Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrier

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Ulan
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by Ulan »

Ben C. Smith wrote:
Solo wrote:The only reason that I can think why the AE is a problem is that - if true - it decimates the thesis of the early Christian community in Jerusalem that preached Christ crucified.
The more I have considered the ending of Mark over the years, the more convinced I have become that the original ending has been lost to us, and that the abrupt ending is too abrupt to be the originally intended ending. And that judgment has nothing to do with anything you wrote in that sentence.
Except if it really was some kind of (proto?)-gnostic gospel that was supposed to be followed up by an oral revelation of the mystery, whether it was something like Secret Mark, John 21 or whatever. Of course, that doesn't really clash with your statement in its basic sense that something got lost. This only explains why this could be the intended ending.
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by MrMacSon »

.
I think this is a significant statement -
Solo (2nd paragraph) wrote:
The fact of the matter is that Mark's text (even in the damaged form that reaches us) is an important historical witness that the coming together of the Paulines and Petrines, to borrow Baur's naming convention, did not happen until after the earliest canonical gospel was written. The "appearances" of Jesus 'post-mortem' to disciples date from Matthew, who in this wise sought (and succeeded in a spectacular fashion) to unseat Paul's supreme apostolic authority in the proto-Christian communities, and substitute it with the remake of the Mark's Twelve, headed by Peter. It was Matthew who de-gnosticized Mark.

Best, Jiri --@ http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 175#p54175
I'd like to be presumptuous & modify the first sentence of Solo/Jiri's first paragraph from

to
  • ' - if true - [the AE] decimates the thesis [that] the early Christian community [had] preached Christ crucified.'

The rest of that 1st paragraph, expanded -
  • "The intent behind "καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν" ("did not say anything to anyone") in 16:8 is crystal clear: the annunciation did not reach the disciples. They do not understand, and resist the idea of resurrection ever since Caesarea Philippi. They simply scatter in fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy (14:27).

    "Peter did not even hear Jesus' saying he is going to "precede" them to Galilee that comes next. They did not "hear" the gospel (because they did not have faith), the women do not deliver the message to them, i.e. the news of resurrection finally arrives to them (or their disciples) only through Mark's writing. Any other "ending" of Mark argues with, and bastardizes the original plan of the narrative."
.
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Adam wrote:That "lost ending" is not lost to us if
IT'S JOHN 21! (Moat of it, the source under it.)
That is certainly a live option. And it is an option that demonstrates, even if mistaken, the falsity of the following statement:
Solo wrote:The intent behind "καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν" ("did not say anything to anyone") in 16:8 is crystal clear: the annunciation did not reach the disciples. They do not understand and resist the idea of resurrection ever since Caesarea Philippi. They simply scatter in fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy (14:27). Peter did not even hear Jesus' saying he is going to "precede" them to Galilee that comes next. They did not "hear" the gospel (because they did not have faith), the women do not deliver the message to them, i.e. the news of resurrection finally arrives to them (or their disciples) only through Mark's writing.
To leap from the women failing to deliver the news to the disciples hearing of the resurrection only through Mark's writing is a fallacy. Another option is glaringly obvious: the women failed to deliver the message, but Jesus appeared to the disciples anyway, even after they have given up and gone back to their former way of life (John 21.2-3; Peter 14.59-60). The disciples are surprised (John 21.7) and ashamed (Luke 5.8), precisely because the women did not tell them about the empty tomb, and this is the first time the resurrection is made apparent to them.

(In Acts, Jesus appears to Saul, and Saul needs no women delivering any messages to him. If Jesus wants to make an appearance, then by Jove he is going to make an appearance, even if the recipient has been kicking against the pricks.)

I am not at all sure this is the correct reconstruction; but it is a plausible one, and it ought not to be skipped over when considering the options.

Another option, to my mind, is that John 21 and Luke 5 (and probably Peter 14) present sanitized versions of an original ending in which Jesus appears to the disciples in order to reject them for their unbelief and move the needle on the meter of Christian culture decidedly toward "gentile" and away from "Jew".

