paul's theology. That would be Mark's house with the human beauty carving in it.

Problem is, spin, that any kind of cult tends to form around single individuals. So what was there at the start ? Random activity of itinerant preachers who agreed to call their wise man "Jesus" ? And even if that unlikely scenario played out, who supplied "the policy" on the itinerant preachers ? Based on what ? On the apostles, with whom these itinerant preachers were on first name basis ? I don't think so. There was not - if one keeps close to the traditional timelines - hell of lot time to form strong, binding traditions that would help communities separate important teachings and information from nonsense. You have two or three generations in which the kernel of the new religion was formed. However one feels about the final product it was a remarkably durable core. But how was this core formed ? Around what ? I take the view it was not around the teachings of a historical Jesus but around teachings supplied by strong, gifted individuals who themselves animated the Jesus oracle around which they formed the Jesus societies. What was probably set up very early on (at any rate we know that Paul used this 'technique') was a style of 'leading from behind', a mystique the individuals built around themselves as true witnesses and interpreters of Jesus. You may want to check again where, among other mental skills, Paul placed the ability to "interpret". All four gospellers seem remarkably strong - and opinionated - individuals, and without a doubt leaders in their communities. When Matthew picked up Mark, he was not awed by his Jesus "tradition". He knew Mark was allegorizing Paul and trying to pull a leg of everyone else in the Jesus business, thinking no-one could figure out what he was really doing. He was not drawing on an alternative "source" when he wrote down that the two "robbers" were "co-crucified" with Jesus. He was ridiculing the Pauline idea of being "crucified" with Jesus that Mark placed into his gospel symbolically. He purposely supplied the extra "syn" in 27:44 to signal that he read Mark's deception about the identity of the two robbers. I do not believe the original Mark had the robbers "revile" Jesus. Oneidizō is a hapax in Mark but used multiple times in Matthew. Matthew knew that Paulines were hostile to the "Jesus" of the Jerusalem church and never wanted to talk about him alive.

Now obviously, if you start with the conventional premises according to which Mark was a humble transcriber, you will end up either with church litanies or a deconstructed non-story around which nothing can be said without causing spin to climb walls.

I was merely pointing out to you that divergent views exist about this in academia. Strange (again) that you who has read Gundry should have missed his aversion to explain textual inconcinnity by redaction. Unlike you he grasps that redaction is an assumption, not evidence for anything.

Well, it may not be obvious to you, but if the first and last figure of Mark's gospel has a messenger of the Lord sent ahead with instructions, the chances are overwhelmingly in favor that the story was designed and composed by a single author, (even though it was written into by a number of people later). Also, the Twelve and Judas Iscariot were plotted from the start with the single purpose of "dividing the house of Israel", ie in the anticipation of the passion plot, so no I don't think many people would buy the splicing theory.

I did not complain, I did not express any hopes and I definitely do not take Mark to be a redactor. That much I think judicious people reading my post would agree on. :huh:

Best,
Jiri

spin

If by "point out" you mean "assert", I agree. You've asserted the conflation consistently without going any further that assertion.

Obscure to those who don't want to read the text.

He'd been away and had returned. It was heard that he'd come home. So?

Instead of speculating, go and ask him. Oh, that's right....

It would be you asserting opacity.

You find comparing a general statement such as in Isa 44:13 (that would condition an indefinite noun) with a contextualized statement regarding a specific individual (that would invoke a well-known idiom) useful? There is no real point of comparison. The carpenter is not a specific carpenter, but anyone who would make such an idol. One has no problem making a case for the indefinite noun in such a context. Not so with Jesus entering Capernaum, suggesting a specific house, thus the idiomatic "home".

If for some reason the reader of Isa 44:13 read the verse totally out of context, for in context he is looking at the setting up of a wooden idol in a house. Why did you pick this particular verse out of Isaiah though, was it because the LXX has εν οικω and it mentioned a carpenter?

Cults start up around single figures such as Mohammed and Paul and Alexander of Abonoteichus. Sometimes the cult takes off. Mohammed was apparently prolific. Paul supplied much less as a basis, being interested only in the salvific act of the death of the savior, which would have encouraged the need to fill in what people wanted to know about. Hence a cottage industry eking out new Jesus stories that were reflections, or repurposings, of old ones.

You haven't got the idea yet. After the initial Pauline savior was spread to communities through Anatolia and Greece, itinerant preachers had a business of supporting themselves going from community to community sponging off them by telling Jesus stories.

The gospel of Mark contains traditions that were certainly after the Jewish War, when we get the vaticinium ex eventu at the beginning of chapter 13, the rending of the temple curtain, marking the end of the priesthood, and the story of the wicked tenants which sees the overthrow of the Jews. How much after the Jewish War is hard to say: I don't find the apologetic analyses of any value.

I don't understand what exactly you have in mind in these last two sentences.

As to the early part, I see no reason why you would opt for a Jesus-centric analysis, when Paul, our earliest witness, never knew Jesus and doesn't indicate that anyone before him knew Jesus. Your gifted individuals could just as easily have sprang up from communities which were founded by Paul, who taught that the gospel was founded on the salvific death of Jesus, the point to which all the gospels lead. Much of the passion is just a little narrative development upon the fact that Jesus offered himself up as a paschal sacrifice, so you get the crucifixion happening in Jerusalem at pesach.

At least you can accept the notion of writers working within a community.

When you talk of "Matthew" this way, you assume more than you can reasonably do. You conclude a single author which shapes the assumptions you develop and hinder yourself in so doing.

And he knew Mark was a Dynamo Moscow supporter.

Well, you've got a whole unfalsifiable scenario to wave around. Beside the fact that an extra συν isn't that well supported, as significant manuscripts either don't have συν or they don't have συσταυρωθεντες, preferring σταυρωθεντες, you have no way of knowing, assuming for a moment both being original (see Sinaiticus & Vaticanus), that the particular writer wasn't just reinforcing the notion, rather than making some supposed anti-Pauline slight.

That's not evidence of anything. The particular writer of Mt (various hands were involved at different times) may have found the word suitable, rather than your implied spill from Mt back into Mk. That's two steps away from a hypothetical original Marcan text, the anti-Pauline rewrite in Mt and then the replacement of whatever was in the original Marcan verse. Not unheard of, but here unfalsifiable.

Why bother to express this? I mean, I have argued here that there is no evidence at all that the people Paul was in contact with knew anything about Jesus before he told them of his revelation.

There's either the Solo everything or nothing approach. Who said anything about a "humble transcriber"? That's just another one of your straw men. A redactor is anything but a humble transcriber. A redactor shapes a final work from disparate parts. The end result is that of the redactor.

And Solo to deliver his surmises.

I can happily separate philological expertise from theological constrictions.

Perhaps the shaping work of a redactor is not something you are aware of. You make me think of the sort of redactor that could have been at work. You know a priori what you want the material to say, then with that certainty you manipulate it so that it reflects your knowledge.

At what stage of the tradition development did the twelve enter? Was it before the construction of Mark or at the time of construction? Did the redactor inherit the list of the twelve or not?

Beside not responding to the criticism, you assume that judicious people would agree with you. I don't think they would.