pMark's portrayal of Jesus

[LM Barre]

It seems to me this idea (which has been discussed at book length in "This Tragic Gospel" and which has fast becoming a cliche of liberal postmodern theology) is the sort of thing Unitarian Universalists would get excited about, but it stands in opposition to the tradition of the early church and has the effect of isolating and devaluing Mark.

What is more, it also attempts to evaluate Mark using contemporary methods of literary criticism that are quite inapplicable to the first century. The first known work of fiction identifiable as a novel dates from the first century, the rather obscene Satyricon of Petronius the Arbiter (which has the effect of confirming thr worst fears about the rampant sexual immorality of Rome during the early Empire). So it seems to me silly to even attempt to apply modern literary criticism to a society which had only just invented the novel, and then primarilynas a form of inappropriate contentography. Our concept of a tragic hero depends on a knowledge of Shakespeare, Milton and other writers working with a sophistication unimaginable to the ancient Romans, who did have Virgil and Greek tragedy, but these works were simplistic, whereas the literary sophistication required to conceive of Jesus Christ as a tragic hero I think was simply unavailable to someone like Mark, considering that even the accounts of the death of Socrates fall short of the critical standard such a conception of Mark requires.

My contention is that if Plato and Xenophon were unable to intentionally render a historic event with the sort of tragic pathos that Mark would imply if we subscribed to the theory advocated in "This Tragic Gospel" or the OP, then such narrative technique would be entirely unavailable to someone like St. Mark the Evangelist, living as he did outside of the rarified world of Roman literature.

Lastly, despite enormous efforts on the part of the author of "This Tragic Gospel" to discredit it, the Gospel of John remains highly regarded as the apex, narratively and stylistically, of the New Testament, and this has the effect of disrupting the position of the OP regarding Mark, in that if one adopts a view of the Gospels as fictionalized accounts of the life of Christ, then John comes out ahead narratively, whereas if one piously recognizes their accuracy, then the superior prose of John coupled with the intense doctrinal content suggests that Mark was simply a less developed precursor, an initial attempt if you will of conveying the life of Christ in a written form, and this tends to invalidate the idea that Mark was intentionally styling our Lord asma tragic figure on the basis of Greek drama et cetera.

My interpretation of the Passion Narrative (PN), which I find in Mark 14:1-15:39, appears to have been authored by one a literate Roman who provided an assessment of who and what Jesus was and was not in terms that his fellow Romans would understand. He wholly rejects the Jewish Messianism that both Jesus and the Sanhedrin share. Jesus' tragic fatal flaw was that he thought himself to be a mythological figure of Jewish prophesy, the Son of Man/the Messiah.

A pressing question is whether this is a fictional Jesus, portrayed according to Greek theatre and described in Aristotle's Poetics or did a real Jesus actually embody a tragic hero, or does the truth lie somewhere in between? My analysis of the genre of the piece finds it somewhat surprisingly to be a Report, an account intended to give the facts regarding this Jesus of Nazareth. The evidence that moves me to this rather rare conclusion is that I find that Jesus' last words in 15:34 satisfy two criteria used to identify an authentic saying of Jesus, namely Embarrassment and Orality.

Jesus as a Messianic Pretender who came to embody a Tragic is not likely to be embraced by many. Maybe a Secular Humanist, perhaps a Unitarian. I do my best to provide an critical and academic interpretation and let the chips fall as they may.

And no, there is nothing anachronistic or unrealistic about my interpretation, or at least you have not stated anything to make me think so.

 

[LM Barre]

So you're sitting in court explaining yourself,
and either the judge, the jury, the lawyers,
or the people of the gallery cruelly mock you.

Does that add validity to the complaint?

I have no idea about what you are talking about. I was referring to the biblical story, the section that scholars call the "Passion Narrartive."

 

[SkyWriting]

Why did Jesus cry out in anguish? I submit that he did so when realized why he was forsaken, why he was not established as the ruling Messiah as he expected in his answer to the high priest. According to his own thinking, it meant that he was not the Messiah.

There are other passages and reasons that solidify Jesus knew His death was required as payment for Sin.

