Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.

[Peter Kirby]

Not exactly a huge threat here as to whether the observation 'survives' as an interesting point to the Gospel of Mark, just as the reference in Mark 15:21 is itself interesting.

To be clear, it was not the observation itself that I doubted might survive, but rather the symmetry. The original chart mentioned a similar odd pattern structure (2 parents and 4 children expressed 3-fold) and called it a mirror-like reflection; correspondingly, this chart also had one set of names expressed once with another set of names expressed twice in both columns (1+2=3, for the threefold pattern). The new chart has each set of names expressed twice in the left column (2+2=4), but one set of names expressed once and the other expressed thrice in the right column (1+3=4). The result is no longer mirror-like. I say that the original chart tried for more symmetrical precision than the text of Mark warrants; that is all. Yes, the overall observation is still interesting, and may mean something.

Sure, fair enough.

The proposed symmetry may remain, however, if it is examined on the level of the people named, rather than mechanically by references to them.

This is what I meant by:

I guess the most relevant thing to be said in this context is that the same parents/children are being named

[Ben C. Smith]

Right. The two parents and four children are still there in each case (in each column). That remains.

[Secret Alias]

If Mark wrote his gospel to people who knew Alexander and Rufus, how does anything the Basilideans do later (even if only a little bit later) alter what came before?

Some (more or less) random notes:

Why does the comment in Mark have to have been written by Mark? The aside may well have been done at the same time as the Basilidean tradition or as a reaction against it. Clearly the orthodox tradition of Mark which understood Simon to have carried the Cross did not understand him to have been crucified in place of Jesus or 'as' Jesus. It is equally difficult to ascribe the Basildeans as developing the tradition that Simon was 'substituted' for Jesus from our gospel. Someone is lying about, misrepresenting or 'correcting' the other tradition. I am not saying we have to believe the followers of Basilides but it really is a case of 'either/or' where our Mark cannot necessarily be accepted as the original text of the gospel. Six of one, half dozen of the other. The comment wasn't picked up by Matthew or Luke either. It could be a late addition to the text to deny the implication that Simon died on the Cross as a young man (implicit in the Romans deciding to take him to carry - hard to believe an old man would be chosen).

Perhaps more significant is the way Mark at first introduces Simon:

"a passerby, Simon, a Cyrenian" (paragonta tina Simona Kyrenaion)

If this stands alone, it shows he did not expect his readers to know Simon personally. This is the way the other texts preserve the episode. By adding, however, that Simon was "the father of Alexander and Rufus" he shows that he expected his readers to know Simon's two sons. On the surface it appears that Alexander and Rufus may have been members of the Markan community. But there can be argued to be a disconnect - first introducing Simon as a paragonta and then suddenly by way of addition and qualification the exact opposite is manifested.

Moreover I strongly suspect that Simon's original epithet was a deliberately bad translation of 'Hebrew.' Notice that in Psalm 129:8 = הָעֹבְרִ֗ים. Hebrew: a Hebrew = עברי.

If we look at the period 'Hebrew' tends to have been used to mean 'proselyte' (cf. the Gospel of Philip). My guess then is that there is some inner tension between Simon being at first identified merely as a 'passerby' and then suddenly he is known to the community. Indeed if he was explicitly identified originally as a proselyte and this became corrupted. Κυρηναῖον may well be (although less likely) a corruption for Κυριακός.

[neilgodfrey]

Neil, I like that chart of correspondences. I would have linked the spirit coming out of Jesus in Mark 15.37 with the spirit going into Jesus in Mark 1.10; the Greek morphemes are εξ and εις, which are antonyms.

With that link, the baptism contains the following parallels to the death (most of these you already have; it is just nice to see them all in one place):

1. John the baptist is an Elijah figure, and onlookers misunderstand the words of Jesus on the cross as an appeal to Elijah.
2. The heavens are rent open at the baptism, the veil at the death (same Greek verb!).
3. The spirit goes into Jesus at the baptism and goes out of him at his death.
4. Jesus is acknowledged as the son of God in both cases.
5. Baptism equals death in some mystical way (as you note with regard to Mark 10.38).

Ben.

Thanks, Ben. The symmetry of the spirit/breath into/expelled is in another row in the original table: http://vridar.info/xorigins/storyechoes1.htm Peter has selected only those bookends that relate to the patterns of names. The original table contains about 45 rows of bracketing motifs.

Some have said that the gospel is really a Passion Narrative with a string of beads tagged onto the front to form a prequel narrative. I don't know. The crucifixion is said within the gospel itself to be a baptism so we have two baptisms bookending the gospel. Recall the studies arguing that Mark was a "manual" for baptism candidates.

