andrewcriddle wrote:A few comments as I promised.
Thanks, Andrew. Excellent points as always.
The advantage of your idea is that as you say it resolves at one stroke various problems in the Gospel narratives as we have them. One issue that I don't think you specifically mentioned is that it gives the last words of Mark 16:8 They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. a clear function in context. It allows the appearance of Jesus to the Apostles to be plausibly unexpected (In John 21 it is implausibly unexpected given the previous appearances). Although an angel has already told the women that Jesus has risen' the apostles remain unaware of this because the women have not passed on the message.
I may not have explained my view of 16.8 fulfilling this function very well in the OP, but yes, I agree with this assessment completely.
Some problems:
a/ I haven't does a proper analysis but the relevant section of John 21 (the last few verses are clearly from the redactor) doesn't at first sight seem stylistically particularly Markan.
I do agree with this. But I also think that, in general, whatever John touches seems to tend to turn Johannine. The baptism of Jesus, for example, in John 1.29-33 strikes me as thoroughly Johannine in character:
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and he says: Behold, the lamb of God, the one who is taking away the sins of the world. 30 This is he on behalf of whom I said: After me is coming a man who is to my fore, since he was before me. 31 And I did not know him, but, so that he might be made apparent to Israel, on account of this I came baptizing in water. 32 And John testified saying: I have watched the spirit descending as a dove from heaven, and it remained upon him. 33 And I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize in water, that one said to me: Upon whom you see the spirit descending and remaining upon him, this is the one baptizing in the holy spirit. 34 And I have seen and have testified that this is the son of God.
Were our extant version of Mark lacking a baptism, and were my thesis that the original version contained one, based on John, the same observation might easily be made: nothing in the Johannine version seems at first sight particularly Marcan. I would have to be arguing that the very presence of the pericope would be Marcan, not the style of what we find in John, and that is what I am doing with the resurrection appearance in John 21: its very presence strikes me as Marcan, but the style is all John.
b/ The emphasis on the restoration of Peter in particular in John 21 (also present in the source used in Luke 5) feels non-Markan and probably post-Markan.
The threefold restoration of Peter is just a guess on my part; it is not actually part of my argument, and is a possibility at best. As I responded to someone else on this thread, John has as much motive to create this threefold restoration as Mark does, since John, like Mark, has three denials.
c/ I have problems with an ending of Mark known to Luke and to the Johannine redactor and to the author of the Gospel of Peter but unknown to Matthew and lost from all surviving copies of Mark. Part of the problem here may be the idea that the Gospel of Peter knew the lost ending. I think we can explain the Gospel of Peter on a basis of our Mark and our John. (There is a problem as to how the Gospel of Peter handled the resurrection appearances in Jerusalem, which the author must have known, but I don't think knowledge of the lost ending of Mark really helps here.)
Yes, this is where things get very complex very quickly: how do all of these gospels fit together chronologically and with regard to interdependence? If Peter's dependence upon the lost ending of Mark becomes too much of a liability, then it could be dropped, and we might suppose that Peter is combining John 21.1-14 with Mark 1.16-20. What gives me pause here is that mention of Levi of Alphaeus in the gospel of Peter. Sure, Peter can be drawing him in from Mark 2.14, but it has always bothered me that Levi is one of only five disciples to be given a personal, narrated call by Jesus, yet he fails even to make the list of the twelve in Mark 3.13-19, and he does not even make an appearance later. If the lost ending of Mark had him at the Sea of Galilee for this resurrection appearance, that would at least tie up a loose end in Mark. But if that is the case, of course, then Peter can have gotten that information only from the lost ending of Mark: not from John 21.1-14 and certainly not from Luke 5.1-11. So I am a bit reluctant to give up that point altogether.
Furthermore, I have only become more and more convinced with each passing study that
all of the gospels are probably layered. I quoted an excerpt from David Parker a good while ago that I feel is relevant:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1832&p=41579#p41579. He is writing only/mainly about the canonical gospels, but I have a feeling that Peter is the same way, preserving very early materials and adding very late materials. (I would say that, in its present form, it is one of the latest, if not the very latest, of the gospels; but I suspect that Crossan, though mistaken overall about his "cross gospel", is correct on some points, to the effect that there are some materials in Peter which predate our canonical gospels. But that is a topic for another time.)
If we avoid supposing that the Gospel of Peter had access to the lost ending then we have an ending known to Luke and to the Johannine redactor but unknown to Matthew and lost from all surviving copies of Mark. This would probably imply a relatively early date of Luke and John and a relatively late date of Matthew. If true this would have broader implications for things like the synoptic problem.
This is something to consider, and I may have more to say about it later.
Thanks again.
Ben.