Kata Markon

["Ted Weeden" <weedent AT atw.earthreach.com>]

Dear Ron,

Having returned from a week away, I want to begin here with a reply to your
critique of my "Guidelines for Locating the Markan Community," dated 3/1.
Since its will require an extensive reply to your critique of all seven
guidelines, I limit this post to the first part of your critique through the
second guideline.  As I see whether others have similar concerns to yours
with respect to the other guidelines, I may well incorporate your concerns
in my response to them, should they be similar.

Your post begins:
>>A good idea in principle ....... by using the following seven
methodological
>>guidelines. But the guidelines presented are hardly "methodological", a
term >>which usually has the connotation of a neutral technique.

My response: I am not sure why you think that the guidelines are not
neutral.  It is true that I ended up with the result that Caesarea Philippi
is the most likely candidate.  But I tested all other Markan geographical
references against the guidelines.  To have shown that in my original
posting of the guidelines would have made a very long post.  So I just
presented the argument for Caesarea Philippi.

Then you gone on by quoting me:
>>The First Guideline
>>Markan allusions to his community's location in all likelihood are to be
>>found where Mark exhibits accurate representation of geography .......

And then responding:
>>Hang on a bit. This assumes that Au_Mark was writing in one of the
>>places mentioned in his gospel. As his knowledge of Palestinian
>>geography appears to have been rather inaccurate, the assumption is
>>dubious, to say the least.

My response: I thought I indicated that there are errors in Markan geography
and that Dean Chapman in his article in BTB, has proposed a way to explain
most of the errors.  What Chapman cconcludes in his article is that Mark
knows best the Judean region around Jerusalem and the Galilean region
immediately around the northern and western shore of the Sea of Galilee and
northward from Bethsaida to Caesarea Philippi.  Mark is confused about the
Decapolis and the region on the eastern shore of the sea.  Those regions are
a part of his cosmographic geography, the unfamiliar outer horizon of his
knowledge. The same is true of Tyre and Sidon.

Chapman argues for the Judean site of the community, particularly Jerusalem,
over against a Galilean site.  But, for me, there is a problem with that
locale with respect to geographical accuracy.  Mark makes a strange error in
geography when he inexplicably has Jesus travel from Bethphage southeast to
Bethany in order to reach Jerusalem which is northwest of Bethphage (11:1).
Chapman acknowledges the error and has an explanation for, which I cannot
provide here, but which I do not find convincing.  In view of the fact that
Mark's geography is most accurate from the northern rim of the Sea of
Galilee, including Gennesaret, Capernaum and Bethsaida, northward to
Caesarea Philippi, it would suggest that that is the region he knows well
and is the likely region in which his community is located, if he alludes or
refers to his community in his narrative.

Aside from this, there is another curious feature of Markan geography.
With the exception of Nazareth, Jesus' hometown, he mentions no town,
village or city by name west of the Galilean seashore.  And the only
reference to villages in general in that western section is to the
unspecified villages near Nazareth (6:6).   I find it striking that there is
no mention of the cities of Sepphoris or Tiberias. (Parenthetically and
interestingly enough, the only cities [legitimately so-called] that are
mentioned in Mark's narrative are Jerusalem, Caesarea Philippi, Tyre and
Sidon).  With respect to villages besides Nazareth in western Galilee, even
Luke knows of Nain and John and John's Signs Source knows of Cain.
Moreover, Mark makes no reference, as does John, to Samaria, let alone any
villages there.  I find all of this rather strange.  It is as though, with
the exception of Nazareth and the non-specified villages nearby, Mark's
geography has been collapsed to the area around the northern part of the Sea
of Galilee, northward to Caesarea Philippi, and Judea to the south, with the
Decapolis (including, of course, Gerasa) east of the sea, Idumea (3:8) to
the "far" south, Tyre and Sidon to the west and north all serving as the
outer, and not well-known, cosmographic limits of his geographical
knowledge.  Anything in between this outer cosmographic circumference and
the areas cited as best known, with the exception of Nazareth, don't seem to
exist or have any geographical importance or narrative, much less
theological, meaning in Mark's mind.

Now respect to other possible locations of the Markan community, outside of
the Syrian-Palestinian region: according to your most recent post (3/11),
you state a strong preference for Rome.  If I may quote you in your post-
"The gospel of Mark represents a brilliant synthesis of Pauline theology
with a Christian Jewish interest in the earthly life of Jesus. It must
therefore have emerged in a community which was not dominated by either
faction. Rome fits the bill perfectly."  I will not comment on Mark being "a
brilliant synthesis of Pauline theology with a Christian Jewish interest."
I have problems with that formulation. But that is for another time.

