A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

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Ben C. Smith
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A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Subject: Mark's Sources -- a question
Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 1:54 amThere was a discussion with Michael BG on the "Pre-Marcan Passion Narrative" and I think it's easy to identify typical characteristics of Mark's style in all parts of the text.

imho the same applies to Bultmann's famous case on Mark 2:1-12
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:24 am This thematic duplication reminds me of another pericope I have argued to be a composite:

Mark 2.1-12: 1 When He had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room, not even near the door; and He was speaking the word to them. 3 And they come, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four men. 4 Being unable to get to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying. 5a And Jesus seeing their faith says to the paralytic [λέγει τῶ παραλυτικῶ], 5b "Son, your sins are forgiven." 6 But some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, 7 "Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?" 8 Immediately Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, says to them, "Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’; or to say, ‘Get up, and pick up your pallet and walk’? 10 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" — He says to the paralytic [λέγει τῶ παραλυτικῶ], 11 "I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home." 12 And he got up and immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone, so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this."

It is a duplication ("says to the paralytic") that gets the pericope back to its original state, after the business about sin and blasphemy has been inserted, but the duplication makes mince of the grammar. We can tell that the use of sources is one very plausible way to account for this kind of grammatical stumble between narration and direct dialogue from how Luke treats Mark here:
I would claim that it would be easy for me to show that the story in Mark 2:5b-10 has the same typical characteristics of style as the story in Mark 2:1-5a+11-12 and in the rest of GMark.

On the contrary, imho in GLuke (partially also in GMatthew) one could observe on the one hand the typical enigmatic synoptical stories and on the other hand Luke's own stories, in which the logic of the action is well explained.
I, too, think it is possible to find Marcan style all over the gospel of Mark. But I also think that it is possible to find Matthean style all over the gospel of Matthew. Where Matthew has used Mark, Matthew has also usually changed Mark to match his own style. For example, Matthew often changes καί to δέ (especially at the beginning of a pericope) or gets rid of the καί by using a participle instead of a finite verb; sometimes changes an historic present to a past tense; often enough sprinkles in words or phrases of his own preference in addition to the words found in Mark; and tends to get rid of double expressions in favor of a simpler, more streamlined approach.

As an example, chosen more or less at random, consider the healing of a leper:

Matthew 8.1-4: 1 Καταβάντος δὲ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄρους ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ ὄχλοι πολλοί. 2 καὶ ἰδοὺ λεπρὸς προσελθὼν προσεκύνει αὐτῷ λέγων· κύριε, ἐὰν θέλῃς δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι. 3 καὶ ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα ἥψατο αὐτοῦ λέγων· θέλω, καθαρίσθητι· καὶ εὐθέως ἐκαθαρίσθη αὐτοῦ ἡ λέπρα. 4 καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ὅρα μηδενὶ εἴπῃς, ἀλλὰ ὕπαγε σεαυτὸν δεῖξον τῷ ἱερεῖ καὶ προσένεγκον τὸ δῶρον ὃ προσέταξεν Μωϋσῆς, εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς.

Mark 1.40-45: 40 Καὶ ἔρχεται πρὸς αὐτὸν λεπρὸς παρακαλῶν αὐτὸν [καὶ γονυπετῶν] καὶ λέγων αὐτῷ ὅτι ἐὰν θέλῃς δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι. 41 καὶ σπλαγχνισθεὶς ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ἥψατο καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· θέλω, καθαρίσθητι· 42 καὶ εὐθὺς ἀπῆλθεν ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἡ λέπρα, καὶ ἐκαθαρίσθη. 43 καὶ ἐμβριμησάμενος αὐτῷ εὐθὺς ἐξέβαλεν αὐτόν 44 καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· ὅρα μηδενὶ μηδὲν εἴπῃς, ἀλλὰ ὕπαγε σεαυτὸν δεῖξον τῷ ἱερεῖ καὶ προσένεγκε περὶ τοῦ καθαρισμοῦ σου ἃ προσέταξεν Μωϋσῆς, εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς. 45 ὁ δὲ ἐξελθὼν ἤρξατο κηρύσσειν πολλὰ καὶ διαφημίζειν τὸν λόγον, ὥστε μηκέτι αὐτὸν δύνασθαι φανερῶς εἰς πόλιν εἰσελθεῖν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔξω ἐπ᾽ ἐρήμοις τόποις ἦν· καὶ ἤρχοντο πρὸς αὐτὸν πάντοθεν.

