Kata Markon

[Michael Turton <turtonm AT yahoo.com>]

To do
> other than that is to be 
> guilty of the fallacy of assuming our conclusion and
> then restating it as if 
> the issue is solved.

I think you overread there (my fault).....
 
> In the process of writing your historical
> commentary, what cotrolled factors 
> have you established or found in the text that allow
> you to conclude that 
> "Mark never errs," or that "Homer may nod, but Mark
> never sleeps"?

....the AMark's gospel is a complex literary work, and
sometimes commentators are apt to reach for "error"
when perhaps they missed how AMark had sent them a
signal. For example, take the reference to Abiathar in
Mark 2, the "wrong" priest. Markan hypertextuality is
Temple focused -- and Abiathar, among other things,
carried the Ark of the Covenant to the Temple in
Jerusalem. Another trait of the author of Mark is that
he sprinkles little clues to what passages he is
paralleling in other places in the text. Abiathar pops
up in 2 Sam 15-16 (carrying the Ark back to the Temple
as David flees), which AMark seems to parallel in the
Gethsemane scene later in the Gospel. 

So, on the whole, when I encounter something in Mark
that at least some commentators consider an "error" I
am inclined to withhold that judgment until I have
sussed out the (possible/potential) literary context.
That is all I meant. I was probably just too
rhetorical. I apologize.

Rikki Watts writes
>I suppose it is just faintly possible that these
>major teachers/thinkers of the church who knew and
>spoke the very Greek in which Mark was originally
>written and who were heirs to the larger oral
>tradition of the gospel, to a man completely
>misunderstood him. 

No doubt they missed this in the same way they missed
that Matt and Luke had copied Mark, and the same way
they missed some ten thousand other things that modern
commentators have built two hundred years of modern
critical scholarship on. 

I am not saying that Rick's position is right (or
wrong). I would prefer that more information be
gathered/presented. Certainly a cry of "How could they
have missed it?" is more of an emotional outburst than
a serious refutation of Rick's position on how Mark
1:1-2 should be translated. As you wrote:

Rikki Watts
>However, the expression (kathws) gegraptai occurs
>some 65 times in the NT and with only four exceptions
>(Mk 9.12; 14.21; Lk 24.26; Mt 26.24) it is followed
>by a scriptural citation, and even in the four
>exceptions the basic content of the scripture is 
>included.

Two of your exceptions are in Mark. Further, in both
9:12 and 14:21 no scripture is cited nor apparently
referred to, though Powery (JBS 4/1 (January 2004)
1-22) noted that avpokaqistanei may refer to Mal 3:23
-- note that Mal 3 is part of the context here as
well. Powery adds:

"In the Markan narrative, of the 15 occurrences of
introductory formulae, a precursor text follows 12
times.47 Basically 20% of these occurrences are left
without any specific scriptural content. Since it is
much more common in Mark to expect a scriptural
reference following the indicator, most scholars offer
reasonable suggestions based on the surrounding
literary and historical contexts. With sensitivity to
the narrative, this study suggests, however, that such
educated guesses may not be necessary. Introductory
formulae (e.g., "just as it is written") serve as
forceful rhetorical indicators on their own."

Hope this helps.

Michael


=====
Michael Turton
AFL Dept 
Chaoyang University
Taiwan Site
http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/teach_index.html
Sri Lanka site
http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/lanka/lankindex.html


        
                
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