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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
It is introduced in Mk 2:1, a verse which is difficult to translate since the reference is obscure.
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Obscure to those who don't want to read the text.
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Well obviously, he was either "in (the) house" as KJV, ASV, Darby and some others say or he was "(at) home" if you go with RSV or NASB or NIV, etc. So, about half of the translations do not see the 'en oiko' as idiomatic. If the meaning was given plainly by the text, as you want to argue, we would not have two translations.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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.
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He'd been away and had returned. It was heard that he'd come home. So?
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So? You missed my point. That's not unusual.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
Why doesn't the narrator say plainly that after several days, Jesus 'went' home ?
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Instead of speculating, go and ask him. Oh, that's right....
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Just what you would expect from a pug-nose wit.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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.
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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".
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The translators of King James' Version and Luther, among others, did not see that way.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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.
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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?
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....actually, I made the connection when the blind man at Bethsaida tells Jesus that he sees "men as trees, walking". Upon reading this once whilst riding a bicycle, a mighty sound came from heaven and an angel flew down through a cherry tree and knocking me to the ground, whispered in my ear that the "carpenter" in Mark was a reference to Isaiah 44:13-14. How could I argue with that ?
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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.
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Yeah sure, spin, except Paul prohibited stories about Jesus alive walking on the earth. So it would take some other authority figure to break this taboo and shape his Lord into a literary figure to overlay whatever other Jesus' traditions were in circulation.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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.
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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.
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I am not sure where you get "traditions" in Mark if they were post-70 CE, which I agree they were. There are number of indications, the wicked tenants, the abomination of desolation, the torn curtain, and to me, the clever double-entendre of Jesus prophesying the destruction of the temple and rebuilding it in three days which references both, the temple destroyed in the war and the temple of his body, with the former being lost and the latter being recovered in the resurrection. To me the word "tradition" signifies that certain beliefs or practices are established in the community for some period of time. If Mark was writing very close before or after the war (which I believe he had to because of the prophecy of "this generation" in ch.13 needed to be credible to Mark's generation, ie. could not have been removed more than 40-50 years from the reign of Pilate) then none of the symbolic allegorical figures could have been "traditional". The wicked tenants, as well as the other symbolic narratives before Jerusalem and in the city were most likely invented by Mark himself because they form a part of the gospel plot of a secret Messiah who is the Pauline crucified one and not (as the disciple in the story want to believe and the Sanhendrin suspects Jesus believes himself to be) the shepherd king who will restore the ancient kingdom.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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".
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I don't understand what exactly you have in mind in these last two sentences.
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Paul presented himself as a leader who was a servant of all : 1 Cr 9:19 For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.
Note that Mark's Jesus articulates the same idea: 9:35 If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.
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Originally Posted by spin
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.
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All I am saying, spin, that the passion just too much of a dramatization of Paul's cross theology (which I have good reasons to suspect was unknown in the James' community in Jerusalem) to have originated from oral traditions, and too tightly fitted into the overall design of the gospel to have been adapted from another text.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
When Matthew picked up Mark, he was not awed by his Jesus "tradition".
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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.
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It's more like an authoritative figure who holds sway over his community. A charismatic leader.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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.
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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.
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First, I see in your other post you have found that both S & V support the συνεσταυρωμενοι. Good.
Second, I would not be the first one who argues that some of the glosses in Mark are later attempts to bring Mark in line with the later synoptics. The LE is the most dramatic illustration of that.
Now, it is evident you do not read the symbolic figures of the gospel, here the two crosses on both sides of Jesus the same way I do. You either don't see the design or you do not want see it. The two robbers most certainly relate to the request of the Zebs (10:37) to sit one on the left and one on the right "in thy glory". Jesus tell them they do not know what they are asking. It is not up to him to grant such a request, it is "for those for whom it has been prepared". Mark of course prepares the thrones of the Jesus' thorny glory for the "robbers" (based on Isaiah 53:12), which Matthew spiced with his own comment.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
Matthew knew that Paulines were hostile to the "Jesus" of the Jerusalem church and never wanted to talk about him alive.
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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.
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You are just plain wrong about that. Paul says in 2 Cor 5:16,
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.
If Paul regarded Christ kata sarka before his revelation directly from God, his previous informing source about Jesus were other humans, ie they knew something about Jesus, whether real, imagined or historical.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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).
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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.
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Just out of curiosity, would it bother you if it turned out that Mark actually did not work "with material", ie. "traditional" stories about Jesus and his sayings but rather creatively adapted Paul's teachings for the spiritual needs, edification and entertainment of his gnostic community ? Because it seems it would.
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Originally Posted by spin
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Originally Posted by Solo
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.
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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?
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I believe the Twelve were Mark's invention. He did not inherit the list nor did he consider Peter, Andrew and the Zebs part of the twelve. The list was created by Matthew and imported into Mark later. Study the different the verses of Mk 3:14-19. Here is my take on it:
The dative Σιμονι in Mk 3:16 makes his renaming an action unrelated to the ordination in 3:14, and thus the appended alias of Zebedees with the inventoried apostles (all accusative) immediately suspect. The ‘assurance’ of the Western text text at 3:14 και αποστολους ωνομασεν suggests that in the evolving redactions of Mark the idea of naming of the apostles came first as a license for its effectuation. Οι δεκα, in 10:41 is most likely a harmonizing gloss (Mt 20:24), to fix the numerical discrepancy which would have arisen with the inclusion of the Zebedees in the twelve.
Best,
Jiri