Mark and the Passover (for Neil).

[neilgodfrey]

I have tried to explain my concerns but obviously not clearly because the same inferences about my reasons keep recurring. I have no ideological or presumptive opposition to lost sources or oral transmission and I am at some loss to understand why you keep implying that I do.

Well, especially with regard to oral transmission, you wrote:

By studying the gospels as literary wholes one gains a clearer perspective of exactly what those individual sayings were intended to convey. Forget form criticism and memory theory. I would also say forget oral tradition theory. Read them as literary texts. Acknowledge their evident literary sources and relationships.

Perhaps you were distinguishing between oral transmission and oral tradition somehow.

I hope my explanations, qualifications and justifications of that comment have gone some way to further understanding our positions.

For me, tradition is simply the act of transmitting something on from one person to another and from the older generation to the younger (or, alternatively, from those more experienced to those less experienced). Oral tradition is that process undertaken by the spoken word rather than by the written word. By itself, the term does not imply special schools or methods beyond the usual human ways of remembering information.

For me, "tradition" means something a little more formal than a vague "something" or transmitting mere "information". You are welcome to read my comments about oral culture and oral sources.

Ah, perhaps we have different ideas about what we each mean by form criticism. Joining passages by catch words is not something I would consider part of the form of a unit (forms such as healing stories, ...). They are units that are used to unite a narrative -- as you yourself say, they are ways of organizing the sayings.

That blows my mind. The catchword thing is classic form criticism. Here, virtually at random, is a snippet from the Form Criticism entry at Encyclopedia.com:

Method. In order to attain this objective, the method requires that these three steps must be taken: (1) the literary units must be isolated; (2) they must be classified according to types; (3) their place of origin and transmission must be determined.

Isolation of Units. For the purpose of isolating the literary units, the Gospels offer data sufficiently firm for laying the foundations of a working hypothesis. The Gospels give clear evidence of being collections; they are compositions in the sense of being composite, made up of preexisting parts. This can be seen in the grouping of units around a common theme, in the repetition of certain catchwords, and in certain numerical arrangements (groups of three each, seven each, etc.); the transitions, the literary sutures, the framework around the units, etc., can easily be apprehended.

But we can't just assume that because there are a series of small units joined together that those units derived from any particular source, let alone "a tradition". I happen to think we have evidence for arguing those units were derived from literary sources on the whole (not all of them).

Those quotations are explaining how literary units are isolated and that is a necessary step to establishing the parameters of a passage that is then, in the following step, to be form critically evaluated. But the very same process is used to isolate the units for other purposes, too -- including literary criticism.

Form criticism is the criticism of forms, I believe. It assumes the existence of "pure forms" as the original form of various types of literary units. To the extent that those pure forms have been apparently corrupted or modified the critic can trace the history of the saying through respective community interests over time and place.

What it would take to blow my mind would be equating form criticism with the techniques of isolating literary units especially when the same techniques are used for isolating units for other types of criticism as well.

Ignore the specific arguments for a moment, though. You were asking about the principle of form criticism being accommodated with literary criticism. Can you see at least the potential for form criticism intermingling with literary criticism in this context? Suppose we have decent evidence that some of the sayings were transmitted orally before being collected, while others were collected from more literary sources. And suppose we have evidence of Marcan redaction here and there throughout the section. I would say that in such a situation we could easily and profitably do form criticism, literary criticism, and redaction criticism all pretty much at the same time, attempting to unravel what it all looked like before the sayings were collected and/or before they were incorporated into Mark. Do you at least agree with the potential here?

I can only repeat that I don't see any form criticism in any of your examples so far, but only redaction or source criticism. I have explained why I think they are at odds. Literary critics who argue against form criticism on methodological grounds do indeed engage in redaction and source criticism as absolutely fundamental. Your own examples, "specific arguments" that I have attempted to address, are examples of redaction criticism and are classic examples of what a literary critic might do.

Catchwords are also a feature of the literary works of the day. So catchwords alone don't necessarily point us in either direction.

I would be interested in an example or two from you now. Mainly for clarity, since we have obviously misunderstood each other a number of times here. What is a text or passage which is organized by catchwords and (key point for me here) not by logical connection, and which you would say evinces evidence of purely literary origins?

