MARKed - astonishing text variants

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:I do not understand why both of you are not a bit more friendly to my suggestion.
Well, it is certainly nothing personal. :cheers:

When I read your first post about a limited meaning of δὶς I really thought about it, and am still thinking about it.
The discussion started with the observation that the early textual tradition of Mark 14:30.68.72 is really damaged. There could be two different reasons: intentional corrections of the text or inadvertent errors by some early scribes. When we notice how damaged this textual tradition was, then, I think, the possibility of intentional corrections can not be ruled out.
I agree that the changes may have been intentional. In fact, I am pretty sure they were.
But it is clear that the original text must have contain a real problem which caused such intentional corrections.
This is what is not clear to me. To my mind, if the original text had either one consistent cock crow or two consistent cock crows (setting aside for the moment your perceived inconsistency regarding the meaning of δὶς), but the persons handling the text were accustomed to a different number of cock crows to signal the dawn, then the change may well have been made simply to assimilate it to its new cultural context. I have suggested that perhaps the text started with one cock crow, congenial to a Jewish context and to Mark 13.35, but that somebody changed it to two cock crows in order to better line up with the cultural expectations of readers of the same mind as the writers of the Greco-Roman texts which Brown lists. That is my preferred direction of change at this very moment, but I admit that it could hypothetically have gone in the other direction, from a Greco-Roman understanding to a more Jewish one. In either case, the textual tradition as we have it would be the result of both readings being current. This scenario has the advantage of evidence for both a single and a double cock crow having cultural meaning, and it has the advantage (to my way of thinking, at least) of putting authors and editors in the position of producing the two consistent texts (with one or two cock crows throughout) and scribes in the position of producing the inconsistent texts.

A variant on this scenario that I am seriously considering is that perhaps whoever added the second cock crow (to what we find in Sinaiticus) originally did not add the actual event of the first cock crow in Mark 14.68; the original purpose was simply to track down every instance of "cock crows" and turn it into "cock crows twice", so as to better represent the Greco-Roman notion of when the dawn arrives. (This is what we find in Vaticanus.) Then somebody later furnished the first crowing so as to be consistent. (This is what we find in Alexandrinus.)
During our discussion I noticed (contrary to my first assumptions) that the preferred reading variant contains such a problem, because - taken on the surface and with the “normal” meaning of "δὶς" as “twice” - the prophecy of Jesus (Mark 14:30) went wrong and I think it is no exaggeration to say that this would be a problem with the potential to cause an intentional correction of the text.
If somebody was inclined to think of this word in the same way you do, then yes, such an issue could have sparked a textual change, and that textual change could have, in combination with the original text, sparked the textual history we see today. I agree with this.

The sticking point for me is:
Naturally, it must be assumed, that some ancients understood it as a big problem and that this knowledge was later lost.
It is possibly because I myself do not actually see the same problem that you do (though I feel I completely understand and respect why you see such a problem) that I want evidence of these ancients who would have seen it as such.

For me, even after thinking about it a long time, I do not see δὶς as an issue in passages like this. I think that something cannot happen twice before it happens once, but I also think that it cannot happen twice until it happens for the second time. I do not regard the chronological placement of the first time as in any way relevant to the timing of the second time. I can try to prevent something from happening twice even if it has already happened once.

Now, I am not an ancient, and your hypothetical group of them may well have existed. But the scenario I outlined above still appeals to me more, simply because I have the evidence actually before my eyes of how certain ancients treated the issue of the cock crowing, and I do not have to hypothesize them against my own sensibilities on the meaning of δὶς.

But I am completely open to change my mind! It would not take much. Your hypothesis is attractive for its explanatory value. But do you think it explains the variants in the "mixed up" (inconsistent) texts like Vaticanus and Bezae better than the struggle to reconcile two consistent texts with different numbers of cock crows? Is there a variant or a pattern of variants in those manuscripts that you feel leans most directly in the direction of your hypothesis? It is possible I simply have not yet clocked your argument from the textual data itself.

Ben.
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Kunigunde Kreuzerin
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ben C. Smith wrote:If language were always created and used in perfectly logical ways, then I could probably follow you down this path. But I think that, in practice, "twice" is sometimes used as a synonym for "a second time" or "again".

First, In English: "Experience is the ability to see a mistake before it happens twice." I do not imagine that this line means that the trick is to figure things out before a mistake happens twice in immediate succession; I think that explicit allowance is being made for a mistake to be made once, but for the lesson to be learned before it happens a second time (or again).

Second, in ancient Greek: we encounter the expression "once and twice" (ἅπαξ καὶ δίς) fairly commonly. Were it "once or twice", it would not apply to the case at hand, but as it is "once and twice" the meaning, according to your strictly logical way of reading δίς, would have to be "a total of three times" (once plus twice = thrice; 1 + 2 = 3). But take 1 Kingdoms 17.39a, for example:

And he girt David with his sword over his coat; and he made trial walking with them once and twice [ἅπαξ καὶ δίς]....

Are we to understand that David tried walking about with arms and armor three times, once on its own account and then twice again in tandem somehow? Or are we to understand that David tried it once, and then tried it again (a second time)? I suspect the latter; do you not? And that is how translations such as Brenton's takes it:

And he girt David with his sword over his coat: and he made trial walking with them once and again....

Refer also to Deuteronomy 9.13; Nehemiah 13.20; 1 Maccabees 3.30; Philippians 4.16; 1 Thessalonians 2.18.
In German is no correct equivalent to “twice”, but „two times“ can be used in a few common phrases and short expressions also in the sense of “second time” or “again” or without the exact sense, also in connection with “three times”. For example
- „to make a mistake two times” means at the end also “again”
- “We discussed it two-three-times” means that we discussed it “a few times”.

