Kata Markon

[JFAlward AT aol.com]

In a message dated 3/15/01 7:36:31 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
rwatts AT interchange.ubc.ca writes:

<<  I can find no analogy or precedent for this, and
 would like to know just how someone like Joe would explain the emergence of
 such a radical move, why they would do it, and whom they would hope to
 convince.  Until that is done, I think the suggestion that Mark or Matthew
 constructs stories wholesale is a castle in the clouds and quite without
 historical or cultural foundation. >>
============
Let me restate my position.  

The gospel of Mark is a set of stories about Jesus which evolved through oral 
transmission into their present form.  Some of the stories may be based on 
actual events which had parallels with events described in the Old Testament, 
so the transmitters naturally emphasized these points of similarities.  As 
the story was passed from one link in the chain of transmission to the next, 
Old Testament allusion might have been added--not deceitfully, necessarily, 
but because the transmitters truly believed that Jesus was the son of God and 
*must* have fulfilled what they thought were Old Testament prophecies about 
the coming messiah.  Their reason for doing so--if this actually 
happened--was to strengthen what they were sure must be the divine 
connections of the man they sincerely believed was the son of God to the holy 
men of scripture--David, Elijah, Elisha, and Moses and, of course, the Lord.

This describes how *actual* events evolved into gospel stories.  Now, the 
other type of tale would be of a completely fictitious nature.  Someone who 
wasn't actually there with Jesus just assumed that certain of the events in 
the lives of holy men of scripture *must* have been prefigurements of the 
events in the life of Jesus.  Not having any oral tradition to build on, 
these men created stories about events in Jesus' life which they were certain 
must have occurred.  We'll probably never know to what extent a given gospel 
story is totally without historical basis, but for now, we probably cannot 
conclude that any of them are.

Now, this is just a theory, of course.  But, the test of any good theory is 
the extent to which it describes the data. There is vastly more evidence that 
the gospel stories are just an adaptation of Old Testament ones than there is 
that they represent actual events in the life of Jesus.  The gospel stories 
by Mark below are packed with Old Testament parallels; virtually everything 
in them can be traced back to the Old Testament, or dictated on the basis of 
narrative logic.  Absent evidence extrabiblical documentation that these 
events actually happened, we should believe that they are fictional.

I challenge any reader to show why we shouldn't believe that the creators of 
the stories below weren't relying mainly on the Old Testament in their 
narratives.

Loaves and Fishes:  http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Loaves_and_Fishes.htm

Betrayal and Arrest:  http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/David_and_Jesus.htm

Jesus Walks on Water:  
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Jesus_Walks_on_Water.htm

Wicked Tenants:  
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Marks_Wicked_Tenants_Parable.htm


Regards,


Joe Alward