 

[SkyWriting]

I have no idea about what you are talking about. I was referring to the biblical story, the section that scholars call the "Passion Narrartive."

Just because people think you mis-spoke, doesn't mean you did.

 

[Wgw]

My interpretation of the Passion Narrative (PN), which I find in Mark 14:1-15:39, appears to have been authored by one a literate Roman who provided an assessment of who and what Jesus was and was not in terms that his fellow Romans would understand. He wholly rejects the Jewish Messianism that both Jesus and the Sanhedrin share. Jesus' tragic fatal flaw was that he thought himself to be a mythological figure of Jewish prophesy, the Son of Man/the Messiah.

A pressing question is whether this is a fictional Jesus, portrayed according to Greek theatre and described in Aristotle's Poetics or did a real Jesus actually embody a tragic hero, or does the truth lie somewhere in between? My analysis of the genre of the piece finds it somewhat surprisingly to be a Report, an account intended to give the facts regarding this Jesus of Nazareth. The evidence that moves me to this rather rare conclusion is that I find that Jesus' last words in 15:34 satisfy two criteria used to identify an authentic saying of Jesus, namely Embarrassment and Orality.

Jesus as a Messianic Pretender who came to embody a Tragic is not likely to be embraced by many. Maybe a Secular Humanist, perhaps a Unitarian. I do my best to provide an critical and academic interpretation and let the chips fall as they may.

And no, there is nothing anachronistic or unrealistic about my interpretation, or at least you have not stated anything to make me think so.

Alas your critical and academic interpretation suffers from an extreme lack of erudition in terms of ecclesiastical and indeed literary history. I have already treated on why I regard your theory as anachronistic based on the literary state of the art in ancient Rome; suffice it to say it is wildly implausible that an unknown Roman author not a member of the Church would seize upon the Christian narrative before any other written accounts of our Lord (with the possible exception of Matthew) were completed and then proceed to create an incredibly sophisticated depiction of a tragic hero suffering from a delusion; while such a character in and of itself was not beyond the abilities of Roman authors, it is unlikely that they would conceive of such a character without taking steps to explicitly clarify that character's delusional nature. In Mark, not only do we not see that, but we see unambiguous suggestions to the contrary. Literarily speaking, your theory not only disagrees with the uncontroversial position that Mark 16:1-9 are genuine, but also requires much of the rest of the Gospel to be deleted, and furthermore I would say given the known attributes of Roman literature, requires the existence of a missing section to make clear the character is deluded.

I could also mention that in the Silver Age of Latin letters (the Golden Age having passed due to the impositions of the Emperor), the most sophisticated Roman authors wrote in Latin, so the fact that the text of Mark is in Koine Greek (which was a widely used literary language and lingua franca, but not the language employed by Petronius, Juvenal, et cetera), and not a translation, is inconsistent.

Now if we turn to ecclesiastical history, your claim can be exposed as impious musing:

- The Pauline epistles which predate the Gospel of Mark refer to a Mark.
- This same individual was regarded by the early Church as the author of the Gospel, a disciple of Peter and as the first bishop of Alexandria.
- Even to the extent these facts are disputed, there is no disagreement among scholars as to the authenticity of the Shorter Ending.
- The Gospel of Mark is one of the most well-attested documents in antiquity.
- There are no extant mentions however of this work in sources commenting on Roman literature per se from the period in which it was believed to have been written. There is however a figure uncontroversially credited with its authorship by the early Church.
- There is no plausible author outside of the Christian community; extant first century references to Christians even from the likes of Josephus, who was relatively familiar with them, lack the detail of Mark.
- The early Church restricted access to the Gospels to catechumens and the faithful. Assuming modern scholarship is wrong and Matthew predates Mark, the author of Mark without being an initiate could not have learned of it.
- The early Church would not have adopted the Gospel from a very earlyndate and used it under the conditions you propose; even Tatian who composed the Gospel harmony known as the Diatessaron, which used Mark and the other canonical gospels, was criticized for that; St. Irenaeus classed Tatian a heretic, and the fourth century Syriac church suppressed the Diatessaron in favor of the Peshitta; the Church therefore would have surely branded Mark a heretic, rather than labeling hymn a saint and documenting him as the founder of the Alexandrian Patriarchate.