Well I cannot jump to do it "now" given all your conditions that you might on reflection note are all grounded in implicit assumptions of a certain model of gospel origins. But catchwords are indeed found in a variety of literatures, including our own today (and probably even your own writing), and in the types of ancient literature that liked to string otherwise unrelated units together into a single episodic narrative. But the conditions you impose, some might notice, are in fact derived from one of your quotations that in fact is itself arguing from the perspective of a tendentious interpretation that cannot otherwise conceive of alternative non-oral tradition or oral-source explanations. Another of your quotations was also circular, if I recall. But to get into this detail is a discussion that I must postpone for another day. I would need to put other tasks on hold to refresh myself of the details and take the time to prepare the arguments.

And I think your view of oral tradition was/is far more robust and official than mine is.

Certainly more "formulaic" as is implicit in form criticism.

[Ben C. Smith]

Catchwords are also a feature of the literary works of the day. So catchwords alone don't necessarily point us in either direction.

I would be interested in an example or two from you now. Mainly for clarity, since we have obviously misunderstood each other a number of times here. What is a text or passage which is organized by catchwords and (key point for me here) not by logical connection, and which you would say evinces evidence of purely literary origins?

Well I cannot jump to do it "now" given all your conditions that you might on reflection note are all grounded in implicit assumptions of a certain model of gospel origins. But catchwords are indeed found in a variety of literatures, including our own today (and probably even your own writing), and in the types of ancient literature that liked to string otherwise unrelated units together into a single episodic narrative. But the conditions you impose, some might notice, are in fact derived from one of your quotations that in fact is itself arguing from the perspective of a tendentious interpretation that cannot otherwise conceive of alternative non-oral tradition or oral-source explanations. Another of your quotations was also circular, if I recall. But to get into this detail is a discussion that I must postpone for another day. I would need to put other tasks on hold to refresh myself of the details and take the time to prepare the arguments.

You are saying that my approach is circular, but to me it appears that your approach rules out options in advance, before they have even been properly considered. I will not vouch for everything said in quotations that I have offered; I am already on record as saying that critical methods have been abused before. But my own approach is to leave the possibilities open, as one of those quotations did, IIRC, when it said that Mark "may" have received that passage as a unit of oral tradition. Now, maybe the commentator is assuming that oral tradition existed in the early church, and stating that this may be an example of what is already thought to have existed (though I doubt we could tell from that single quotation), but maybe s/he is simply leaving the possibilities open. The latter is my preference (it is possible that there was oral transmission in the church, and it is also possible that this is an example of it), and I do not see how that is circular.

Ben.

ETA 1: What do you think of form criticism as applied to the Psalms? Hypothesizing, for example, that certain psalms (especially 2 and 110) were originally coronation poems and the like? Whether you think the hypothesis is correct or not, is it circular? If so, why?

ETA 2: Is it possible that we are viewing things from very different stages in the process? That I am viewing them as if starting from scratch, with no idea what we might find in the gospels? That you are viewing them as if toward the end of an already lengthy process of investigation, having already found time and time again that literary origins seem more likely than origins in church praxis, so much so that you no longer consider the form critical option to be as viable overall? From my perspective (at the beginning of the process) that would look like you were shirking your duty to consider all options, but from your perspective (at the end of a process) it would be more a matter of having already considered all options and found some of them so consistently wanting that they no longer merit the same degree of attention as the more reliable options merit. Could that difference of perspective be part of our disagreement here?

[Ben C. Smith]

The assumptions I wish to avoid... on both sides....

First, form criticism. Edgar V. McKnight, What Is Form Criticism?, page 18:

The "fundamental assumption," and in some sense assumption which makes form criticism both necessary and possible, is that the tradition consists basically of individual sayings and narratives joined together in the Gospels by the work of the editors.

Second, literary criticism. Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, page 30:

However, adopting literary perspectives, just like adopting historical perspectives, carries with it certain assumptions about the text and the task.

The first and most important of these assumptions, as we have already noted, is that Mark is a self-consciously crafted narrative, a fiction, resulting from literary imagination, not photographic recall. ....

The use of a literary approach also assumes that a narrative is unified and coherent.

I say: make neither assumption. Try both/all options on for size for each text, each large unit, each small unit; see which one fits.

