Kata Markon

[Karel Hanhart <K.Hanhart AT net.HCC.nl>]

Kata Markon digest wrote:

> Kata Markon Digest for Tuesday, April 18, 2000.
>
> 1. Re: dating Mark
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: Re: dating Mark
> From: Eszter <ESZTER.ANDORKA AT student.kuleuven.ac.be>
> Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 13:28:10 +0200 (W. Europe Daylight Time)
> X-Message-Number: 1
>
> Dear Karel,
>
> thanks a lot for your mail. sorry for not answering up to now.
>
> I know about your book, but as it was not on the shelf of the library of
> our university, I did not read it up to now. In the last two weeks I made
> several attempts to get it, like fishing around the desks of other PhD
> students and asking professors working on related issues. I did not
> succeed: the book is stolen. It is to be taken as a praise of your book on
> the one hand (Book-thieves have a good taste.), as my apology and exuse
> for not knowing it on the other. (But I am intended to talk the
> librarians about the possibility of ordering it again.)

Dear Eszter,
I am sorry to hear that the copy of my book has been taken by someone off the 
shelves
of the  Louvain library, as you intimate. However, the book is listed on the 
Internet
Amazon books - perhaps another copy can be ordered. It was published by 
Liturgical
Press, the press of the Benedictine Abbey in Collegeville MN.

> In the past 5 years my opinion on the location and function of the GMark
> remained the same, while that on the date changed every year. I wonder
> with which position I will side on the day when I finish my PhD. :-)
>
> Why the sixties? I think most scholars would date Mk to the the sixties or
> the seventies. You seem to agree that the political tensions reflected in
> the text does not fit to the relative peacefull early sixties. So let me
> narrow the question like this: Why before 69-70?
>
> For me the two (interconnected) decisive arguments are:
>
> 1. Immeadiately after the trauma of the war this topic should be more
> central in the presentation of the Gospel. I think the NT scholarship do
> not take seriously enough, what a strong impact the word 'Jerusalem' could
> have right after 70. (I will collect quotations from contemporary authors
> to demonstrate it.)

I agree with you that the word "Jerusalem" must have had a strong impact 
right after
70,  witness (a) Vespasian's victory coin JUDAEA CAPTA - bitter and 
infuriating for
all Judeans (christians and non-christians alike)  struck soon after 70. 
Being the
smallest currency it slipped  daily through the fingers of Romans and Judeans 
alike
and served as a kind of empire wide newspaper report;  -  and (b) the Titus' 
arch,
erected relatively soon afterwards.
    However, Mark wasnot free to mention the rebellion and the fall of 
Jerusalem
explicitly because he was a  Judean and wrote for and/or to a Christian Judean
ecclesia. It was extremely dangerous to accuse the Romans publicly of such 
misdeeds as
having a just and innocent Judean prophet succumb to the excruciating death by
crucifixion after a flimsy trial - especially if the author himself appeared 
to be a
follower of this prophet who had been charged to be "king of the Judeans". 
(After all,
Judeans were still capable of launching a second rebellion). It may help to 
appreciate
the risk that a carrier of such a document takes of being inteecepted by the 
police,
when an exegete has lived in a country likePoland or Checho-Slovakia or 
another
country occupied by a ruthless foreign force. Experience teaches that a 
suppressed
nation learns to conceal the real meaning of an undercover message with the 
help of
subversive language. Apocalyptic language is partially a subversive language
(Russell).  Rome is, for instance, called the "whore of Babylon" in the 
Apocalypse of
John. Anti-communists in East Germany called this type of subversive 
communication
"Zwei Geleisen Sprache" = 'two track' language. To outsiders ( and to 
officialdom) the
message is cryptic, to insiders it is immediately recognizable. Mark's Gospel 
partly
has this subversive character. He avoids mentioning the wanton destruction of 
the
temple outight - for all Judeans it was a horrible tragedy - but he writes 
"bdelugma
tes eremeseoos" (13,14) - "let the reader understand!". Much of the sometimes 
bitter
irony on the part of Mark can be ascribed to his feelings towards the Roman 
brutality
(legion - Mk 5,1ff. - and 'centurioin' - 15,39) as well as towards the various
highpriests (in Mark always in the plural) whom he deemed responsible for the
surrender of Jesus to the enemy and for the outbreak of the revolution 
against Rome
(so rightly Goodman).

> 2. The fall of Jerusalem had have its effect on the dynamic of the
> Christian community as well. The tragedy had different importance for
> those who were closer to James then for others. I am unable to see the
> trails of it in the Markan text.

I truly wonder if  the trauma  of 70 was only important to those who were 
"more close
to James", as you suggest. It deeply affected all Judeans, whereever they 
lived, I am
sure. Except perhaps unscrupulous persons who were out to make money.  It 
seems to me
that the aspersion "tax-collector" described such unscrupulous persons. Mark 
writes
that Jesus' call for repentance went out even to  such "tax-collectors". His 
openness
toward them  underscores his teaching to love one's neighbor, EVEN when it 
concerns
the enemy.

> To the possibility of an earlier edition of Mk: I doubt it. I am an
> admirer of the marcan structure, of its tautness and logic. Although
> the defenders of such a theory are really numerous, I find that they do
> not even agree in the very basic questions about the supposed "Urmarkus".
> Ican be wrong, the text could exist. But the whole idea is too dubious,
> too uncertain - I do not think that we could use it in the dating of Mk.

My theory of a (radical) revision of an earlier Passover Haggadah is 
partially based
on the fact that (1) Christian Judeans must have had some kind of Christian 
Passover
Haggadah rreading during the Pesach season in whuich they commemorated Jesus' 
death.
In my book called Mark I     (2) Mark's present text shows  signs of an  
editorial
hand  in many places- most explicitly in 3,14 and 14,28 - nevertheless it 
isnot
possible to isolate a document, an Urmarkus, underneath the canonical text 
with a
styele and vocabulary different from the author. In other words, Mark himself 
must
have revised his own text. Only a catastrophe of the size and  impact of 70 
could have
forced him to write a revisionm - called Mark II, = canonical Mark, that now 
ends with
a midrash on LXX Isa 22, 16, 33,16  in which the term "a monumental tomb hewn 
from the
rock (Zion)" is a metaphor for the house of God about to be destroyed. "in 
story
toime". When he wrote the midrash, "in real time" the temple was destroyed 
already, of
course.

> Do my arguments hold water?

> your

Karel

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