Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 8:32 am
Can you be more clear, please? I fear that my posts are more clear then yours, even if English is not my native language (and I was not particularly good in foreign languages at school).
Your written English is fine, Giuseppe. I suspect you are having more trouble accepting that Basilides is interpreting
Mark, not Mark reacting to Basilides, than you are having trouble understanding my scruffy English.
I commend to your attention Mark 15:21-37. The fun begins when
they (some of the soldiers in all readings) compel Simon to go with them "that he might bear his cross." The majority reading is that Simon might bear Jesus's cross. Basilides's (reputed) reading is that Simon might bear Simon's own cross. Or what is now Simon's cross at least.
In the majority reading, Simon is never referred to again. On the page, however, from verse 22 through verse 33, Jesus's name doesn't appear, just personal pronouns he/his/him. The majority reading takes all these pronouns to refer to Jesus. Basilides considers them references to Simon. The grammar is fine either way, just ambiguous.
Jesus reappears by name at verse 34, when Jesus cries out his line from Psalm 22. Fine by Basilides, perhaps Jesus is making an ironic comment on Simon's plight. We all know how much Mark loves irony. Verses 35 and 36 have more pronouns and then in 37 Jesus appears by name for the last time in this passage.
Jesus having loudly cried out, [he - based on the verb form] gave up the spirit.
Basilides would need to do a little fancy dancing there, but arguably "Jesus having loudly cried out" simply repeats what was just said in verse 34, while "he gave up the spirit" must refer to the only person in mortal peril. In Basilides's reading, that's Simon.
Is it now clear that one or two well-placed mentions of Jesus by name would have disambiguated the composition? If the matter were grammatically unambiguous then the reading attributed to Basilides would be completely unsupported. (As opposed to being a ludicrous stretch - although not so much worse than some readings of other texts on offer webside.)
Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 8:19 am
As I noted in my previous post, Mark doesn't say what Alexander and Rufus would confirm if some (hypothetical?) contemporary of Mark had asked them (assuming Mark was an author who wrote sometime between 65 and 80 CE).
that is easily implied, however. Alexander and Rufus would confirm you that their father Simon limited himself to carry the cross. Period. Stop.
Who is "you" in this? There's nothing on the page about any reader, much less a 21st Century reader like me, having access to Alexander and Rufus. They are
potential generation-later sources with whom the narrator claims at least to know of them. In the majority reading, presumably they could learn from their father about how he was pressed into service, etc. In Basilides's reading, their father died that day without ever leaving Roman custody. The sons might know that much, but Simon would have had no natural way to tell them about what he saw from the cross, and how uncanny was the resemblance between his crucifixion and Psalm 22.
If Basilides errs, then Alexander and Rufus could possibly say so offers no information about whether or not Basilides errs. The mention of the sons in the text cannot be explained by the author rebutting in advance a potential misreading of his composition. The sons are not positioned to serve that function, and if the author were worried about a possible misreading, then simply changing one or two words would have accomplished the cure.