Kata Markon

[JFAlward AT aol.com]

(I place the name of the author in front of a colon at beginning of his 
remarks.  J.A.)
============ 

Larry Swain:

Virgil scholarship is pretty certain that Homer influenced Virgil as Virgil 
influenced Dante... if in Text A which is known to be influenced by Text B 
there is LESS parallel than between Text Z and text B wherein Text Z is not 
known to be influenced by Text B, then the conclusion of dependence should be 
able to be easily demonstrated, or
there is a problem with the thesis as stated.  So call it an exploratory 
argument.
 ===========
Joe Alward:

Larry seems to be arguing that since there are fewer connections of Virgil to 
Homer than there are of Mark to Homer, one would expect scholarship long ago 
to have recognized Mark's dependence because it was long ago recognized in 
Virgil.  I hope I've properly translated your argument, Larry; if not please 
accept my apology.  The premise of Larry's argument seems to be false.  
First, I don't see evidence that there ARE fewer connections to Homer in 
Virgil.  Second, any connections which have gone undiscovered for two 
millennia are, by definition, obscure ones.  Even if Larry were to show that 
MacDonald listed more parallels between Mark and Homer than exist between 
Virgil and Homer, their well-disguised nature would explain why the 
dependence is not "easily demonstrated."  

I want to mention at this point my deep concern about MacDonald's claim that 
Mark wanted and expected his readers to notice his "flags" waving toward 
Homer; I agree that Mark may have hoped that his use of Homer was 
sufficiently well done that people would recognize the connection, but, if 
that was Mark's hope, he surely would be disappointed.  He did an absolutely 
terrible job.  With each passing day I find myself leaning more toward the 
view that Mark was very uneducated, didn't have Homer at hand--or if he did, 
he didn't bother to read it, and embedded into his Jesus stories 
half-remembered and poorly understood elements from Homer oral tradition. In 
the case of his story about John the Baptist's beheading, Mark remembered 
several elements from Homer which were actually in the original epic, and 
some which had been created through tradition in its many retellings over the 
centuries; a good example of this is the traditional view that Klytemnestra 
beheaded Agamemnon.  Klytemnestra didn't behead Agamemnon, but people thought 
she did, so Mark nevertheless created a story in which a woman who was party 
to an illicit (or, thought to be illicit) relationship plays a pivotal role 
in the murder of her husband.  The story Mark remembered had Agamemnon's head 
landing on someone's dinner platter, so he thought that would be a juicy 
element to introduce into his tale about Herod ordering John beheaded; 
Josephus didn't say that John was beheaded, and he certainly never said 
anything about a head on a platter, so where did Mark get this idea, if not 
from Homer?  I could go on like this to explain what might have been on 
Mark's mind when he included other elements from Homer in his story, but I've 
made my point, I hope:  Mark might have been no more that a sophomore-level 
student completing writing assignments that called for him to create stories 
about the messiah people were talking about by rewriting stories he 
remembered from Homer.  He was a very poor student, wrote in lousy Greek, and 
didn't remember all that much from Homer, which he may never have read in the 
first place.  There's no wonder that there are so many dissimilarities of the 
type Larry Swain mentions; it's exactly what you'd expect from an incompetent 
young highschooler.
 ==========
Larry:
 
 Finally, at least in the story of Mark 6, I find your list of allusions 
unconvincing.  Let me take the first two.  Your first one states that in both 
stories their is a King involved in a love triangle with a male relative.  
But this is not the case in Mark.  The narrator in Mark goes out of his way 
to mention that Herod MARRIED Herodias, Philip who is only mentioned by the 
way is NOT an actor in the Marcan drama.  Thus, there is NO love triangle 
here, and the issue is one over the observance of the Torah. 
============
Joe:

At the time of Mark, Josephus was recording the relationship--the 
"marriage"--between Herod and Herodias'.  Josephus also noted that John 
deemed it to be illicit.  Based on this information, in Mark's mind there was 
a "triangle" involving Herod, Herodias, and Herodias's husband--Herod's 
brother--Philip.  Mark ineptly connected this to what he remembered from 
Homer:  A wife who was carrying on illicitly with another man beheaded (in 
the traditional telling) another man.  Mark transformed this into his tale of 
Herodias carrying on illicitly (in the traditional view) with Herod, and then 
Herodias ordering the beheading of another man.  There are huge differences 
between the two tales, of course, but Mark either didn't know that, or didn't 
care; he just had to make sure his assignment was in by Friday noon.

Regards,


Joe
==============

Joseph F. Alward, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics
University of the Pacific
Stockton CA 95211
email:  JFAlward AT aol.com