Ben.
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by Solo »

Ben C. Smith wrote:
Adam wrote:That "lost ending" is not lost to us if
IT'S JOHN 21! (Moat of it, the source under it.)
That is certainly a live option. And it is an option that demonstrates, even if mistaken, the falsity of the following statement:
Solo wrote:The intent behind "καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν" ("did not say anything to anyone") in 16:8 is crystal clear: the annunciation did not reach the disciples. They do not understand and resist the idea of resurrection ever since Caesarea Philippi. They simply scatter in fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy (14:27). Peter did not even hear Jesus' saying he is going to "precede" them to Galilee that comes next. They did not "hear" the gospel (because they did not have faith), the women do not deliver the message to them, i.e. the news of resurrection finally arrives to them (or their disciples) only through Mark's writing.
To leap from the women failing to deliver the news to the disciples hearing of the resurrection only through Mark's writing is a fallacy.
Ben, I love our little skirmishes. I remember many of them from the time of Carrier's 'Freethinkers' forum' and I have enjoyed your POV very much. I must say though that you do remind me of my University teacher of Philosophy, a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, who tried to convince us (and most likely himself) that what he believed was not given by an ideological blueprint to which he was subscribed but by simple "down-to-earth common sense". It rarely was. Mostly his reasoning fully coincided with what one heard on the radio.

You say: "To leap from the women failing to deliver the news to the disciples hearing of the resurrection only through Mark's writing is a fallacy". That is an ipse dixit, or "so he said", a statement that does not have to be reasoned out, or even explained, because the "authority" spake. We have later gospels where the word gets out to the disciples, and so we a classic Christian article of faith and try to sell it as "down-to-earth common sense". So says Ben, although he will deny saying that.

The point I argue here is that the intent written into that sentence is categorical, so final in fact, that anything that would come after, trying to qualify it or excise it, would look un-Markan, and argue with him.
Another option is glaringly obvious: the women failed to deliver the message, but Jesus appeared to the disciples anyway, even after they have given up and gone back to their former way of life (John 21.2-3; Peter 14.59-60). The disciples are surprised (John 21.7) and ashamed (Luke 5.8), precisely because the women did not tell them about the empty tomb, and this is the first time the resurrection is made apparent to them.
This "option" is available to certain forms of faith, namely those which consider themselves "infallible". Other forms of faith would realize immediately the difficulties with imposing John's or Luke's theology on the earliest gospel's ending. These versions came later and reflect a different stage in the development of the new faith, and a much larger tent which in their time embraced factions that were previously at loggerheads with each other (i.e. Mark’s and Matthew’s communities).

Much of the early history of the church, say from the middle of the second century on, is consumed by the idea of unity, and anything that would threaten the project of a universal (Catholic) church would have to be proscribed. The self-understanding of Christians would be absolutely tied to the prevailing contemporary theology of the Church, which was partly established by the councils but mostly reflected the politics of the church hierarchy. This is what stands behind the Vincent de Lerins 5th century self-defining formula of the faith as “that which was believed, from the beginning, everywhere and by all”. Unfortunately, this picture of church unity, projected backwards, is flawed historically. Paul Tillich said that the church in this wise cut itself off from its own roots. After the fall of Montanism, the church had no longer any idea what Christian living in the Last Days meant to the early believers, and the Holy Spirit animated through the Paraclete gave way to hollowed out litanies. By the fourth century, the idea of the Church founded by a promised spontaneous falling of the Holy Spirit on the mass of ecstatics at the Pentecost, became so embarrassing to the higher echelons that Eusebius skipped it in his Church History. NT scholarship needs to get away from this still dominant idea of a Christian monolith out of Jerusalem with Paul as an afterthought. Nothing will be produced by it other than variations of the same fairytale.
(In Acts, Jesus appears to Saul, and Saul needs no women delivering any messages to him. If Jesus wants to make an appearance, then by Jove he is going to make an appearance, even if the recipient has been kicking against the pricks.)
This is a puzzling analogy, Ben. Again, what has been said above applies. You seem to think that because Mark and Acts are two books of the canon, their writers are simply two interchangeable sheep in De Lerins' flock. It was not so.
I am not at all sure this is the correct reconstruction; but it is a plausible one, and it ought not to be skipped over when considering the options.
I am not saying that it should be skipped. I just fail to see its being inspired by anything else other than "incredulity" at the way Mark really ends. The Abrupt Ending is too abrupt, you say. To which, someone may say, "that's a pretty abrupt verdict, if you ask me".