There are elements of Matthean style all over the Matthean version of this pericope, are there not?
  1. Matthew starts the pericope with δέ rather than with καί, as is typical.
  2. Matthew writes of ὄχλοι πολλοί (not paralleled here in Mark), just as he does elsewhere (4.25; 12.15; 13.2; 15.30; 19.2). In fact, he uses the plural of ὄχλος some 30 times in his gospel (whereas Mark, just by way of comparison, uses it only once, at 10.1).
  3. Matthew uses the term εὐθέως instead of Mark's εὐθύς (though perhaps all such changes must be subjected to textual considerations).
  4. Matthew introduces the main action with an ἰδού (not paralleled here in Mark); this word is a favorite of his, and he uses it dozens of times throughout the rest of his gospel.
  5. Matthew uses the participle προσελθών where Mark has ἔρχεται πρός, in keeping with his preference (compared to Mark) for subordinating phrases rather than joining independent verbs. Similarly, he uses λέγων instead of καὶ λέγει a bit further down.
  6. Matthew has the leper bow down to or worship (προσκυνέω) Jesus (not paralleled here in Mark), just as he has people do throughout the rest of his gospel (2.2, 8, 11; 9.18; 14.33; 15.25; 20.20; 28.9, 17). Mark has this happen only once (at 5.6; the instance in 15.19 is in mockery).
  7. Matthew has the leper address Jesus with the vocative κύριε (not paralleled here in Mark), a rather common feature of this gospel but very rare in Mark (occurring only at 7.28, I think).
  8. Matthew uses the verb καθαρίζω here in conjunction with leprosy, just as he does a couple of times elsewhere (10.8; 11.5), but this is the only pericope in which Mark uses the verb in conjunction with leprosy.
  9. Matthew uses the phrase ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα, which appears in Mark only here, in parallel with Matthew, but thrice elsewhere in Matthew (12.49; 14.31; 26.51).
  10. Matthew uses the word δῶρον (not paralleled here in Mark), which appears only once in Mark (at 7.11) but multiple times in Matthew (2.11; 5.23-24; 15.5; 23.18-19). In three of those other instances the verb προσφέρω is used in conjunction with δῶρον, just as here in this pericope.
  11. Matthew has Jesus command the leper to show his cleansing to the priests as a testimony to them, which seems quite fitting given the setting of this pericope immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus comes off as a new Moses. There is no such Mosaic context for this pericope in Mark.
Is it not the case that Matthew has (on a supposition of Marcan priority) rewritten this pericope in a way consonant with his own style? It is true that he retains an historic present in common with Mark, and that he retains a few instances of καί in common with Mark, but he does that elsewhere, too, and I think those kinds of examples pale in comparison with all the typically Matthean editing he has done.

So my question (and it is a serious one, not merely rhetorical) is this: what arguments from style would you make in favor of Mark not using sources which would not simultaneously suggest that Matthew, too, did not use sources?

Ben.
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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:06 am But I also think that it is possible to find Matthean style all over the gospel of Matthew. Where Matthew has used Mark, Matthew has also usually changed Mark to match his own style. For example, Matthew often changes καί to δέ (especially at the beginning of a pericope) or gets rid of the καί by using a participle instead of a finite verb; sometimes changes an historic present to a past tense; often enough sprinkles in words or phrases of his own preference in addition to the words found in Mark; and tends to get rid of double expressions in favor of a simpler, more streamlined approach.

As an example, chosen more or less at random, consider the healing of a leper:

There are elements of Matthean style all over the Matthean version of this pericope, are there not?
I have very little time today, so at first I will only agree with your starting point. From what I know, yes, Matthew was a very skillful redactor (positively spoken), better than Luke. He gave the stories in most cases a thick Matthean varnish, while it seemed that he followed Mark's lines very closely. Sometimes it's terrifying.
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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

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Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 3:18 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:06 am But I also think that it is possible to find Matthean style all over the gospel of Matthew. Where Matthew has used Mark, Matthew has also usually changed Mark to match his own style. For example, Matthew often changes καί to δέ (especially at the beginning of a pericope) or gets rid of the καί by using a participle instead of a finite verb; sometimes changes an historic present to a past tense; often enough sprinkles in words or phrases of his own preference in addition to the words found in Mark; and tends to get rid of double expressions in favor of a simpler, more streamlined approach.

