Kata Markon

["Rikki E. Watts" <rwatts AT interchange.ubc.ca>]

Title: Re: [gmark] The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark

Dear Joseph,

I missed Prof. McDonald’s presentation at SBL.  But I do have a question, and would love to know if anyone asked it and what answer they received.  When his volume first came out, I ran a quick check of my church fathers, I found over 200 explicit references to Homer; as McDonald says, these people knew him well.  I also found over 400 references to Mark, whom apparently they knew even better.  But not once was there any reference suggesting or noting any parallels between Mark and Homer.  It seems to me that this leaves two options: either Mark did a very poor job of his parallels, or he never intended his readers to make such a connection and they, obligingly, didn’t.  Any responses?

PS I notice on your web-page you comment on Isa 7.14 as a false prophecy.  You might be interested in a paper I wrote for SBL on Matthew’s intention here. I agree that this is not a “prophecy” in the sense most use the term—and I think Matthew would too.  We have our own ideas of what fulfillment means.  On the other hand, it’s possible that Matthew doesn’t use “fulfillment” the way we do and means something different.  I think the latter makes the best sense of the data, not only here, but in several other places as well. 

Rikk 


on 20/1/01 8:12 pm, JFAlward AT aol.com at JFAlward AT aol.com wrote:

> Prof. Dennis R. MacDonald, Claremont School of Theology, argues in his book, 
> __The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark__, that Mark based some of his 
> stories about Jesus in part on tales in Homer's epics. 
>
> I've published ten short articles which analyze separate parallels alleged by 
> MacDonald.  They may be found at 
>
> http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html 
>
> I'd greatly value any comments or criticisms any members may have. 
>
>
>
> Joseph F. Alward, PhD 
> Assistant Professor 
> University of the Pacific 
> Stockton CA 95211 ---
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