Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.

[Peter Kirby]

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.

Thanks for saying this, Ben. It is fundamentally very important. It's frequently skipped over due to convenience or blind spots, because it is a difficult question or something that people don't question, not because it is unimportant and should be skipped over.

On the other hand, you have to build up a picture of the genre of Mark, at least in part anyway (considering also, say, the historical context and reception history), from the details within Mark, so we haven't discarded this interesting detail even as we do take into consideration questions of genre. It feeds back into the question of genre, just as much as that question of genre affects our reading of the details. It's a bit of a mess, but that's how it is.

[Ulan]

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?

I'm afraid that this question is that intertwined with the original one that, while conceptually different, it affords you to answer the same questions to the text. So, again, the answer to this will fall in line with the answer you give to the question whether Alexander and Rufus were hints to the community or had some symbolic meaning. The answers don't have to match up 100%, but I would expect them to go into the same direction. Which means, the genre question mostly just shifts the problem around.

[neilgodfrey]

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.

The loud voice, the shout, thunder -- they seem to be important in extra-canonical texts for some reason I have not been able to fathom.

[neilgodfrey]

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?

Without some awareness of genre we don't know how to read a text. Mostly this happens without thinking -- we just know what a news genre is, a diary genre, a letter genre, a history genre, etc is and our reading frame of reference locks in immediately as appropriate to what we have in hand. Genre signals the author's intention for writing.

No text is fully sui generis re genre or it would be incomprehensible. (Or maybe that's evidence that Mark is sui generis?) But we do have authors of the day mixing genres, and it seems the synoptics are doing that, too.

Yes, without some grasp of genre we don't know how to read a text. Many "historical Jesus" scholars seem to make a conscious effort to avoid any direct attention to genre and work instead at "getting behind" the contents of the text. Like trying to understand the origins of a painting by peeling away the paint.

[Ulan]

Without some awareness of genre we don't know how to read a text.

Unfortunately, we decide on the genre mostly via how we read the text.

[neilgodfrey]

If the Gospel of Mark was written for a community so small that no-one else for whom anyone would want to write a gospel would know who Rufus and Alexander were, then would we expect it to have become the model for those subsequent gospels?

I find it difficult to think of the Gospel of Mark being written with such a limited readership in mind.

I wonder why an argument from ignorance is so widely regarded as the default view.

[neilgodfrey]

Without some awareness of genre we don't know how to read a text.

Unfortunately, we decide on the genre mostly via how we read the text.

True. But it does not have to be this way. There are serious genre studies and ways to assess genre.

Classicists have traditionally not been too careful about being too particular about the genres of the works they study -- genre is much more a serious question with "modern" literature. But with the gospels those failings have come back to bite us.

Most scholars seem to just assume that the gospels are biographical or historical genres (or close enough to the ancient equivalents of those). That assumption arises from the cultural baggage that has come with the gospels -- they present themselves as just that. Like Genesis presents itself as the authoritative account of the origin of the world and everything. Exodus presents itself authoritatively as the origin of the Law.

The voice of narrative authority is a powerful one.

[toejam]

^Neil, I would say it's no more an "argument from ignorance" than any other proposed solution. The question is about the relevance of their reference. I think most critical scholars would acknowledge "ignorance" on this question (even if many lean toward the historical view). The hypothesis that they were known figures at the time of the authorship makes good sense of it - better than, or at least on par with, the best alternate proposed solutions (which I agree would include a lost symbolism or interpolated verisimilitude). I don't see that the historical hypothesis is necessarily out of character with the gospel, given that the gospel also references several other known historical figures - i.e. "This isn't just any old Simon of Cyrene - but the father of Alexander and Rufus!". Assuming that Alexander and Rufus were historical people, we don't know what their relationship to the Markan community was. They need not be members of a small community.

Personally, I might put it this way, if I were forced to bet:

Genuine historical nugget? 40%
Lost symbolism? 25%
Interpolated verisimilitude? 25%
Other 10%

So in my view, the the 'genuine historical nugget' hypothesis makes the best sense of the standard proposed solutions, but overall it's not probable. It's probably not a genuine historical nugget.

[neilgodfrey]

^Neil, I would say it's no more an "argument from ignorance" than any other proposed solution.

That still leaves it as an argument from ignorance. I don't dispute that the other proposed solutions are also speculative.

I would argue that there are more reasons to justify some spec more than others. (I don't know what evidence we have to lend any support to the "they were known to the community" thesis.) But they are all speculative attempts to explain something we simply don't know.

[Ulan]

Without some awareness of genre we don't know how to read a text.

Unfortunately, we decide on the genre mostly via how we read the text.

True. But it does not have to be this way. There are serious genre studies and ways to assess genre.

Well, yes. I have seen some of these genre studies and also read many of your blog posts regarding this. What I took away from that discussion is an admittedly very unsatisfactory, but simple: We don't know. The texts have elements of legends, of biographies, of "novels". They are somewhere in between. Which brings us back to square one.

The only obvious considerations are that we are dealing with religious texts that were written for a specific purpose, and that the gospel authors had no qualms changing them because of this. It's obvious that completely fictional parts are included (at least all scenes that cannot have had any witnesses by default). This doesn't help us with the question whether the texts also contain historical kernels. Maybe, maybe not.