As an example, chosen more or less at random, consider the healing of a leper:

There are elements of Matthean style all over the Matthean version of this pericope, are there not?
I have very little time today, so at first I will only agree with your starting point.
No problem. Take whatever time you need.
From what I know, yes, Matthew was a very skillful redactor (positively spoken), better than Luke. He gave the stories in most cases a thick Matthean varnish, while it seemed that he followed Mark's lines very closely. Sometimes it's terrifying.
I think you can see where I am going with this. If whatever Matthew touches becomes Matthean, then who is to say that whatever Mark touched cannot have become Marcan? I do not see how style can eliminate the probability/possibility of sources. Even scribes have styles sometimes, and their job presumably is to copy their source document with great accuracy! Consider how, in the gospel of Mark, Sinaiticus never has εὐθέως at all, while Alexandrinus never has εὐθύς except once; obviously some scribe or group of scribes has been a bit heavyhanded. I just went through Mark 1, and there are variations in the manuscripts between καί and δέ at least in Mark 1.6, 9, 14, 16, 28, 29, 41, and four of those instances (verses 9, 14, 16, 29) are at the beginnings of pericopes; additionally, some manuscripts add a καί to verse 4 where the others have no conjunction at all.

If scribes can do this to some extent, then surely authors or editors may exercise even more freedom to bend their materials to their will. There is no doubt that Josephus used the Hebrew scriptures as sources for his Antiquities, but he has paraphrased and reconstructed their contents in his own ways. I think we can detect Josephus' style throughout. But this does not mean that he did not crib from sources.
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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:31 pm .........................
If scribes can do this to some extent, then surely authors or editors may exercise even more freedom to bend their materials to their will. There is no doubt that Josephus used the Hebrew scriptures as sources for his Antiquities, but he has paraphrased and reconstructed their contents in his own ways. I think we can detect Josephus' style throughout. But this does not mean that he did not crib from sources.
If Josephus used the Hebrew text of the scriptures to produce a Greek work then it is inevitable that the work would be influenced by Josephus' Greek style.

(Josephus clearly knew the LXX but it seems to have been his primary source mainly in passages absent in Hebrew such as the additions to Esther. )

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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

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andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 11:59 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:31 pm .........................
If scribes can do this to some extent, then surely authors or editors may exercise even more freedom to bend their materials to their will. There is no doubt that Josephus used the Hebrew scriptures as sources for his Antiquities, but he has paraphrased and reconstructed their contents in his own ways. I think we can detect Josephus' style throughout. But this does not mean that he did not crib from sources.
If Josephus used the Hebrew text of the scriptures to produce a Greek work then it is inevitable that the work would be influenced by Josephus' Greek style.
It is hardly beyond the pale of possibility that Mark's hypothetical sources may have been in Aramaic and/or Hebrew, in which case the analogy would be even more exact, if Josephus relied mainly upon the Hebrew.
(Josephus clearly knew the LXX but it seems to have been his primary source mainly in passages absent in Hebrew such as the additions to Esther. )
I do not have a full personal grasp yet on which recensions Josephus used, so I can go only by what I have learned from others, including Louis H. Feldman in Studies in Josephus' Rewritten Bible:

Page 295: There is some reason to think that Josephus used the Septuagint version for the Elijah pericope, as he did for most of the Bible, inasmuch as he agrees with the Septuagint in identifying Jehoram as the brother of Ahaziah at the point when the former succeeds to the throne (2 Kings 1:17; Ant. 9.27).

Page 539: Josephus is eclectic in the texts which he uses, generally preferring the Septuagint, but not infrequendy using the Hebrew, the Aramaic Targumim, and the proto-Lucianic text; his preference for any given one of these texts varies from book to book, though, of course, it is possible that he had a text different from any of those that are extant.

