Ben C. Smith wrote:You say: "To leap from the women failing to deliver the news to the disciples hearing of the resurrection only through Mark's writing is a fallacy". That is an ipse dixit, or "so he said", a statement that does not have to be reasoned out, or even explained, because the "authority" spake.
It is, rather, a pointing out of a position that your post did not even consider. It
is a fallacy to assume that, because the women failed to tell the disciples about the empty tomb, therefore Jesus never appeared to the disciples. There is no better characterization of the argument than "fallacy".
It is obvious that we have a different understanding of the meaning of the word 'fallacy'. If you can show me in Mark where the disciples get anything of gospel substance coming from Jesus, Ok, I will agree that my argument is fallacious. But my point to you - from which you are trying to run away like Peter from the scandal of the cross - is that you cannot show from anything Mark wrote - up to that point - that he intended a different ending.
Ben C. Smith wrote:The point I argue here is that the intent written into that sentence is categorical, so final in fact, that anything that would come after, trying to qualify it or excise it, would look un-Markan, and argue with him.
And I am saying that you are mistaken. It is not obvious
at all that Jesus will not appear to the disciples just because the women say nothing. And when I say that it is not obvious, I do not mean that
the opposite is obvious; I mean that it is genuinely unclear.
And this is why: in the abrupt version of Mark that we have extant, we find Mark 14.28 ("but after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee") and 16.7 ("but go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you'"). These are predictions by Jesus, and everything else on point in the gospel thus far has primed us to expect Jesus' predictions to come true. On another thread I pointed out that, just as Jesus' prediction of Peter's three denials was coming true in the courtyard outside the trial, Jesus was simultaneously predicting to the priests inside the coming of the son of man. The contemporaneous fulfillment of one prediction certifies the eventual fulfillment of the other. There is nothing in Mark to suggest that Jesus will not fulfill his prediction in 14.28 and 16.7.
Jesus is dead by 16:7 and makes therefore no further predictions. On a point of textual fidelity Jesus does not say in 14:28 the disciples would "see him" in Galilee; that is something the messenger adds in 16:7 to Jesus' statement. Whether he was authorized, by whom and to what end, is a question, but lesser as to what he meant. Given the verb here is 'horáō', i.e. 'seeing spiritually', what the messenger really might be saying is far from a scene out of Matthew, Luke or John. Mark ridicules throughout the spiritual capacity of the disciples - that much should be clear.
But the argument falls as soon as you look at it from the specific Markan point of view. Would in Mark's milieu not allowing the disciples to hear the news, cause Jesus' most important prophecy to go unfulfilled? We know of course that from the later church's point of view the ending was judged deficient and the text was expanded in several attempts to deal specifically with this deficiency. But is it possible that Mark himself perceived the end that way, and bridged the chasm between the disciples and the gospel ? It is possible but not at all probable.
This is because in Mark's writing, the disciples not only do not get "resurrection", they frighten of the idea (and its demonstration on the lake and on the mountain) and in one instance, Peter's unsuccessful attempt to talk Jesus out of it at Caesarea Philippi, violently resist it. In the gospel, the subject of the Son Man's rising is broached in 8:31, 9:9, 9:31, 10:34 and finally with Jesus using first person singular, in 14:28. In In all these instances, the disciples do not know what Jesus is talking about, discussing it among themselves (9:10), and afraid to ask Jesus (9:32), misapprehending his "secret" kingdom (Zebs in 10:35-40), and finally Peter "not hearing" (14:28-29) the part that Jesus would go "before them" to Galilee after he has risen. All of this is consistent with the shocking abrupt ending.
What does it mean ? By all appearances, the disciples' incomprehension of the prototype of Messiah who would be killed and rise after three days, is given by their unfamiliarity with the "gospel" which closely relates to "rising from the dead" and belongs exclusively to "faith". Mark's text (like Paul's) proclaims "faith in resurrection". This is not a fact, or Easter "event", of which the writers know nothing (1 Co 15:17, Mk 4:3-20). Also for Mark's community faith was something that separated them from everyone else, and that would include the Petrine tradition. So, naturally, the disciples stand "hoi exo", on the outside of faith, which is in places difficult to get out of the text due to the harmonizing of Mark with Matt and Luke. The later synoptics no longer feature this sharp divide internally between Jesus and the disciples; "unfaith" will be projecting strictly to the outside of the Christian community. Matt may be scathing of Paul and Paulinism, but he cleverly hides it behind general moral maxims and wisdom sayings.
On Markan terms then, denying Peter and the disciples the "knowledge" of resurrection (in the narrative, the "annunciation" in the cave) follows the pattern of his defining and treating this group. Mark was writing in an early community that saw itself as the privileged elect. Their Jesus was not trying to reach everyone: one's faith and spiritual competence was a gift of the Spirit which was tested 4:11-12 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. These two verses shock all those who subscribe to de Lerins paradigm.
