To clarify.Sinouhe wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:06 amandrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 5:24 am
The feeding of the 5 thousand in Mark clearly involves Jews. The feeding of the 4 thousand in Mark may or may not involve Gentiles. (See Feeding 4000 for an argument from a consevative Christian viewpoint that it involves Jews.)
I think it involves Gentiles since Jesus is pagan territories (Decapolis : Mark 7:31).
To deny that this is Gentile territory in Mark 8 is to make the text say what it does not say: that Jesus left the Decapolis.
Even if the feeding of the 4 thousand does involve Gentiles, (and it may well do), this is probably a relatively late doublet of the feeding of the 5 thousand
A late addition to Mark ?
I don't think so. It is only a conjecture once again since all the manuscripts of Mark contain this pericope.
And Paul said: first the Jews then the pagans? Mark knows his classics. First the Jews (Mark 6), then the pagans (Mark 8).
Wasn't one of Mark's agendas to show that the pagans had the right to enter the covenant like the Jews? (the Syro-Phoenician woman, the cross bearer, the Roman centurion)
and not relevant to the question of Gospel tradition at the time of Paul.
By mentioning the multiplication of 4000 or the dining with sinners, I was implying that these events in Mark are legends since Paul makes no mention of them when he argues that kashrut is unnecessary for pagans or that the apostles can dine with pagans. So I think it is relevant to bring it up in the discussion of Paul's doctrinal differences with the Jerusalem apostles.
Mark being a pro-Pauline gospel and rather pro-Pagan as well, I think he had the same view of non-Christian Pagans as Paul did, whom he considered sinners until they were converted to Christ (Galatians 2:15-21)I don't think eating with Jewish 'sinners' raises the same issues as eating with Gentiles. (Assuming that the Jewish 'sinners' are reasonably kosher and are not serving roast pork).
I was not questioning that the feeding of the 4,000 was part of the original text of Mark. The issue is about pre-Markan material.
IF you regard the feeding stories as Markan invention then there is obviously no pre-Markan material here. However, if you believe that Mark is rewriting earlier material, (which seems necessary in order to see this material as relevant to the dispute between Paul and the Jerusalem Apostles), then the location of the feeding of the 4,000 in probably Gentile territory is highly likely to be Markan redaction (even if the doubling of the feeding miracle is pre-Markan).
I.E. although there may plausibly have been accounts of feeding miracles by Jesus circulating in the time of Paul, such a miracle is unlikely to have been located in Gentile territory until the post-Pauline period. (Possibly in response to Pauline debates.)
Andrew Criddle