Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

There is also a certain irony in appealing to the Iliad, since it too has an "incipit," and could hardly be clearer about the scope of the work (following Fagles's English-language translation)

Rage - Goddess sing the rage of Peleus's son Achilles
murderous, doomed, that cost the Acheans countless losses,
... [lots of people died, Zeus got involved] ...
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles

So to say that Homer begins "in media res" is not just a garden-variety slip-up (oops, the Iliad is not a military or diplomatic history of the Trojan War, but rather a story set during the Trojan War), but a plain disregard of the black letters on the page which tell directly what story will be told (Achilles's wrath and its heroic-scale consequences) and where the story will begin - at a very defensible place to call its beginning (= what was Achilles wrathful about?).

Mark is not quite this clear in his opening lines, although there is some elegance to his launch of Jesus's public career with an aura of prophecy hanging in the air. And this beginning makes clear enough that the story is, and will be throughout, written for adults about adults. (Yes, there are children along the way, being cared for and nutured as is the ordinary adult role in the human life cycle).

I am tempted to justify Mark's choice (e.g. what is so interesting for adults about Joseph believing a dream that his pregnant fiancee hadn't cheated on him?), but that exceeds the topic. The storyteller must begin somewhere. There is a certain humor in American letters about how the late James Michener used to begin his historical novels (+/- starting at the creation of the universe, like a secular GJohn, or if in a rush, just a few million years ago when Hawai'i first emerged from the Pacific Ocean). Different artists make different choices; there need not be any question of standing "against" other artists making different choices.

What I like about the Eysinga's point:

A separationist would make willingly the point that the Gospel started not with the birth of Jesus, but with the his possession, already adult, by the divine Christ, at the baptism.

Note that also Bruno Bauer had noted that the emphasis, in the incipit of Mark, is on the "when": when did Jesus realize that he was divine?

The answer: at the baptism by John the Baptist.

Accordingly, the first verse is part and parcel of the same obsession for the chronology.

For a Gospel story that preceded Mark, the Gospel started when Jesus...


I.e. the Gospel started with a deliberate debasement (made by a pre-existent being) in heaven, not with the intention, by a pious Jew named Jesus, to go to the baptism in order to expiate his own sins on the earth.

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 6:56 am What I like about the Eysinga's point:

Note that also Bruno Bauer had noted that the emphasis, in the incipit of Mark, is on the "when": when did Jesus realize that he was divine?
...
I.e. the Gospel started with a deliberate debasement (made by a pre-existent being) in heaven, not with the intention, by a pious Jew named Jesus, to go to the baptism in order to expiate his own sins on the earth.

I think that Eysinga's and Bauer's reasoning is completely outside of what Mark wanted to tell as his main point.

imho Mark's introduction (Mark 1:1-1:15) should be read like starting a divine program, Mark 1:2b-3 being the EXE file. When running the file, John and Jesus appear ("ἐγένετο") as divinely authorized messengers. Mark's Jesus is not a "pious Jew, to go to the baptism", but the obedient son who accepts the authority given to John and whose own mission begins with John's dismissal. (This can be read in clear words again in the parable of the tenants.)

Everything else is secondary question and mostly eisegesis.

Nietzsche has called it a world-historical trick, an outrageous philologic farce, that the Christians have pulled the Jews their O.T. from under their bodies

Where does Nietzsche say this? Is there a footnote?

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: ↑Wed May 10, 2023 1:42 pm I think that Eysinga's and Bauer's reasoning is completely outside of what Mark wanted to tell as his main point.

remember that Celsus also interpreted the role of John the Baptist as the witness of Jesus who had to fix him in the historical time:




(hence forcing Origen to quote the Baptist Passage from Josephus or from Hegesippus).

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: ↑Wed May 10, 2023 1:42 pm Mark's Jesus is not a "pious Jew, to go to the baptism"

surely he is distinct from the spiritual Christ that "threw him out" in the wilderness.

GA van den Bergh van Eysinga correctly realized the absolute falsity of Markan Prioritism and Pauline Authenticism, the major cancerous diseases of NT scholarship.

Unfortunately, GA vdBvE failed to see that the eucharist is instituted in the feeeding miracles, not the cena, although he realized that the shorter narrative of the feeding is largely parallel to the structure of the Roman Catholic mass, as denied by Sinouhe and recognized most accurately only by Jean Magne.