That said, there are some apparently sophisticated objections to Mark intending to apparently stop at 16:8. And they come from people who reject the SE & LE as textually imponderable as Mark's work. An example you may find here.

Let me address the most salient point of Robert Stein's 'Theory That Mark's Intended Ending Is Missing'(starts on page 89):

Stein believes that the pattern of fulfilled Jesus 'prophecies' makes it difficult to credit that Jesus would not manage to fulfil his word to meet the disciples in Galilee.

Stein is of course thinking de Lerins' maxim, and from that point of view I agree, it would have been quite impossible to end his gospel in the manner AE ends.

But the argument falls as soon as you look at it from the specific Markan point of view. Would in Mark's milieu not allowing the disciples to hear the news, cause Jesus' most important prophecy to go unfulfilled? We know of course that from the later church's point of view the ending was judged deficient and the text was expanded in several attempts to deal specifically with this deficiency. But is it possible that Mark himself perceived the end that way, and bridged the chasm between the disciples and the gospel ? It is possible but not at all probable.

This is because in Mark's writing, the disciples not only do not get "resurrection", they frighten of the idea (and its demonstration on the lake and on the mountain) and in one instance, Peter's unsuccessful attempt to talk Jesus out of it at Caesarea Philippi, violently resist it. In the gospel, the subject of the Son Man's rising is broached in 8:31, 9:9, 9:31, 10:34 and finally with Jesus using first person singular, in 14:28. In In all these instances, the disciples do not know what Jesus is talking about, discussing it among themselves (9:10), and afraid to ask Jesus (9:32), misapprehending his "secret" kingdom (Zebs in 10:35-40), and finally Peter "not hearing" (14:28-29) the part that Jesus would go "before them" to Galilee after he has risen. All of this is consistent with the shocking abrupt ending.

What does it mean ? By all appearances, the disciples' incomprehension of the prototype of Messiah who would be killed and rise after three days, is given by their unfamiliarity with the "gospel" which closely relates to "rising from the dead" and belongs exclusively to "faith". Mark's text (like Paul's) proclaims "faith in resurrection". This is not a fact, or Easter "event", of which the writers know nothing (1 Co 15:17, Mk 4:3-20). Also for Mark's community faith was something that separated them from everyone else, and that would include the Petrine tradition. So, naturally, the disciples stand "hoi exo", on the outside of faith, which is in places difficult to get out of the text due to the harmonizing of Mark with Matt and Luke. The later synoptics no longer feature this sharp divide internally between Jesus and the disciples; "unfaith" will be projecting strictly to the outside of the Christian community. Matt may be scathing of Paul and Paulinism, but he cleverly hides it behind general moral maxims and wisdom sayings.

On Markan terms then, denying Peter and the disciples the "knowledge" of resurrection (in the narrative, the "annunciation" in the cave) follows the pattern of his defining and treating this group. Mark was writing in an early community that saw itself as the privileged elect. Their Jesus was not trying to reach everyone: one's faith and spiritual competence was a gift of the Spirit which was tested 4:11-12 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. These two verses shock all those who subscribe to de Lerins paradigm.

So Mark would likely think nothing of cutting out Peter and Co. from the mystery of resurrection since they, though apparently devoted to Jesus and idolize him, do not get him, i.e. fail the test. According to Mark, they lack moral fibre. They think of him as Messiah, the restorer of the old kingdom; which he teaches them he is not (Mind you, he teases them with the "triumphal entry" but that's just Mark thickening the plot). Because of this divide, the failure of the disciples to see Jesus in Galilee, can hardly be interpreted as leaving a stain on Jesus' fiability, faith here is the sine qua non to the promise of resurrection. The disciples did not the gospel but for their heirs Mark's gospel was an open invitation: "Repent and accept the cross!".

There are some interesting observations by Stein of the function of the provocative "gar" at the end of the gospel. Robert Fowler believes it is closely related to a "coda, which signals to the musician a return to marked passage, and to keep on playing". I am very much on side with this hypothesis, and in fact the idea of the text returning to the beginning has occurred to me independently. It is given by the tight coupling of the two baptismal scenes, at the start, by John the Baptist and at the end, by the young man (baptising into Christ death), both are sent ahead as the Lord's messenger to prepare the way. I do not think anything will be decided on account of this unusual syntax concluding the narrative. It may be just another of Mark's ruses set for the unbelievers.

