Kata Markon

["Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT home.com>]

I see from recent postings to the GThomas List that one of our former correspondents
has (once again) used  a post on another topic as a spring board for
promoting a thesis that is not only dear to his heart, but which reputedly
has the authority of A. Loisy behind it -- namely,  that
> all the [sic] four canonicals were originally entirely
> Jewish in their early versions, and they were still so back in 100 CE.
Having learned to be a bit suspicious of how accurately our correspondent
reproduces the views of other scholars he has appealed to when, in support
of other of his pet theories, he has claimed that these scholars have said
what he claims they have said, I decided to have a look myself at what
Loisy said -- at least with respect to GMark-- to see if Loisy could be
invoked to support the thesis at hand. Curiously, after doing this, four
things in the quotation above struck me as sheer misinterpretation, if
not misrepresentation, of Loisy's views.

Loisy did indeed argue that our canonical GMark was created from a "proto Mark" and that it has the form we now know it as having because of the work of a "later" redactor. But

(a) it is questionable whether Loisy believed that this "proto Mark" was, as our former correspondent asserts, "entirely Jewish" (what ever that question begging _expression_ actually means) since Loisy saw the substance of it, which he characterized as a

> ... collection of notes which originally recorded the essential
> facts of the Galilean mission and the messianic venture concentrated on
> Jerusalem, with its culmination at Golgotha (Ev. selon Marc, 19), 
as ultimately going back to reminiscences of Peter who as a Galilean would
not necessarily have embraced the Judaism of the Temple elites in Jerusalem.

(b) according to Loisy, the creation of GMark was not simply a matter of **adding** material to "proto Mark". Loisy believed that the redactor of GMark also **subtracted** material in "proto Mark" -- interestingly, in an attempt to cover up the political activity of Jesus. What was removed was much of the chronological and topographical order that was present in "proto Mark" (on this, see Sean Kealy (_Mark's Gospel: A History of Its Interpretation_, 103);

(c) along with Bacon, Gougel, Branscomb and others, Loisy dated  the final redaction of GMark, that is to say the completion of GMark **in the form in which we know it**, NOT to the second century CE, but no later than the 8th decade of the first century, and as early as 75 CE.

(d) in Loisy's view the redactor of GMark was a thorough-going **Paulinist** who sought to defend, in the heat of a long standing and on going controversy, the authority of Paul and the Pauline churches, with their predominantly if not entirely Gentile composition, over against the authority of Jerusalem, Indeed, according to Loisy, the "author" of GMark, was, if not **the** pre-eminent disciple of Paul, then someone who was "in any case a great admirer, or better still, a great partisan of S. Paul. His Gospel may be described as Pauline, and a deliberately Pauline interpretation of the primitive tradition" (_Les Evangiles Synoptiques_ Vol. 1, 116). So according to Loisy,  not only is "gentile" material included in GMark much earlier than our correspondent would have us believe; if we are to accept Loisy's views on the "authorship", purpose, and date of the redaction of GMark, then the issue that precipitated and necessitated the inclusion of such material was one that was felt within the church far earlier than our correspondent would have us believe.

Now there is always the chance that I've misrepresented or misunderstood Loisy on these matters. So I'd be grateful for corrections, so long as those making them give specific quotations from Loisy's works which show that I have.

But in the meantime, assuming that I have not done so, it would then seem that if our former correspondent might still wishes to maintain his thesis on Gospel composition and late Gentile inclusion in the early Church, he must let go of the claim that he has Loisy backing him up.

Yours,

Jeffrey Gibson
--
Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)
7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT home.com