It is strange when even a (wisely) skeptical person on everything sounds dogmatic in his defense of the Markan priority, despite of the argument I have raised for argue the opposite.
Hence I wonder: what are the psychological motivations behind the hard-to-die Markan prioritists (assuming they are not religious people)?
I have found the following:
1) Mere conservatorism;
2) a kind of horror vacui: objectively, the priority of a form of proto-Luke (*Ev) implies the recognition that we can't explain the earliest narrative by reducing all of it to allegory;
3) fear of adding fuel to a kind of conspiracy theory: how someway the idea that all the Canonical gospels are an anti-marcionite reaction is (wrongly) considered;
4) The implicit debunking of the specific pet theory cultivated by someone.
Most of them are chiasmolators, unable to see that those Markan Sandwiches are just interpolations. The anabatic method of Jean Magne can help to discern these interpolations, but naive Ockhamists are too inert to see that.
Given that Mark priority is one of the obvious options given the synoptic problem,
Is it necessary or helpful to project psychological illness on those who consider it?
The imbecillitas pecorum, which characterizes Markan Priorists and believers in pre-Flavian Judaic origins of Christianity, is not a psychological illness but the deprecable general condition of mankind.
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sun Jan 14, 2024 12:42 am
Hence I wonder: what are the psychological motivations behind the hard-to-die Markan prioritists (assuming they are not religious people)?
I have found the following:
A similar question also arises in my mind:
Why don't others happily take my great truth to heart, but stubbornly cling to their own strange ideas?
I suspect that they must have had terrible experiences in their childhood
schillingklaus wrote: ↑Sun Jan 14, 2024 7:03 am
The imbecillitas pecorum, which characterizes Markan Priorists and believers in pre-Flavian Judaic origins of Christianity, is not a psychological illness but the deprecable general condition of mankind.
Wow! So... Coco and masterbation not helping you out much eh?
My post is not designed to be offensive but only descriptive: I really think that the Markan prioritists show some psychological/emotional reaction before a drastic change of paradigm in course.
My point above is SIMPLY that Mark is removing ambiguity about who (the father of) Jesus is from passages where a such ambiguity was strumentalized (to say the least) by Marcion. I have found another “coincidence”, number 4:
The episode of Bartimaeus is found in both Mark and *Ev. It may be strumentalized in a marcionite way along the following lines: Bartimaeus gives up to hail Jesus as davidic only after, not before, he gains the sight (just as Adam and Eve realize the salvific function of the Serpent only after their act of disobedience). Realizing the danger of the marcionite interpretation, Mark adds the episode of the blind of Bethsaida that is exactly simmetrical to the Bartimaeus episode: Marcion has only the rapid healing of the blind called Bartimaeus while
Mark has added the delayed healing of the blind of Bethsaida. The delay is explained by the vision of “men as tree walking”, i.e. blind people want a king-messiah for themselves (the allusion is to Judges 9:8-15). The inference is that Bartimaeus has healed rapidly just because he recognized Jesus as already the davidic Messiah and didn’t wish one yet to come. In this way the initial recognition of Jesus as davidic messiah by Bartimaeus is not seen more in (Marcionite) antithesis to his secondary recognition of Jesus as son of god.
For me, Marcionite priority is a very weak theory.
That’s why i stick with Mark.
Nothing to do with any emotion or psychological problem in changing one's mind. I'd have been quite happy for Marcion to be the first, since I'm a mythicist. But I'm not convinced and will never be. I'm sorry. Marcionite priority is a very bad theory.
And I've deserted this forum because I'm tired of seeing this flawed theory expounded everywhere.
When Neil is ready to contemplate the possibility of a proto-Mark without John the Baptist in the incipit, I wonder if he is falling in the same mistake of people preserving a genuine 1 Thessalonians contra factum that 1 Thess 2:14-16 is an interpolation with the potential of dating the entire epistle after Bar-Kochba.
What surprises me is that I don't see a phalanx of scholars defending the authenticity of 1 Thessalonians without 1 Thess 2:14-16 with the same zeal of the phalanx of people defending the priority of a some form of proto-Mark without John the Baptist in the incipit.