Best,
Jiri
Another option, to my mind, is that John 21 and Luke 5 (and probably Peter 14) present sanitized versions of an original ending in which Jesus appears to the disciples in order to reject them for their unbelief and move the needle on the meter of Christian culture decidedly toward "gentile" and away from "Jew".
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Solo wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote:
Adam wrote:That "lost ending" is not lost to us if
IT'S JOHN 21! (Moat of it, the source under it.)
That is certainly a live option. And it is an option that demonstrates, even if mistaken, the falsity of the following statement:
Solo wrote:The intent behind "καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν" ("did not say anything to anyone") in 16:8 is crystal clear: the annunciation did not reach the disciples. They do not understand and resist the idea of resurrection ever since Caesarea Philippi. They simply scatter in fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy (14:27). Peter did not even hear Jesus' saying he is going to "precede" them to Galilee that comes next. They did not "hear" the gospel (because they did not have faith), the women do not deliver the message to them, i.e. the news of resurrection finally arrives to them (or their disciples) only through Mark's writing.
To leap from the women failing to deliver the news to the disciples hearing of the resurrection only through Mark's writing is a fallacy.
Ben, I love our little skirmishes. I remember many of them from the time of Carrier's 'Freethinkers' forum' and I have enjoyed your POV very much.
Are you referring to the FRDB? I had no idea that was a Richard Carrier thing.
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by Tenorikuma »

Great comment, Solo.

Robert Fowler constantly points out how Mark's Gospel is structured to show how even though the disciples are ostensibly on the inside, they are on the outside when it comes to understanding Christ, while it is outsiders who gain insider knowledge. The abrupt and shocking ending is but a part of that.

I observe that is not just the women's fear, but the disciples' own fear that causes them to miss out on Christ's resurrection.

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him. — Mark 9

More from Fowler on the disciples' outsider status:

…with two touches Jesus could make a deaf-mute speak and hear properly (7:31-37) and with two touches he could make a blind man see clearly (8:22-26), but after two sea miracles and two feeding miracles, the disciples still do not see, hear, or speak properly (8:14-21). Jesus seems to be least successful with those who are closest to him. Those who are supposed to be the closest turn out to be the furthest away. While this is happening at the level of story, at the level of discourse just the opposite is happening. We may not understand fully what the disciples do not understand about Jesus, but at least we understand that they do not understand.

About the ending, Fowler concludes (bold emphasis mine):

How does Mark's Gospel end? The last verse reads: "And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come over them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid" (16:8). Literally, the women say "nothing to no one"… that is, they were so frightened by their experience that the story of the empty tomb was never told. The story in the Gospel seems to preclude the telling of the Gospel; Mark's Gospel is the story of a story that was never told. If we read the Gospel with a fixation on the story level, this ending may strike us as an immense problem. No problem exists, however, if we grant that this narrative is more concerned about discourse than story. The women may never tell the story of which they are a part, but the reader has read their story and can respond to it in a multitude of ways, among them the option of telling the story of the story that was never told. The burden of response-ability lies wholly on those of us standing outside the story.

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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by Ben C. Smith »

You say: "To leap from the women failing to deliver the news to the disciples hearing of the resurrection only through Mark's writing is a fallacy". That is an ipse dixit, or "so he said", a statement that does not have to be reasoned out, or even explained, because the "authority" spake.
It is, rather, a pointing out of a position that your post did not even consider. It is a fallacy to assume that, because the women failed to tell the disciples about the empty tomb, therefore Jesus never appeared to the disciples. There is no better characterization of the argument than "fallacy".
The point I argue here is that the intent written into that sentence is categorical, so final in fact, that anything that would come after, trying to qualify it or excise it, would look un-Markan, and argue with him.
And I am saying that you are mistaken. It is not obvious at all that Jesus will not appear to the disciples just because the women say nothing. And when I say that it is not obvious, I do not mean that the opposite is obvious; I mean that it is genuinely unclear.

