A strange anomaly in Mark 14:41

[Giuseppe]

There is a very strange anomaly in Mark 15:41:

And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.

(Mark 14:41-41)

in the part in blue Jesus says:

Sleep on now, and take your rest

So the disciples have simply to sleep. Ok.


But not even a second after the same Jesus contradicts himself and says:

it is enough, the hour is come

How could it be possible that the sleep of the disciples could last only a microsecond????

The great mythicist J. M. Robertson knows the explanation. ''Mark'' was betraying what he was doing. To transcript what was a (orally executed) sacred drama in a narrative form.

It's beyond any doubt that the source of Mark was something as the following:

And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest

[then Jesus leaves the disciples and returns after some time > 0, and he finds the disciples still asleep and therefore he says ]

it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.

But this could be so only in a sacred drama.

[lsayre]

I'm of the opinion that all of the Gospels were stage type performances.

[Stuart]

I'm of the opinion that all of the Gospels were stage type performances.

Agreed. I wish more people understood this. Much of the mystery of the Gospels would go away, and they could be appreciated for what they are, rather than trying to force them to be something they are not, like memoirs or historical records.

They are religious plays which evolved into literature, where "truth" is in the exploration of exegesis, not in X or Y happened type facts. If people looked at it as a movie, they might realize the central characters are fictional (even if real, their speech and actions are the invention of the authors) and placed on the scene felt appropriate. For whatever reason the genre developed as events occurring roughly two generations before Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans and in Judea-Samaria-Galilee region (Acts runs forward the better part of a generation after). That became the accepted backdrop, much like Westerns are always portrayed as roughly 1870-1900 period and in the region of the Western US.

As for Giuseppe, I think he makes a mess of this, as his English translation of the Greek is way off (Jesus asks, "Are you still sleeping and resting?") and does not look at the scene in it's entirety from 14:38-52 (all in the same setting/stage, the last two verses perhaps a bit of quick comedy). In general it's pretty clear Giuseppe's English is not strong enough, and he should probably make his case in Italian, or run that parallel since what we get are poorly constructed questions like this thread. His question comes across as an Emily LItella argument for Violins on television (now I'm dating myself with an original SNL cast sketch). #NeverMind

[Jax]

I'm of the opinion that all of the Gospels were stage type performances.

I third this.

[Charles Wilson]

http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark09.html#9X

[Ben C. Smith]

But this could be so only in a sacred drama.

I'm of the opinion that all of the Gospels were stage type performances.

I third this.

http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark09.html#9X

That link brings us back to Goodacre's observations about the passion in Mark as liturgy.

The Marcan passion narrative as liturgy I am already more or less on board with. The whole of Mark as a sacred drama is an appealing thesis. But I am not yet convinced; the argument is purely circumstantial, and each individual bit of evidence might be better explained in other ways. It would be great if someone could mount a more complete argument (more complete than an excursus) for the proposition; I would love to be convinced.

[Jax]

But this could be so only in a sacred drama.

I'm of the opinion that all of the Gospels were stage type performances.

I third this.

http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark09.html#9X

That link brings us back to Goodacre's observations about the passion in Mark as liturgy.

The Marcan passion narrative as liturgy I am already more or less on board with. The whole of Mark as a sacred drama is an appealing thesis. But I am not yet convinced; the argument is purely circumstantial, and each individual bit of evidence might be better explained in other ways. It would be great if someone could mount a more complete argument (more complete than an excursus) for the proposition; I would love to be convinced.

I totally agree with this. I wish that I could be the one to do this for you but I cannot.

Reading some of the things that are posted and linked to in these threads makes it plain to me that the information that we have concerning this material is so incomplete that it is the 'perfect medium for growing speculation' (biology reference).

The take away message here is that we are really just groping around in the dark with no real way to prove anything, and the material that we have to work with is so ambiguous as to be useless to us as hard evidence for anything concrete. We can't trust any of it.

For me at any rate, with what I have been able to learn about the Gospel stories, I have been able to discern (for myself) that they are:

1: Fictional stories (at least Mark).

2: Probably plays (again, at least Mark. Seems right anyway, especially when you take into account the statement made by Paul in Galatians about the crucifixion being publicly presented to them).

3: Probably understood as fictional stories to the people it was written for with the real message (mystery) revealed to people when they are ready to understand (solid food instead of milk).

You just have to go with what sounds right to you. There's just no way to know for sure.

[Stuart]

Ben,

Notice how I parsed it. The Gospel(s) started life as plays, but evolved into literature. I agree Mark is well into the second stage, and it was self aware, e.g., 13:14 ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω [1]. But it was built upon a prototype(s) and that was still in the first stage.

The published Gospels were a traveling document for evangelism by a solitary preacher or maybe a couple of people (see Galatians 2:2, 6-7a), no longer an established ensemble to perform, like say the Theraputae used to put on plays (closest to a pre-Christian sect as there is). So Mark would have been composed during this era where the play scripts from the cloisters were used to write more complete narratives to convey theology his sect wanted to recruit with. Thus the elements and even many narrative bits would still have been present.

