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Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 10:46 pm
by Giuseppe
Mark 13:33-37:

33 Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. 34 It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.

35 “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. 36 If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. 37 What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’”

...has any air of being the original ending of proto-Mark.

The current ending in Mark 16:8 raises agan the theme of surprise.

What is more, Luke seems to be based on Mark only until Mark 13:37. After that point, Luke doesn't follow more Mark.

In my view, the Strongest Argument to consider the Passion story not of the same author of proto-Mark, is that before Mark 14:1 any little episode finds his explicative reason singularly in itself, while after 14:1, you can't more to divide the Passion story in single pieces: you have to read it entirely to decipher fully any his single piece

I wonder if this Argument can be extended to see the original ending of proto-Mark even before, at the end of Transfiguration episode, since only from that point the reader is informed about the future death in (earthly) Jerusalem, hence he can realize it only if he is already aware about the content of the Passion story.

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 6:53 am
by Giuseppe
Note also how:
  • before the Passion Story, the (anti-)Messianic Secret rules (Jesus is not the Christ)
  • While in the Passion Story, the Messianic Rumor rules (Jesus is the Christ/king of Jews).

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 7:12 am
by Giuseppe
Luke 9:31:
31 They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.

Differently from Mark and Matthew, Luke puts already in 9:31 the first prophecy of the death of Jesus in Jerusalem.

While Mark and Matthew put the first prophecy of the death of the Son of MAN, i.e., of Jesus, just after the descent from the mountain where the Transfiguration is happened.

Hence, strictly speaking, in all the 3 our synoptical Gospels, only from the Transfiguration episode the reader can realize fully the meaning of the prophecy of the death of Jesus in the light of (i.e. assuming already) the knowledge of the Passion Story.

Before the Transfiguration episode, no allusion to a future death of Jesus. Not even a clue.

Hence, the Transfiguration episode was the final episode of proto-Mark.□
  • Hence, it is absolutely wrong to say that Mark is a "long introduction to a Passion story". Who claims so is only a fool Christian apologist.
  • It is absolutely correct to say that Mark is a "long introduction to an Ascension story": precisely, the Transfiguration.

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 9:27 am
by Giuseppe
GIUSEPPE'S SECOND ARGUMENT, BASED ON THE GOSPEL, THAT JESUS NEVER EXISTED:
  • 1) The Earliest Gospel (proto-Mark) is Mark until to Transfiguration episode, without all the rest (evidence above);
  • 2) after the Transfiguration episode, anything was added in proto-Mark, gaining our Mark as result;
  • 3) in the original Transfiguration episode (=original ending of proto-Mark per 1), Jesus was discussing with Moses and Elijah about his imminent ascension to celestial Jerusalem;
  • 4) in the rest of the story that was added on proto-Mark, per 2, Jesus predicts his imminent ascension and death in the earthly Jerusalem;
  • 5) an imminent ascension to earthly Jerusalem, as per 4, is not an imminent ascension to celestial Jerusalem, as per 3;
  • 6) therefore: per 5, the author of Proto-Mark didn't imagine that his Jesus could die on earth. Which means more precisely: per 5, he didn't even know about an earthly crucifixion and only ignored it.
  • 7) per 6, if Jesus didn't die on earth in Proto-Mark, then he was already assumed to be dead in outer space, even before the entire story started.
  • 8) therefore, per 7, Jesus never existed.
COROLLARY:

A confusion, I fear deliberate, has occurred, simply by adding the sequel to the original story, a sequel that is still before our eyes. There is no better internal proof, against the historical Jesus, than the repeated insistence, for three or four times, of the imminent death of Jesus in the earthly Jerusalem, just starting from the episode in which the Jesus of the Earliest Gospel was about to take the flight definitively, after discussion with Moses and Elijah, to the heavenly Jerusalem.

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 12:34 pm
by Giuseppe
Tangential to my thesis, is the question about the true identity of the two human figures appearing during the Transfiguration: were they really Moses and Elijah?

And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

5 Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)

(Mark 9:4-6)

"Before them" may mean: only for them, for the idiot Pillars. If they were not Moses and Elijah, then who were really?

Paul and Marcion.

ADDENDA:
  • Marcionites liked to depict Jesus sitting on a central throne with Paul to his right hand and Marcion to his left.
  • This explains why the Judaizers transformed Marcion and Paul in the 2 thieves crucified with Jesus: Marcion and the Marcion's Paul denied that Jesus was the Christ/"king of the Jews" and insulted him as such, the irony being that Jesus, for the Judaizing author of the Passion story, was the Christ/"king of the Jews".

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 2:38 pm
by lsayre
Interesting! I seem to vaguely recall reading a book some time ago written by a (former?) Priest wherein he made the claim that all of Mark was telling the story of an already risen Jesus Christ, as if the end should have been placed at the beginning, and the order of Mark was at some juncture jumbled/transposed. But I'm at a total loss as to the title or author of this book. Perhaps I merely dreamed it. ????

