Irish1975 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 9:30 am
Meant by whom? Are you hypothesizing, for example, an original but lost collection like that of Marcion, but with your proto-Mark instead of The Evangelion?
Yes, that what Marcion published was a secondary expansion/revision of the original collection, which was Mark followed by the (six or seven) authentic letters only.
This collection was received by a Pauline community that had additional letters in Paul's name - Colossians and Laodiceans. They added those letters to the collection and then also revised Mark's Gospel to reflect in the teachings of their community, reflected in Colossians and Laodiceans.
I don’t understand what I am supposed to conclude from the juxtaposition of texts. Your interpolation of the name “Paul” into the text of Mark is baffling.
Mark ends on a cliff-hanger. The women run away terrified and tell nothing to anyone. There is no resolution. What happens next? The story is clearly "To be continued...". Where is the continuation? It is Galatians. Galatians is what happens next.
As for the change of Peter to Paul, Peter makes no sense on multiple levels. Firstly, Peter is a member of the disciples, so saying "Tell the disciples and Peter" is like saying, "I'm going to the store, tell your family and your dad to meet me there." That makes no sense because your dad is a part of your family, you don't need to name him in addition to saying "tell your family".
Secondly, the whole story has been working to discredit Peter. Jesus rebukes Peter, he calls him Satan, he knows that Peter will abandon him, Peter does abandon him, and does not witness the Crucifixion. Why, at this point, would the writer, after having worked so hard to discredit Peter, call Peter out as if he eager for him? He wouldn't.
I grant that Mark shows a lot of Pauline themes, and likely influences. But I do not see that it “directly interacts with the Pauline letter collection,” or at least not any more than gMarcion or gLuke. One can easily find parallels or common themes there as well. For example, 10:21 (things hidden from the learned and intelligent, but revealed to little children) is a parallel with the Pauline discourse in 1 Cor 1:18ff of worldly wisdom as ignorance, while foolishness is the true spriritual wisdom.
Indeed, both Mark and Marcion's Gospel or proto-Luke, from which canonical Luke is derived, incorporate material from the Pauline letters. The Pauline letter collection is in fact the source of the teachings and character of Jesus, both in Mark and in the additions made to Mark.
But only Mark has an ending that is deigned to lead the reader directly into Galatians. Galatians is, essentially, the "next chapter" of Mark. It is also only in Mark that we see direct allusions to Paul, as in the statement that the first among you shall be "slave of all", which is an explicit reference to Paul who identifies himself as a "slave to all".
First in what way? What you are suggesting in relation to Paul doesn’t warrant a blanket conclusion about Markan priority to other Gospels.
False, if taken literally.
“The 7 authentic letters” are a construct of modern criticism, analogous to “Q.” And I have no idea what would count as a “correct” interpretation of Paul’s letters. Again, I don’t see the connection to Mark.
So the suggestion that Mark was “written as an introduction” to Pauline writings is ungrounded, unsubstantiated, and generally puzzling. FWIW, if this proto-Mark is anything like as ambitious a text as canonical Mark, the notion of it as an actual “introduction” to some other texts, even to Pauline writings, is hard to take seriously.
The comments that followed did not clarify anything for me, because I’m already so disoriented.
The Gospel of Mark only refers to, by my count, 6 of the Pauline letters, all ones that are considered to be "authentic". By my analysis Mark refers to:
Galatians
1 Thessalonians
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Philippians
Romans
Something I didn't realize when I first made this assessment is that the only supposed letter of the 7 authentic letters that mentions Luke is Philemon, yet I find no references to Philemon in Mark. Maybe I've just missed it.
But, what is also interesting is that Luke is mentioned in Colossians. So, by my count, Mark refers to 6 Pauline letters, none of which mention Luke.
Thus, I consider Mark is being our earliest witness to a collection that contains:
Galatians
1 Thessalonians
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Philippians
Romans
We know that Marcion "published" a collection with a Gospel that looked more like Luke, followed by a collection Pauline letters that started with Galatians but also included 2 or 3 letters (Colossians, Laodiceans and Philemon?) not referenced in the Gospel of Mark.
What sets Colossians and Laodiceans apart from the rest of the Pauline letters, among other things, is their focus on sermons and prayer guides.
What sets "Luke"/Marcion's Gospel apart from Mark is its addition of sermons and prayer guides, such as the Sermon on the Plain and the Lord's Prayer, both of which very closely resemble the language of Colossians and Laodiceans.
The logical explanation is that a collection existed which consisted of Mark followed by the 6 or 7 "authentic" letters. That collection was appropriated by another Pauline community, or the same community later in time, in which sermons like those we find in Colossians and Laodiceans were given in Paul's name. That community adopted the collection and revised it by both adding Colossians and Laodiceans to the letter collection and revising the Gospel to have Jesus say the types of things that were a part of the sermons given in this community, again, such as we find in Colossians and Laodiceans.
So there was a story that introduced a Pauline letter collection, we call that story "The Gospel of Mark". Another Pauline community had additional "Pauline" letters and a different theology. When they received the original collection they updated it to reflect the teachings of their community. They understood that the Jesus of the story was being used to expound the teachings of the Pauline letters, so very likely the person who added the new letters to the collection also modified the story to reflect the content of those letters and of the community sermons mor broadly.
I doubt at this point that such a person was Marcion, though it could have been. It could also be some pre-Marcionite community. I suspect this was pre-Marcionite and that the Gospel that was produced was actually known as the "Gospel of Luke". And I suspect that the "Gospel of Luke started with Canonical Luke 3 and included the genealogy. I suspect that Marcion then redacted this version of "The Gospel of Luke", removing the genealogy and other things.
The Canonical Gospel of Luke then is not actually based directly on Marcion's Gospel or Marcion's collection at all. The Canonical Gospel of Luke goes back to the original "Gospel of Luke" collection and moves forward from there in order to refute Marcion.
But nevertheless, the Pauline letters that Marcion possessed in his collection were virtually identical to the "Lukan collection". And the writer of Canonical Luke and Acts very likely did also modify the "Lukan collection" to add the Pastorals as well as make other changes to the letters.
Thus, what the fathers said was almost true. They said that Marcion had altered the "original collection" and claimed that their collection was actually the original. Well, this is sort of true, but not really.
They went back to the collection that Marcion had copied from, that's true, but Marcion's version of the letters was actually closer to his source than what ended up in the orthodox collection.
It never made sense to me that the other Gospels were derived from Marcion. But now this makes sense. So actually nothing derives from Marcion. What Klinghardt and Vinzent think are relationship to Marcion's Gospel are actually relationships to the original Luke and the letter collection that was associated with it, from which Marcion derived his collection.