Re: A strange anomaly in Mark 14:41
Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 12:47 am
With respect to the plastic genre character of Mark:
I think Mark is a flexible-purpose text. Experimental archeology establishes that it is robust as a performance work, with casts ranging from solo performance through about 15.
https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/gm42/other-gms/
All told, there are about 60 "speaking parts," with another 40 or so "special business parts," but I don't know of any production that has fully realized that potential. It would make for an interesting (also easy and low-budget) Lenten project for some church group, just as some pastors have done the solo performance (challenging for most moderns to memorize that much).
It is difficult to imagine how Mark could manage to be unaware of that possible use of his work, and being aware of it, not to welcome it.
We have independent reasons to suspect that at least some other prose works of the time and place were "multi purpose." That is, the same work might be read aloud as dinner entertainment and also consulted by other writers composing their own works in their private workrooms.
If this picture is correct, then it is also difficult to imagine that Mark wouldn't know about that feature of his cultural surround.
In any case, both performance and private study for re-use (Matthew, for instance) have occurred, so the text is, as a matter of fact and not of conjecture, suitable for both (regardless of authorial intent, whatever that means apart from what a reasonable person might foresee as possible uses for their creation).
With regards to the specific anomaly:
While I agree that the transition within that speech is awkward for a lone silent reader, it is easy to fill in performance. There could well have been a line there, but there is no way to tell what that line would have been.
I have a suspicion that Jesus' resolution not to drink grape products for a while may have been there at one time, and has since migrated to its present location at the end of the last supper. However, since the prompt for the second part of the speech is off-stage action, a silent beat, covered with a change-of-gaze-direction gesture, would also suffice.
Even with modern conventions for explicit intraspeech stage directions, you can find awkward-for-silent-readers transitions like that, where the author trusts the director and performer to read the speech effectively. It can even be part of the fun to see what the company comes up with.
I think Mark is a flexible-purpose text. Experimental archeology establishes that it is robust as a performance work, with casts ranging from solo performance through about 15.
https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/gm42/other-gms/
All told, there are about 60 "speaking parts," with another 40 or so "special business parts," but I don't know of any production that has fully realized that potential. It would make for an interesting (also easy and low-budget) Lenten project for some church group, just as some pastors have done the solo performance (challenging for most moderns to memorize that much).
It is difficult to imagine how Mark could manage to be unaware of that possible use of his work, and being aware of it, not to welcome it.
We have independent reasons to suspect that at least some other prose works of the time and place were "multi purpose." That is, the same work might be read aloud as dinner entertainment and also consulted by other writers composing their own works in their private workrooms.
If this picture is correct, then it is also difficult to imagine that Mark wouldn't know about that feature of his cultural surround.
In any case, both performance and private study for re-use (Matthew, for instance) have occurred, so the text is, as a matter of fact and not of conjecture, suitable for both (regardless of authorial intent, whatever that means apart from what a reasonable person might foresee as possible uses for their creation).
With regards to the specific anomaly:
While I agree that the transition within that speech is awkward for a lone silent reader, it is easy to fill in performance. There could well have been a line there, but there is no way to tell what that line would have been.
I have a suspicion that Jesus' resolution not to drink grape products for a while may have been there at one time, and has since migrated to its present location at the end of the last supper. However, since the prompt for the second part of the speech is off-stage action, a silent beat, covered with a change-of-gaze-direction gesture, would also suffice.
Even with modern conventions for explicit intraspeech stage directions, you can find awkward-for-silent-readers transitions like that, where the author trusts the director and performer to read the speech effectively. It can even be part of the fun to see what the company comes up with.