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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:06 am There are elements of Matthean style all over the Matthean version of this pericope, are there not?
I would add the word order „λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς“ (only the order verb+object+Jesus in last position, not the concrete phrase) used by Mark only in a few cases, imho to emphasize the authority of a saying, but is more frequently in Matthew if I have not overlooked something.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:06 am So my question (and it is a serious one, not merely rhetorical) is this: what arguments from style would you make in favor of Mark not using sources which would not simultaneously suggest that Matthew, too, did not use sources?
I think so far we are discussing essentially only word choice as one element of style. I agree that word choice isn’t a sufficient argument against the use of sources (in the conventional sense of oral and written traditions). But I think it is an argument against the usual arguments in favor of the use of sources because these arguments do not consider the thorough work of a redactor as Matthew was.

Matthew chose the story about the leper as the first story after the sermon of the mount and from his perspective it is clearly a good choice (helping the most stricken after the great preaching = words + deeds). He omitted the problematic second part of Mark’s story and added pious things like „Lord“. Matthew‘s version is a plain story about the healing of a leper by the Lord Jesus and nothing more. He also rewrote some phrases with his preferred word choice. I think this is a thorough work with compositional, contentual and stylistic considerations and not done in five minutes. I do not think that one could argue with cheap arguments in favor of Mark’s text as Matthew’s source. The following is Matthews work:

Matthew 8.1-4: 1 Καταβάντος δὲ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄρους ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ ὄχλοι πολλοί. 2 καὶ ἰδοὺ λεπρὸς προσελθὼν προσεκύνει αὐτῷ λέγων· κύριε, ἐὰν θέλῃς δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι. 3 καὶ ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα ἥψατο αὐτοῦ λέγων· θέλω, καθαρίσθητι· καὶ εὐθέως ἐκαθαρίσθη αὐτοῦ ἡ λέπρα. 4 καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ὅρα μηδενὶ εἴπῃς, ἀλλὰ ὕπαγε σεαυτὸν δεῖξον τῷ ἱερεῖ καὶ προσένεγκον τὸ δῶρον ὃ προσέταξεν Μωϋσῆς, εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς.

Mark 1.40-45: 40 Καὶ ἔρχεται πρὸς αὐτὸν λεπρὸς παρακαλῶν αὐτὸν [καὶ γονυπετῶν] καὶ λέγων αὐτῷ ὅτι ἐὰν θέλῃς δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι. 41 καὶ σπλαγχνισθεὶς ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ἥψατο καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· θέλω, καθαρίσθητι· 42 καὶ εὐθὺς ἀπῆλθεν ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἡ λέπρα, καὶ ἐκαθαρίσθη. 43 καὶ ἐμβριμησάμενος αὐτῷ εὐθὺς ἐξέβαλεν αὐτόν 44 καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· ὅρα μηδενὶ μηδὲν εἴπῃς, ἀλλὰ ὕπαγε σεαυτὸν δεῖξον τῷ ἱερεῖ καὶ προσένεγκε περὶ τοῦ καθαρισμοῦ σου ἃ προσέταξεν Μωϋσῆς, εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς. 45 ὁ δὲ ἐξελθὼν ἤρξατο κηρύσσειν πολλὰ καὶ διαφημίζειν τὸν λόγον, ὥστε μηκέτι αὐτὸν δύνασθαι φανερῶς εἰς πόλιν εἰσελθεῖν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔξω ἐπ᾽ ἐρήμοις τόποις ἦν· καὶ ἤρχοντο πρὸς αὐτὸν πάντοθεν.

