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  • From: Karel Hanhart <K.Hanhart AT net.HCC.nl>
  • To: Ted Weeden <weedent AT earthreach.com>, "Synoptic-S AT bham.ac.uk" <Synoptic-S AT bham.ac.uk>, crosstalk2 <Crosstalk2-subscribe AT yahoogroups.com>, Kata Markon digest <gmark AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Fw: [XTalk] Re: [Synoptic-L] Thesis: Mark Used Cross Gospel in 15:42-16:8, Pt.1
  • Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 16:24:02 +0100




Thank you, Ted, forwarding to me the text below, which fell off my screen..
I'll try to respond, as briefly as I can:, to your serious objections to my
new
approach.
Deciphering Mark's Gospel, ridllesome as it is with its quaint miracle
stories, is
no easy matter. Yet, to Mark's contemporary Jewish readers, these texts must
have
been forceful, realistic, hopeful and crystal clear. Below follows my further
response

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ted Weeden" <weedent AT earthreach.com>
> To: <crosstalk2 AT yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 7:10 PM
> Subject: Re: [XTalk] Re: [Synoptic-L] Thesis: Mark Used Cross Gospel in
> 15:42-16:8, Pt.1
>
> > Karel Hanhart responded on Saturday, February 23, 2002:
>
> > > Yes, I have read your exposé and I reached the very opposite
> > > conclusions. And both interpretations are based on the same texts of
> > > Mark. With one distinct difference in approach. You believe Mark knew a
> > > so-called Cross Gospel, which Crossan distilled from the second century
> > > Gospel of Peter and in the judgment of many is inauthentic.

> > > (a) It is written in the "I" form. (I, Peter, saw...).....

Ted objected correctly

> The reconstructed text of Crossan's Cross Gospel is *not* "written in the
> 'I'
> > form."

My response:
Yes, you are right. The "I" form, in which the Gospel of Peter is written,
dated in
the second century,
doesn't apply to the 'Cross Gospel' within it. That's logical. Peter was not
present
at the crucifixion, so the author couldn't use the "I" form. Thus it may not
serve
as an argument for a filtered-out original Cross Gospel.

> > You have not given me opportunity to present my full thesis before drawing
> > conclusion regarding its validity. For if it proves to have validity,
> > then we
> > must date the Cross Gospel before Mark. And while the Gospel of Peter is
> > second century CE, its independent tradition of the story of the guard at
> > the
> > sepulcher (which even Raymond Brown recognizes as a coherent canonically
> > independent source which the author of the Gospel of Peter used in his
> > composition: see Pt. 1 of my thesis).

My response,
An authority like Ray Brown certainly carries weight. He and his fellow
Catholic and
Lutheran interpreters persuaded me, a Reformed or Presbyterian, in their
book that
Peter, mentioned last of the (male) disciples "figures prominently.." in
Mark's
Gospel. "...it may be said [Mark's Gospel] gives us the basic outline of the
Gospel
portrait of Peter". So in this respect Ray would not agree with your
conclusions
with regard to Peter's role in Mark.
We must be careful not to let a case rest on the authority of fellow
exegetes
alone, as you will also agree.. Moreover, an authority like Charles Moule
wouldn't
agree with Raymond's position re. the "independent position of the story of
the
guard at the sepulchre". What do you mean by "an independent early position"?
Does it mean in this case that we should believe the high priests (plur)
historically were afraid that Jesus might disappear from the tomb? Did they
need the
authority of Pilate to safeguard its entrance with a platoon of soldiers to
prevent
Jesus from rising? Isn't this story simply an ironic reply to a an equally
ironic
post-Markan rumor that the body was stolen by the disciples? I believe,
Matthew
edits here the Gospel of Mark.

Markan research has truly reached an impasse because of so many conflicting
assumptions re. the identity of Mark, the date of his Gospel, its genre, its
provenance and addressees. You and I have tried to break through this impasse
along
different routes. For that reason I would argue at the outset that the
foundation
stones, on which you have so carefully and consistently built the edifice
of your
theory in your earlier work, are weak and inadequate. They are weak because
you
don't offer an exegesis on Mark's open-tomb-story itself but argue your case
on the
supposedly early burial stories found in the second century inauthentic
Gospel of
Peter.
You asked me about my method.
I let the text of Mk 15,42 - 16,8 stand as it is and try to make sense of it
in the
light of its genre and of the structure and content of the Gospel as a whole..
By defining its genre as a Passover Haggadah and not as a (sacred) biography,
various interpretations are ruled out, such as (a) Bultmann's myth or (b) the
fundamentalist's biographical report of a supposed discovery that Jesus' body
had
disappeared or (c ) that the story is a late outgrowth of an early memorial
prayer
service - liturgy near Jesus' grave in which a guide, dressed in white, is
supposed
to have told the gathered pilgrims: "Behold the place!". This (c ) solution
is the
latest attempt to interpret Mark's story. [Mind you if this guide would
have told
the pilgrims to look inside an empty tomb at a supposed slab of stone where
the body
would have been laid, he would have said in Greek 'idete ton topon' and not
'ide, ho
topos'. The latter is a literal translation of the Hebrew "Lo. ha-Maqom". And
maqom is thè chosen term for the temple on Mt Zion, "which JHWH your God will
choose... to put his name there" (Dt 12,5 and passim). In his midrash on LXX
Isa
22,16; 33,16 Mark is not referring to the actual grave (Gr. taphos) of
Jesus. He is
discussing the - in the end frustrated - attempt by Joseph to seal off the
entrance
(thura) to the Holy of the temple = the Maqom. For Joseph was a member of the
Council. He had asked for the "body of Jesus", but all that he got was "the
corpse"
from the cynical Pilate. But Jesus himself was raised from the dead and the
ecclesia
would be "his body" on earth. In the frightening vision of the future on
Sunday the
women see (a) that the temple structure will be destroyed and (b) that the
stone
before the entrance (thura) to the Holy Presence of God was removed once for
all -
the curtain was rent in two..