But I think that this inexact sense is limited to common phrases and short expressions. When I add only few further informations, “two times” gets its exact sense in mostly all cases.

“Today we discussed it two times and yesterday three times” – In German every one would assume that I mean “two times” and “three times” in the exact sense of the words. It could be that there are very few exceptions.

But with the addition of the word “before” it is really really hard to imagine. I assume that in English and Koine Greek it is more or less the same.
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by iskander »

Twice is rare finding outside English, but translating from English to Spanish is simple.

30 —Te aseguro —le contestó Jesús— que hoy, esta misma noche,

antes de que el gallo cante por segunda vez, me negarás tres veces.
.. before the cock crows for the second time, you will deny me three times
http://www.biblestudytools.com/nvi/marcos/14.html


avant que le coq chante deux fois, tu me renieras trois fois.

avanti che il gallo abbia cantato due volte, mi rinnegherai tre volte
Last edited by iskander on Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

iskander wrote:KK, I am only interested in what the text is trying to say . This article of the CCC is what his followers are saying while they wait for the cock to crow again for a second time.
My impression is that in Mark’s story Peter and the disciples regress from disciples to disciples which lacks understanding to deserters of Jesus. But if Mark’s story is “true”, how could it be possible that the historical Cephas (or Peter) was in fact this great and prominent apostle of Jesus? I think this is Mark’s answer: Because of this little private unimportant prophecy.
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by iskander »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:
iskander wrote:KK, I am only interested in what the text is trying to say . This article of the CCC is what his followers are saying while they wait for the cock to crow again for a second time.
My impression is that in Mark’s story Peter and the disciples regress from disciples to disciples which lacks understanding to deserters of Jesus. But if Mark’s story is “true”, how could it be possible that the historical Cephas (or Peter) was in fact this great and prominent apostle of Jesus? I think this is Mark’s answer: Because of this little private unimportant prophecy.
The great apostle of Christianity was Paul who was a convert. In Mark, Peter is only a name that stands for the understanding of the disciples.
It is not a prophecy, it is only what a man believes will happen to his work when he is gone
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

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Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:But with the addition of the word “before” it is really really hard to imagine. I assume that in English and Koine Greek it is more or less the same.
For me it is really, really easy to imagine. I gave one example from English, and I have found others, so I think my instinct is probably correct on that score. I am happy to take your word for the opposite sense in the German. As for the Greek, I would love to have examples of "twice" being unable to mean "the second time", and in a manner consistent with Mark 14.30, before coming to a firm conclusion.

I agree with you on the meaning of the following...:

We did it once today and twice yesterday.

This really is a total of three times. The adverbs "today" and "yesterday" distribute the various times the thing was done. But I am unaware of an expression in English as follows:

We did it once and twice.

Greek has this expression, and it apparently means something similar to once or twice. But I do not recall ever hearing such a thing in English, which is undoubtedly why the translations take the Greek and translate it as "once and again".

As long as that Greek expression exists and means what I think it means, it proves that "twice" can be a synonym in Greek for "again" or "a second time". Whether there are cases in which "twice" cannot mean the same thing as "a second time" remains to be seen, right? You are still assuming, based on your own sensibilities, that such cases existed, or that people existed who would notice your discrepancy, I think. And your assumption may well be correct! It is just that I am not sure it is; therefore I still prefer other possibilities.
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Something else occurs to me, as well. Here is Mark 14.30:

30 And Jesus says to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a cock crows twice, you yourself will deny me three times.”

Now, let us imagine the verse as follows:

30 And Jesus says to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a cock crows a second time, you yourself will deny me three times.”

Might not this way of phrasing it, on your same logic, lead the reader to wonder at this point of the text: when did the cock crow the first time? Is it not the case that, when we hear of something being predicted to happen a second time, we tend to think that it has already happened once before (that is, before the prediction)? This would produce the sequence: first cock crow, prediction, denials, second cock crow, right?
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by Secret Alias »

All things begin to get solved when we abandon the silly notion that God somehow 'preserved' the original gospels for us. Mark is not the first gospel.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ObwyA ... em&f=false
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ben C. Smith wrote:For me it is really, really easy to imagine. I gave one example from English, and I have found others, so I think my instinct is probably correct on that score. I am happy to take your word for the opposite sense in the German.
As I said, in a few common phrases it is possible also in German. "before one makes the same mistake two times" is also a typical German phrase. In a German literary work from 1843 I have found also the expression "he must shoot once and twice, but the third shot ...". But I googled this ;) and it could be also an adaption of biblical style.
Ben C. Smith wrote:
We did it once and twice.

Greek has this expression, and it apparently means something similar to once or twice. But I do not recall ever hearing such a thing in English, which is undoubtedly why the translations take the Greek and translate it as "once and again".

As long as that Greek expression exists and means what I think it means, it proves that "twice" can be a synonym in Greek for "again" or "a second time". Whether there are cases in which "twice" cannot mean the same thing as "a second time" remains to be seen, right? You are still assuming, based on your own sensibilities, that such cases existed, or that people existed who would notice your discrepancy, I think. And your assumption may well be correct! It is just that I am not sure it is; therefore I still prefer other possibilities.
But this expression seems to be also a common phrase. I can assume the same in lyrical word-usage or slang and such things. But in a "normal" sentence?
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Re: MARKed - astonishing text variants

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Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:But this expression seems to be also a common phrase. I can assume the same in lyrical word-usage or slang and such things. But in a "normal" sentence?
I imagine the only way to tell for certain would be to find relevant examples of such "normal" sentences.
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