But the same would also apply to Mark if Mark was only a redactor. From his stable word choice one would see that he did at least the same thorough work as Matthew. And there is not only the „καὶ“ and the historical present, but also the repeated use of special words and phrases, the repeated use of Latinisms and Semitisms, the preferred form of the pericope (even in the passion narrative are little units), the structure of the text in doublings, chiasms and intercalations, the sometimes rather clear and sometimes subtle allusions to the scriptures, the developed themes like the Messianic secret and the lack of the disciples' understanding and much more. All these characteristics give a big fat Markan layer. If Mark was just a redactor imho he did a very hard, detailed and careful work. I think that also the unusualness of passages is part of that layer. Who can with absolute certainty say why Mark's Jesus „sternly charged“ the leper and „casted him out“ and what the puzzling end of the pericope should mean „so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town“? And this second part of the story is the greater part of the pericope and not only a little addition. One can only try to interpret it as best as possible. But such puzzling twists and turns are not an exception in GMark but the rule, starting with the „false“ quote of Isaiah and ending with the flight of the silenced women from the tomb.

imho if one tries to argue for sources of Mark he has to start with this layer in his mind and the knowledge how difficult it is to interpret something as a sign of sources in GMark. I think that you - unlike Bultmann - made some really interesting points, but so far I have not seen a case that turned my mind around.

Besides the classical synoptical arguments, some of my points that Matthew used sources would be the considerable differences in the form of the stories (the transferred Markan pericopes on the one hand and Matthew's own stories on the other hand which are not really pericopes), the plain points of some stories and the refinement of other stories and the indifferent use of metaphors (the meaningless trees in Matthew 7:17ff against the solid allusion to Isaiahs vineyard and so on).
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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

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Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 2:13 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:06 am There are elements of Matthean style all over the Matthean version of this pericope, are there not?
I would add the word order „λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς“ (only the order verb+object+Jesus in last position, not the concrete phrase) used by Mark only in a few cases, imho to emphasize the authority of a saying, but is more frequently in Matthew if I have not overlooked something.
Insisting that the subject be "Jesus" but giving the saying verb leeway for tense and mood, I get 15 instances of this expression in Matthew and only 6 in Mark. Given that Mark has just under a third fewer words than Matthew over and against fewer than half as many instances of this syntax, it would seem that Matthew does favor it a bit. So good call. :)
I think so far we are discussing essentially only word choice as one element of style. I agree that word choice isn’t a sufficient argument against the use of sources (in the conventional sense of oral and written traditions). But I think it is an argument against the usual arguments in favor of the use of sources because these arguments do not consider the thorough work of a redactor as Matthew was.
Well, words and phrases, as well as a bit of grammar (the subordinating clauses, and now the syntactical point you added above) and theme (placing this pericope after the Sermon). But yes, words and phrases were my starting point.

I am honestly no longer sure what the "usual" arguments are for source criticism, since I have read so many different takes on the subject and have personally rejected most of them as not having any probative value. This is why I have taken to studying what Matthew and Luke did to Mark (assuming Marcan priority), as well as what other gospels potentially did to the synoptics (always with an eye toward the possibility that we have our stemma set up in reverse order sometimes), and only then looking to see if we can find the same kinds of signs in Mark that we find in Matthew and Luke and others. I have given examples of this sort of thing before, and I both have and am working on others.

In this particular pericope, for example, the key indicator I find for Matthew having used a source is that he starts off with "great multitudes" in 8.1 before Jesus' usual injunction to silence in 8.4, a meaningless gesture if "great multitudes" have witnessed the event. Even if we did not have Mark at hand to which to compare Matthew, it would look suspiciously like a case of Matthew having mislocated a pericope which someone else had devised. It would look like Matthew was concerned to point up Jesus' Mosaic character and healing abilities, and either did not notice or did not care that Jesus was enjoining silence in a situation in which it was already too late to keep the secret.

But wait. This sounds familiar, does it not? William Wrede, The Messianic Secret, pages 124-125:

The public nature of the miracles does not accord with the command to keep silence about certain miracles.

....

How are we to explain the fact that in the Gospel [of Mark] the activity and so the nature of Jesus comes so much into the limelight and is so widely known, if he is constantly concerned to conceal it?

The most obvious idea is that [Mark] the evangelist has taken over traditional materials in which the idea of the secret messiahship was not present....

Of course, we know that Wrede was not content with this "obvious" idea; he took it even further and argued that even the messianic secret itself must have been found among Mark's traditional materials, writing (for example) on page 145:

Is the idea of a messianic secret an invention of Mark's? The notion seems quite impossible.

This can be seen from Mark itself. In it, the entire life of Jesus is shot through with the various motifs of this idea. The individual conceptions occur in a multiplicity of variants. In them there is much that is unresolved. Material of this kind is not the work of an individual.

