neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:08 am
The Gospel of Mark speaks of Jesus' mother in a scene before he brings her into another setting where she is named: Compare Exodus where Miriam is unnamed when we first meet her in Exodus where she tends to Moses but she is named quite some chapters later after crossing the Red Sea.
Yes, but Mark is extremely sparse with the naming of women. Unless I'm missing something, the only named woman in Mark outside of Mary in 6 and the women in 15 and 16 is Herodias, who is a sort of villain and a historical figure.
When we look at the names in Mark, they seem quite gratuitous to me.
3 Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are His sisters not here with us?”
What is the point of these names? They are never used again in the story. These aren't historical figures. They make no impact on the narrative. They are completely unnecessary. Their function seems to be entirely doctrinal. It seems that the only point of presenting these names is to reinforce a tradition, but the rest of Mark seems to lack such a motive. Mark is not interested in documenting traditions, it is interested in telling a theological story.
40 Now there were also some women watching from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and Joses, and Salome.
Same issue here. Why so specific with the names? The overwhelming majority of Mark is symbolic and mystical. The focus is on conveying concepts, not documenting facts. The roles of characters are allegorical. Why get so specific here with the documenting of these figures?
So again this looks to me like a later revision by an anti-Marcionite who was establishing a broader set of traditions to be shared across the four Gospel collection.
One can understand a Marcionite gospel not mentioning the Jewish-associated mother's name. One can also imagine a later redactor of Marcion's gospel sticking it to Marcion by adding lots of mentions of Mary by name in additional chapters.
Yes. But interestingly, Mary the mother is mentioned surprisingly few times in the main narrative across the Gospels. She's in the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, but then only mentioned once in Mark, once in the main body of Matthew, and not named in the main body of Luke nor in John.
I know its a very messy proposition and maybe very difficult to defend, but I suspect that the naming of Mary in Mark 6 is actually a harmonization of Mark with Matthew. I hate even proposing that because it raises a whole host of issues. But, if we take the proposition seriously that the Gospel used by Marcion was not created by Marcion and was not redacted to fit Marcionite doctrine, which is what several scholars such as BeDuhn propose, then we can't assume that the writer of the Gospel Marcion used would have had a reason to remove these names. What would be the function of removing the names? But we have testimony that they didn't exist in Marcion's Gospel.
If indeed Marcion's Gospel was derived from Mark, which I believe to be the case, then is it not likely that it may be a more faithful witness to the original state of Mark than Matthew? We know that in many ways the main body of Luke stays closer to Mark than Matthew does. Of course there are scenes in Matthew that more closely resemble Mark than Luke as well, so, as with most things, its difficult to make definitive conclusions.
As for the Gospel of John, the Mary association with Wisdom would not sit comfortably with the christology we find there where Jesus is the Logos and therefore Wisdom himself.
Possibly, but John already looks like a Frankenstein story, stitched together from multiple disparate narratives. I'm talking about Mary Magdalene originating as a consort of Jesus associated with Wisdom, not necessarily that she was portrayed as such in John, which would have just been cobbling together and repurposing of existing narratives. Again, very speculative I know.