With respect to Rome being the site of Mark's community: as I stated to
Karel Hanhart in a post via Kata Markan, I am unpersuaded by the traditional
claim that Mark was in Rome much less that his community was located there.
I share here my reasoning as presented to Karel, thus:
I cannot put a lot of confidence in Irenaeus' report that "...Mark, the
disciple and interpreter of Peter, transmitted his preaching to us in
written form" when Irenaeus goes on to say that "...Luke, who was a Paul's
follower, set down in a book the gospel which he [Paul] preached. Then John,
the Lord's disciple, who had reclined on his breast, himself produced the
Gospel when he was staying at Ephesus, in the province of Asia" (ADV. HAER.
3,1,1). Quite frankly I don't have much more confidence in Eusebius report
about what Papias wrote about Mark which he presumably (so Hengel, STUDIES
IN THE GOSPEL OF MARK, 47ff.) got from the presbyter John, namely:
"Mark...having been the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, howbeit not
in order, all that he recalled of what was either said or done by the
Lord.... For he [Mark] kept a single aim in view: not to omit anything of
what he heard [from Peter], nor to state anything therein falsely"
(Eusebius, HE 3,39,15).

How can I place any more confidence in a fourth-century Church historian
(Eusebius) who tells me that a second-century church elder (Papias)-
receiving information from a late first century presbyter (70-100), almost a
generation after Mark wrote- believed that Mark reported accurately the
recollections of Peter than the confidence I can place in a first-century
church historian (dubbed "Luke") who knew and used Mark and assures me that
all that he writes is "an orderly account" of the events about Jesus "as
they were handed on...by those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses....so that you [Theophilus] may know the truth"(Lk. 1:1-4).

And the truth Luke reports in his orderly account? Among other things: Jesus
and John the Baptist were related; Jesus was conceived without male sperm;
John the Baptist was imprisoned when Jesus was baptized; Pilate served as
Jesus' defense attorney in his Roman trial and drew upon the corroborative
witness of Herod Antipas in Jesus' defense; Jesus physically rose from the
dead and had supper with two disciples and later bodily ascended into heaven
(Lk. 24:13-51; Acts 1:3-9)? How is Papias' account of how Mark wrote his
gospel any more trustworthy than Luke's revisionist history in his gospel
(including his alteration of the Markan story) and his revisionist history
in his Acts of the Apostles? How would you develop a methodology that would
assure me that I can trust the historical accuracy of Papias' understanding
of Mark, an understanding penned 50 years after Mark, when I cannot trust
Luke (who is dependent upon Mark's story) to represent Mark's story
"truthfully" and when I have well-founded doubts about Luke's accuracy in
reporting the historical "truth" about most of his accounts regarding Jesus
and the beginning of the early Jesus movements?

Moreover, I have trouble finding coherency between Papias' belief that Mark
"kept a single aim in view: not to omit anything of what he heard, nor to
state anything therein falsely" and Mark's treatment of Peter. You refer to
my thesis on Mark's denigration of the disciples. 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.  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?

I think Mark invented the story of Peter's denial as his vendetta against
the authority of Peter and the twelve which was being used against Mark in
Mark's own community, a story of Peter's denial that subsequent gospel
writers Matthew, Luke and John) had to give the best apologetic spin. I also
think that Mark invented the insider-betrayer Judas (a thinly veiled
reference to Judea) as a part of his anti-Judean polemic. That is another
story which I cannot get into here. My point about Mark's invention of the
denial of Peter is that such a fabrication hardly computes with Papias'
belief that Mark did not "state.. anything false. I do not think Mark was a
disciple of Peter, nor ever knew Peter, much less recorded the Petrine
memoirs. Furthermore, I do not think Mark was ever in Rome, as church
tradition leads us to believe.

Ron, with respect to your critique of my second guideline you quote me:
>Wherever the community is located, it must be at significant distance from
>the Mediterranean Sea ....... If Mark, as Theissen has argued, were
>aware of the size of the Mediterranean Sea, he would not have made the
>mistake of calling Lake Gennesaret a "sea."

And then you state:
>According to M.D.Hooker (_The Gospel According to St Mark_, London,
>A&C Black, 1991), Aristotle once used QALASSA for a lake. Anyway
>Au_Mark's use of language is notorious for its lack of literary finesse
>so his use of "sea" is a weak foundation for a hypothesis. Didn't even
>Au_Matt similarly misuse a common word when he described Nazareth as a
>city (POLIS, Matt 2:23)?

