Kata Markon

["Wieland Willker" <willker AT chemie.uni-bremen.de>]

I just came across this article by Walter Schmithals:
New Test. Stud. vol. 45, 1999, pp. 472-497
ZUR GESCHICHTE DER SPRUCHQUELLE Q UND DER
TRADENTEN DER SPRUCHUEBERLIEFERUNG. DAS
SIEBENFACHE WEHE LK 11.37-54 PAR.

Here he presents a curious, but interesting theory. It goes something like 
this:
At around 70 CE there were (at least) two Christian parties. On the one hand 
followers of
Jesus who saw him only as a messianic prophet, but don't know anything about 
him BEING the
Messiah,don't know about miracles and don't know of the resurrection. These 
people wrote
the first stratum of the source Q (kind of wisdom literature).
On the other hand there was the group arround Mark. They knew all these 
Messiah things and

Mark wrote the first version of his Gospel for this group. Schmithals is able 
to extract a
"Grundschrift" from Mark!
Because Mark (or his group) wanted to join the different groups together, he 
had to
explain, why the first group didn't know of Jesus Messiah-ship. The famous 
Wrede-Messiah
secret theory: He added the Messiah-secret to his Gospel. He also added some 
things from
the first Q edition to his Gospel to show good will. After that Q was 
rewritten also to
incorporate Messianic things. This way they were able to join everything 
together.
Schmithals therefore thinks that the second stratum of Q knows GMark. He also 
thinks that
GMark and Q were transmitted together (on one scroll perhaps) and that it was 
then only
logical to combine this double-book into one (Lk and Mt).                (I 
hope I got
this right?)

My Questions:
For Xtalk:
Is a non-Messianic Jesus group as proposed above parallel to a Messianic 
group probable?

For Kata Markon/Synoptic-L:
1. What is the current status of separating sources/editions in GMark?
2. What other explanations are there for Wrede's Messiah secret today?
3. Does final Q knows GMark?

Best wishes
    Wieland
      <><
------------------------
Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
mailto:willker AT chemie.uni-bremen.de
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/