The temple word.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Paul the Uncertain
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Re: The temple word.

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Ben
What I am wondering is what would distinguish this literary device you are describing from sloppy writing.
For one thing, I recognize that it is a device. Cartoonist Gary Larson is famous for his frequent use of it. Larson is revered as a successful communicator. Why would I diss Mark for something that I appreciate in Larson?

Second, in what way is it sloppy? Jesus has predicted his third-day rising three times already. Why not condense a fourth such episode? There may be other kinds of interest in the omitted scene's particulars, but if the unserved interest is unrelated to the audience's appreciation of the unfolding story, then how could the omission be a flaw in storytelling technique?

Finally, the omission is harmless. If the omitted incident is fictive anyway (as I suspect that the conversation between Adam and the Woman is, for example), then so what if it's omitted? If the incident really happened, then how is its omission any more a flaw than the omission of everything that happened in Jesus' life before he met John?
If an author literally forgets exactly what s/he wrote in a past scene and therefore does not quite "recall" it correctly in the current scene, would the result not look very much like the literary device you are pointing to?
Could be. How much alike depends on whether or not his or her lapse effectively advances the story, reveals character and coincides with what other authors do on purpose.
Foreshadowing, for example, can scarcely be the result of the author accidentally having alluded to the same event twice, ...
Mark does foreshadow 14:58. This is an instance of hearing without understanding, just as Jesus discussed way back in chapter 4. There is found another jarring line (from the Isaiah passage Jesus mentions) about how otherwise people, understanding, would be converted. Paul, too, considers that if people had understood, then the persecution of Jesus (events like the trial) would not have happened.
So how can you tell those done on purpose from those done by accident?
With full certainty, I can't. All I can do is note that this "accident" serves the story surpassingly well. That leads me to the dichotomy that either Mark knows what he's doing or else he's lucky. I'm not big on luck, a personal failing, no doubt.

"Your mileage may differ" acknowledges that your appreciation of Mark's craftsmanship may be less than mine. Yes, if Mark lost the plot, literally, in a work of about 11,000 words, then that, too, would explain it.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The temple word.

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Paul the Uncertain wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:16 pm Ben
What I am wondering is what would distinguish this literary device you are describing from sloppy writing.
For one thing, I recognize that it is a device. Cartoonist Gary Larson is famous for his frequent use of it. Larson is revered as a successful communicator. Why would I diss Mark for something that I appreciate in Larson?
I love The Far Side, and have read lots and lots of it. Would you please give me an example from Larson of what you are talking about?
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Paul the Uncertain
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Re: The temple word.

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Ben

Thagomizer is a searchable term.

On information and belief, Larson hasn't licensed his work for the web. Google, however, is your friend, and saying so can't get Peter into any DMCA issues.

We are not told why the anatomical feature of the Stegosaurus is called a thagomizer, nor what specifically that has to do with a man named Thag, nor why his now being dead is mentioned. We may have our suspicions, though, that there was some earlier event familiar to those gathered in the cartoon that would account for all we are shown.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The temple word.

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Paul the Uncertain wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 4:25 pm Ben

Thagomizer is a searchable term.
I am familiar with that one. Thanks.
We are not told why the anatomical feature of the Stegosaurus is called a thagomizer, nor what specifically that has to do with a man named Thag, nor why his now being dead is mentioned. We may have our suspicions, though, that there was some earlier event familiar to those gathered in the cartoon that would account for all we are shown.
Oh, it is more than a suspicion. The genre is humorous, and there is no humor unless we fill in a bit of backstory in which a certain Thag Simmons met his fate upon one or more of those tail spikes. Once we "get" the joke, there is no doubt about our having "gotten" it. We need no superfluous details about the encounter itself, but it is patently certain that the cartoonist had in mind, at the very least, a caveman named Thag Simmons dying by impalement in an encounter with a stegosaurus.

Contrast Mark's "temple word," for which we are not at all certain which backstory to fill in for how those witnesses came to be giving that false testimony. Your own tentative take is that the accusation comes from a saying which is not narrated in the gospel:
For example, perhaps the witnesses overheard an occasion when Jesus tells his disciples about what's to come. Maybe he used the figure "this temple" (meaning his body) as opposed to "The Temple."
Others have judged that the witnesses garbled dominical sayings (specifically, Mark 13.1-2 and at least one of the passion predictions) which are narrated in the gospel, despite there being no witnesses described as eavesdropping on those occasions. Still others have judged that Judas was the source of the erroneous information, in which case it is not even clear whether Judas himself got it wrong or the witnesses misunderstood him. At least one other, Joe Wallack (on this very forum), judges that it is a mistake even to look for anything that the witnesses might be cribbing from, the point being, rather, that those who heard something did not tell it while those did not hear anything told it well.

