Mark's Sources -- a question
Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2017 12:57 am
If the author "Mark" used a range of sources that he stitched together somewhat clumsily and so leaving tell-tale "seams" and various infelicities in his efforts to join them into a single narrative, would we not expect that such an author would also fail to totally assimilate his diverse sources so that each of his pericopes or anecdotal units maintained its original style or christological fingerprints?
In other words, a fairly untalented author attempting to (slightly awkwardly) link different sources together (a tradition from here, a narrative from there, a saying from over here....) would also be expected to preserve tell-tale signs of the different styles, vocabulary, ideology, of his different sources in each pericope.
Now I think with the story of John the Baptist's death we certainly do find a very distinctive narrative unlike anything else in the gospel. But that little story stands out as exceptional, does it not, in the pre-Passion "half" of the gospel. So yes, we would expect various studies to suggest that that particular detail was a subsequent addition to that gospel.
But what of the other little stories. Don't they all (or most of them, let's say) bear the same sort of style, vocabulary, ideology that we would expect to find from a single author?
If so, how do we explain a work (of a range of different oral and other traditional sources) that is supposedly strung together by a rather unsophisticated author that at the same time produces an apparently harmonious vocabulary, style, ideology throughout all of the little anecdotes that he has put together?
Would we not, rather, expect a real smorgasbord of styles, vocabularies and ideologies throughout such a gospel produced by such an author?
In other words, a fairly untalented author attempting to (slightly awkwardly) link different sources together (a tradition from here, a narrative from there, a saying from over here....) would also be expected to preserve tell-tale signs of the different styles, vocabulary, ideology, of his different sources in each pericope.
Now I think with the story of John the Baptist's death we certainly do find a very distinctive narrative unlike anything else in the gospel. But that little story stands out as exceptional, does it not, in the pre-Passion "half" of the gospel. So yes, we would expect various studies to suggest that that particular detail was a subsequent addition to that gospel.
But what of the other little stories. Don't they all (or most of them, let's say) bear the same sort of style, vocabulary, ideology that we would expect to find from a single author?
If so, how do we explain a work (of a range of different oral and other traditional sources) that is supposedly strung together by a rather unsophisticated author that at the same time produces an apparently harmonious vocabulary, style, ideology throughout all of the little anecdotes that he has put together?
Would we not, rather, expect a real smorgasbord of styles, vocabularies and ideologies throughout such a gospel produced by such an author?