Kata Markon

["Mark Goodacre" <M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk>]

On 10 Mar 00, at 16:52, Ted Weeden wrote:

> I now want to push that
> even further than in my earlier writings.   I cannot find any evidence prior
> to Mark that the early Jesus movements had a tradition about the denial of
> Peter.  The Q community does not refer or allude to Peter's denial, nor does
> the Signs Source, nor does Paul, nor does the tradition behind the Gospel of
> Thomas, nor does any other tradition that I am aware of prior to Mark.

Thankyou for your interesting post, from which the above is 
extracted.  I must admit to having several difficulties with the line of 
reasoning here. First, we do not know whether or not "the Q 
community" referred or alluded to Peter's denial.  Let us assume 
for the sake of argument that Q existed and note:

(1) We would only have access to what "the Q community" 
believed by means of Q itself, but Q itself might not tell us what 
"the Q community" thought about Peter's Denial.  

(2) This point is accentuated when we bring in the question of 
genre.  If Q theorists are right to see its genre as logoi sophon, we 
will not expect the document to refer to events in Jesus' passion.

(3) We need to bear in mind that we only have access to Q via 
reconstructing on the basis of what is retained in Matthew and 
Luke.

(4) The latter point reminds us to have a careful look at Matthew's 
and Luke's witness here in the story of Peter's Denial where we find 
the following five word verbatim agreement: KAI ECELQWN ECW 
EKLAUSEN PIKRWS (Matt. 26.75 // Luke 22.62).  This is not 
found in Mark.  Perhaps, then, Q knows about the Peter's Denial 
after all and perhaps we should be talking about Q 22.62?

I would be similarly concerned about the argument from silence as 
it touches on both the "Signs Source" and Thomas.  When it 
comes to Thomas, again we do not know what "the tradition behind 
Thomas" contained.  We can, of course, say that Peter's Denial 
does not come in Thomas, but again this is surely a question of 
genre.  There is, of course, no allusion to any of the Passion 
events in Thomas.  

> I
> cannot imagine, if Paul knew of Peter's denial, that Paul would have passed
> up the opportunity of citing that in his attack upon Peter's duplicity in
> eating and than refusing to eat with the uncircumcised at Antioch when the
> James "party" arrived in town (Gal. 2:11-14).   Citing Peter's denial of
> Jesus would have been a tour de force in Paul's argument that Peter is
> duplicitous.  Paul could have make a strong argument for the fact that Peter
> had a habit of being duplicitous, a habit, Paul could have declared, that
> goes back to Peter's confession of Christ (Mk. 8:29), which, under the heat
> of accusations that he was a follower of Jesus, Peter later reneged upon and
> denied that he ever knew Jesus (Mk. 14:66-72).   Furthermore, if Peter
> actually denied Jesus, I find it astounding that there is no Petrine mea
> culpa in any of the resurrection narratives.  Peter never sought forgiveness
> for his betrayal-denial of Jesus?

The first point is an interesting one, but the second sounds odd to 
me in the light specifically of John 21 but also generally of the 
tradition of appearance to Peter (Luke 24, 1 Cor. 15 etc.).


Mark
---------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre          mailto:M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk
Dept of Theology
University of Birmingham    Fax.: +44 (0)121 414 6866 
Birmingham   B15 2TT       Tel.: +44 (0)121 414 7512  

http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre
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