> Ted also wrote:
> >.., quite frankly, I find you

> > superimposing upon the text a haggadah template that the text itself just
> > does
> > not invite. Your appeal to ancient tradition (the author is John Mark of
> > Jerusalem, Petrine historicity reflected in the Gospel, etc.) as being
> > historically authentic is contrary to what my study of Christian origins
> > and
> > that of many other scholars have concluded is historically authentic. As
> much
> > as I regret it, I guess there is no alternative with respect to our
> > dialogue
> > with each other but to accept the fact that the hermeneutical chasm is so
> great
> > between us that we must come to the recognition that we finally have no
> > alternative but to agree to disagree.

Ted,
I am not 'superimposing upon the text a haggadah template'. The text of Mark
was
written as a Christian haggadah for the celebration of Pesach, in this case
commemorating the day of Pesach on which Jesus was crucified.
Up till now the interpretation of Mark's Gospel has reached the impasse
noted above
because Bible critique from the 19th century onward has not regarded the
Gospels as
basically first century Jewish documents but as first century Christian
documents in
a Hellenistic religious world including the Jewish religion. The assumption
was all
along that ever since Nicea we all know what Christians believed - whether or
not we
ourselves subscribe to that creed. That sort of Christianity was supposed to
have
begun de novo; it was defined generally speaking as a new religion, its books
called the New Testament. This new religion was therefore studied in the
context of
these other Hellenistic religion including what was called "Late Judaism or
Spät
Judentum". Thus the 'history of religions' school was born and its end result
was
Bultmann's call for demythologizing the Gospel. As a result regarding the all
important ending of the Gospels, we haven't come much farther than the
conclusion
that Mark was inventing a myth or that he wrote a rehash of an older myth or
was
reporting a historic discovery that Jesus' grave was empty. As late as 1970,
the
advice of Jewish scholars such as Montefiore and David Daube or Christian
scholars
like Bowman have been largely ignored by interpreters of Mark's ending. As a
result
the enormous variety of interpretations of the Gospels and the Epistles
remained
within the inner-christian perimeters. So Paul was generally seen as an
apostle to
the Gentiles, meaning that christian ecclesia's were supposed to have spring
up
spontaneously among non-Jews. Paul's adversaries were jewish christian,
emissaries
from James. He was not arguing with his fellow Jews of the synagogue but with
christian Jews of Jerusalem. Another example of this pre-WW II exegetical
approach
was the inner-christian divorce among interpreters: Catholics were claiming
Simon
Peter had served in Rome and was martyred there and Protestants denying this.
The
existence of the synagogue in the first century encompassing the large
majority of
Jews in the diaspora from Babylon to France and the emergance of synagogues
(called
'ecclesiae') within this Jewish population, were held at arm's length. In
fact, a
thorough knowledge of Hebrew and Hebrew literature was not thought to be
important
for Seminary students. (I am still discussing pre-war circumstances). Standard
apologetic and biased works like Kittel's Dictionary and Strack-Billerbeck
were used
in order to bring out the truth of the Gospels.
Only after the horrors of the Holocaust began to sink in, a new approach
to
first century Judaism has begun. Jewish studies flourish. Terms like haggadah,
halacha and midrash are no longer unfamiliar to young students of Scripture.
Hebrew
is studied by conservatives and liberals alike.
So the question of genre is all important just as the Judean identity of Mark
and
his readers 'In many societies one of the most important ways to define
social
roles is the production of texts according to the defined scheme of a genre'.
Genres change with the times and people may use genre schemes creatively for
their
own ends. Think of the pastor and the genre sermon, the lawyer and his plea,
the
professor and his oration. (I am quoting here the Dutch professor of 'Bible
Translation' L.J. de Vries, who is using here the concept of genre in Foley's
Anthropological Linguistics (1997).
So the question I raise is all important: Were Mark's readers Gentiles,
unfamiliar
with Jewish culture and ways of communication? Am I 'superimposing' an
approach
totally foreign to the Gospel or should we say that Bultmann cum suis simply
was not
interested in the historical situation of the Jewish people at a most
important
cross roads of their existence. After the disaster of 70, two traditions
emerged,
one is the Mishna, the other is the Gospel and the apostolic writings. The one
bitterly opposed to the other and vice versa. Should we not try to approach
the
Gospels by means of the method of communication familiar to both of them -
their
appeal to the Torah, their ways of celebrating Pesach and Shabuot and their
halacha,
the ethical rules deriving from it? Nicea was still far off - the ruination
of the
temple and the new exile was the bitter reality of the day. On the one hand,
you
agree with me, that canonical Mark was post-70 and that Mark's community
consisted
of Jews (rather Judeans) in somewhere in Galilee. On the other hand you
believe that
I am wrongly superimposing first century Jewish ways of communication. It is
a
contradiction I don't understand. If you want me to, I'll list a number of
indicators in Mark showing that he was indeed writing a post-70 Christian
haggadah
for the celebration of Pesach and Shabuot.

with regards,

Karel






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  • Re: Fw: [XTalk] Re: [Synoptic-L] Thesis: Mark Used Cross Gospel in 15:42-16:8, Pt.1, Karel Hanhart, 03/07/2002

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