Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.

[Secret Alias]

were (or had been) known within the Markan community, when it was not the case in the ones of Luke & Matthew.

But that's a 'hindsight is 20/20 argument.' Because this passage is not in Matthew and Luke you say 'therefore' Mark knew them and Luke and Matthew didn't. But Luke and Matthew kept references to people whom neither of them or Mark knew. I've always said Bernard that you can't get out of YOUR HEAD (= your beliefs, prejudices etc) and thus project your need for order on people and things in antiquity. There are all these problems, all these unresolved questions and you see it as your goal to sew them all up and stop letting them be problems and 'solve' them by making assertions.

I see no evidence that Luke or Matthew removed references to people whom they did have a lot of information. Your supposition is just another explanation of the passage. It's hardly authoritative. But you move on like 'problem's solved' but nothing of the kind has been accomplished. You've just found another reason to stop allowing ambiguity to be ambiguity.

[Secret Alias]

The facts are that people in antiquity (Papias, Irenaeus) saw Mark as using a Hebrew original of Matthew. This tradition assumes that we are one step removed from the ur-text behind all gospels. This isn't definitive either. But there is no reason to discount the possibility that Mark or someone else added the reference to Simon being the father of A and R to a pre-existent gospel. I see no evidence brought up thus far which 'closes' the issue or 'solves' the problem. It's yet another inherited ambiguity from antiquity.

[neilgodfrey]

Being a professional scholar assumes some sort of 'productivity' at the end of all research. Most of the time that certainty is unwarranted given the lack of evidence.

Yes, and very, very often in real life the productivity is to establish that some hypothesis is not true/does not work. This is also very important research but it just doesn't cut it for the editors of popular journals like Nature.

[neilgodfrey]

I will mention here that I am surprised that the thread has gone this long without anyone pointing out that the literal interpretation most frequently suggested (that Alexander and Rufus were real people, known because they were still living and perhaps in Rome, and Simon were their father) essentially requires that the Gospel of Mark were written in the first century, and even 90 CE would be quite a stretch. (I suppose there's still the idea that Alexander and Rufus were famous dead people. . . .

It has crossed my mind but the problem is that the date of Mark is determined in part by its contents and if it can be established that A&R were known (or were still in the local memories of) Mark's readership then that would bring the gospel to the earlier end of the dating scale.

Isn't it a chicken and egg argument?

[Ben C. Smith]

The facts are that people in antiquity (Papias, Irenaeus) saw Mark as using a Hebrew original of Matthew.

Whoa. Where do Papias and Irenaeus assert that Mark used a Hebrew original of Matthew?

Ben.

[Peter Kirby]

I am also reminded of warnings against making too much of any passage in a text like this given that we have no way of being sure how much detail we have today was original to the gospel (did Matthew and Luke omit the names because they were not in their version of Mark?). I'd be interested to hear Roger's reasons for suspecting the names to be a redactional addition.

The warning is sound--too much cannot be made of any one sentence, given that we don't have autographs, if we don't want a castle built on sand.

I don't believe it were an addition, but if it were an addition, we could start by going through the list of ideas that have been proposed under the hypothesis that it is authorial. Some of them would still be candidates.

I will mention here that I am surprised that the thread has gone this long without anyone pointing out that the literal interpretation most frequently suggested (that Alexander and Rufus were real people, known because they were still living and perhaps in Rome, and Simon were their father) essentially requires that the Gospel of Mark were written in the first century, and even 90 CE would be quite a stretch. (I suppose there's still the idea that Alexander and Rufus were famous dead people. We have just enough indications of the notoriety of some kind of "Rufus," given Romans 16 and/or Polycarp to the Philippians, but neither Rufus is grouped with an Alexander... does this perhaps count against the idea that there were a famous, deceased -pair- Alexander and Rufus? Note that 'Polycarp' lists his Rufus with some guy Zosimus and with Ignatius.)

I did suggest in an earlier post in this thread, that the presence of Alexander and Rufus in Mark but not in either Matthew or Luke could be explained by Alexander and Eufus being alive when Mark was written but dead when Matthew and Luke were written.

Andrew Criddle

Yes, and that is what I have in mind as what I think most people would believe about this verse. (I.e., that it is about living people in the time of Mark... then obscure to Matthew and Luke, one reason for the obscurity easily being that they were then deceased.)

I have not forgotten about the possibility.

[neilgodfrey]

If Alexander and Rufus were indeed known personally to Mark's readership then it must be as good as a certainty that those who knew them also knew about Simon their father carrying the cross of Jesus.

How could they not know their relationship to one so directly an active eyewitness to the crucifixion of Jesus?

Does it not follow (??) that the author of the gospel would have no incentive or need to mention A&R as the sons of Simon the Cyrenian in his gospel -- even less so if such a procedure would possibly be a unique innovation in literary practice. As soon as the readers who knew A&R heard the name Simon Cyrenian mentioned in the reading everyone would glance smiling and knowingly at A&R in the audience, or at least murmur to each other their names if they were not present.

(I have not yet caught up on all the comments so far so apologies if this thought has already been presented.)

[neilgodfrey]

We could probably extend the logic of this thought to other persons in the narrative. Surely there must have been others in the audience who had met Jesus or some of the disciples or named persons. Would the author have been tempted to name others in the audience who had done so and somehow have woven them into the narrative, too?

I don't mean this as a vague hypothetical. It is valid to set out on the table what each hypothesis would lead us to expect. Testing predictions is a necessary part of the argument.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Why is the name of the father mentioned first in Mark 10:46? Because Daddy Timaeus was known within the Markan community?

Mark 10:46
... ὁ υἱὸς Τιμαίου Βαρτιμαῖος, τυφλὸς προσαίτης, ἐκάθητο παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν
... the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, blind beggar was sitting beside the way

Why not going for this? It would be the same logic!

[Secret Alias]

Das ist genau mein Punkt