I have still not decided whether Wrede was right to go further like this, but I cannot help but ponder that "obvious idea" of his: perhaps this contradiction which runs right through the middle of Mark is the result of two different notions, two concepts not conceived by the same mind, but rather forced together implausibly: (A) Jesus was the son of God, and therefore worked mighty miracles, and (B) Jesus' messianic character was a great secret until his resurrection. This "obvious idea" scans the entire gospel from a high altitude, but Matthew 8.1-4 shows us what it might look like on the ground, as it were. For in this pericope Matthew has created exactly the same contradiction where none need have existed before (since the parallel in Mark 1.40-45 is one of those pericopes in which no one is said to have witnessed the miracle except the healed man himself, and Matthew has eliminated the part of the pericope in which this one and only necessary witness proclaims the event far and wide) simply by having relocated the pericope to a situation involving "great multitudes" (a favorite Matthean theme).

And notice that not even Matthew's penchant for introducing "great multitudes" has to be his own idea: Mark, too, speaks early and often of "a great multitude," the only real difference being the singular versus the plural. All that need have happened is that Matthew inherited both his taste for big crowds (all those multitudes around Jesus) and his interest in the messianic secret (all those injunctions to silence) from the tradition which preceded him (Mark, at least, ex hypothesi), and in this pericope the two tendencies created a tangible discrepancy.

So, for me, the obvious question is: if this happened to Matthew, might it not also have happened to Mark? We are still light years from actually reconstructing any such materials which may have come before him, but noticing how Matthew writes himself into these kinds of internal contradictions using Mark may inform our perception of what might be going on with Mark using other materials, as well.

ETA: Clearly, I am not at a point where I am able to suggest a wholesale source behind Mark which would explain every Marcan tension between miracles worked and silences enjoined. That kind of reconstruction is beyond my grasp, at least for now and perhaps until new and relevant papyri are unearthed. But the bare idea that these internal tensions might have resulted from the use of sources is supported by the existence of such tensions in Matthew and Luke, too, in such a way as to make clear that their sourcing of Mark was the cause. 1 Chronicles also contains some internal contradictions which are easily explained as the result of having used something like Samuel or Kings as a source. So, when I find internal tensions of a similar nature, say, in Mark's passion account, and when I notice numerous other factors which make the passion account stand out and which would support the idea of a source behind our extant text, naturally it is going to make me take notice.
The following is Matthew's work: ....

But the same would also apply to Mark if Mark was only a redactor. From his stable word choice one would see that he did at least the same thorough work as Matthew.
If I understand you correctly, I agree completely. But this means that style cannot help decide sources, at least not by itself. Authors often overwrite their sources beyond practical recognition. If they do this, then we are basically waiting for them to slip up, as it were (to commit an "error" that betrays their use of a source), though they themselves might not view it as a slip, since other things are far more important to them.
Besides the classical synoptical arguments, some of my points that Matthew used sources would be the considerable differences in the form of the stories (the transferred Markan pericopes on the one hand and Matthew's own stories on the other hand which are not really pericopes)....
While I agree that Matthew has added tracts of material which does not divide up very neatly into pericopes, he has also added lots of material which does, especially parables:

8.5-13. The healing at the request of a centurion (L).
8.18-22. Following Jesus (L).
9.32-34. The healing of a dumb man.
13.24-30. The parable of the tares.
13.33. The parable of the leaven.
13.36b-43. The explanation of the parable of the tares.
13.44-46. The parables of the treasure and the pearl.
13.47-50. The parable of the dragnet.
13.51-52. Things new and old.
16.1-3. Discerning the times (L).
18.11-14. The parable of the lost sheep (L).
18.23-35. The parable of the unforgiving servant.
20.1-16. The parable of the laborers.
21.28-32. The parable of the two sons.
22.1-13. The parable of the wedding feast (L).
24.45-51. The parable of the faithful servant (L).
25.1-13. The parable of the virgins.
25.14-30. The parable of the talents (L).
25.31-46. The parable of the sheep and the goats.
27.3-10. Thirty pieces of silver and the field of blood.
27.62-66. The guard at the tomb.
28.11-15. The bribing of the guard.
28.16-20. The great commission.