And the "point" of it all changes depending on which of these options we select, so the selection itself matters.

Humorists like Gary Larson absolutely depend upon that moment of recognition, that moment when you put all the pieces together and it makes perfect sense. Lateral thinking puzzles are the same, though the process is supposed to take longer. The degree to which there is any doubt about the "solution" to the "problem" posed by the joke or by the puzzle is also the degree to which either (A) it is a poorly written joke or puzzle or (B) the listener just has not "gotten" it yet.

Mark's temple word, therefore, seems to be a fairly drastic misfiring of this kind of fill-in-the-blank approach, if that is the approach it is supposed to coax out of us.

Which is why, naturally, I eschew that approach. I have argued elsewhere that Mark is rewriting a story already partly known to his readers. The temple word itself, on its own merits, probably does not belong among the pieces of evidence I adduced for that argument; but, once one accepts the rest of the argument, it is fantastically easy to see how the temple word might well be another bit of information already known to the readers. On the one hand, sure, I have deliberately selected the form of the saying most able to explain its appearance, not only in Mark, but also in John and the other listed sources; so that this form of the saying should explain matters so neatly can hardly come as a surprise. On the other, however, such a selection would not be necessary if Mark were, in fact, written more intelligibly: like a Gary Larson panel.
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soberxp
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Re: The temple word.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 5:00 pm written more intelligibly: like a Gary Larson panel.
jesus did not say anything to them without using a parable

(Mat)
13:10
The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"
(Mat)
13:13
This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

I think disciples use parables too,

Someone who makes false testimony ,as jesus said they do not understand . not because the false testimony, cuz they do not understand what jesus said , other ways ,background is they belief in god, they looks like this, "oh no, u can not destroy the temple of god, u are bad ." they do not really know what jesus said about destroy the temple.

for the lord jesus said It is peaceful and not evil.
how about pyramid ? it's also destroy by times or the natural of god , when time is enough,we can not see it still standing there anymore . or maybe not,why they building the pyramid ?just guess ,maybe they know this
(Mak)13:2 "Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."
(Gen)32:28 Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
hope u can understand .there must be something we don't know . they building the pyramid before the Exodus or later .It should be a great plan in the hand of god,Egyptians believe in immortality,eternity life,why? cuz the Exodus ,they already face to god . they know something we do not know .

BTW,what's your point about the temple word. From my understanding,You think two possibilities about the temple word ,right ? 1:Destroy the Entity temple 2:another

so what's your point about the temple word really ?

and my point about the temple is:
1.for the lord jesus said It is peaceful and not evil.
2.not started a war to Destroy the Entity temple(the matter)
3.It should be a great plan for us.
Last edited by soberxp on Wed Apr 25, 2018 4:44 am, edited 9 times in total.
Paul the Uncertain
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Re: The temple word.

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Ben
Oh, it is more than a suspicion...
OK, lest we go too far down the road of analyzing a modern cartoon, our topical issue was whether or not there was a craftwork-level device available to Mark. There was. Could I give an example besides Genesis 3:1-3? Yes, I could.
Once we "get" the joke, there is no doubt about our having "gotten" it.
Well, actually there is. Larson caters to his re-readers (as I think the Genesis author does), not only his one-timers. Larson reissued his work in book form, and those books sold well, to a population that presumably had already seen many of the gags.

As it happens, there is a second anomaly in this cartoon, subtler than cavemen gathering for an anachronistic slideshow: the median Larson fan knows that no human being ever saw a living Stegosaurus. That second-thought directly undercuts the most accessible unseen scene, and opens the door to revisit the question. (Indeed, was Larson "sloppy," or ... something else?)
Contrast Mark's "temple word," for which we are not at all certain which backstory to fill in for how those witnesses came to be giving that false testimony.
That is the situation Genesis 3:1-3 incites. We get a question (why is that feature told to us?), with a range of answers, not any one specific answer. Nothing later in the story depends on our knowing which of the possible answers is correct, while what's happening now depends on something having happened, but not on exactly what. We are told what we need to know (and "teased" that there's more to know than what we are told).

