Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Ben C. Smith wrote:

1. A lot seems to happen between the sabbath in 6.2 and that in 15.42. Can it all fit into one week, on any kind of reading?

Ben C. Smith wrote:

Peter Kirby wrote:... Many have attempted to read this as a narrative, then, from one spring (green grass) to another (Passover), in one year. ...

The plucking of grain by the disciples also tends to get worked into those attempts.

Ben.

Tenorikuma wrote:Mark has Jesus doing things that are geographically impossible.

Why not chronologically impossible as well?

Ben C. Smith wrote: Do you mean the Sidon trip? Or what?

What do you find chronologically impossible about the number of days that Mark describes as taking place here and there between chapter 6 and chapter 15?

14 Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away,

Clive wrote:Couple of hours? We are reading the script of a play with people coming on and off scene, choruses, dramatic beginnings and endings?

Tenorikuma wrote:Nothing in particular. I'm just suggesting what is often observed, that Mark is not always coherent when it comes to chronology or geography. His narratives are more like collections of thematically related vignettes for which the narrative is just scaffolding.

The number of Sabbaths may indeed be relevant; but overanalyzing what time of year each pericope had to occur in, and building a timeline out of that, is probably as futile as tracing Jesus' route from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee.

Tenorikuma wrote:

Clive wrote:Couple of hours? We are reading the script of a play with people coming on and off scene, choruses, dramatic beginnings and endings?

Indeed; and the teachings of Jesus in their entirety could probably be recited in 15 minutes or so.

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified

The kernel of the gospel narratives is the trial and execution of Jesus. Whereas Jesus’ ministry in Galilee is presented as a string of utterances, deeds and incidents, culled from oral traditions and differently arranged by each of the four evangelists, with Jesus’ arrest the pace quickens and a highly dramatic story emerges, in which the differences between the gospels fade into insignificance. This indicates that the gospels drew on some pre-existing written account of the passion. As we read the story of Jesus’ final hours and watch one carefully-construed scene succeed another, we begin to distinguish the hand of a master. There must have been an individual of literary genius who wrote about the trial and execution of JesusI speak of an individual, because genius is individual.

Ever since the Enlightenment, when the gospels began to be studied in a rationalistic frame of mind as literary works within their ancient context, parallels have been drawn between the passion of Jesus and the rituals and mysteries of the dying and resurrecting gods such as Dionysus and Osiris. The death and resurrection of Osiris was enacted annually in a dramatic performance. Greek tragedy evolved from sacred plays in honor of Dionysus. Did primitive Christianity, too, begin as ritual drama?

The economy of the Gospel narratives is related to the ritual commemoration of the Passion; taking them literally we run the risk of transposing into history what are really the successive incidents of a religious drama,

so wrote Alfred Loisy, one of the most perceptive New Testament scholars of our time.[2] J. M. Robertson went even further, claiming that the story of the passion is

the bare transcript of a primitive play... always we are witnessing drama, of which the spectators needed no description, and of which the subsequent transcriber reproduces simply the action and the words...[3]

Even theologians who are less daring in framing hypotheses continue to stumble upon traces of some ancient drama that appears to underlie the passion narrative.[4] S.G.F. Brandon is impressed by the superb theatrical montage of the trial of Jesus[5] ; Raymond Brown finds that John’s gospel contains touches worthy of great drama in many of its scenes and suggests that our text may be the product of a dramatic rewriting on such a scale that little historical material remains.[6]

• 1) The use of the number forty, paralleling to Israel's forty (years) before redemption.
  
  2) "1510 [e] ēn ἦν he was" is in the imperfect. "He is there".
  
  3) "3985 [e] peirazomenos πειραζόμενος being tempted" is consistent with 2) as the related verb is in the present.
  
  4) There is no explanation right here of how Jesus was tempted by Satan.
  
  5) There is detail narrative midway through GMark that does have temptation by Satan.
  
  6) The following narrative explicitly says it was after John was "delivered up" as opposed to after Jesus was in the wilderness.
  
  7) As previously noted, the fiveish Sabbaths in GMark would support a fortyish ministry.