Kata Markon

["Rikki E. Watts" <rwatts AT interchange.ubc.ca>]

Title: Re: [gmark] Burden of proof

Sid,

There are some problems here.  First, no one that I know is insisting that Mark is “history” (in first century terms) merely because it’s a narrative (I don’t think this is what naïve historicism means anyhow; doesn’t it refer to the idea/notion that one could access truly objective history; that seeing is the same as knowing?).  Of course we don’t judge things as being historical just because they are narrative in form: who regards The Simpsons as history?  So I’m not sure I see your point.  

You ask for proof: but I don’t know what you would accept.  External attestation, while nice, doesn’t help much and is problematic for all sorts of reasons (but I won’t pursue this unless you want to).

Rather, it seems to me that the key is first genre, not an act of faith (more on that below), the social function of which is to form a contract between reader and writer as to the truth claims of what is written.  Case in point: you are right, none of us takes the infancy narratives of Jesus/apocryphal gospels seriously.  As far as I can tell neither did the early church. So the question is why not, and why did they treat the canonical gospels seriously? The second element is coherence: does what this document describes make sense of all the data, including the emergence of something called the early church and the content of its preaching?  

So, the truly historical question is what genre is this document and does the proposed reading of the document cohere—both “outside” and “inside” (Collingwood)--with what we know of the mental and external world of first century Jews (it is after all a Jewish story)? And to help with that: in terms of genre and coherence with the first century world, where is the evidence that first century people, writing within a Jewish horizon, invented the recent past, or wrote novels (or whatever), to claim that scripture was fulfilled?  The only examples I can see of claiming the fulfillment of Scripture that comes close is in Qumran and they don’t seem to be inventing history at all.  

(re bringing theological presuppositions to the text; pardon me for what follows, but give me a break-- who doesn’t bring presuppositions to the text?  Try it this way, “nor may we allow narrative, philosophical, ideologically committed naturalism, etc presuppositions to enter into our analysis” and I think you’ll understand my reaction; :-) To disallow theological presuppositions is to my mind question begging since it already assumes it knows something of the nature of the answer before it gets there.  Sounds very laudable but only because of the regnant plausibility structures, a la Berger.  It’s just a piece of philosophical sleight of hand; i.e. how do you in fact know in advance that it is not helpful to bring theological considerations to the table?)

Rikk

  
on 3/16/01 9:19 AM, Sid Martin at smartin AT webzone.net wrote:

> May I suggest that the burden of proof is on those who would assert the historicity of any narrative and that the Gospel of Mark is no exception.  To assume that a literary work is historical simply because it exhibits a narrative format might well be termed "naive historicism."  Nothing that I know of justifies the assumption that the author of a narrative means to assert that the "events" narrated actually occurred.  All stories take the form of saying that a certain character went here and did this and then went there and said that.  That does not even imply that the author means to say that any such thing ever happened, let alone that the assertion is historically accurate.  
>  
> Certainly, stories about Jesus are no different.  The so-called "apocryphal" gospels are no less narrative in format than the canonical gospels, yet no one takes the sayings and doings of the Jesus character therein described seriously as fact.  Religious fiction in general, and Christian fiction in particular, was quite typical of the age.  To carve out an exception for the literary works which received official sanction is an act of faith, nothing more.  If anyone would assert an historiographic intention on Mark's part, let them prove it.  Failing that, we are not entitled to take the Markan narrative as even an attempt to write history.  Rather, the narrative must be studied as narrative, that is, from the standpoint of literary and not historical criticism.  That being the case, the search for narrative sources need not be limited to historical rather than literary sources, nor must the historical sources be limited to those congruent with the narrative, i.e., of the same time and place, but may quite appropriately include both biblical and nonbiblical parallels.  Of course, nothing prevents Mark from using his own imagination in fashioning his narrative.  There need not be any extraneous source at all for a given episode.  We cannot assume that Mark was less creative than any other narrator, nor may we allow theological presuppositions to enter into our analysis of Mark's Gospel as a literary work.
>  
> Sid Martin
> Tulsa, OK
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