Kata Markon

[JFAlward AT aol.com]

Rikk:
 
 
Sorry to be insistent, but can I ask again: if we can see how Mark operates
when he is invoking an interpretive grid, i.e. he explicitly cites materials
and quotes snatches of phrases, why not with something so fundamental to his
story as Homer?  I'm not sure I saw your explanation of this.
 
==========
Joe:
 
 
First, I agree that allusions to the Old Testament are very dense in places, 
and quite easy to track, while the opposite is true, I believe, for the 
allusions to Homer.  However, we apparently disagree about Homer being “so 
fundamental” to Mark. Following MacDonald, I found in Mark about 170 verses 
spread over nine different events (
http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html) which contained elements 
which I could accept plausible, possible, or probable parallels to elements 
in _Odyssey_  Only forty of those 170 show plausible Homeric influence. Thus, 
94 percent of Mark’s 678 verses have nothing to do with Homer, in my 
opinion.  This slight contact doesn’t make Homer fundamental to Mark in any 
sense of the word, I believe.
 

Rikk:
 
 
Re what I see as the real Achilles heel of this proposal, i.e. that not one
of Mark's target audience, undoubtedly familiar with Homer as they were,
ever caught on.  
====
Joe:
 
You seem to be begging the question, no doubt unintentionally.  Your premise 
is essentially the very thing we’re arguing about: that MacDonald can NOT 
have been the first person in two millennia to have written about Mark’s 
Homeric connection.  It would be easier to believe in MacDonald’s parallels 
if the ancients had also written about, them, but in the final analysis, 
one’s argument must be directed not to the person, but to the facts and the 
logic which connects them.  If we see evidence of Homeric contact, then that 
cannot be rejected just because others couldn’t see it. 
====
Rikk:
 
You seem to assume that for the Fathers to observe
parallels between Jesus and Homer would imply to them that Mark's Jesus was
a mythical figure. But why?  Why not, perhaps analogously with Philo,
simply see here divine intervention/patterning such that yes indeed Jesus is
both superior to Odysseus and moreover, far far superior, even the son of
God?
=====
Joe:

Irrespective of whether the Fathers actually believed there was a son of God 
named Jesus, evangelizing would have been much more difficult if they had to 
tell the pagans that God had Homer write his epics so that a thousand years 
later Jesus could be compared favorably to Odysseus.  With all the 
virgin-born, miracle-working, resurrected gods they’d been worshiping for 
centuries, comparing Jesus to a mythological god-like being would have made 
Jesus just one more god among many to the pagans.  The Fathers would have 
kept their mouths shut about Homer if they’d seen it in Mark.
 =====
Rikk:
 
 However, if you are right and the Fathers did not want to recognize
the otherwise obvious parallels, what about the opponents of the church?
Surely they wouldn't have been bound by such constraints and this would have
been a gift to them, especially if the Fathers felt so threatened by it?
But as far as I can not one ever suggests that this Jesus story is based on
Homer.  
 
============
Joe:

You’re assuming that the Fathers--and therefore their opponents--recognized 
that Homer was to be found in Mark. I’ve already explained above why that 
might not have been the case
============
Rikk:
 
To sum up, it's all beginning to look a little curious: A. Mark is happy to
cite explicitly and to quote directly from the other works (scrolls) that
have influenced him, Isaiah, Psalms, Jeremiah, etc. but nota sausage of
Homer, his most important source.  
=======
Joe:
 
I think you’re creating a straw man here, perhaps unintentionally; the Old 
Testament is Mark’s most important source, not Mark.   What little bit of 
Mark is based on Homer is very well hidden, and largely ineptly inserted.  
The Mark who was clever enough to weave beautifully certain Old Testament 
passages into this stories is probably not the same Mark who added Homer to 
them.
=======
Rikk:
 
B. his target audience, au fait with
their Homer, are completely silent on the parallels (a universal conspiracy
of silence so unified that not one lone voice breaks it--remarkable not
least because the early church seemed hardly to agree on anything, but they
do here with unique unanimity); 
======
Joe:
 
I don’t believe there was a conspiracy.  I believe what may have happened 
with the Fathers if any of them knew about the Homer connection is what 
happens constantly in controlling churches and cults; nobody dares to speak 
out against the common beliefs of the group.  The pressure is just too great, 
and there’s too much to lose by telling the others they believe in a false 
god.

Think about the controlling churches and cults I spoke of earlier.  If anyone 
wants to read horrific accounts of mind policing and group control by church 
elders, check out the site at 
http://apocalypse.berkshire.net/~ifas/wa/stories.html
 
You ask if it doesn’t strike me as extraordinary that nobody spoke out?  
Well, first I don’t agree that anyone necessarily would have noticed. If it 
hasn’t become obvious to all list members by now, it not at all obvious to 
most members that MacDonald is correct.  This shows one of two things, 
probably:  that the parallels don’t in fact exist, or they exist but are 
extremely well hidden.  It’s no surprise to me that no ancient believers 
wrote about the parallels, even if they knew about them, which is doubtful.
 
========
Rikk:
 
C. the opponents of the church, who likewise
know their Homer backwards, are also silent, passing up what would have to
be a gift to their anti-Christian attacks.  Not even the great Celcus notes
it.  Doesn't it strike you as extraordinary that everyone involved, without
one solitary exception, is utterly silent on the matter?  I think at one
point you invoked Occam's razor.  I wonder what Occam would regard as the
simplest explanation?
====
Joe:

If the opponents had known about the parallels, we undoubtedly would have a 
record of their observations.  However, absence of evidence that they knew 
about the parallels is not evidence that the parallels are absent.  I’ve 
already explained why I think nobody knew about the parallels:  Mark put too 
few of them in his gospels, and the few lines he did put in represent a 
largely amateurish effort to incorporate Homer in the existing Mark. The Mark 
who did the parallels was a highschooler adding to a Markan tradition.  
Nobody noticed the parallels because they’re almost impossible to see unless 
you go looking for them.  By the way, in some of the analyses of MacDonald’s 
work, I’ve indicated that “Mark” fully expected his readers to see certain 
Odyssean flags; I’m of a different view now.  I going to change those 
comments to “hoped, but didn’t really expect”; Mark was just hurrying to 
complete a writing assignment, in my opinion.  Years later, his school papers 
were dug out of some ruins somewhere and treated as if they were gospel.
 
Now, finally, Occam’s Razor.  Given that Homer was in the everyone’s blood 
in those days, and that children began to imitate, revise, 
paraphrase--concealing as best they could--the epics, we should be surprised 
NOT to find some Homerian parallels inMark.  Which explanation would Occam 
regard as simpler?  I think the answer is clear:  There are events in Homer 
which Mark put in his gospel; he did it so poorly that nobody noticed, but he 
didn’t care:  He wasn’t the real “Mark”anyway, whoever he was.
 
 
Regards,
 
 
 Joe
 =============
 Joseph F. Alward,Ph.D.
 Assistant Professor
 Department of Physics
 University of the Pacific
 Stockton California 95211
 e-mail:  JFAlward AT aol.com