I too have wondered why Jesus' suffering/execution is connected to the Passover sacrifice in the NT, but is connected to the Day of Atonement ritual in Barnabas. The common wisdom is that Barnabas is more primitive than the NT Gospels, but why did the interpretive emphasis shift from the Day of Atonement sacrifice(s), which at least meshes with the NT theology of Christ's death as an atoning sacrifice for sins of ignorance, to a Passover sacrifice?
Not only Barnabas, but the Barabbas story in Mark still preserves the lottery of the goats at Yom Kippur. This means that the "atonement" idea is not gone from the NT gospels. As to the answer of the question:
The siege began a few days before Passover. The temple was destroyed at the end of August, and the city fell on September 7. That's too early for Yom Kippur, but the idea of atonement may still have been connected to the whole affair. The connection to Passover would come from the date when it started. "A few days before Passover" fits the start of the passion Jesu.
I think you got the preferences right. For (Catholic) Christians, Easter is the important day, the passing over from the perishable earthly existence to eternal spiritual life (Protestants brought the idea of sacrifice more back to the center stage). For Jews, atonement has always been a main trait of their prophetic stories. Is there anyone who propagates a Barabbas/Barnabas connection, or is this seen as too silly?
Ben C. Smith wrote:However, within the gospel of Mark it seems that there is a subtext, as it were, that indicates that Jesus actually was crucified before the Passover. We begin with 14.1-2, in which Jesus' rivals plot to kill him before the feast, and with 14.10-11, in which Judas seeks to betray him to them at an opportune time.
To what extent Mark was aware of this subtext?
1) Mark used the word “feast” only twice
14:2 “Not during the feast (ἑορτῇ), lest there be an uproar from the people.”
15:6 Now at the feast (ἑορτὴν) he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. ...
8 And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them.
2) The death of the forerunner, also at a feast and “a day of good kairos” (the "right time")
6:19 And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not, ...
21 But an opportunity (ἡμέρας εὐκαίρου) came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee ...
26 And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her.
Mark 6:21 opportunity = ἡμέρας εὐκαίρου - day of good-kairos
14:11 And he (Judas) sought an opportunity (εὐκαίρως) to betray him
15:15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified
Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:A Markan sandwich and some questions of time
A
1 It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, 2 for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”
B
3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
A'
10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.
- Jesus' enemies are looking for the right time
- the woman (an outsider) and Jesus understand that the time has come
- the insiders don't understand this
1. The author of this text has designed a literary form and the plot revolves around the theme of time.
Thank you for this, Kunigunde. I find that my potential response to it is so vast I do not know where to begin. So rather than write a manifesto I will give a few exploratory thoughts and questions:
I agree that the Marcan sandwich has something to do with time/timing. But is there anything in the pericope to indicate that the authorities' planned time ("not during the feast") conflicts with Jesus' own time (you say that both he and the woman know that the time has come)? Anointing the body beforehand, always having the poor, and not always having Jesus do not tell us anything about whether the right time is before the feast or during the feast, right?
For whatever it may be worth, I still agree with myself from nearly a decade ago concerning the main point of most/all Marcan sandwiches: "I have found that the main point of the intercalation generally revolves around an interplay of past and future; one kind of thing is ending while another is just beginning." And I still agree with myself concerning the main point of this particular sandwich: "The past in this intercalation is Judas Iscariot and the authorities of Judaism (though one can also see the earthly ministry of Jesus as part of the past here). The future is the preaching of the gospel, not forgetting the memory of the anointing woman." The authorities are unwittingly rendering themselves obsolete by trying to kill Jesus.
I therefore think that Marcan irony is at work here. The Jewish authorities (and Judas) plan to bring something to an end by killing Jesus, but they do not know that Jesus himself plans to be killed in order to begin something else; the contrast is not that the authorities want to kill Jesus but Jesus does not want to be killed; rather, the contrast is that the authorities do not know what killing Jesus is going to accomplish (the preaching of the gospel to the whole world, for example). In the same way, I believe that this pericope works best if we see no contrast, explicit or implicit, between the authorities' timing and Jesus' timing. Rather, the contrast is between intended results. What the authorities do not know, as they are trying to keep their timetable, is that it is actually Jesus' timetable, because, as you say, the time had come. Jesus is portrayed as knowing every detail of the timing: "this very night" Peter will betray him, for example, and he taught openly in the temple all this time, but his arrest is happening in this manner to fulfill scripture. The authorities are unwittingly playing right along, fulfilling scripture all the way. Some of the punch of this irony is lost if the authorities' plans are actually thwarted; the irony works best if their plans come to fruition but have an unintended outcome. That, I suggest, is why no point is directly made about their plans, including the timing, being thwarted.
