Stefan Kristensen wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2017 4:29 pmParker's theory seems to solve some problems in textual criticism. But it also seems to create alot of problems, but I havn't read his work. I think the text of gMark as we have it, with all the variant readings taken into account (most of them are not really important for the meaning), has such coherence of meaning on the deeper level that I find it hard to regard it as some sort of collective effort, if that is the theory.
To my mind, Parker's approach neither solves old problems,
per se, nor poses new ones. Rather, it explains why those old problems may ultimately be inexplicable on a close analytical level.
For me the object is the meaning in the text itself. But that's also because I think it is impossible to actually separate what is Mark's own stuff and what is tradition, at least in any way that's meaningful for the purpose of tradition history. I wish we could know more precisely what traditions Mark was familiar with, but I think we just need to uncover the whole network of theological meaning beneath the text before we do anything else. And I don't think we have done that quite yet.
To put literary and theological meanings of a text before text and source criticism seems to me to be perfectly backwards. Theological and literary readings are powerful:
too powerful. They can usually make sense of whatever is there. The trick is to make sure that whatever is there was there originally. Otherwise, we may be deriving theological and literary meanings from passages which did not pour from the same pen. With a bit of care this can be okay when the topic is early Christianity as a whole, but when the topic is Mark or Paul or any other specific author from antiquity it behooves us to be reasonably sure of what Mark or Paul originally wrote.
Regarding the thing about assumptions, all I meant was that we all bring preconceptions to our reading of a text. Of course we want our preconceptions to be as informed and refined as possible, but when we ask complex questions of this text we must always build on a lot of assumptions all the time (maybe assumption is a bad term here). For this sort of text our understanding of it will always be the result of an ongoing interplay of preconceptions (or assumptions) and deductions, I'm sure you agree.
Well, sort of, I think. We can continually test our assumptions. I, for example, used to work on the assumption that NA27 was basically correct about the original texts of Mark and Paul, but I have come to question that assumption, and am in the process of trying to figure out whether certain texts might not be layered, as opposed to being singular compositions from a single mind. This approach does not multiply assumptions; it eliminates them. Now
any given piece of Mark's gospel may or may not derive from Mark himself (whoever we imagine that to be), from tradition (redacted by Mark, of course), or from later interpolation. This approach certainly complicates things, because each and every pericope and piece of a pericope now has to be analyzed on its own merits. There is no way such an approach can get at the underlying literary or historical reality right away; it is a matter of creating a model based on limited study and range of facts, then refining that model based on further research, and so on. The model may never be perfect, but it can consistently get closer and closer than it was before.
Without this approach we are left either with the assumption that Mark is a random assortment of pericopes (as some of the more extreme form critics would have it) or with the assumption that Mark is a unified whole written by a single author (a common trend these days). Remove these assumptions and we have created more work for ourselves, but at least we have not prematurely eliminated options that we have never actually mounted cogent arguments against.
Again, we want to ask different questions of the text. I guess you could say that you want to answer historical questions, I want to answer semantic questions.
Not true, so far as my own intent is concerned. I
also wish to answer semantic questions. And literary questions. And theological questions. And of course historical questions. I am greedy. I want it all.
I think there are some fundamental traits that gMatt and gLuke share against gMark.
The main argument is like I write: The deeper meaning in gMatt and gLuke are often repetitive, simple, clumsy or seem abit unmotivated, I would argue. In some cases even there isn't a deeper meaning which happens only very rarely in gMark (maybe just 7:19b and 10:10-12). In gMark, on the other hand, almost everything flows neatly on the deeper level. And likewise, on the surface level gMark seems alot more messy and clumsy with 'unnecessary details' where the other two are much more tidied and clean all the way through. So gMark has more weird details but more deeper meaning, and gMatt and gLuke vice versa. I give two examples of this (the Feedings and the Epileptic Boy), but in order to argue this, of course, it must be shown how the deeper level of meaning in gMark is indeed much more coherent network ideas than the other two synoptics, and I believe it can be done. That's my favorite pet right now.