And this is why: in the abrupt version of Mark that we have extant, we find Mark 14.28 ("but after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee") and 16.7 ("but go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you'"). These are a prediction by Jesus and then a follow-up prediction by what appears to be his representative, and everything else on point in the gospel thus far has primed us to expect Jesus' predictions to come true. On another thread I pointed out that, just as Jesus' prediction of Peter's three denials was coming true in the courtyard outside the trial, Jesus was simultaneously predicting to the priests inside the coming of the son of man. The contemporaneous fulfillment of one prediction certifies the eventual fulfillment of the other. There is nothing in Mark to suggest that Jesus will not fulfill his prediction in 14.28 and 16.7.

Now, you give the following response to this point; I will helpfully boldface the part that strikes me as nonsense:
But the argument falls as soon as you look at it from the specific Markan point of view. Would in Mark's milieu not allowing the disciples to hear the news, cause Jesus' most important prophecy to go unfulfilled? We know of course that from the later church's point of view the ending was judged deficient and the text was expanded in several attempts to deal specifically with this deficiency. But is it possible that Mark himself perceived the end that way, and bridged the chasm between the disciples and the gospel ? It is possible but not at all probable.

This is because in Mark's writing, the disciples not only do not get "resurrection", they frighten of the idea (and its demonstration on the lake and on the mountain) and in one instance, Peter's unsuccessful attempt to talk Jesus out of it at Caesarea Philippi, violently resist it. In the gospel, the subject of the Son Man's rising is broached in 8:31, 9:9, 9:31, 10:34 and finally with Jesus using first person singular, in 14:28. In In all these instances, the disciples do not know what Jesus is talking about, discussing it among themselves (9:10), and afraid to ask Jesus (9:32), misapprehending his "secret" kingdom (Zebs in 10:35-40), and finally Peter "not hearing" (14:28-29) the part that Jesus would go "before them" to Galilee after he has risen. All of this is consistent with the shocking abrupt ending.

What does it mean ? By all appearances, the disciples' incomprehension of the prototype of Messiah who would be killed and rise after three days, is given by their unfamiliarity with the "gospel" which closely relates to "rising from the dead" and belongs exclusively to "faith". Mark's text (like Paul's) proclaims "faith in resurrection". This is not a fact, or Easter "event", of which the writers know nothing (1 Co 15:17, Mk 4:3-20). Also for Mark's community faith was something that separated them from everyone else, and that would include the Petrine tradition. So, naturally, the disciples stand "hoi exo", on the outside of faith, which is in places difficult to get out of the text due to the harmonizing of Mark with Matt and Luke. The later synoptics no longer feature this sharp divide internally between Jesus and the disciples; "unfaith" will be projecting strictly to the outside of the Christian community. Matt may be scathing of Paul and Paulinism, but he cleverly hides it behind general moral maxims and wisdom sayings.

On Markan terms then, denying Peter and the disciples the "knowledge" of resurrection (in the narrative, the "annunciation" in the cave) follows the pattern of his defining and treating this group. Mark was writing in an early community that saw itself as the privileged elect. Their Jesus was not trying to reach everyone: one's faith and spiritual competence was a gift of the Spirit which was tested 4:11-12 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. These two verses shock all those who subscribe to de Lerins paradigm.

So Mark would likely think nothing of cutting out Peter and Co. from the mystery of resurrection since they, though apparently devoted to Jesus and idolize him, do not get him, i.e. fail the test. According to Mark, they lack moral fibre. They think of him as Messiah, the restorer of the old kingdom; which he teaches them he is not (Mind you, he teases them with the "triumphal entry" but that's just Mark thickening the plot). Because of this divide, the failure of the disciples to see Jesus in Galilee, can hardly be interpreted as leaving a stain on Jesus' fiability, faith here is the sine qua non to the promise of resurrection. The disciples did not the gospel but for their heirs Mark's gospel was an open invitation: "Repent and accept the cross!".
Your answer basically boils down to the proposition that Jesus made a prediction that went unfulfilled. It is not as if Jesus was averse to making negative predictions: "Tonight you will all fall away from me!" "Tonight you will thrice deny me!" Why did he not do so in this case? "You will see me no more."

You have Mark deliberately putting a false prediction on Jesus' lips, and then you accost me on ideological grounds for not accepting it: a truly incredible approach to the debate.

In the meantime, everything you say about the mystery potentially being denied to the twelve is fine. I can easily imagine a version of Mark in which the twelve do not get to see the resurrected Lord. Trouble is, it is not a version that contains 14.28 and 16.7! Those verses are the main stumbling blocks, not some ideological factor (of which you appear to understand nothing in my case, anyway).

