JoeWallack wrote:For starters Ben, "Mark" uses a double negative above, yes?
Yes.
It's generally agreed that such double negatives do still not only have a meaning of negative but an extra emphasis of negative. On the surface than this would seem to support your observation that the subsequent exceptions to the negative in the same pericope contradict its use and could be evidence of an original that did not have the contradiction. Unlike the current GoT though I have faith that you are still familiar with the classic Animal House. There is a scene where Flounder tells Otter and Boone that he heard that Legacys are automatically asked to pledge. Otter and Boone say, "Yes, that's normally the case, unless the brother was a real head case (look at each other), like Fred."
Well, I can say that I have watched it; but jeepers, man, that was
aaaages ago.
Similarly, we are talking about "Mark" here. You would agree that he has a substance abuse problem with the double negative.
Sure. Demonstrating a talent for understatement, Robertson remarks that Mark "loves the double negative".
Some would say that ain't good Greek. I would say it's style.
Mark is either a genuine rustic or a sort of Mark Twain (or both).
He also is known to follow a double negative with an exception, such as at 1:44.
I can honestly say that I have never given the specific combination of double negatives and exceptions any special thought.
I think you would agree that "Mark's" style is unorthodox (so to speak) so I would offer as an initial defense of Markan originality here his style. More to come, but comment (maybe you think the 1:44 language is arguable)?
(Arguable in what way? It is a double negative, I agree.)
You may be preaching to the choir here if you are trying to convince me of Marcan priority vis-à-vis Matthew and Luke. But, if you are arguing for Macan priority vis-à-vis some alleged source, I am not sure rustic language is enough for me. As I remarked to Kunigunde on another thread, I am not very optimistic about our chances of recreating the exact wording of most lost sources; so I do not know whether the source might have been phrased rustically, as well, or not. I will grant that the synoptic authors seem to rewrite each other less than, say, the Greco-Roman historians rewrote their sources; but Matthew and Luke still do a
lot to Mark (changing historic presents into aorists, removing superfluous and overused words like "straightway/immediately", and so on). So who is to say exactly how Mark treated the wording of
his sources? What if his sources are even more rustic than his own stuff, or perhaps even translational Greek based on Aramaic, and he has cleaned them up a bit in the same way that Matthew and Luke have cleaned up Mark? Unless you have some fresh ideas about how we could go about recovering such information....
Ben.
