Kata Markon

["L. J. Swain" <larry.swain AT wmich.edu>]

JFAlward AT aol.com wrote:
> 

> In Mark 13:32-37, Jesus tells the story of the type of failure servants must
> not be guilty of:  closing their eyes while the master is away.  There is 
> not
> the slightest hint in this parable that Mark wanted the readers to think of
> the servants' failure in terms of their testing God. 

No one has claimed so, so the value of this is nil.

> No one will deny that
> the second parable at Mark 32-42 was meant by Mark to read in light of the
> first parable, so since there is zero reference to testing God, how could
> Mark ever have expected his readers to impute that meaning to Mark 14:38, as
> Gibson thinks they should have?  

Plenty of fodder here.  1) Many would deny that Mark 14:32-42 should be
read in light of Mark 13:32-37.  That the two sections are connected by
words such as sleep and commands to watch does not mean that one is to
become the interpretive lense of the other.  2) how could Mark's
audience have arrived at the meaning Jeffrey suggests?  By reading the
text.  Unlike Mk 13:32-47, Mk 14:32 tells us to Watch and Pray so that
you not enter into a test, the words are quite explicit.  Interpreters
have taken this as a reflexive or a passive even though there is no
indicator there to do so....thus it is the disciple who is being
tested.  But Jeffrey has shown that every other occurrance of this
construction in the LXX means that the one being warned is the active
testor, the object of the testing.  He then asks the next logical
question, if Jesus is warning the disciples against testing, what or
whom are they testing?  Since Mark's readers knew Greek, and knew the
LXX, it is likely that the common and typical LXX usage and its meaning
is the one they would have heard at this juncture.
3) If Mk 13:32-37 and 14:38 are indeed to be connected, it makes sense
to see the latter completing the former.  In the former as you point out
the hearer is warned to keep watching for the parousia, keep awake. 
Here, where they fall asleep, and as you point out do exactly what they
were told not to do, and Jesus tells them, Watch and pray, but he
doesn't stop there but: SO THAT YOU NOT EMBARK UPON A TEST of X.  In
short, 14:38 completes the idea of 13:37.  QED.



>Did he expect his audience to undertake the
> comprehensive rumination, and extensive and deep probing of the Greek, while
> reading between the lines, that Jeffrey Gibson has done? 

Rather than remark on the unnecessarily pejorative nature of this
comment, I will point out again that Mark's audience knew Greek, and
would have been familiar with the LXX, thus when they heard 14:38 they
would have heard something different than what we have heard over the
last 1500 years.  The question is Joe, can you point to other evidence
that Jeffrey has misunderstood the LXX material?  That there are other
constructions of this type out there that suggest something
different?    Until you deal with that evidence, all the sneering in the
world will not remove the validity of Jeffrey's observations.


 Of course not.
> Mark would have wanted them to see and accept the direct, surface meaning of
> the words he had Jesus speak.  Why make it hard on his audience?


He didn't, you see he used language his audience was familiar with from
the LXX and set it in a context in which the meaning would be
unmistakable.  It is the modern meaning that is difficult to make sense
of grammatically.

 
> The message in the sleeping servants parable in Mark 13 is very simple:  
> Keep
> awake while the master is away.  Since this parable is obviously the
> antecedent to the parable Mark tells of the sleeping disciples, the absence
> of any reference to testing God is strong evidence against Gibson's
> interpretation.

Actually, no, its absence in Mk 13 is really only evidence of its
absence in Mark 13.  Even if we posit a connection between these two
because of the similarity in vocabulary and theme, we must also note the
great differences in context between them as well, and that difference
in context only means that what is absent from Mk 13 is absent from Mk
13, it does nothing to change the meaning of what is present in Mk 14.
 
> In constructing his parable, Mark was mindful that Jesus was already about
> seventy years late in keeping his promise to return with the angels and the
> trumpets in the heavens.  