But then we have the Fayyum fragment, which lacks any parallel to Mark 14.28. Unfortunately, it is such a small fragment that it can shed no clear light on anything beyond a few verses in chapter 14. What if an earlier edition of Mark lacked both 14.28 and 16.7? That would be a version that could maybe, with a bit of tweaking, lack any postresurrectional material about the disciples. (I say it may need some tweaking because, even if we excise both 14.28 and 16.7 cleanly, it is still not completely clear just from 16.8 that nothing is expected to transpire afterward; verses like 4.11 and 9.1 are still in the mix. It is especially not clear that no negative follow-up should come after 16.8, something to emphasize that the disciples lost what they were apparently given in 4.11.) But, then again, what if the Fayyum version lacked the empty tomb altogether, and not just 16.7? The fact is that we cannot tell what the extent of the rest of the fragment would have been, despite me being very much in favor of using its evidence that 14.28 is secondary in its context.

You quoted the next part of my post, but did not respond to it:
Ben C. Smith wrote:Another option, to my mind, is that John 21 and Luke 5 (and probably Peter 14) present sanitized versions of an original ending in which Jesus appears to the disciples in order to reject them for their unbelief and move the needle on the meter of Christian culture decidedly toward "gentile" and away from "Jew".
Ben.
What response, if any, do you have to this possibility? It would preserve everything you said about the disciples genuinely being rejected, and it would preserve the force of the dominical prediction in 14.28 and 16.7.

Ben.

PS: I will respond to other points in your post by PM.
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by JoeWallack »

Ben C. Smith wrote:in the abrupt version of Mark that we have extant, we find Mark 14.28 ("but after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee") and 16.7 ("but go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you'"). These are predictions by Jesus, and everything else on point in the gospel thus far has primed us to expect Jesus' predictions to come true. On another thread I pointed out that, just as Jesus' prediction of Peter's three denials was coming true in the courtyard outside the trial, Jesus was simultaneously predicting to the priests inside the coming of the son of man. The contemporaneous fulfillment of one prediction certifies the eventual fulfillment of the other. There is nothing in Mark to suggest that Jesus will not fulfill his prediction in 14.28 and 16.7.
JW:
Logical. But one of your uses of the above is evidence (the key evidence I think) that the original ending of GMark was lost. I think you can predict the question that is coming:

Which is more likely:
  • 1) The original ending of GMark was lost which had a post resurrection reunion and there is no awareness of this ending in early Christianity.

    2) Mark 14:28, which does have extant evidence of addition, is an addition?
For those who are having trouble deciding, let me help. From a motivation standpoint, (and we have very good extant evidence of early Christian motivation regarding endings of GMark) would early Christianity be more motivated to exorcise the original post resurrection ending of the original Gospel or add an implication for it to a Gospel that lacked it?

Also Ben, let's go with your theory that "Mark" (author) always shows his Jesus' prophecies as being fulfilled. If 16:8 is the original ending, and that is what the evidence shows, then "Mark" did not show 14:28 as being fulfilled. More evidence that 14:28 is an addition for you to fear for.


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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by Ben C. Smith »

JoeWallack wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote:in the abrupt version of Mark that we have extant, we find Mark 14.28 ("but after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee") and 16.7 ("but go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you'"). These are predictions by Jesus, and everything else on point in the gospel thus far has primed us to expect Jesus' predictions to come true. On another thread I pointed out that, just as Jesus' prediction of Peter's three denials was coming true in the courtyard outside the trial, Jesus was simultaneously predicting to the priests inside the coming of the son of man. The contemporaneous fulfillment of one prediction certifies the eventual fulfillment of the other. There is nothing in Mark to suggest that Jesus will not fulfill his prediction in 14.28 and 16.7.
JW:
Logical. But one of your uses of the above is evidence (the key evidence I think) that the original ending of GMark was lost. I think you can predict the question that is coming:

Which is more likely:
  • 1) The original ending of GMark was lost which had a post resurrection reunion and there is no awareness of this ending in early Christianity.