What about those times when, say, Matthew is the one who is adding details, and those details bear theological meaning? For example, only Matthew has Peter trying to walk on water. He tries (which is a positive thing), but he fails (which is a negative thing), and Jesus has to step in and rescue him. Not only does this extend in a very consistent and logical way the "personality" of Peter as we know it from Mark, but it also has a lot to say about Jesus' role as savior. Or, as another example, what about the way in which Matthew has enhanced Jesus' role as a Moses figure throughout his gospel, from the massacre of the innocents and the flight to Egypt through his fasting, like Moses, for 40 days and nights in the wilderness to, notably, his Mosaic role in the Sermon on the Mount and in the four other main discourses which Matthew presents, each one ending with the same formula so as to mark them off as special (five discourses, perhaps mimicking the five books of Moses)? His presentation is fairly thoroughgoing, but he is (according to both of us) using and modifying sources. For example, he turns the temptation in Mark, during which Jesus is being ministered to by angels much like Elijah was by ravens, into a period of fasting, right in line with Moses on the mountain in Exodus 34.28. A subtle change, but one which furthers Jesus' status as a new Moses (while not losing his status as a prophet like Elijah, since Matthew still has the angels coming to minister to him, but after the 40 days and nights). Why can Mark not have modified sources in the same way, bringing them in line with his own deeper theological truths?
If you wish to suggest that Mark's theological meanings are even deeper than Matthew's, so be it. You may be right. But why can that not simply mean that Mark was better at modifying sources than Matthew was? Why would that
have to mean that Mark is freely composing his own story while Matthew is not?
So I'd say that either Mark didn't use sources, or he used other forms of sources, or he used them in a different way from his two fellows, Matthew and Luke.
My examples above involving Matthew appear to me to be of a similar nature to what I see Mark doing. Maybe Mark does it better, and that is fine. But it still makes me question your distinction about Mark using his hypothetical sources differently than Matthew. To me, the difference (if there is one) is one of competence, perhaps, but the game both are playing seems to be the same. Or what am I missing?
I think questions like these, then, are valid here (perhaps you disagree): If Mark used sources in the same way that Matthew and Luke did, why didn't he tidy them up in the same way?
What if he
did? What if his sources were actually even less tidy than we find in Mark, and he did a great deal to tidy them up? And then Matthew and Luke continued the process and did even more tidying up? How would we know? If you are imagining a certain kind of source available to Mark before you even start to investigate it, then you are making assumptions. I think we have to read the contours (and they can probably never be any more than that) of his potential sources from the limited evidence we can scrape together from individual pericopes. We cannot assume their size, shape, and character in advance.
In short, when I look at Mark, I see a handful of passages that I think (after much study and careful consideration) he himself invented wholesale, a few passages that I think (after much study, again, and careful consideration) he derived and modified from tradition, a few passages that I think (after yada yada yada) were interpolated (by scribes) into his work after the gospel was circulating. Then there are a
lot of passages that I simply am unsure about as of yet. I get the impression, though, that things are different for you. When you look at Mark, you see by far most of the passages as having been created by Mark or reworked (from tradition or other sources) so very thoroughly that they may as well have been. You do not even try to see what may lie behind the text on the table. Your approach, then, is laden with a very heavy assumption or two right from the outset, while mine eschews those assumptions and tries to take each line on its own merits. For
some purposes, there is absolutely no harm in making your assumptions. For others, they would be fatal to any fair inquiry. As long as you are limiting your inquiries to the former kind, there is not real issue; but you should be aware of the assumptions you are making (and I am not claiming that you are not) in case you ever find yourself asking even slightly different questions, or dealing with someone of my ilk, someone who does not make those same assumptions.
Perhaps you get the main idea, but of course it would take alot to build my case properly. I'm working on it, though!
I genuinely look forward to reading to whatever you produce along those lines.
I find your stuff to be very interesting and thought-provoking.
Ben.