Is *Ev 7:24-28 based on Mark 9:9-13 ? The STRONGEST case of Markan priority over *Ev

[Giuseppe]

In the mirable words of Bruno Bauer:

After the transfiguration, Jesus told the disciples that Elijah, who was to come, had already come (Mark 9:11-13), and they understood, as Matthew adds (17:13), that Jesus meant John the Baptist. Luke omitted this statement that Jesus made after the transfiguration.

Why? He just worked them into a longer speech by Jesus and created the message of the Baptist as the occasion for this detailed explanation.

(my bold)

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant. 11 And they asked him, “Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?” 12 Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? 13 But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.” (Mark 9:9-13)

What went ye out into the wilderness to gaze at? A reed shaken with the wind? 25 But what are ye come out to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are in gorgeous apparel, and delicacy, are in kings' courts. 26 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. 27 This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. 28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women a greater prophet than John the Baptist, there is none: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. (*Ev 7:24-28)

I am tempted to ask directly to prof Klinghardt how he would answer to this so strong argument supporting the Mark's priority on *Ev (and the *Ev's priority on both Matthew and Luke).

In whiletime, I am obliged by this argument to accept the following solution:

[Giuseppe]

Possibly the Klinghardt's counter-argument is found in p. 742: in short, since Mark 9:13 figures in an episode about the absence of faith by the disciples, and since the episode about the absence of faith of the disciples would be based on an episode in *Ev 9:37-45 about the absence of faith by the crowd, then also Mark 9:13 would be post-*Ev.

*Ev had an account revolving around lack of faith; not, however, regarding the disciples’ lack of faith (which is absent from the episode itself) but the crowd’s faith in the ability of the disciples who (according to *9,1) were in possession of ἐξουσία ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ δαιμόνια. The critical reaction of Jesus with the dissociative question (*9,41) is directed to the father as representative of the crowd from where he had called out to Jesus (*9,38: ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου ἐβόησεν). Jesus’ question (ἕως πότε ἀνέξομαι ὑμῶν; according to the *Eversion) must be understood as a frustrated sigh about the persistent lack of faith. The keyword ἕως πότε then triggers the instruction to the disciples that the Son of Man will be handed over shortly. The meaning of this instruction lies less in informing the disciples about the Son of Man’s violent end, but rather in disclosing that time is running short.
b. Mark took up this exorcism account, but he substantially changed its character through partially extensive editorial interventions. Above all, he turned it into a story about the faith of the disciples. For that purpose, Mark introduced the disciples twice as participants in this episode: initially, by having Jesus come down the mountain with Peter, James, and John (Mark 9,9: καταβαινόντων αὐτῶν ἐκ τοῦ ὄρους), and then by letting these three disciples meet with the others (Mark 9,14: ἐλθόντες πρὸς τοὺς μαθητάς).

(my bold)

[Giuseppe]

It is not clear why an attack against the crowd has to be older than an attack against the disciples.

Especially more so when Klinghardt thinks that in Mark the attack against Simon the Leper replaced the attack against Simon Peter in *Ev.

[Giuseppe]

mlinssen felt someway obliged to comment this thread in the following way:

I couldn't even if I wanted to!
As I already stated in Absolute Thomasine Priority (page 38) this very odd verse points to no Scripture - unless ...

>>>
In the light of all that, would it be feasible that the so very peculiar beheading of John the Baptist served a purpose? Other than relieving the gospel-writers of their duty to assign him a true role as Jesus' one and only prophet and to thoroughly deepen his character - and have him finally actually do something to 'turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers' as the real Malachi prophecy foretold?

2 Kings 2:1

When Yahweh was about to take Elijah up by a whirlwind into heaven, Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. 2 Elijah said to Elisha, "Please wait here, for Yahweh has sent me as far as Bethel." Elisha said, "As Yahweh lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you." So they went down to Bethel. 3 The sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that Yahweh will take away your master from your head today?" He said, "Yes, I know it. Hold your peace."