There is simply no compelling reason either from a literary or scholarly perspective or from an ecclesiastical perspective for anyone to gove your odea any credence, except perhaps as an example of the sort of contrived Elaine Pagels pop theology relied upon by the less intellectually rigorous clergy of certain left wing denominations.

 

[Korah]

I hope, Wgw, that you will be kinder to my presentation here of my theory of the earliest source of the Passion Narrative. It's been sitting unnoticed in Controversial Christian Theology for years. Here the Passion Narrative portion of my Thesis:
Tracing sources of the gospels would seem to start with the earliest written documents, but the logic starts better with the foundation upon which the other sources and additions were built. This source is the Passion Narrative, the largest part of the material common to both John and the Synoptics. The source for the information in it is most likely John Mark, who was the most likely “disciple known to the high priest”. (See John 18:15-16, 20:2-9, in which in John 20:2 the English word “love” is phileo in the Greek, not “agape” as in John 13. In John 18-19 we get events and direct quotes that Peter would not have witnessed.)
John 18 launches right out with Jesus going to the Garden. Whereas Teeple believed the information here came from the Synoptics and was later enlarged upon, he more correctly called it a source. No one regards these chapters as from the Signs Source. This foundation source from John Mark is the following:
[My Post #1 OP should be amended to include in the shared source (from John Mark) also verses preceding the Passion Narrative in John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.]
John 18:1b, 1d,ii. 3,vi. 10b,v. 12,iv. 13b,i. 15-19,xiii. 22,ii 25b,ii. 27-31,vii. 33-35,vii. (36-40);x. 19:1-19,xl. 21-23,viii. 28-30,vii. 38b,iii. 40-42;vi. 20:1,iv. 3-5,viii. 8,ii. 11b-14a,iv. 19b,ii. 22-23,v. 26-27,viii. 30,ii. John Mark gives the story of this one week in his life, best called the Passion Diary. (The Roman numerals indicate my rough count of how many eyewitness touches seem evident in the verse(s).)
Some of the later passages in John 20 are as likely to have been added as P-Strand, but as discussed later this may have come from the same author.
A great many scholars have believed that a Passion Narrative was the first element of the gospels to be written. It seems similarly often believed that John Mark was very young at this time and lived near Jerusalem, so his personal testimony would not tend to include narrative preceding John 18. He is the first of seven identifiable eyewitnesses in the gospels.
http://www.christianforums.com/threads/gospel-eyewitnesses.7594923/


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[Babe Ruth]

I look forward to what others think on this question

LM Barre, hi.. Is the question specifically, Do we believe Mark was supplemented (with burial & resurrection) for ideological reasons ?

Isn't it established that earliest versions of Mark end with his empty tomb (no resurrection account) ?
I can accept that.. But I believe later additions are still valid. As more witnesses, believers shared accounts. And to me, Gospel of Mark seems least likely to accept unsubstantiated, ideological insertions. (Hear me out..)

I've always sensed Mark to be the most straight-forward, honest accounting of Jesus' life (as opposed to the more philosophic commentary of John). Part of that straight-forward honesty is showing Jesus' insecurity on the cross (that u cite).
The reporting of Jesus' family (Chapter 3) perceiving Jesus as mad. They would've known better than any, that he was divine, & not simply insane. And the Chapter 14 account of the young man who runs naked from the scene of Jesus' arrest. It seems completely irrelevant, but authentic (& straight-forward) to me. Belabored point I'm getting to.. I believe Mark whole-heartedly because of it's straight forward reporting, even to the (possible) detriment of Christian dogma. Jesus' family believing him insane, could sabotage a partisan sales job.. but Mark includes it. Same with Jesus' dying cry. I believe Mark, no matter how it was ultimately pieced together. It's contradictory, honest, & real (to me). And Mark's absence of a Nativity, has always influenced my perception of the Nativity's validity. Mark's Gospel is my primal (& inspiring) guide for the life of Jesus. peace.