Kata Markon

["Ted Weeden" <weedent AT atw.earthreach.com>]

Dennis,

Glad to see you have joined the dialogue.   Thank you for the reference to
Ron Hock's article.   Are you aware of Teresa Morgan's very fine book,
_Literate Education in the Hellenistic and RomanWorlds_(1998, Cambridge
 Classical Studies).   Morgan also demonstrates, particularly drawing upon
Quintilian, that Homer was at very center and pervasive in education in the
Hellenistic world.  Yet, she does note one caveat and I quote her (105):

"One might assume from reading Quintilian that all of Homer was read with
equal frequency.  The papyri, however, show a rather different picture.  The
ninety-seven surviving extracts from Homer form an important test-case for
our understanding of what literature was taught in *enkyklios paideia* and
why.  Homeric texts survive in a great variety of schoolhands of different
standards, supporting the recommendation in elite writers that Homer be
taught at all levels of education.  But surviving texts are far from equally
representative of all books and poems.  Only eleven of them come from the
_Odyssey_: four from the Ptolemaic period and seven from the Roman period.
[At this point Morgan makes reference to two tables she supplies: one citing
the distribution of _Odyssey texts in "literary hands," and the other one
citing _Odyssey_ texts surviving in "school hands."  She then proceeds] ....
[H]alf the texts come from the first five books and the only two
representatives of the second half of the work are Ptolemaic."

"To say that eighty-six texts of the _Iliad_ survive makes it sound as
though Homer's traditional place at the head of Greek 'literature' is firmly
supported by the evidence of papyri.   Again [here she makes reference to a
table]...the distribution of survivals is far from even.   The texts cluster
strongly at the beginning of the work.  This tendency appears to have
increased over time.  Although we do not possess enough material from the
Ptolemaic period to draw unequivoal conclusions, the distribution of
survivals suggests both that less Homer overall may have been read in the

Roman period relative to the Hellenistic and in the Byzantine period
relative to the Roman and that the range of texts probably decreased."
Morgan goes on to offer further evidence for her conclusion.

Does Morgan's finding with respect to the decline in the use of Homer taught
in *enkyklios paideia* have any bearing on your thesis and does Hock address
the issue to which Morgan refers?

On another note, much of the discussion of comparative textual evidence
supporting Markan dependency on Homer has focused in recent posts on
parallels between the beheading of John the Baptist and the story of
Agamemnon's slaying by Aegistus and Klytemnestra (see in particular, Joe
Alward's posts).  The parallels are certainly suggestive.  But is John's
beheading
really a Markan creation?   Gerd Theissen (_The Gospels in Context_, 81-96)
has made a strong case for Mark not being the creator of the story.  Mark,
according to Theissen, appropriated the story from a popular story about the
death of John the Baptist circulating in northern Palestine.   If that be
the case, and I find Theissen's argument convincing, it is the creators of
that story and not Mark who may have been influenced in their creation by
the Agamemnon story.  And, if that be the case, however, I do not see the
fact
that the story of the beheading of John the Baptist in Mk. 6:17-29 is not a
Markan creation seriously challenges your thesis of Markan dependency on
Homer, except for that one parallel  [I am still trying to assess the other
parallels
you offer].   To the contrary, if the story is non-Markan, it may give added
support for your thesis in that the story of John's beheading is one more
indication, aside from Mark, that in the region of northern Palestine, where
I
place Mark (I have made a case for Mark's provenance being the village area
of Caesarea Philippi), story tellers were strongly influenced by Homeric
stories
in the crafting of their own

Finally, one of the fine contributions you have made in your methodological
discussions is the important role transvaluation plays in one author
emulating
another.   I am now convinced that John was not only dependent upon Mark
for such material as the passion narrative, but also that John transvalued
certain
features of the Markan narrative for his own theological/christological
purposes.
For example, John, following the LOGOS prologue, constructs his opening
narrative, the questioning exchange between John the Baptist and the
Pharisees,
by recasting and transvaluating the Markan Caesarea-Philippi story of
Peter's
Confession (Mk. 8:27-29) into the Baptist's "I'm-not-the-Messiah" confession
in response to the Pharisees questioning (Jn 1:19ff.).   Most of the
principal
features of the Markan story are there in the Johannine story (questioning
of
identity and response; possible identities--"John the baptist," "Elijah,"
"one of the prophets," "Messiah;" implied/explicit confession).  I also see
John
taking the "hour" motif of Mk. 14:41, an hour of humiliation in Mark, and
transvaluating it into John's recurrent "hour" motif, which points
throughout the
Johannine narrative to Jesus' hour of triumph at his crucifixion.  I also
submit
that John appropriated Mark's suffering Son-of-Man christology and
transvalued it into the Johannine triumphant christology.

Ted Weeden