Kata Markon

["Mark Goodacre" <M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk>]

On 19 Mar 2001, at 10:03, Rikki E. Watts wrote:

> Mark G's remark on Goulder is apropos.  Why did Goulder use the term
> Midrash in the first place, if not because he implicitly/subconciously
> realized the need for culture coherence? I.e. plucking genres out of
> the air doesn't carry a great deal of conviction, and being able to
> use a culturally located term leant his theories some legitimacy. 
> Retract the term and one begins to realize that his view of
> "extensive, creative embroidery drawing on their sources, the
> Scriptures, inference" etc. does not have a lot of, if any, cultural
> precedent, and on what I know so far makes little or no sense.

The way that Michael Goulder answered Philip Alexander was to 
point out that his primary model for Matthew's creative work with 
Mark was not so much the rabbis' work with Scripture as the 
Chronicler's work with Sam-Kings.  The chapter on "The Midrashic 
Method" (_Midrash and Lection in Matthew_, Chapter 2) draws 
some examples from rabbis and Targums but focuses primarily on 
Chronicles.  This is why, as I read it, Goulder felt able in 1989 
reluctantly to withdraw the term "midrash" because he saw that it 
was indeed inappropriate to the literary model with which he was 
primarily working, the Chronicler.  In fact in _Midrash and Lection_ 
Goulder did distinguish between the technical sense of "midrash" 
from the second century AD and what he saw as its earlier more 
general reference (p. 28).

If one wants to examine Goulder's work on the creativity of the 
evangelists, it is important to note what he has retracted:  the 
terminology of "midrash" but not the process he attempts to 
describe.  This process he expounds and defends on two fronts, (1) 
primarily by exegesis of the whole of Matthew (1974) and Luke 
(1989) and (2) by drawing attention to other models for the way 
ancients dealt with source material, especially the Chronicler.  I 
don't want to play down the importance of Goulder's retraction on 
the terminology -- it is an important concession to Alexander's 
critique (and shows, in my opinion, the right kind of scholarly 
integrity that Goulder was prepared to retract one of his views in 
published work) -- but it needs to be placed in context.  

Mark
--------------------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre               mailto:M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk
  Dept of Theology                tel: +44 121 414 7512
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  Birmingham  B15 2TT  United Kingdom

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