Kata Markon

["Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT mailhost.chi.ameritech.net>]

George Young wrote:

> ******************
> J. Gibson wrote:
> A very interesting response, I think. But even assuming a Roman provenance
> for
> GMark, aren't you here confusing the traditions about, and interpretative
> models
> of, PEIRASMOS that AMark would have been steeped in with those with which
> his
> readers were familiar?
> ******************
>
> Forgive my lack of cryptic lingo, but by "AMark" do you mean Alexandrian
> Mark, or an Aramaic 'proto-' Mark, or something else?  Also, what 'readers'
> are you referring to?

I use AMark to indicate the author of the Gospel of Mark (A=author). By
"readers" I mean those to whom the author of GMark (=Gospel of Mark) sent his
work,  those for whom he wrote.

>
> ******************
> Also, I'm curious about your assertion that there is a tradition regarding
> "testing" and/or a use of the "testing motif" in the Greek Novel. Can you
> tell
> me when and where this appears? And can you tell me whether or not, when it
> appears, what the technical language of "testing" is? That is to say, is it
> the
> noun PEIRASMOS and its verbal cognates PEIRAZW, EKPEIRAZW, etc.,  or some
> other
> terminology?
> ******************
>
> Liddell and Scott provide a good start for PEIRASMOS; but with respect to
> the Greek Novel (i.e., as love story), perhaps the references are too
> obvious to mention! Trial and temptation are themes upon which plot revolves
> in many instances, especially the LOVE story. But beyond this, even if one
> treads into Greek epic, often the hero's aims or goals are continually
> thwarted by the Gods, creating a dramatic trial/test of the hero's
> attributes (think of Odysseus [Homer], or Aeneas [Virgil], or Lucius -as
> donkey-come-Isis convert [Apuleius], to name but a few).   Furthermore,
> there is the ubiquitous use of the labyrinth trope throughout Greco-Roman
> literature from ca. 6 century BCE onwards, where the labyrinth-as-process,
> i.e., as a bewildering path for the hero fraught with trial, or as a
> hermeneutical - read: ethical and/or philosophical -  maze for the reader,
> was a mark of poetical brilliance (see the metaphorical use of POLYPLOKOS,
> as well as derivatives of the root DAIDALLEIN as instances of poetic
> brilliance - much like the master architect Daedalus).  The labyrinth trope
> has its origin in the Theseus exploit at Crete, and was a cherished item
> within Greek (and subsequently) Roman literature/culture; indeed, so much
> so, that Juvenal (1.1-21) complained bitterly of its devaluation among
> mediocre poets.
>

One of the reasons I asked this was that when Garret was setting out what
stories or trope  within Hellenistic literature could be appealed to as the
models of "testing" she sees as potentially standing as background to, or
interpretative filters for,  the stories of Jesus under "testing" in GMark,  
she
chose (quite correctly, I think) only those that, like the "testing" stories 
in
GMark, employed the terminology of those stories -- that is to say those in
which PEIRASMOS and/or its cognates or its synonyms appear. And therefore it
seemed to me to be a little off the mark (excuse the pun) to chastise Garrett
for not using the models of "testing" in the Greek novel if linguistically 
there
was no clue that these models were indeed models that should be used.

A second reason is that I have written an article on the idea of "testing" in
the "secular world" for the forthcoming _Dictionary of New Testament
Backgrounds_ (a companion to _Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels_ and
_Dictionary of Paul and His Letters_) which focuses on the how non Biblical
Hellenistic authors use the PEIRASMOS terminology and what can be inferred 
about
their conception(s) of the experience that the terminology is used to denote. 
So
I was curious to see if I missed any thing. So far as I know (after searching
all forms of PEIRASMOS and cognates in the TLG -- which in terms of the number
of instances of the terminology is far more extensive than those noted in 
LSJ),
the terminology does not appear in any of the Hellenistic Greek Novels such as
Chariton, etc.

And then there is the larger question of whether what you identify in the 
novel
as a model of what the terms PEIRASMOS and cognates signified in either Greek
Biblical or non biblical Hellenistic literature really is a such a model,
especially if it is more concerned with the idea  of  "enticement" or
"seduction", which I have argued is something quite different from what 
stories
designated as  PEIRASMOI entail.

Yours,

Jeffrey
--
Jeffrey B. Gibson
7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT ameritech.net