Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Ulan wrote:However, I have a principal reservation about the point that Nazareth could play any role in gMark. There is no function assigned to the place in the whole gospel.

I agree. My comments were aimed only at the notion that Nazareth makes a poor "word of power". I do think that Nazareth, on the whole, is fairly intrusive in the gospel.

On the other hand, the term Nazarene goes unexplained if Nazareth is an addition to Mark 1.9. Unless the reader already knows what a Nazarene is, s/he is likely to guess that it is a demonym and then think of a back formation like Nazara. (Gadarenes are from Gadara, so I guess Nazarenes are from Nazara, right?) So evidently, if Nazareth is missing from 1.9 and Nazarene does not mean "person from Nazareth/Nazara", Mark expects his readers to know what a Nazarene is already.

Ben C. Smith wrote:On the other hand, the term Nazarene goes unexplained if Nazareth is an addition to Mark 1.9. Unless the reader already knows what a Nazarene is, s/he is likely to guess that it is a demonym and then think of a back formation like Nazara. (Gadarenes are from Gadara, so I guess Nazarenes are from Nazara, right?) So evidently, if Nazareth is missing from 1.9 and Nazarene does not mean "person from Nazareth/Nazara", Mark expects his readers to know what a Nazarene is already.

While that is a perfectly logical explanation, I have the feeling that this is exactly what Mark is doing here: leave the reader hang out dry. The reason for this impression is mostly due to the (in my opinion quite cringeworthy) explanation given in Matthew 2:23: And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.

The OT never mentions the town. "Nazarene" must refer to something else then.

Quoted in Adversus Marcionem oddly enough again.

Ulan wrote:

Ben C. Smith wrote:On the other hand, the term Nazarene goes unexplained if Nazareth is an addition to Mark 1.9. Unless the reader already knows what a Nazarene is, s/he is likely to guess that it is a demonym and then think of a back formation like Nazara. (Gadarenes are from Gadara, so I guess Nazarenes are from Nazara, right?) So evidently, if Nazareth is missing from 1.9 and Nazarene does not mean "person from Nazareth/Nazara", Mark expects his readers to know what a Nazarene is already.

While that is a perfectly logical explanation, I have the feeling that this is exactly what Mark is doing here: leave the reader hang out dry.

Why would Mark do that? Why give Jesus a secondary identification that he knows nobody will understand, and not explain it? Why include it at all, then?

On the other hand, I can imagine the name becoming so entrenched that people forget even to ask how it came about or what it means; I guess many people never bother to wonder why a famous baseball player was named Babe Ruth. But my impression is that Jesus the Nazarene was much less common for a long time than Jesus Christ or Jesus the Son of God.

The only time humans act like this is when they are acting dishonestly

Ben C. Smith wrote:Sorry, but trust Matthew for what, exactly? I am missing something.

I think we discuss principally not the question

For what reason is Jesus rejected in his hometown?

but the question

How can Mark claim, that Jesus is rejected? He wrote that the people believe in Jesus’ ability to do “miracles”? So where is the rejection?

At last you wrote

“Mark is still leaving something out here, I think.”

so I assume that you doubt more or less that the logic of Mark’s text is sufficent.

What I wished to say is that we can trust Matthew that there is an inner logic in Mark’s text although we do not fully understand this logic. The reason for this is that Matthew did not correct Mark in this regard. The text of Matthew makes no more sense than the text of Mark.

- But basically Matthew is much more comprehensible than Mark. Sometimes he changes the sense, but he always makes the story more understandable and eliminates Mark’s riddles.

- Matthew redacted the pericope and the preceding context carefully.

- If Matthew would have thought that there is no sufficient logic in Mark’s text, then he would have changed more.

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:I think the "unbelief" is primarily that God's chosen one is identified as a simple human being

next step: Paul, 1 Thessalonians 2

13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

Why is this cruddy argument better than the "against Marcion" thesis? Just curious

Secret Alias wrote:Why is this cruddy argument better than the "against Marcion" thesis? Just curious

It's simple. Why should Mark, the Miles Davis among the early Christian theologians, wrote against the stuffy Marcion?

Because the Marcionite tradition not only had the original gospel but the original gospel paradigm. They knew that the man who wrote the Pauline letters wrote the 'constitution of Christianity' - the gospel - the very voice of God visiting humanity in a particular year of the first century. These two texts, the gospel and apostle left no room for any other interpretation of this religion other its secretive claims (which were revealed only to those who underwent an arduous initiation period).

So the Marcionite Church was broken. It retreated from the Roman Empire and fled eastward to Armenia, Osroene and other locales. This began at around the same time as the end of the last great Jewish revolt. Perhaps the exodus happened quickly or much slower lasting into the reign of Commodus. We simply don't know. But a new tradition took over.

And what did this 'Catholic' tradition do? It created a counter canon which as its first great act diluted the authority of the apostle. Now there was a 'congress of apostles' - like Patriarchs in the Greek Orthodox Church. The secret doctrine disappeared and all the riddles scattered by Jesus throughout the gospel were left abandoned with no oral tradition to explain them any longer. Instead of the Pauline letters explaining the one gospel we had four gospels whose sole purpose was to obscure the meaning of the text, to provide as many ways possible to confuse and deny any authoritative interpretation of the material. All meaning in Christianity was permanently obscured never to return with individuals like us wrestling with incomprehensible texts and muted traditions.