Kata Markon

["Dennis MacDonald" <dmacdon AT cst.edu>]

Mr. Swain, your hyperbole is not helpful: more parallels in Mark to Homer 
than in Vergil. This not only is contrary to what I claim, it is not an 
argument against my hypothesis at all. On another point, when dealing with 
literary imitation the issue never is the number of differences between one 
document and its putative model. The issue is how to explain similarities. 
If the similarities are sufficient to link two works together into a 
hermeneutical dialogue, then the differences become interesting as possible 
transforms of the model. I find the differences between Mark and Homer to 
be precisely what I would expect in an imitation. Here the analogy to 
Vergil is helpful: there are thousands of differences between the Aeneid 
and the Homeric epics and certainly not all of them are hermeneuctically 
interesting.
Concerning the death of John the Baptist and the death of Agamemnon: I 
don't think these parallels by themselves are the most compelling. Indeed, 
at one point I thought about putting the chapter as an appendix or even 
dropping altogether. But part of my argumentation is cumulative, and some 
of the parallels, in view, are overwhelmingly compelling. If in such cases 
Mark did imitate Homeric epic, there is reason to suspect it elsewhere. By 
the way, I would not at all be surprised that I missed some allusions to 
the epics. I hope others find them.
Dennis MacDonald

-----Original Message-----
From:   L. J. Swain [SMTP:l9swain AT wmich.edu]
Sent:   Monday, January 29, 2001 9:58 PM
To:     Kata Markon
Subject:        [gmark] Re: The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark



JFAlward AT aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 1/28/01 10:05:59 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> l9swain AT wmich.edu writes:
>
> In reference to the article, "The Beheading of John the Baptist," in 
which I
> analyze Dennis MacDonald's claims of a parallel between Homer and Mark, 
Larry
> Swain noted that I wrote that "Victim's head falls among dishes," and 
that
> this is not strictly true.  He is correct.  I've rewritten that entry in 
the
> table; it now reads, "Victim's head is in contact with tableware."
>
> All of the other great many differences Swain notes between the Homeric
> traditional tale and Mark are quite obvious; there are literally hundreds 
of
> other significant differences between other Homeric and Markan stories 
that
> MacDonald discusses, but these differences are of no real consequence, as 
far
> as I'm concerned. What matters is that a great many of the same 
ingredients,
> or elements, appear--in this case, eleven--not that they're used in the 
same
> way, or in the same order, or even that the messages in the parallels are
> similar.

Thanks to Dr. MacDonald for his response to which I'll get to in a moment.
But just to note that the "ingredients" are the same and in the same order
is rather like saying Steak and Kidney pie is an influence on Sour Cream
cake: both use flour, eggs, milk, an agent to make the dough rise, a pie
plate, an oven set at 350 degrees.  But they are very different dishes
indeed.

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, and at least these allusions are
so general, and generalized, as to be unconvincing.  As you note, there
are hundreds of details difference, including and especially plot
differences, that it is hard to believe direct influence.  In fact, if we
took this seriously we would actually have more allusions in Mark to Homer
than Virgil does in some episodes of the Aeneid that are so obviously
dependent on Homer.

Regards,
Larry Swain





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