Laugh if you will, I know I did when I first saw it. Not a prophecy at all yet a historical narrative of Elijah's being taken up into heaven, and even already fulfilled - and it does contain the words 'take...away...master...head' but that's really all about it. The master is taken from the head, it's not saying the reverse, that the head of the master will be taken, and head is naturally used figuratively here.
<<<

Naturally, now Mark has introduced John the Baptist as an ally instead of an adversary, he can't have JtB doubt Jesus anymore and wisely leaves out *Ev 7:20 - and obviously it is nonsense to restore 7:19, as the whole goal of Mark, as stated in my book, is to introduce entirely new elements to *Ev that no one has evidently ever heard of. In order to do so while comfortably providing a reason why those elements were unknown, Mark invents all kinds of testimonies and witnesses who never testify.
JtB exits the stage right after the baptism, the Messianic Secret serves to keep his new identification as XS and son of God etc "a well hidden secret", and the women at the tomb nor telling anyone about the resurrection does likewise.
Points 4a) through 4c) on pages 225-229 of the hard copy

Feel free to share!

[rgprice]

The relationships between the Gospels aren't nearly as neat and straight forward as any typical relational diagram, yours included.

This particular passage isn't the strongest case. As far as I'm concerned its impossible that Marcion is before Mark for a multitude of reasons. In Mark virtually every single scene is derived from literary parallels to the Jewish scriptures. Detail after detail comes from the scriptures. The whole flow of the narrative is dictated by the scriptures.

For example, at a high level Mark 1 - 9, from the Baptism TO the Transfiguration, is all based on the story of Elijah and Elisha. But the parallels between Elijah and Elisha end exactly with the Transfiguration. Then we move on to a much more prevalent use of the Prophets.

But the scenes in Luke/*Ev (other than where they match Mark) do not contain these scriptural parallels. And when they do contain scriptural parallels it is only to the degree that the text exactly matches Mark. When the text deviates from Mark the scriptural parallels are degraded. So some scenes in Luke/*Ev are "similar" to Mark, but not exactly, and when you look at the scriptural parallels the scriptural parallels are very tight in Mark, but much less clear in Luke.

When it comes to the re-ordering, we see that in Mark the Elijah/Elisha theme spans exactly from Baptism to Transfiguration, while in Luke some of those scenes are rearranged and fall outside of these chapters. Not only this, but when we look at the supposed "Q" material, much of it can be very distinctly grouped into specific themes, and of course it does not contain the types of scriptural parallels that we find in Mark.

So we have two possible explanations:
1) Mark came first, with the writer of Mark constructing his/her story from scriptural references in a very orderly and precise way. Then the writer(s) of *Ev/Luke/Other Gospels derived their stories from Mark. When they did so, they disrupted many of the scriptural parallels by rewording passages without regard to the underlying parallels. They also added new material that was not constructed to follow the scriptural themes developed by the writer of Mark.

2) *Ev was created first. The writer of *Ev created a story without the use of scriptural parallels or with vague and intermittent use of scriptural parallels. The writer of Mark was able to take *Ev, identify scriptural parallels for scenes that originally were not constructed from scriptural parallels, rearrange the material to more closely follow scriptural themes, and remove material that couldn't be aligned to scriptural themes. The material that Mark decided to remove "just so happens" to be a bunch of teachings that are related conceptually.

Option #1 requires that the writer of Mark produced a story from scriptural themes and that later writers failed to fully recognize all of the scriptural elements used by Mark, and so disrupted many of the parallels developed by Mark. Later writers who did recognize some of the parallels consciously preserved or developed these themes and claimed them to be cases of "prophecy fulfillment".

Option #2 requires that the writer of *Ev wrote a story either without or only loosely based on scriptural themes, and then the writer of Mark was able to somehow take this story and revise it into a story where dozens of scenes that were not originally derived from the Jewish scriptures were able to be reworded in ways that exactly aligned the scenes with scripture, and he was able to reorganize the whole narrative to follow distinct scriptural themes. So this editor was able to take a story not written, or only loosely written, with scriptural concepts in mind and then force it into a story that paralleled scripture with every verse.

While the literary genius of option #1 is impressive, the work required to achieve option #2 is inconceivable. Option #1 merely requires the creation of an impressive narrative based on scriptural themes that later revisors all degraded and disrupted. So I can understand how one goes from Mark to *Ev or to any other Gospel. I can't imagine how one could go from *Ev to Mark.