    2) Mark 14:28, which does have extant evidence of addition, is an addition?
The issue is not so simple this time. First, "no awareness in early Christianity" of the lost ending may be mistaken, as we may have such awareness in John 21, Luke 5, and Peter 14. Or the ending may be so surprising that we have awareness of it elsewhere, but just do not know it. Second, what if turned out that the lost ending was irredeemably negative toward the disciples? In that case it is easy to see how the loss of the ending might be viewed as a blessing, and all your comments about motivation would come into play:
For those who are having trouble deciding, let me help. From a motivation standpoint, (and we have very good extant evidence of early Christian motivation regarding endings of GMark) would early Christianity be more motivated to exorcise the original post resurrection ending of the original Gospel or add an implication for it to a Gospel that lacked it?
Also Ben, let's go with your theory that "Mark" (author) always shows his Jesus' prophecies as being fulfilled. If 16:8 is the original ending, and that is what the evidence shows, then "Mark" did not show 14:28 as being fulfilled. More evidence that 14:28 is an addition for you to fear for.
There is more than 14.28 on the table: there is also 16.7, which is even clearer as a prediction; I know it is not Jesus himself making it as in 14.28, but it seems to be someone who represents him and his interests: definitely someone who knows things that the other characters do not.

I have told you before that I like the idea of a text that lacked 14.28, based on the Fayyum fragment. But that does not help me decide about 16.7; it definitely leans me in the direction of considering that secondary, as well, but is it just that verse, or is it the entire empty tomb narrative? A version of Mark ending at, say, 15.40 holds some appeal.

The core of my complaint regarding the ending of Mark on this thread — indeed, on this forum — is that people seem to think that by shooting down the standard Christian view of Christian origins they have proven that 16.8 is the original ending of Mark. But that is simply not the case, not from the standpoint of simple logic. Mark 14.28 and 16.7 stand in powerful opposition to an original ending at 16.8, and there are more than two ways of resolving the tension. Some of these ways involve 16.8 as the original ending, but some do not. This is the farthest thing in the world from an either/or situation.

What seems clear to me, for the same kinds of reasons that the Long Ending and the Short Ending appear to be secondary, is that 14.28 and 16.7 did not originally stand in a text that was meant to end at 16.8. But how to solve the problem? We may extend the ending (and assume that it has been lost) or retract the ending (and assume the empty tomb is secondary, too); we may retain 14.28 and 16.7 or excise them; or we may do subtle combinations of these maneuvers.

By far the least likely option, in my book, is some bogus, pseudopsychological analysis that makes it okay for Jesus to have flubbed this prediction alone. I think you are on board with that, since your preferred move is to excise 14.28 (at least), but others are not in the same camp.

Ben.
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JoeWallack
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Re: Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication by Richard Carrie

Post by JoeWallack »

JW:
The offending verse:

Mark 14:28

Strong's Transliteration Greek English Morphology
235 [e] alla ἀλλὰ But Conj
3326 [e] meta μετὰafter Prep
3588 [e] to τὸ - Art-ANS
1453 [e] egerthēnai ἐγερθῆναί having arisen V-ANP
1473 [e] me με I, PPro-A1S
4254 [e] proaxō προάξω I will go before V-FIA-1S
4771 [e] hymas ὑμᾶς you PPro-A2P
1519 [e] eis εἰς into Prep
3588 [e] tēn τὴν - Art-AFS
1056 [e] Galilaian Γαλιλαίαν. Galilee. N-AFS

And the offending word here:
4254 [e] proaxō προάξω I will go before V-FIA-1S

Part of Speech: Verb
Tense: Future
Mood: Indicative
Voice: Active
Person: 1st Person
Number: Singular
Ben, this is the Transitive form yes? Transitive indicates a cause and effect relationship. "I will lead you". I had a most unpleasant related "discussion" with Jeff Gibson:

http://bcharchive.org/2/thearchives/sho ... 546&page=9

where he lied about the meaning of the offending word because it was more important to him to try and discredit me than honestly discuss the meaning of the word. I should have filtered him but I could not resist the opportunity to discuss the meaning of a Greek word with a Greek professor (well, ajunk. assistant professor). You witnessed this. My memory is that after a sufficient amount of time and Threads had passed you agreed with me that the form is transitive, but you are a better source of what you think/thought than my memory.


Joseph

The Israeli/Arab Conflict - The Peel Commission - 1937
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