If your point is that you'd also like to know what you haven't been told, then should Mark grieve that you've become so intellectually and maybe emotionally invested in his tale? Could be, but I know some writers and editors IRL who would be pleased to achieve that effect. They wouldn't think it tragic that you might re-read their product, ponder it a while, discuss it with others, ask a question at a promotional event, etc.
Your own tentative take is that the accusation comes from a saying which is not narrated in the gospel:
Not quite. I think Mark's narrator-choral character is sincere when he says the testimony is false. We can judge for ourselves that the testimony "sounds like something Jesus might say." As the old Jesus Seminar might put it, Jesus didn't say this, but he probably said something like it.

The exact relationship between the testimony and anything Jesus actually said is simply lost. If we can recognize a phrase as "sounding like something Jesus might say," then so might the witnesses, and little more than that is needed for a memory to form in their mind of his having said it.

We can be confident that there is some omitted incident, and somebody might have as their favorite guess that the incident involved a saying which is not narrated in the gospel. I agree that it could be that, but I don't have confidence in that to the exclusion of other ways people make mistakes.
Others have judged that the witnesses garbled dominical sayings (specifically, Mark 13.1-2 and at least one of the passion predictions) which are narrated in the gospel, despite there being no witnesses described as eavesdropping on those occasions.
I'm fine with that, too, but not to the exclusion of other ways people make mistakes. Similarly for all the other hypotheses in that paragraph.

Nothing in the story that comes after the trial scene depends on the particulars of how the witnesses came to err; that they erred at trial does affect the story. That said, Mark depicts a witness to the crucifixion as reporting a recent "saying of Jesus" that we are told Jesus simply did not say (calling on Elijah). Mark is therefore capable of conceiving of simple perceptual failure as a cause of false hearsay testimony. If not that? The sky's the limit, knock yourself out.
And the "point" of it all changes depending on which of these options we select, so the selection itself matters.
But not Mark's point, so far as we can tell. Why would Mark grieve that different audience members imagine different scenarios for a question that arises but whose answer affects nothing that happens in the story? How is this different from, for example, "What happened to Jesus' natural father?" (Apart from Mark not calling our attention to that question beyond natural curiosity, a question not relating to the Markan theme of a hundred different reactions to Jesus' preaching).
Which is why, naturally, I eschew that approach.
Really, that's fine with me. I knew going in that this is your thread, and that you have a view on the matter.

Thanks for the discussion.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The temple word.

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Paul the Uncertain wrote: Wed Apr 25, 2018 3:26 am Ben
Oh, it is more than a suspicion...
OK, lest we go too far down the road of analyzing a modern cartoon, our topical issue was whether or not there was a craftwork-level device available to Mark. There was.
The fact that I had to ask in the first place, despite being pretty aware of literary devices, indicates that I am not at all convinced that Mark was striving for the device you had/have in mind. In fact, there are quite a few literary devices, I think, which require the reader to fill in missing information. But none of those devices seems to fit what we actually find in Mark; yours is simply one of that set.
Once we "get" the joke, there is no doubt about our having "gotten" it.
Well, actually there is.
Okay, you say that there is doubt about our having "gotten" the joke, but your support (if that is what it is supposed to be) is this:
Larson caters to his re-readers (as I think the Genesis author does), not only his one-timers. Larson reissued his work in book form, and those books sold well, to a population that presumably had already seen many of the gags.
Which has literally nothing to do with whether we got the joke the first time. The fact that people like to revisit jokes they have already heard in no way implies that they failed to get the joke the first time.
As it happens, there is a second anomaly in this cartoon, subtler than cavemen gathering for an anachronistic slideshow: the median Larson fan knows that no human being ever saw a living Stegosaurus.
Finally, something I can agree with you on.
That second-thought directly undercuts the most accessible unseen scene, and opens the door to revisit the question.
What?? No, it does not. We are still certain, as readers, that Larson had in mind a scene involving Thag and the business end of a stegosaurus' spiked tail.
Indeed, was Larson "sloppy," or ... something else?
No, Larson was brilliant, anachronisms and all. The Marcan equivalent to finding anachronisms in Far Side cartoons (of which Larson was very aware, as discussed in his Prehistory of the Far Side) would be to find that Mark, say, presupposes Jewish trial elements in his narrative which did not exist in Pilate's time. Neither the dinosaur/human anachronism in Larson nor any supposed historical anachronisms in Mark even impinge upon the issue at hand, which is the relationship, if such exists, between the false testimony of the witnesses and the somewhat similar sayings which Jesus had pronounced at different earlier points in the gospel.

