It is an over-simplification of course. But the way it has generally been used in form criticism is hindering our true understanding of what is really going on in the text, I think. The passages have generally been treated as self-contained units that were unrelated and foreign to each other, often even foreign to 'Mark', the compiler.DCHindley wrote: ↑Sat Nov 04, 2017 5:49 amI think that is a bit of an over-simplification. Aren't pericopes just discrete sense units? These sense units can be clauses, sentences, even multiple sentences as long as they seem related to a common message. We have always had the ability to "stack" pericopes to make greater sense of them, much like links to cells within a spreadsheet being used as elements in formulas, which seems to be what you are suggesting.Stefan Kristensen wrote: ↑Sat Nov 04, 2017 12:01 amThis [treatment of discreet passages as "pericopes"] is the method invented by the form critics, and it is unfortunately, I think, still popular. The passages are not "pericopes", i.e. to be "cut around" and taken out of context. Then they lose their basic meaning.
That being said, I do agree that form critics have gone down some sort of primrose path. I would speculate that what that path was is the expectation that all these pericopes served some sort of function in group devotions/worship. In my view, that assumes that how they were put to use by the later church is why they were written to start with.
IMHO, I would say that the gospels were written to serve rhetorical purposes, to help form narratives that "explained" how Jesus, the man executed by the Romans in a manner reserved for revolutionaries and bandits, was not *really* a revolutionary/bandit but a *sage* who spoke God's will, who was *tragically* accused and executed by the Judean authorities on account of *jealously*. Since Josephus's War and other parts of his works are full of accounts of Judean authorities on all levels stabbing each other in the back out of jealousy, the Judeans were an ideal foil for such rhetoric.
To the gospel writers, Jesus' death had a secret "meta purpose" that ultimately benefited all of mankind, if people become initiated into the Christian mysteries. It was only later that these rhetorical elements took on functions within group worship and community.
DCH (I've only had one so far this morning)
The way I think we ought to read the gospels, especially that of Mark who is the author that invents this special way of writing, is exactly the opposite: always try to seek the deeper meaning from the context, especially the immediate context. Of course, I work under the presumption that there actually is a deeper meaning to the text apart from the narrative 'surface' meaning.
So when John is described like Elijah in Mark 1:6, this is meant by Mark to be understood as an 'historical' event, but the reader (or the one with "ears to hear") can see the deeper meaning of this: John is the awaited Elijah from the book of Mal. which has just been cited of course in the immediate context (1:2).