Kata Markon

["Ted Weeden" <weedent AT atw.earthreach.com>]

On April 13, 2001 at 12:13 AM Stephen Carlson wrote:
Subject: [gmark] Re: Judas' Kiss-- Methodology & Misplaced Concreteness


> MacDonald lays out a number of criteria for investigating
> mimesis, viz. accessibilty, analogy, density, order,
> distinctiveness, and interpretability.  Based on my own
> interdisciplinary study of literary dependence with
> respect to modern copyright law, I believe that MacDonald
> has formulated a good set of criteria.  I'm wondering if
> you have thought about these criteria regarding a possible
> Markan interaction with 2 Samuel, and, if so, what the
> results have been.

I have not applied MacDonald's full set of criteria specifically to a
possible interaction of Mark with 2 Samuel.   It is something worth doing
and I will get back to you on that.  But it may take a while, since I am
pressed to complete some other matters.   By the way I have been working
away, off an on, on the issue of Johannine dependency on Mark for his source
for the passion narrative in response to the questions you posed to me
almost a year ago on XTalk.  I hope to get that done and test it out with
you.

Also, with respect to Dennis MacDonald's work,  I think the strongest part
of his book, _The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark_, is his set of
methodological criteria outlined in his first chapter.   I am not, as yet,
convinced, however, that his criteria, in their application for ferreting
out  Markan dependence on Homer, support the many parallels he sees.
Some of those proposed parallels he points to may not be an indication of
Markan direct dependence on Homer, but rather, at most, an indirect
dependence via osmosis, that is, a natural and normal mental absorption of
common thought structures of the Greco-Roman world which have been
influenced by Homer and are a "pedestrian" part of the public lore.   For
example, the osmosis I am suggesting is like the way a joke makes its
rounds in popular culture today.   As it is spun out in different settings,
it takes on new elements and stylistic ways of telling it, depending on the
memory of the teller, his/her peculiar spin, and his/her source of the joke,
and depending on its many recensions it has gone through when
it is told and retold in its various settings.   Yet, for the most part the
original general and basic structure of  the joke and some of its elements
along with its punch line is generally recognizable, despite its many
renditions.    But no one asks where did the joke originate and who was
its originator.   And if the joke has been heard before, one usually
associates it with the occasion on which it was formerly heard, rather
than tracing back to its originating occasion.

Ted Weeden