FransJVermeiren wrote:The leper as an expulsed community member
I believe it is interesting to confront Mark 1:40-45 (‘The Cleansing of a Leper’) with Josephus’ description of the Essenes (War II:120-161) and with a passage from Dalits in Early Buddhism by Paramanshi Jaideva.
Josephus on the expulsion of Essenes from the community:
(143) Men convicted of major offenses are expelled from the order; and the ejected individual often comes to a most miserable end; for being bound by their oaths and customs, he is not allowed to share other men’s food and so he is forced to eat grass, his starved body wastes away and he dies of starvation. (144) This has led them out of a compassion to take many offenders back at their last gasp, since they feel that men tortured to the point of death have paid a sufficient penalty for their misdeeds.
On p. 170 of Dalits in Early Buddhism, the Encyclopedia of Religion of Ethics is quoted on the expulsion prevalent in caste-system:
For the minor violation of the rules of the tribe and its preventions, a sort of purification function is arranged and the tribe members are given a treat. But for the serious crimes or impudence, one is excommunicated from the caste, that is, the members of that tribe have no relation with the punished member. Neither anyone eats food with him, nor does he smoke nor talk with him. The people remain aloof from him just as they do from a leper and his life becomes so miserable that he becomes ready to accept any condition.
I think we can interpret Mark 1:40-45 against this background. A punished Essene, a leper, comes in despair to the Essene priest Jesus, who abolishes his punishment of expulsion (‘he was made clean’). This way he overrules the decision of another Essene priest. The expulsed man is asked to show himself to that priest. It looks as if Jesus is challenging the authority of that other priest, who is too hard-hearted in his opinion. Jesus also asks the man to make an offering for his reintegration in the community.
As Josephus speaks of compassion as motive for the reintegration of punished community members, I believe that the word for compassion in Mark 1:41 is authentic. Anger can have a place in this situation too, but only in a secondary way: maybe Jesus is angry at the other priest because he has protracted a harsh punishment for too long.
How could anyone be certain that the words we read in the final edition of a canonical book are the exact replica of what Jesus said ( or anyone in ancient history)?
This is the problem as presented by Professor Ehrman long ago.
Text and Tradition: The Role of New Testament Manuscripts in Early Christian Studies
The Kenneth W. Clark Lectures
Duke Divinity School
1997
Lecture One: Text and Interpretation: The Exegetical Significance of the "Original" Text
Bart D. Ehrman
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"
7. We have, of course, come a long way since Mill. Today we have over fifty times as many
MSS as he had--at last count, there were upwards of 5300 complete or fragmentary Greek
copies--not to mention the thousands of MSS attesting the early translations of the NT into
Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Old Slavonic, etc., and the many
thousands of quotations of the NT by church authors of the first few hundred years. What is
particularly striking is that among the 5300+ Greek copies of the NT, with the exception of
the smallest fragments, there are no two that are exactly alike in all their particulars.
8. No one knows for sure how many differences there are among our surviving witnesses,
simply because no one has yet been able to count them all. The best estimates put the number
at around 300,000, but perhaps it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are
more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT. "
What do these putative first words tell us exactly?
Jesus may have changed his views during the time he started preaching until his death,. and therefore his first words on anything will not teach what he wanted his pupils to do and remember. It is the path walked by most reformers. Jesus come across as a vulnerable man resisting a merciless overseer.