My argument with respect to the fact that Mark's community must be at some
distance from the Mediterranean Sea, or he would never have called Lake
Gennesaret a "sea," is based upon the following convincing evidence from
Gerd Theissen (THE GOSPELS IN CONTEXT).  Theissen draws attention to the
Semitic background in the Greek of "the Sea of Galilee," and the fact that
in Hebrew yam can refer to either lake or sea. The Hebrew yam is almost
always translated as QALLASSA in the LXX, whether the reference is to an
interior body of water, such as Lake Gennesaret or Lake Asphaltitis (the
Dead Sea) Thus,  Theissen contends,  the NT usage of QALASSA should be
interpreted with this Semitic understanding of the term in mind.   This then
suggests to Theissen that the use of QALASSA to refer to the Sea of Galilee
originated in the eastern section of the Roman Empire where Semitic
languages would have some influence on formulating vocabulary (106).

Theissen notes with respect to Mark's construction QALASSA THS GALILAIAS
(Sea of Galilee) that it is a genitive construction rarely  found in Greek
or Latin with specific reference to lakes or oceans.  In those languages the
descriptive term is adjectivally rendered. But as Theissen observes "the
genitive attribute 'Sea of Galilee' corresponds exactly to the common Hebrew
and Aramaic construction for names as in yam ha kinnereth."  Therefore
Theissen concludes: "We can presume that the name QALASSA THS GALILAIAS also
goes back to a Semitic name or was constructed by analogy to such names.
That points to strongly to a milieu in which (as in the whole
Aramaic-speaking East) Semitic names are familiar, and where the great
Mediterranean world is not the center of everyone's experience. Anyone who
knows the great sea would hardly call the little Galilean lake a 'sea."

Such, as Theissen shows, was the judgment of Porphyry (ca. 234-301/305) with
respect to Mark's calling Lake Gennesaret a sea.  Theissen quotes (105f.)
Porphyry via Macarius Magnes (Apokritikos 3.6,  400 C. E):..."those who
describe the true conditions of those places [Galilee], say that there is no
sea [QALASSAN] there, but instead a small lake [LIMHN], created by a river
at the base of the hill country in the region of Galilee near the city of
Tiberias-a lake that can be crossed in only two hours in small boats made of
a single log, and that is not large enough either for waves or for storms.
Mark has thus gone beyond the truth."

Theissen then notes that people with a limited world view could easily call
a nearby inland body of water a "sea," if they are unaware that from the
view of those more widely traveled that their body of water qualifies more
as a lake than a true sea.   Theissen offers for evidence of this difference
in perspective several examples to make the point.   First, Aristotle in his
Meteorlogia (1.13.351a) refers to " a lake beneath the Caucasus, which the
inhabitants call a sea: for this is fed by many rivers, and having no
obvious outlet runs out beneath the earth in the district of the Coraxi and
comes up somewhere about the so-called deeps of Pontus, an immeasurably deep
point in the [Black] Sea."

A similar contrast in perspective, between inhabitants limited in their
perspective with respect to the so-called "Dead Sea" and persons with more
expanded knowledge of what a real sea, is noted by Theissen (107).  Those
with a limited perspective call that body of water a "sea." Those with a
broader perspective, such as Aristotle, Hiero-nymus of Cardia, Diodorus
Siculus, Strabo, Vitruvius, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemaeus,
Alexander of Aphrodisias and Solinus, call the body of water a "lake" (LIMHN
or lacus).  When the Palestinian inhabitants' name for the body of water in
the Jordan Valley spread to the rest of the ancient world, Theissen observes
(109), the local designation  "sea" was preserved, but those who looked upon
it as no bigger than a lake, qualified their reference to it as "the Dead
Sea" or in some other way indicated their qualified acceptance of the
Palestinian nomenclature.

Here are some examples Theissen cites in this regard: "Pausanius... first
speaks of a lake (LIMHN) and adds, in a relative clause, that this lake is
called the 'Dead Sea' (QALASSA.).   Aleius Aristides was in Scythopolis when
heard about this lake (LIMHN) 'which some call a sea'....Galen speaks of a
lake with two names: some call it the "Dead Sea." others 'Lake Asphaltitis.'
For him, it is a lake; once he even calls it the 'Dead Lake'....  Similarly,
Dio Chrysostom, who evidently knows the name 'Dead Sea' alters it to 'the
Dead Water' (TO NEKRON HUDWR).

Thus, with Theissen, I contend that Mark's community must be located in a
region where a body of water such as Lake Gennesaret could well have
appeared to them to be a "sea," if they did not have a "true" sea with which
to compare it.

Finally, with respect to Rome being the site of Mark's community, Theissen
declares, "... Mark's talk of a 'sea' would be hard to imagine in the
cosmopolitan city of Rome (237f.).  And, of course, I agree for that reason
as well as the other reasons cited above.

Ted Weeden