Kata Markon

["Professor L.W. Hurtado" <L.Hurtado AT ed.ac.uk>]

A few coments in response to John Lupia's email earlier this week:
1) Qumran 7Q5 is NOT a fragment of Mark (as has been shown by 
scholars for 20 yrs or so since the identification was first 
proposed).  E.g., Fee, Gordon D. "Some Dissenting Notes on 7Q5 = 
Mk. 6:52-53." Journal of biblical literature 92 (1973): 109-12.  More 
recently:  Puech, E. "Des fragments grecs de la Grotte 7 et le Nouveau 
Testament?  7Q4 et 7Q5, et le papyrus Magdalen grec 17 = P64." Revue 
Biblique 102, no. 4 (1995): 570-84;Gundry, Robert H. "No Nu in Line 2 of 
7Q5:  A Final Disidentification of 7Q5 with Mark 6:52-53." JBL 118 (1999): 
698-707.  We should really lay this chestnut to rest.
2) Lupia assumes (incorrectly) that early Christians used scrolls for 
transmission of their scriptures and other revered texts.  The extant 
evicence indicates that they overwhelmingly and programmatically 
preferred the codex:  see, e.g., Roberts, Colin H. Manuscript, Society and 
Belief in Christian Egypt. London: Oxford University Press, 
1979;Roberts, Colin H. and T. C. Skeat. The Birth of the Codex. London: 
Oxford University Press, 1983;Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in 
the Early Church:  A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale 
Univ. Press, 1995.  So, a theory of Mark having a lost ending that 
depends upon a final bit of a scroll going missing is fatally flawed.
3) The theory also presumes that there was ONE scroll that circulated 
without being copied until it began to fall apart.  From the earliest, 
however, it's clear that Mark circulated widely and influentially (esp. 
shown in helping to generate and shape Matt & Luke within a decade or 
so).  Again, bingo, fatal flaw in the theory.
4) James Kelhoffer's recent thorough study of the Markan "long ending" 
shows that it is a secondary scribal creation drawing upon material in the 
other canonical gospels, and that it was probably circulating by ca. 120 
CE.  The most likely explanation for it is that, once the other gospels 
began to circulate along with/beside Mark, the Markan ending became 
perceived as problematic, stark by comparison.  
5) Assumptions about Mark's ending must be based on the best exegesis 
of Mark 16:1-8, which, I with other contend, does NOT present the 
women as disobeying the orders of the "young man", and is NOT an 
account ending in failure.  Rather, the women only avoid speaking to 
ANYONE ELSE than those to whom they were told to go; see, e.g., 
Catchpole, David R. "The Fearful Silence of the Women At the Tomb:  A 
Study in Markan Theology." Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 18 
(1977): 3-10; et alia. Intended (first-century Christian) readers are 
expected to know traditions that the 11 WERE restored by the risen 
Christ (there is no other tradition in the first century material!).
Larry Hurtado
 

L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: (0)131-650-8920
Fax: (0)131-650-6579
E-mail:  L.Hurtado AT ed.ac.uk