[GMark] On The Earliest Markan Narrative

E Bruce Brooks brooks at asianlan.umass.edu
Thu Jan 15 23:35:58 EST 2009


To: Crosstalk
Cc: GMark, GPG
In Response To: Several Personal Inquiries
On: The Earliest Markan Narrative
From: Bruce

It may help if I answer at large, and thus for others who may be interested, 
several questions which have arisen in response to my earlier invitation on 
this list (and on GMark, to which this is being cross-posted; it is also 
being cross-posted to Synoptic, where earlier versions of some of these 
ideas were shared), to take part in an effort currently in progress to 
reconstruct in detail the whole accretional structure of Mark.

1. It hurts to say so, but no, we can't realistically accommodate spectators 
in the little NT working group. It is tempting to include them, and I 
greatly appreciate their interest, but classroom experience teaches us that 
silent auditors quickly inhibit the work of nonsilent participants. The 
sense of being watched is unnerving, or something like that. Our working 
group expects to be making small progress reports from time to time (on 
Crosstalk and/or what seem to be other appropriate fora), and I hope this 
will provide something in the way of spectator interest for those not 
regularly involved. Responses to such reports as they are posted, to me or 
to the list in question, will always be most welcome. Feedback is what we 
are looking for, in order to draw on the widest possible range of expertise 
and experience as we attempt to accomplish a task which is beyond the 
ability of any one of those currently involved, myself very much included. 
We look forward to feedback of that kind, and tender in advance our thanks 
to those willing to provide it.

2. Requests to look at the working reconstruction of Mark Layer 1 are in a 
slightly different category: a sort of middle zone between passive E-list 
spectatorship and full seminar participation. Such a zone would consist of 
interested individuals who have seen the current reconstruction, and are 
willing to share their suggestions and criticisms with me, for possible 
secondary sharing with the working group.

The only thing I want to emphasize beforehand is this: according to our best 
philological judgement, Mark is indeed accretional, and as a stratified 
text, whose successive strata were laid down at successively later times, it 
does indeed witness to several stages in the evolution of what finally 
crystallized as Christianity. Details are still under study, but that much 
seems pretty certain. The early layers of this sequence turn out to be 
doctrinally prior to the Christianity of Paul; that is, they do not include 
the Resurrection Doctrine. And the earliest layer of all (as E P Sanders 
long ago warned us to expect) shows Jesus not operating as a Christian of 
any sort, Pauline or other, but wholly within the boundaries of Jewish 
belief and expectation. Christianity itself came later, as Luke seems to 
have been in some sense aware; see again Acts 11:26.

Specifically, as we see it, the earliest Jesus which can be philologically 
recovered from Mark, itself the earliest of the consecutive witnesses to 
Jesus, was Messianic rather than Apocalyptic. It shows Jesus as concerned 
with exactly what Blind Bartimaeus at one and, and Pontius Pilate at the 
other, SAID he was concerned with, namely, the return of God, and thus of 
political sovereignty, to Israel.

How would one frame a narrative which, like the Passion Narrative recently 
excavated by Adela Yarbro Collins (in her 2007 commentary, page 819), ends 
with Jesus's death and seeming defeat? What would be the point of it? What 
would be the *use* of it, for any still remaining followers of Jesus? Those 
are the questions. I think they can be answered, and our little group is in 
the process of answering them, as best it can with the time and talent 
currently available to it. But the idea of Christianity without the 
Resurrection, which so enraged Paul when he encountered it in Corinth, is no 
less unwelcome to many people at the present time. We have no wish to upset 
anyone, and we do not seek to overturn any convictions to the contrary. We 
*do* invite comment by those who are prepared to see Christianity as 
evolving, rather than as defined from the beginning, and who are prepared to 
consider a proposal about what amounts to a pre-Christian Jesus. But we 
don't want to lure anyone into exposure to a hypothesis which can only be 
distressing to them.

On those terms, which are meant to avoid offense and minimize static, I will 
be glad to share, with suitably interested parties, the URL at which the 
current reconstruction of Mark Layer 1 may be found. Would such persons 
contact me privately, or renew to me privately their earlier expression of 
interest in that option?

Thanks to everyone for their patience with these qualifications, in an 
inevitably delicate matter. I hope the qualifications may serve as an aid to 
interest, while avoiding irritation to those whose interests lie in other 
directions.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst



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