Kata Markon

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

Dear Ted

Many thanks for your response.  It is an honour to engage with 
someone who has informed my own understanding of Mark's Gospel 
over several years!  Your _Traditions in Conflict_ is the first academic 
book on Mark I can remember reading -- it was (and probably still is) 
basic reading for first year undergraduates at the University of Oxford 
and since then I have used it in teaching myself.

On your response I have one or two comments, mainly by way of 
clarifying my original points.

On 11 Mar 00, at 22:54, Ted Weeden wrote:

> My response to your points on Q:
> I do accept the existence of Q, first as an oral "text," presented in oral
> performance by the Q prophets on regular assemblies of the community.  It
> was then written but still performed orally.   See Richard Horsley and
> Jonathan Draper, WHOEVER HEARS YOU HEARS ME (1999), for some important new
> insights on Q and a persuasive profile of the community.
> Horsley/Draper, using the reconstructed text of Q by the International Q
> Project, have made some exciting new breakthroughs on our understanding of
> Q, many of which challenge the work of Robinson, Kloppenborg et al and the
> views that Q has a logoi sophon orientation, is apocalyptic in ethos, and
> that it is stratigraphic in its evolutiion.

I am looking forward to reading the new Horsley & Draper and have 
it on order.  I heard them both speak to the topic of the book at the 
SBL in Boston (Q section), with a response by Werner Kelber.  My 
concern with the oral performance by Draper was that he kept 
pressing the point that the IQP "keeps changing its mind" on the 
wording of Q, commenting that this was natural given the oral nature 
of Q, adding that the more one keeps looking at Q the more one will 
realise that one is looking into a "big fat nothing".  This seemed to me 
to show breathtaking ignorance of the Synoptic Problem & of the 
grounds on which one is reconstructing Q, but it may be that this was 
something limited to the oral performance, and which is not in the 
written word :-)

> Regard to (1): "Q might not tell us about the denial of Peter."  That is
> true but to speculate that it knew but chose not to tell is using an
> argument from silence, which is very problematic.   We could say the same
> thing about Paul.  He knew about Peter's denial, but decided not to
> embarrass Peter further by bringing it up.  If we follow that argumentative
> route, anything can be posited and no one can disprove any claims, as long
> as you allow arguments based upon silence.. We can only deal with the texts
> we have. Of course texts could be found to disprove any theory based on
> evidence in current extant texts.  But until then... .

My worry about this is that your own case was indeed based on the 
silence of Q, Thomas, Paul and the Signs Source about Peter's 
Denial.  My point was that for Q and Thomas at least the silence is 
expected on grounds of genre, so the silence cannot be deemed 
significant.

> With regard to (2): the genre of Q, a collection of orally performed
> speeches, consisting for the most part of aphorisms, does not rule out an
> allusion to the denial of Peter.  In fact Q 12:8-9 is a saying that deals
> with denial: "Everyone who confesses me before people, also the son of man
> will confess him/her before the angels of God.  But whoever denies me before
> people, will be denied before {the angels of God} (IQP translation, see
> Horsley/Draper, 271).  This saying addresses generally the issue of
> confession/denial.  It does not provide evidence that Q knew of the Petrine
> denial, nor does it provide evidence that it does not.

I agree that this does not get us very far.  Where Q presupposes and 
alludes to the narrative development of something very like Mark 
(John Baptist / baptism / temptation / healings + teaching etc.), it is all 
in the pre-Passion material, and this is an inevitability of the way in 
which Q is reconstructed, viz. without any Passion narrative.

> With respect to (3): I agree we can only reconstruct Q from Matthew and
> Luke.
> 
> With respect to (4): Despite the agreement you find in wording in Mt. 26:75
> and Luke 22:69, those verses are not considered to have been a part of Q by
> any Q scholar I am aware of, certainly not by the scholars of the IQP
> project.

Yes; the only one I know of is Emanuel Hirsch.  But, unless you go 
down the textual assimilation route, you would then need to explain 
this five word verbatim minor agreement on the grounds of shared 
knowledge of oral tradition (e.g. Marion Soards, J. Fitzmyer), in 
which case more independent evidence of Peter's Denial.  [On the 
Farrer theory you would have no problem here -- Matthew 26.75 is 
his rephrasing of Mark, now copied by Luke].
 
> My response: The genre of GT is more like Q than the narrative gospels.
> Thus you are right, it would be unlikely that there would be an allusion to
> the Passion events.  But there are sayings in GT in which Peter figures
> prominently, namely GT 13 and 114.  Conceivably GT could have woven in some
> allusion about the duplicity of Peter or his undependability.   GT 113,
> which seems to be a leadership "competition" for who is "top dog," would
> offer itself as a natural place to show why Peter is not the equal of
> Thomas.   Since GT offers us no such allusion, I conclude that GT is unaware
> of a Petrine denial.

It is of course a matter of fact that the Gospel of Thomas shows 
ignorance of the Denial but what I was balking at was your statement 
that the traditions behind Thomas were ignorant of it -- I don't know 
how we can know that and thus how an argument can be built on it.  
Of course Thomas could have referred to it if he knew it, but the point 
is that there is no obvious narrative context for it of the kind that 
would make its absence striking, again because of genre.  What I 
think would make your point would be its absence in another first C. 
independent narrative Gospel.  But alas, we haven't got one unless 
you count John as such (which you don't);  and we don't have the 
relevant bits of the Gospel of Peter.

I accept your comments on the absence of a mea culpa.  I wonder 
what you make of those like Luedemann and Goulder who have the 
appearance to Peter as emerging from his guilt over denying Jesus & 
fleeing from him?

Mark
--------------------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre                mailto:M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk
  Dept of Theology                tel: +44 121 414 7512
  University of Birmingham     fax: +44 121 414 6866
  Birmingham  B15 2TT  United Kingdom

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