(The ones marked with an L in parentheses are also found in Luke.)

This is not an exhaustive list, but I believe every single item thereupon takes the form of a pericope, easily marked off from its context. So this presses the question: if the stuff added by Matthew which is not easy to divide into pericopes (mainly discourse materials, I believe) is an argument that Matthew used sources for the tidier pericopes, does that mean that all the units above come from sources? They did not come from Mark, however....

Conversely, if pericopes are such a feature of Mark, what about those parts of Mark which are not easy to divide into pericopes? Do they then come from a source?
And there is not only the „καὶ“ and the historical present, but also the repeated use of special words and phrases, the repeated use of Latinisms and Semitisms, the preferred form of the pericope (even in the passion narrative are little units), the structure of the text in doublings, chiasms and intercalations....
Since you mention intercalations, let me suggest that not all intercalations are of equal merit in Mark. I myself am content to view the following six as good, solid Marcan examples of tightly woven sandwiches containing thematic links across the parts:

The family of Jesus and the controversy over Beezebul (Mark 3.20-35).
The daughter of Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5.21-43).
The mission of the twelve and the imprisonment and death of John the baptist (Mark 6.7-34).
The cursing of the fig tree and the temple incident (Mark 11.12-24).
The plot to kill and the anointing of Jesus (Mark 14.1-11).
Peter at the fire and Jesus before the high priest (Mark 14.54-72).

But what about those intercalations in Mark which seem so different than these? What follows is a section that both features one such intercalation and also exhibits a section of Marcan text which is no easier to break down into pericopes than anything in Matthew's discourses. I have coded the intercalation itself:

Mark 9.33-50:

A1 33 And they came to Capernaum; and when He was in the house, He began to question them, "What were you discussing on the way?" 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another which of them was the greatest. 35 And sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all." 36 And taking a child, He set him before them, and taking him in His arms, He said to them, 37 "Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me."

B 38 John said to Him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to hinder him because he was not following us." 39 But Jesus said, "Do not hinder him, for there is no one who shall perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. 40 For he who is not against us is for us. 41 For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."

A2 42 "And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea."

43 "And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, 44 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. 45 And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than having your two feet, to be cast into hell, 46 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. 47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell, 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched."

49 "For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

(Verses 44 and 46 are textually questionable, but they do not affect the overall point here.)

Does this intercalation resemble those six masterpieces listed above to you? I confess it does not to me. The bit about the "strange exorcist" feels more like an interruption than an intercalation to me; indeed, it literally separates "these little ones" from their natural antecedent, the children discussed before the interruption.

And then, on top of this, the final part of the intercalation leads directly in to a stream of sayings which I have divided into "pericopes" artificially, based solely upon content. The sayings seem to be linked only in the loosest sense; this entire section simply does not look like a Marcan pericope or a Marcan string of pericopes. Does that mean it is not Marcan? I myself am not prepared (yet) to go that far, but the idea has been nagging at me for a while.

In short, to suggest that Marcan words, phrases, themes, styles, and motifs are an argument against sources leaves open the possibility that where these elements fail in Mark we may have evidence of sources, does it not? (I am not saying this for my own sake; I am not convinced that this is enough to posit sources, at least not until I am more on top of how it works in Matthew and Luke and other derivative gospels. But it seems to be a natural consequence of what you are saying.)
All these characteristics give a big fat Markan layer. If Mark was just a redactor imho he did a very hard, detailed and careful work. I think that also the unusualness of passages is part of that layer. Who can with absolute certainty say why Mark's Jesus „sternly charged“ the leper and „casted him out“ and what the puzzling end of the pericope should mean „so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town“? And this second part of the story is the greater part of the pericope and not only a little addition. One can only try to interpret it as best as possible. But such puzzling twists and turns are not an exception in GMark but the rule, starting with the „false“ quote of Isaiah and ending with the flight of the silenced women from the tomb.

imho if one tries to argue for sources of Mark he has to start with this layer in his mind and the knowledge how difficult it is to interpret something as a sign of sources in GMark.
I appreciate this note of caution, but it is also the case that I do not seek sources just anywhere or everywhere in Mark (at least not yet). I seek them only where I see the same kinds of telltale signs which I find in Matthew and Luke when they have manipulated Mark, signs which I would not expect to appear in every instance. There may be pericopes in Mark which he has derived from another text whose very existence I will never be able to demonstrate, simply because in this case Mark overwrote his source so thoroughly and left no telltale signs for us. As I said above, we are basically waiting for the author to slip up, and certain authors may slip up less than others.

