Kata Markon

[Tony Prete <tonyp AT waterwheel.net>]

 At 08:47 AM 10/31/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>Friends,
>>
>>I am presenting a paper at the November SBL on the Lord's Prayer in
>>which I am going to argue the following thesis:
>>
>>For Matthew and Luke the background and horizon of the prayer is not the
>>future coming of God as King, let alone any zealous longing for it; nor
>>is the prayer's primary concern to voice the desire for a speedy
>>realization of the blessings that the elect would experience once God
>>finally and decisively manifested himself in all his transcendent power.
>>Rather, the prayer is grounded in (and arises from) a perception on the
>>Matthean and Lukan Jesus' part that his disciples are in grave danger of
>>becoming members of "this generation", that is, those among Jesus'
>>co-religionists who reject what Jesus shows is God's will for Israel;
>>and the prayer's focus and concern is that the disciples invoke God's
>>protection against engaging in this apostasy.
>>
>>One of the considerations I will be offering in support of this
>>contention is  that a concern to secure divine aid to be obedient to
>>God's will is the center both of the petitionary prayers which the
>>Matthean and Lukan Jesus himself prays as well as of those which he
>>elsewhere urges upon the disciples
>>
>>So why post this here? I am interested in knowing whether what I detect
>>with respect to petitionary prayers in GMatt and GLuke is also the case
>>in GMark.

[snip]

>Jeffrey:  GMark does not have any "instructed prayer".  Jesus is presented
>in the posture of prayer three times: 1. as he withdrew from Simon's house
>where he had healed S's mother in law, 2. as he went into the hills from
>which he would watch the disciples struggling against a strong east wind
>(N.B.) and 3. on the Mt. of Olives after the Eucharist.  In this last
>readers were expected to understand that they, like Jesus, were to be
>submissive to God's will.

I believe a case can be made for a connection between the LP in GMatt and GLuke (and the Didache), and the words of Jesus in Getheseme. And since scholars who accept the two-source theory would see Mark as the source for Matthew and Luke, there is justification for looking to the Markan version of this incident as the earliest and thus perhaps the closest to how the early Christian's perceived Jesus at prayer.

Though I haven't had time to read your paper yet (it's not quite so easy to access as you describe), I wanted to respond to your request, so I skimmed the text and footnotes. In doing so, I noticed two pertinent points regarding the Markan link:  that you discuss peirasmos only as it is used in the LP; and that your only reference to Raymond Brown is his 1968 essay on the LP. I found his more recent  2-volume work, The Death of the Messiah, (1994) quite useful in my own investigations into the LP and Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane. The issue seems to be whether "the time of trial"--which Jesus warns the disciples about--is the same as the "cup" and the "hour" (only  Mark has both) which Jesus himself  prays to be spared from.  

Brown thinks it does. In talking about Luke 22:42 (and it applies also to Mark, as Luke's source here) Brown explores first how peirasmos has both an ordinary and an eschatological sense, which "are not totally independent of each other in the NT, since after the coming of Jesus the trials of ordinary Christian life have a relationship to the final great struggle for the kingdom" (p. 160). Later he says, "If we think of peirasmos as the final trial, both Jesus and the disciples are confronted with entering it. Jesus' prayer to the Father,... 'Take away this cup from me' (Luke 22:42),   is a prayer not to enter into peirasmos" (161). The whole section, pp. 157-162, is excellent and would seem to fit your thesis, at least to the extent that though Brown  does not limit the interpretation to the eschatological alone.)

Later, in discussing "the hour" and "the cup" in Mk 14:35, 36, Brown summarizes: "'Hour' and 'cup' thus have the same general range of historical and eschatological meaning and can be related to the idea of peirasmos..." (p. 170). Brown's whole treatment of "cup" and "hour" (pp.1677-171) seems well worth your attention.

My own sense--picked up somewhere probably, but I don't remember where--is that the prayer of Jesus in the garden was structured to reflect the LP precisely so that those who prayed the LP as they faced their own "trials" would have the image of Jesus to inspire them, not just in terms of praying but also--especially in Mark--in terms of a deeply human desire to be freed from something that they  had already accepted "in principle" but is now were facing as a concrete and immanent reality. And it is that very notion of "concrete and immanent" that makes your argument so inviting.

I hope this is helpful. Amateurs like myself can only be grateful for the work of scholars such as the recently-deceased Brown, who can summarize,  both cogently and lucidly, the insights of others as well as their own.

Peace,
Tony




Anthony Prete
Haddonfield, NJ USA

Masters Candidate
La Salle University
Philadelphia, Pa.