[neilgodfrey]

You are saying that my approach is circular, but to me it appears that your approach rules out options in advance, before they have even been properly considered. I will not vouch for everything said in quotations that I have offered; I am already on record as saying that critical methods have been abused before. But my own approach is to leave the possibilities open, as one of those quotations did, IIRC, when it said that Mark "may" have received that passage as a unit of oral tradition. Now, maybe the commentator is assuming that oral tradition existed in the early church, and stating that this may be an example of what is already thought to have existed (though I doubt we could tell from that single quotation), but maybe s/he is simply leaving the possibilities open. The latter is my preference (it is possible that there was oral transmission in the church, and it is also possible that this is an example of it), and I do not see how that is circular.

Of course possibilities are left open. That's what I've said so often in so many different ways, or at least tried to. But what is irreconcilable are methods that are based on contradictory or irreconcilable assumptions and models. Now the two cannot be used together if they are grounded in such oppositions. BUT that does NOT mean that one is flat wrong and should never be considered as an option while the other is the only voice that is ever heard. How does one decide which one to use? That's what I've attempted to point out is the necessary question.

ETA 1: What do you think of form criticism as applied to the Psalms? Hypothesizing, for example, that certain psalms (especially 2 and 110) were originally coronation poems and the like? Whether you think the hypothesis is correct or not, is it circular? If so, why?

I don't see the relevance of this question to a discussion of the canonical gospels.

ETA 2: Is it possible that we are viewing things from very different stages in the process? That I am viewing them as if starting from scratch, with no idea what we might find in the gospels? That you are viewing them as if toward the end of an already lengthy process of investigation, having already found time and time again that literary origins seem more likely than origins in church praxis, so much so that you no longer consider the form critical option to be as viable overall? From my perspective (at the beginning of the process) that would look like you were shirking your duty to consider all options, but from your perspective (at the end of a process) it would be more a matter of having already considered all options and found some of them so consistently wanting that they no longer merit the same degree of attention as the more reliable options merit. Could that difference of perspective be part of our disagreement here?

Perhaps. I am talking about the evidence we do see in the gospels, including the clear evidence of relationships with other known resources.

[neilgodfrey]

The assumptions I wish to avoid... on both sides....

First, form criticism. Edgar V. McKnight, What Is Form Criticism?, page 18:

The "fundamental assumption," and in some sense assumption which makes form criticism both necessary and possible, is that the tradition consists basically of individual sayings and narratives joined together in the Gospels by the work of the editors.

Second, literary criticism. Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, page 30:

However, adopting literary perspectives, just like adopting historical perspectives, carries with it certain assumptions about the text and the task.

The first and most important of these assumptions, as we have already noted, is that Mark is a self-consciously crafted narrative, a fiction, resulting from literary imagination, not photographic recall. ....

The use of a literary approach also assumes that a narrative is unified and coherent.

I say: make neither assumption. Try both/all options on for size for each text, each large unit, each small unit; see which one fits.

The beads on a string idea goes hand in glove with form criticism. It is not the same as form criticism to identify these beads on the string, however. There can be different types of unity in a narrative. The idea of a string of otherwise disconnected episodes all strung artificially together and then culminating in a detailed account of a climactic single event at the end is a common form of literature: Odyssey, Aesop's adventures, the novellas..... I'm not saying that canonical Mark is a perfectly crafted literary whole. If it is, it is the work of the redactor, more likely. But there are enough unifying devices throughout it to give pause to the MERE or even PRIMARY beads on a string idea.

In other words, "individual sayings and narratives joined together" is can point to more than one type of literature, and does not necessarily mean a work was an editorial stitching together of an array of pre-existing literary or oral sources.

That does not mean that one option is shut out and never considered. It means that we have to decide on some valid basis which option to use at any particular time.

But form criticism is about forms. The gospels consist of a number of different forms, it is argued, and that where we see these forms (healing stories, controversy stories, etc) strung together we identify the form of each unit we undertake to analyze, and attempt to identify through corruptions of adaptations of a "pure form" both what the original might have looked like and how/why etc it was changed.

I think a number of scholars argue that E.P. Sanders killed off form criticism by identifying sayings within the context of the Judaism of Jesus' day.

My own preference is to use a model that can claim some tangible evidence for support. That does not mean that other models based on educated guesses and speculation are ruled out of court, however. We come back to the result that has the strongest explanatory power, is testable, -- and that this will always remain tentative. That is, options are always kept open.