So Mark would likely think nothing of cutting out Peter and Co. from the mystery of resurrection since they, though apparently devoted to Jesus and idolize him, do not get him, i.e. fail the test. According to Mark, they lack moral fibre. They think of him as Messiah, the restorer of the old kingdom; which he teaches them he is not (Mind you, he teases them with the "triumphal entry" but that's just Mark thickening the plot). Because of this divide, the failure of the disciples to see Jesus in Galilee, can hardly be interpreted as leaving a stain on Jesus' fiability, faith here is the sine qua non to the promise of resurrection. The disciples did not the gospel but for their heirs Mark's gospel was an open invitation: "Repent and accept the cross!".
Your answer basically boils down to the proposition that Jesus made a prediction that went unfulfilled. It is not as if Jesus was averse to making negative predictions: "Tonight you will all fall away from me!" "Tonight you will thrice deny me!" Why did he not do so in this case? "You will see me no more."
I really don't know how to answer this question. I am not Mark (even though I like to imagine I know what he was up to). All I can tell you is that William Wrede composed a pseudo-beautitude for him, saying "blessed be those whose speech is plain for they shall be understood". Incidentally, if you ever wanted to come out with a different point of view on Mark, I recommend Donald H. Juel's Master of Surprise and George Aichele's Phantom Messiah
You have Mark deliberately putting a false prediction on Jesus' lips, and then you accost me on ideological grounds for not accepting it, a truly incredible approach to the debate.
Verily incredible! Now, image the crazy SOB put a non-existent Commandment of the Decalogue on Jesus' lips! (10:19) Isn't that an impossible scandal!
In the meantime, everything you say about the mystery potentially being denied to the twelve is fine. I can easily imagine a version of Mark in which the twelve do not get to see the resurrected Lord. Trouble is, it is not a version that contains 14.28 and 16.7! Those verses are the main stumbling blocks, not some ideological factor (of which you appear to understand nothing in my case, anyway).
So, you mean you haven' seen a version of Mark ending at 16:8. Hmmm, you know there are no other version known to Christendom than that one and later attempts to apologize for it, which now appear so clumsy that it is impossible to assign them to Mark. No other versions of Mark's gospel ending exist. Period. Nobody has ever seen or heard of the one that you seem to think was lost (perhaps like the missing sura of the Koran, that the Shia believe Aesha mistakenly fed to the goat). Again, we have different views what on what constitutes freedom from partisan obsessions.
But then we have
the Fayyum fragment, which lacks any parallel to Mark 14.28. Unfortunately, it is such a small fragment that it can shed no clear light on anything beyond a few verses in chapter 14. What if an earlier edition of Mark lacked both 14.28 and 16.7?
That would be a version that could maybe, with a bit of tweaking, lack any postresurrectional material about the disciples. (I say it may need some tweaking because, even if we excise both 14.28 and 16.7 cleanly, it is still not completely clear just from 16.8 that nothing is expected to transpire afterward; verses like 4.11 and 9.1 are still in the mix. It is especially not clear that no
negative follow-up should come after 16.8, something to emphasize that the disciples lost what they were apparently given in 4.11.) But, then again, what if the Fayyum version lacked the empty tomb altogether, and not just 16.7? The fact is that we cannot tell what the extent of the rest of the fragment would have been, despite me being very much in favor of using its evidence that 14.28 is secondary in its context.
Except, again, Joe has been telling us the Fayyum is not "really" Mark, so I take that as an attempt to deconstruct the argument which by now most people without some commitments seem ok with. There are new and new titles out in support of the AE. So I am good. If you won't be converted to the true gospel, what can a rationalist do ? Not helluva lot.
You quoted the next part of my post, but did not respond to it:
Ben C. Smith wrote:Ben C.Smith wrote: Another option, to my mind, is that John 21 and Luke 5 (and probably Peter 14) present sanitized versions of an original ending in which Jesus appears to the disciples in order to reject them for their unbelief and move the needle on the meter of Christian culture decidedly toward "gentile" and away from "Jew".
Ben.
What response, if any, do you have to this possibility? It would preserve everything you said about the disciples genuinely being rejected, and it would preserve the force of the dominical prediction in 14.28 and 16.7.
I told you, there was no dominical prediction; you are inventing verses. And I addressed your for looking for solution in other gospels to a non-existent problem in Mark .
As best I can read Mark's intent of the "as he told you" by the messenger, it was to accentuate the shocking effect of the abrupt end after the negative response of the women that immediately followed.
PS: I will respond to other points in your post by PM.