I am trying to understand what is going on with your thinking on this. The issue is as clear as the sun at noon on a cloudless day, yet a few birds fluttering around the horizon is enough to pull your attention away from it long enough to pretend that an eclipse is underway.
Contrast Mark's "temple word," for which we are not at all certain which backstory to fill in for how those witnesses came to be giving that false testimony.
That is the situation Genesis 3:1-3 incites.
I have noticed the anomaly with Eve before which you brought up. I am not committed to any single answer to the question. But it is certainly possible that the anomaly is the result of a gap in the storytelling; that option needs to be on the table, especially when we consider all the other anomalies present in Genesis.
Your own tentative take is that the accusation comes from a saying which is not narrated in the gospel:
Not quite.
And again, more confusion on your part. You literally hypothesized a saying which is not narrated in the gospel:
For example, perhaps the witnesses overheard an occasion when Jesus tells his disciples about what's to come. Maybe he used the figure "this temple" (meaning his body) as opposed to "The Temple."
There is no "not quite" about it. The statement is as true as it can be. Feel free to add to it, but to subtract from it is just wrong.
How is this different from, for example, "What happened to Jesus' natural father?"
The accusations at trial sound similar to separate sayings uttered by Jesus earlier in the gospel; there is a potential relationship to investigate. To the contrary, Jesus' father never appears in the gospel. Nor do his aunts and uncles, his grandparents, or his best friend growing up in Nazareth. There is no relationship at all to investigate.
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soberxp
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Re: The temple word.

Post by soberxp »

(Mat)
13:10
The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"
(Mat)
13:13
This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

so which require the reader to fill in missing information
the missing information is
Though seeing, they do not see
though hearing, they do not hear

what's that meaning? missing information,they read their "bible" as we read bible now, they do believe in Jehovah and his word .

Mark 14:60 Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, "Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?"
Mark 14:61 But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?"
Mark 14:62 "I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."

but as jesus said :"This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand."
Paul the Uncertain
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Re: The temple word.

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Ben
there are quite a few literary devices, I think, which require the reader to fill in missing information.
Absolutely.
But none of those devices seems to fit what we actually find in Mark; yours is simply one of that set.
That's the beauty of "seems." It's what makes horse races.
Okay, you say that there is doubt about our having "gotten" the joke, but your support (if that is what it is supposed to be) is this: ...
The topical relevance of the cartoon is that it shows that a literary device of ancient heritage is still used in a modern form appropriate to contemporary media. Genesis 3:1-3 shows that it was used long ago. Mark wrote somewhere in between and displays acquaintance with the earlier work.

On many things, it appears that you and I agree about what's on the page in Mark, but disagree about the extent to which the author's skill can be credited or blamed for its effects on us. It is unlikely that we will resolve those disagreements in an informal internet exchange, but I do thank you for your comments.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The temple word.

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Subject: A Christian eschatological pattern in two steps.
Paul the Uncertain wrote: Fri Apr 27, 2018 6:52 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:20 pm But the pattern is clear: any expectation of an imminent eschaton is immediately quashed by the assertion that nobody knows the timing (except God).
OK. I know from recent experience that you have limited patience for identifying literary devices....

....

I don't see why you'd object to the above, since you think Mark was a bad writer.
Thought maybe I would, against my better judgment, attempt to clear up a smidge of confusion.

In this case, Mark is a bad writer only if he was attempting the literary device you were identifying. I myself do not think he was attempting any such thing, and a good part of my reasoning involves just how poorly the device would have been executed were it actually the goal.

If, on the other hand, my hypothesis is correct and Mark was presuming reader knowledge of the temple word — in much the same way as, according to my argument, he presumes reader knowledge of other topics — then he is not being a bad writer at all. He is simply assessing his readers' extant knowledge of what he is writing. He is writing for them, and not for us.

In fact, overall, I do not think Mark was a bad writer. I do think he slips up sometimes while he is manipulating traditional materials, and in other cases leaves inadvertent clues which cannot even count as slip-ups (the temple word being a good example of this: not a slip-up, but a clue), but most of the time his writing is clear and seamless and meaningful.
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