I have downplayed style as a key to determining sources for reasons outlined above, but my mind is open. If you know of examples of how Matthew or Luke (for example) changed styles as a result of sourcing either each other or Mark, and if those examples do not appear in Mark, then that might mean something. I do not see how it could override information already gleaned from the kinds of tensions and internal contradictions I have been talking about, since it is perfectly conceivable that Mark sourced some parts of his narrative but not others; it would, however, add to our overall knowledge of how these kinds of interconnected textual relationships might work.

ETA:
...the plain points of some stories and the refinement of other stories and the indifferent use of metaphors (the meaningless trees in Matthew 7:17ff against the solid allusion to Isaiahs vineyard and so on).
Is this not simply to compare a poorer part of Matthew with a richer part of Mark? (And also to assume that Isaiah's vineyard derives from Mark and not from Matthew, which has it too?)

What if we deal with a poorer part of Mark?

Mark 4.26-29: 26 And He was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; 27 and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows — how, he himself does not know. 28 The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. 29 But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

Is the seed here any more meaningful than the tree in Matthew 7.17-20? Are not both just a metaphor?
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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

Post by andrewcriddle »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 1:03 pm

I do not have a full personal grasp yet on which recensions Josephus used, so I can go only by what I have learned from others, including Louis H. Feldman in Studies in Josephus' Rewritten Bible:

Page 295: There is some reason to think that Josephus used the Septuagint version for the Elijah pericope, as he did for most of the Bible, inasmuch as he agrees with the Septuagint in identifying Jehoram as the brother of Ahaziah at the point when the former succeeds to the throne (2 Kings 1:17; Ant. 9.27).

Page 539: Josephus is eclectic in the texts which he uses, generally preferring the Septuagint, but not infrequendy using the Hebrew, the Aramaic Targumim, and the proto-Lucianic text; his preference for any given one of these texts varies from book to book, though, of course, it is possible that he had a text different from any of those that are extant.

I am also dependent on others here.

One issue seems to be whether agreement between Josephus and the LXX against the MT means that Josephus was using the LXX or whether he might have been using a non-Masoretic version of the Hebrew text.

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

Post by Ben C. Smith »

andrewcriddle wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:03 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 1:03 pm

I do not have a full personal grasp yet on which recensions Josephus used, so I can go only by what I have learned from others, including Louis H. Feldman in Studies in Josephus' Rewritten Bible:

Page 295: There is some reason to think that Josephus used the Septuagint version for the Elijah pericope, as he did for most of the Bible, inasmuch as he agrees with the Septuagint in identifying Jehoram as the brother of Ahaziah at the point when the former succeeds to the throne (2 Kings 1:17; Ant. 9.27).

Page 539: Josephus is eclectic in the texts which he uses, generally preferring the Septuagint, but not infrequendy using the Hebrew, the Aramaic Targumim, and the proto-Lucianic text; his preference for any given one of these texts varies from book to book, though, of course, it is possible that he had a text different from any of those that are extant.

I am also dependent on others here.

One issue seems to be whether agreement between Josephus and the LXX against the MT means that Josephus was using the LXX or whether he might have been using a non-Masoretic version of the Hebrew text.
I agree that is an issue. Feldman admits as much, both in that second quote and elsewhere in the book. It is not an easy matter.
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Re: A matter of style (for Kunigunde).

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:47 pm I am honestly no longer sure what the "usual" arguments are for source criticism, since I have read so many different takes on the subject and have personally rejected most of them as not having any probative value.
I think the usual argument is to note a real or assumed inconsistency or break or error or something similar in the text (lines in blue) and to draw the conclusion that the text has two sources (black and red), patched awkwardly together into one text. This scenario assumes a sloppy redactor, who has overlooked something. The argument from style shows that this scenario of an awkward redactor is not true because at least the assumed redactor must have rendered the style of the assumed two sources very carefully.

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