Kata Markon

["Philip B. Lewis" <Phil AT sedona.net>]

On February 29 Ted Weeden wrote an interesting post on "Guidelines for locating the Markan community." At one point, listing places with which Mark seems most familiar, he said:

 

>They are (1) Jerusalem and its surrounding area, which
includes such named places as Bethany, Bethphage, the Mount of Olives and
the Garden of Gethsemane and (2) places on the northern rim of the Sea of
Galilee, which include Capernaum, Gennersaret, Bethsaida and Dalmanutha and
the route northward from Bethsaida to Caesarea Philippi.<

A small observation: "Dalmanutha" has long been known to be an error. There was no such "place". The best explanation I know of is that originally GMark named a "Magadan", as in the parallel Matthean account. An early editor entered a marginal correction, "Delta, Ma (not) Nun" indicating the place name "Magdala". A subsequent copyist assimilated the correction to the text yielding "Dalmanutha." Understood in that way, Mk.8.10 poises Jesus on the way to the fish processing village of the Gospel's "Boat Source" where the Woman With a Hemorrhage is healed. Magdala lay at the southern reach of the plain of Gennesaret.

Ted is to be commended for pointing out that the Sayings Source, Q, probably originated in the Galilee, as GMark may have also. In my judgment, "Q1" and GMark emerged as contemporaries, while a kind of "dialogue" can be sensed between them, hence the "overlaps." Depictions of Jesus' Baptism, Temptation and the prophetic Gospel Prologue (1.1-3) have been developed and expanded upon in the latest stratum of Q, not the other way around (original to Q and reworked by Mark).

 

Consequently, if GMark and Q were developed in the same neighborhood, they both can be dated (if that is important) in the late 60's. A pertinent question the two raise is: Why were Gospels written? For what were they substitutes? Can it be that the murders of Jacob, Paul and Peter, each a leader in the early church, made it necessary to compile resources to which believers could appeal as they worked out questions of authority?

Philip B. Lewis, HR, Presbytery of Plains and Peaks,

Sawmill Cove, Cottonwood, AZ