So yes I also agree with you, that it's a mistake to consider the Gospels as purely scripts for plays. There are layers of literature on top of that foundation.

footnote:
[1] compare 2 Corinthians 1:13, Ephesians 3:3-3:4, Revelation 1:3, also Colossians 4:16 and 1 Thessalonians 5:27 --although clearly these two are secondary insertions from the layer Catholic layers-- for examples of NT text aware that they are reading for a wider audience.

[Joseph D. L.]

I'm of the opinion that all of the Gospels were stage type performances.

I can't accept this. The original point of the Gospel, Evangelium, was as a new Torah, and was not be performed, but used as a means of study and revelation. Now plays may have been inspired by the Evangelium (similar to Ezekiel of Alexandria), but the text that went into the canonicals, John and Hebrews, was not such a text.

[Stuart]

I'm of the opinion that all of the Gospels were stage type performances.

I can't accept this. The original point of the Gospel, Evangelium, was as a new Torah, and was not be performed, but used as a means of study and revelation. Now plays may have been inspired by the Evangelium (similar to Ezekiel of Alexandria), but the text that went into the canonicals, John and Hebrews, was not such a text.

You assume they held in their earliest moments the same properties we associate with them in later eras, certainly the 4th century onward, but possibly earlier in the 3rd and some argue the 2nd centuries (evidence is very dicey and for much earlier than the end of the 2nd and start of the 3rd century). This is a serious reach on your part, an example of having a preformed view from an already Catholic understanding of that later era and projecting it backwards.

But when we look at how the Gospels got to where they are, and to a point where they could be used like you note, they had to deveop enough and acquire enough prestige first in order to be worthy of such reflective study. I would liken your argument as like saying thatt feathers are for flight, when we know they existed long before flight, and winged arms developed gradually before any bird took flight -- they had another purpose prior that favored their development. Same development concept here for the Gospels to acquire the exegetical reverence to be studied for revelation.

The Gospels were almost certainly not initially studied like Torah (although their precursors might be a different story). They were instead written by competing sects that wished to overturn the positions of their rivals. And they were used for Evangelism (hence the word, which is derived from Gospel), as this allowed the church to grow rapidly in the 2nd half of the 2nd century and through the 3rd century. Sectarian competition created the form. As the church became more organized and Catholicized, the Gospels became more bloated and less suited for traveling preachers.

I will grant that Matthew was set up more along the lines of an exegetical text than the others, and early. But this reflects the early proto-Ebionite theology of this Sect. It was clearly meant to have the LXX as companion, referenced numerous passages and marked those ("it is written", as the prophet ..."), which was a priority for that sect (see Matthew 5:17). The same cannot be said of John (especially in early form), Mark, and Marcion's gospel, which lacked almost all explicit references to the OT. The Marcionite sin fact developed another completely different document for the document for the purposes of such Torah-like exegesis, the so-called Antithesis (of course even this shows the focus on sectarian competition, as it is meant more as a refutation for pre-Gospel Torah -likely LXX form- Christian competitors). It worked well for evangelism, likely first for the Marcionites, and hence every sect felt they had to have one to compete with them, and so the either wrote one or used another one which was already published which suited their sect sufficiently. Were there no sectarian competition, there would have been only one Gospel.

But this story begs the question, where did the structure and scenes come from? Where was the literary base each of these Gospel writers able to draw from? I think looking to the Theraputae and their plays about the crossing of the red sea and other transformational events surrounding Moses and Joshua/Jesus (same name in Greek) gives an example of where to look for such texts - in the cloisters of monasteries, much like those of the Theraputae. The prototype(s) for the Gospel(s) very much fit a the play scripts. They are easy to set.

Remember when you argue about the lack of formal structure. Early scripts are like note, everything strung together. People knew from repetition of performance with part was theirs and others. The mention of a scene would not have required setting instructions, they would have done what was necessary. And if like the Theraputae (Jewish ascetics and definitely not Christian, but very similar, including the monasticism) the earliest Christians performed the play at night, then even light staging would have been simple, as just covers to dim lights as performers rush on and off. This would actually make Christianity far more like other religions than different. But the format and presentation changed when they became evangelical tools.

Put another way the argument that the Gospels were plays, IMO is more an argument the prototypes were religious plays, than the book carried by a wandering preacher. Long reflective study is not the game he is in, and their will not be a copy where he goes, except his own. Only he can reflect and study. So like the flightless feathered dinosaurs the Gospel had to perform a function for him -and well- to have ever developed to the stage of being a new Torah for similar study and devotion (you really need a large stable church for this, and you don't have that in the early evangelizing days -- had they all stayed in the monastery to have such Torah like reflective study there would have been no evangelism, and no Gospel. This success for preachers with this new Gospel is what spurred the writing of competing Gospels for sects who wanted to correct the message and tell the "true story." Hence we have more than one.