Or take baptism as the central message of Paul's gospel -- the importance of knowing nothing but Christ and him crucified (baptized).

[Ben C. Smith]

Thanks, Neil. That linked table is the one I was complimenting you for. However, I still do not see the spirit-in, spirit-out parallel on that table. I have searched for spirit, out, and 1.10, but no luck.

[Secret Alias]

And the carrying of the cross is too significant a detail to allow for this vague reference to Simon. Jesus defines the true disciple as one who carries his cross. This is clearly an example of Chekhov's gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun In Clement's gospel (= older version of Mark presumably) the parallel section has "Unless ye hate father and mother, and besides your own life, and unless ye bear the sign (τὸ σημεῖον)." σημεῖον does not only sound like Simon in Hebrew and Aramaic it is even closer. The form used for Simon in the catalog of Marutha is Simeon - viz. "And calling him the secret power of the creator, and because he obeyed the Father who sent him for our redemption, his name was called Sem'on and named him Simon." But I will have to look at Voorbus more carefully before I make any more definitive statement on etymology.

[Secret Alias]

But you can at least begin to see that Simon being crucified rather than Jesus has an apparent theological dimensions. I suspect Jesus 'went into' Simon and Simon saw his old self crucified on the Cross (although Simon was ultimately only imagining all of these transfers of bodies). Yet the end result (still preserved in the Islamic pseudepigrapha) in some form acknowledges Jesus escaped persecution by assuming Simon's shape. Not sure how this fits in Clement's variant 'sign' reading. But there it is.

[neilgodfrey]

Thanks, Neil. That linked table is the one I was complimenting you for. However, I still do not see the spirit-in, spirit-out parallel on that table. I have searched for spirit, out, and 1.10, but no luck.

You're right. I misremembered what I had in my table from years back.

The closest I come to that is

1.26: The unclean spirit came out with the cry of a loud voice

against

15.37: Jesus breathed his last (ex-spirited) with a loud shout

Yes, the spirit possessing Jesus at baptism and then "ex'ing" his "spirit" at death is omitted. I think now I have long found myself stumped at seeing how to pin down the echo in 15:37 there. But your point about the opposing prepositions does take us closer to that match.

[Ben C. Smith]

The loud voice as you have it in Mark 1.26; 5.7; and 15.34 is a good match, too (same two words in the Greek all three times); I tend to see all of the stuff having to do with the unclean spirits, though, as kind of a secondary match, support for the big-time matches at the baptism and the death; the transfiguration also figures (pun intended) in here, since it, like the baptism, has a voice from heaven. YMMV.

[Ben C. Smith]

Having now looked over most of the links that Peter gave, it occurs to me that what one gets out of the reference to Alexander and Rufus (and probably also that to Joseph and James) seems to depend greatly, perhaps even entirely, on what one already thinks of the gospel of Mark.

If one is already prone to spotting codes and allegories and complicated, deliberate cultural symbols all over Mark, then of course one is going to wonder what secret message Mark was enlisting Alexander and Rufus to deliver to his readership. If one is already prone to thinking of Mark as a collector, inventor, and elaborator of traditional stories that have been floating around about this fellow named Jesus, then of course the notion that Mark identified two people by their children makes sense as employing those children to point out a link between his readership and some of the characters in the story.

Earlier on this thread Peter wrote:

I am guessing it can be admitted that the idea that the men Alexander and Rufus were known to the expected audience of the Gospel of Mark (because they were part of that community, or at least one of them were) is a pill that is not so hard to swallow. It may be the single best explanation of this datum, taken by itself.

But after reading a lot of comments on those threads, not to mention this one, I am not so sure of this. It seems to me that adherents to one of those Mark-is-super-symbolic readings actually do find this solution a hard pill to swallow; it is as if such a mundane historical flourish is beneath the author, or as if a touch of this kind of historical realism is the last thing we ought to be looking for in such a book.

Those who tend to regard Mark as a compiler of traditional materials, on the other hand, seem to find the ciphers and secrets a hard pill to swallow.

On the old IIDB/FRDB forum I used to advocate doing our level best about identifying the genre of Mark before evaluating theories of this or that notion about individual details of the text. And I am thinking that I was probably right. If we start with Mark as sui generis, forging new paths in intertextual symbology, then Alexander and Rufus may mean one set of things; if we start with Mark as some kind of ancient biography (however inventive or even fraudulent), then Alexander and Rufus probably do not come with a lot of symbolic baggage. Other starting points may yield other possible outcomes.

What think ye? Is identifying the genre (or at least some discussion that fulfills the same role as identifying the genre) of Mark the first step, or can it be skipped?

Ben.