You date Mark that late?  Surely you jest?  I myself am quite happy with
a late 60s date for Mark, 66-69, which means if Jesus was crucified
between 29 and 36, at most he's 40 years late (d. in 29, Mark written in
69, 40 years).  But this is a minor point.


People were starting to wonder whether Jesus was
> ever coming back, and were losing their faith.  Naturally, Mark would have
> wanted to warn them not let their eyes be closed to the message of God, and
> to be patient and continue to wait for Jesus' return, and not be tempted to
> abandon their faith (close their eyes).

Hence, the words and metaphor of Mk 13, they serve that purpose well.  
 
> To present this warning to his audience, Mark told them a story about the
> disciples doing exactly the thing that Jesus warned against in his sleeping
> servants parable:  closing their eyes while Jesus was away, because the
> temptation to do so was so great.  The message would not be lost on the
> audience:  they should keep their eyes open, waiting for Jesus to return,
> even though they may be tempted to abandon him. This interpretation is so
> simple, so sensible, so direct, that it is very hard to understand how 
> anyone
> could think that it is more complicated than this, no matter what they think
> they see in the underlying Greek.

And makes the error that Jeffrey has sought to correct: misreading the
Greek. You see, now that Jeffrey has combed the LXX and looked at every
instance where the phrase and found taht in every negative and positive
instance the phrase means that the subject of the clause is the one who
is testing something or someone else, not the one being tested.  You can
not simply brush that basic linguistic argument aside as if it did not
exist, and your reading simply attempts to brush it aside and ignore it,
rather than dealing with the evidence.

> What I believe Gibson and others have done is to construct a very convoluted
> "how-it-can-be-much-more-complicated-than-people-think" scenario based
> largely on a possible interpretation of a single Greek word.  They see 
> things
> that have not been seen even by the greatest scholars of past centuries, and
> was beyond the understanding of all of those translators that Sid Martin
> mentioned. To accept their "testing God" interpretation, one is forced to
> abandon the far more natural and sensible one, and to ignore completely the
> fact that the antecedent parable has nothing whatever to do with testing.
> Basically, these folks are blinding themselves to the obvious simplicity of
> Mark's message, seeing things with their hearts--not their minds--in the
> manner of the "Bible code" people, who need the Bible to contain messages
> hidden to everyone but them.

This is a specious argument.  If you were really serious about this a)
you would read only Irenaeus and Origen and a few other patristic
writers, for they would be the only authority you would need....how dare
you question them, for these great scholars of past centuries didn't see
as much as we do now in many ways.  Further, Jeffrey's account is based
on teh use of an entire phrase, a fairly common one, and does not hinge
on the interpretation of a single word.  I know there is no convincing
you Joe, and paragraphs such as this Kuchinskyesque diatribe give me
pause to consider why I bother.


 
> Now, we know what Larry Swain thinks about this simpler interpretation; he
> rejects it, evidently, as does Gibson.  Now, Gibson's other supporter on 
> this
> issue in this forum (the only other one I know about), Mark Goodacre, has 
> yet
> to present his views, at least not since I first offered my observations to
> the forum, so let me ask Mark this:  Do you believe with Gibson that 14:38 
> is
> NOT a request by Jesus that his disciples pray that they do not fall
> asleep--essentially pray that they do not lose the contest being body and
> mind?  Do you instead believe with Gibson that 14:38 is a request by Jesus
> that they pray that they do not test God?  If the latter, what do you do 
> with
> Jesus' reference to the body being weak, and how do you explain the fact 
> that
> the antecedent parallel seems to have nothing to do with testing God, and
> only to do with staying awake--showing patience--while the master is away?

Mere appeal to authority?  If Mark comes down in favor of Jeffrey's
reading, does this mean that you'll fess up and accept Jeffrey's
conclusions?   The reference to the flesh's weakness fits in well with
Jeffrey's reading: particularly if we are using the terms pneuma and
sarc more in a Pauline fashion, as you do Joe.

Regards, 

Larry (owner of a KJV printed in the USA) Swain