[Giuseppe]

As far as I'm concerned its impossible that Marcion is before Mark for a multitude of reasons. In Mark virtually every single scene is derived from literary parallels to the Jewish scriptures. Detail after detail comes from the scriptures. The whole flow of the narrative is dictated by the scriptures.

that doesn't sound as a valid objection to me, since Klinghardt has made it clear that *Ev was not written by Marcion. And prof Vinzent eludes astutely this fact by attributing to 'oral tradition' what of not-marcionite is found by him in Marcion.

I see that you assume that "*Ev had to be a marcionite work and therefore without midrash from OT", when the premise or the conclusion is false:

2) *Ev was created first. The writer of *Ev created a story without the use of scriptural parallels or with vague and intermittent use of scriptural parallels.

I am not saying that this denies the Markan priority over *Ev. I am saying that it is necessary a more subtle and deep argument than what is your argument (basically, that an anti-demiurgist couldn't use Jewish scriptures).

[Giuseppe]

Commenting the mlinssen's comment, I see that 2 Kings 2:3:

The sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that Yahweh will take away your master from your head today?"

...explains perfectly the irony in Mark about the arrest of John (and by logical extension his coming decapitation) coinciding with a kind of ascension to heaven: John is ascended to heaven ('taken away') in the precise moment his "head" is removed from the his body.
In other words, Mark wrote:

...After that John was arrested...

...and the readers read:

...After that John was ascended to heaven...

Why did none raise this midrash before mlinssen? Is it ever possible?

[rgprice]

As far as I'm concerned its impossible that Marcion is before Mark for a multitude of reasons. In Mark virtually every single scene is derived from literary parallels to the Jewish scriptures. Detail after detail comes from the scriptures. The whole flow of the narrative is dictated by the scriptures.

that doesn't sound as a valid objection to me, since Klinghardt has made it clear that *Ev was not written by Marcion. And prof Vinzent eludes astutely this fact by attributing to 'oral tradition' what of not-marcionite is found by him in Marcion.

I see that you assume that "*Ev had to be a marcionite work and therefore without midrash from OT", when the premise or the conclusion is false:

2) *Ev was created first. The writer of *Ev created a story without the use of scriptural parallels or with vague and intermittent use of scriptural parallels.

I am not saying that this denies the Markan priority over *Ev. I am saying that it is necessary a more subtle and deep argument than what is your argument (basically, that an anti-demiurgist couldn't use Jewish scriptures).

No, i t doesn't matter who wrote it. We can see by reading any version of any reconstruction of it that it does not parallel the scriptures in the way that Mark does. Has nothing to do with who wrote it, it has to do simply with its content.

[Giuseppe]

The writer of Mark was able to take *Ev, identify scriptural parallels for scenes that originally were not constructed from scriptural parallels

It would be interesting to know about scenes in *Ev "that originally were not constructed from scriptural parallels".

[Giuseppe]

Returning to my argument based on Bruno Bauer's, the following table may be useful:

Mark	*Ev	Pattern in both
Elija comes before	a prophet is seen in the wilderness	a fact is described
but Elijah has already come	really more than a prophet	apparent exaltation
but he was killed	but he is inferior to Paul	final failure

Could Mark have read *Ev 7:26:

But what went ye out for to see? A prophet?

Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet.
[...]
but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

...and invent the following in 9:13?

To be sure, Elijah does come first
[...]
But I tell you, Elijah has come,

and they have done to him everything they wished

The answer may be yes given the fact that Mark was interested in a rehabilitation of John the Baptist, hence (1) omitting the doubting John the Baptist and (2) filling the sequel of the Transfiguration episode with a praise for John as Elijah redivivus.

Bruno Bauer has pointed out rightly how the author of *Ev had invented the entire episode of the doubting John the Baptist in order to arrive to denigrate John the Baptist as more little than the little ones.

But I may say the same thing about Mark: he invented the sequel to the Transfiguration episode in order to rehabilitate John the Baptist as Elijah redivivus.

Where is the decisive difference that decides on the direction of the dependence?