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:26 pm
by Giuseppe
Also I would like to remember the name of the scholar, quoted by Robert M Price in a his book, who was the first to detect that the Risen Christ in Galilee is one and the same with the Jesus who starts his preaching in Galilee, hence revealing that the key of the Gospel is: the hero is risen even before the story starts.

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:34 pm
by Ben C. Smith
lsayre wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2020 2:38 pm Interesting! I seem to vaguely recall reading a book some time ago written by a (former?) Priest wherein he made the claim that all of Mark was telling the story of an already risen Jesus Christ, as if the end should have been placed at the beginning, and the order of Mark was at some juncture jumbled/transposed. But I'm at a total loss as to the title or author of this book. Perhaps I merely dreamed it. ????
Giuseppe wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:26 pm Also I would like to remember the name of the scholar, quoted by Robert M Price in a his book, who was the first to detect that the Risen Christ in Galilee is one and the same with the Jesus who starts his preaching in Galilee, hence revealing that the key of the Gospel is: the hero is risen even before the story starts.
My best guess for what you are seeking....

Subject: The ending of Mark (for Kunigunde).
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Apr 28, 2017 8:15 amRobert M. Price writes in chapter 1 of Deconstructing Jesus:

Darrell J. Doughty [in class lectures] suggests that Marks gospel, which has so many mysterious features, would make a lot more sense if we read it as having a circular structure—if it started with the resurrection! That's why the book seems to end so abruptly at Mark 16:8, with the women fleeing from the tomb after a young man tells them Jesus will rejoin his disciples in Galilee. Mark wants the reader to look next at the only place there is left to look: the beginning. There we find the episode of Jesus' calling the disciples at the lakeside and the mysteriously immediate response: The disciples drop what they are doing and follow him. Doughty noticed how much sense this scene makes if we assume the disciples know him already. Think of how similar the scene is both to Luke's version in Luke 5:1-11 and to that in John 21:1-11, where it is explicitly a resurrection story! This is the reunion Mark's young man was talking about (Mark 16:7)! So once the Risen Jesus regains his disciples at the Sea of Galilee, the post-resurrection teachings begin. They continue throughout the Gospel of Mark.


Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:46 pm
by Giuseppe
Thanks Ben. In the link your comment about Doughty's view is:
I regard this as a very perceptive insight, but one which founders on the very obscurity of the methodology: if this was Mark's intention, why does it take a scholar from the age of postmodernism to figure it out? Such private interpretations are unlikely on their face to be true to the original author's intent, and in this case the notion evidently results in the gospel of Mark being the first extant literary example of a self-causing time loop, a feature from a genre which would not be invented for nearly two millennia.
I don't think so. As I have explained in another thread, the incipit of Marcion could - and was meant (by Heracleon) - be meant as a descent to Sheol, hence also there, Jesus has to go through death before to descend into Sheol, and for the rest of the Gospel he is therefore already risen.

Re: Proto-Mark == Mark without Passion Story

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 9:20 am
by Giuseppe
I like a lot to read Ben, but only to disagree continually with him in advance, again and again.

A strong example is the following:
Ben C. Smith wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:09 pm There are several junctures in the gospel of Mark at which the author/editor seems to presume previous knowledge, on the part of the reader, of significant parts of the overall storyline.

1. The imprisonment of John.

Mark 1.14-15: 14 Now after John had been delivered over [μετὰ δὲ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ἰωάννην], Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."

While John himself has been introduced (in 1.2-6), nothing has been said which would imply that he was going to be imprisoned. Therefore, this notice seems to presume readers will already know about John's imprisonment
The imprisonment of John would require, per Ben, an explanation. But he seems to require as previous presumed explanation, something of the kind:

John did something on earth to be punished by someone, put in prison and killed.

I mean: what escapes to Ben is that any possible explanation of that kind is an euhemerizing explanation, i.e. an INVENTED explanation, quasi a mere apology to eclipse the real ignorance of the WHY "John was arrested".

My reason to think Mark put bluntly the arrest of John, without a minimal bit of a minimal explanation, is that the explanation was found in a disturbing myth, for "Mark":

Jesus descended to Sheol, he was risen by baptism of John, he started to preach a new gospel in Sheol about a new god, and John the Baptist (as all the OT prophets), rejected him. IPSO FACTO, the creator punished John: he was left in the Sheol.

When "Mark" (or a guy similar to him) euhemerized this myth by transposing it on the earth, he couldn't give the pure and simple truth:

I am going to invent an enigmatic earthly arrest of John, because I want to eclipse the "real" arrest of John in Sheol, after he rejected Jesus.

But that is what he did. Take or leave.

I may be wrong, but absolutely not for objections of the kind possibly raised by Ben: John could be existed and done something that required an arrest, et similia.

That means still: ehuemerization.

ADDENDA:

Surely an objection I don't like is: were the readers of Mark so idiots that they "drank" a so enigmatic story of the arrest of John, without asking in advance WHY ?

Well, yes. They were so IDIOTS.

Which means: Mark could have invented the enigmatic arrest of John entirely ex nihilo, pace Ben.