There is, therefore, still the matter of the sense of temporal urgency. Both the authorities and Jesus are hurrying the timetable along: the authorities (for example) by holding a night hearing in order to get Jesus to Pilate "as soon as it was morning," Jesus himself (for example) by dying sooner than expected. If the Last Supper is not a Passover meal, then this temporal urgency makes sense from the authorities' point of view if they are rushing to get the dirty deed done before the Passover celebration; it makes sense from Jesus' point of view if he is setting himself up to be the Passover lamb, as per 1 Corinthians 5.7, slain at the same time that the lambs in the temple are being slain. If, however, the Last Supper is a Passover meal, then the authorities' sense of urgency must be unconscious; they are acting in accordance with Jesus' wishes about the timing without really having a clue as to why they are doing it. Furthermore, it then turns out that the "right time", according to Jesus, was some arbitrary point on Passover day, but an entire night after the Passover meal itself, with no special significance other than that it falls during the festival season.
The timing of Jesus' death to immediately precede the feast is, in fact, what we find in John and in Peter (not to mention in the Jewish version from the Talmud: "on Passover Eve"). Did these authors find a Marcan narrative and tweak it so as to make it even more pointed and ironic, and precisely in a Marcan way? Maybe, but note that this is not the same thing as, say, Matthew and Luke fixing Mark to make it more acceptable to the church at large; this is, IMHO, a change in the direction of making it more starkly Marcan. Also, I think that the very existence of these accounts which make the crucifixion coincide with the slaying of the Passover lambs makes the existence an early narrative tradition which fulfilled 1 Corinthians 5.7 in an exact sense all the more plausible. From the other direction we may note the existence of Eucharist practices and accounts that have nothing to do with either the Last Supper or the Passover (in the Didache, for example), as well as the existence of at least one Last Supper with no Eucharist (in John). That these strands can be separate makes it at least plausible that they started as separate but were drawn together, by thematic attraction, to finish as joined.
2. 2.000 years later, "many scholars" believe that they would understand more and better than the author himself.
3.
The very question on the table is whether there is only one author at work here. Your statement implies that the proposition of a single author is a given. For me it is not. I am bringing that proposition under scrutiny.
Perhaps, if you prefer, you might not think of it as Mark having brought together various traditions to produce what we find now, but rather as Mark having produced the original narrative to which the part(s) equating the Last Supper with the Passover meal have been artificially added, just like Mark 16.9-20.
There is much more to be said here, but that ought to do for now.
Ben.
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Sun May 15, 2016 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Isn't there five dimensional chess happening here, so that there are not only sandwiches in the text, but discussions with readers? So this is very complex writing, with elements of a play.
The above can be read as a discussion of Shakespeare
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Ben C. Smith wrote:The very question on the table is whether there is only one author at work here. Your statement implies that the proposition of a single author is a given. For me it is not. I am bringing that proposition under scrutiny.
True, but it was not my point. I am also interested in the question of which sources are behind Mark and how to explore it.
I could have said that I think the primary source of Mark 14:1-2 is 1 Cor 5:7-8
1 It was now two days before the Passover (πάσχα) and the Feast of Unleavened Bread (ἄζυμα). And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, 2 for they said, “Not during the feast (ἑορτῇ), lest there be an uproar from the people.”
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened (ἄζυμοι). For Christ, our Passover, (πάσχα) has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival (ἑορτάζωμεν), not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread (ἀζύμοις) of sincerity and truth.
But I meant that imho it is much harder to ask the questions of the sources. I think it should be done with more respect for the text when it is not impossible to understand the narrative as an unit. Very conservative Christians sometimes claim that scholars would destroy the bible. From a completely different perspective, I agree with that in some sense.
Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:I could have said that I think the primary source of Mark 14:1-2 is 1 Cor 5:7-8
1 It was now two days before the Passover (πάσχα) and the Feast of Unleavened Bread (ἄζυμα). And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, 2 for they said, “Not during the feast (ἑορτῇ), lest there be an uproar from the people.”
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened (ἄζυμοι). For Christ, our Passover, (πάσχα) has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival (ἑορτάζωμεν), not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread (ἀζύμοις) of sincerity and truth.
As two separate posts of mine above attest, I do agree that 1 Corinthians 5 is a strong candidate as the source of (or at the very least a strong parallel to) this part of the Marcan passion.
But I meant that imho it is much harder to ask the questions of the sources.
Sure, it is definitely harder.
I think it should be done with more respect for the text when it is not impossible to understand the narrative as an unit.
I do not mean to disrespect the text. I mean to understand it, to scrutinize it.
Very conservative Christians sometimes claim that scholars would destroy the bible. From a completely different perspective, I agree with that in some sense.
I used to approach these texts with a default view to their integrity unless that integrity could be proven beyond much doubt. I no longer think that is a sound approach. We have ample evidence in the record that these texts were added to and subtracted from; that they were reworked into other texts without notice; and that they are only a precious few among many, many others of their kind. The assumptions (A) that all of this redactional and scribal busywork happened only after Mark and not before and (B) that we possess in a critical treatment of our earliest copies of Mark (century III) the original text, as penned by the author, are ones that I simply cannot make; they would have to be argued for.
Ben C. Smith wrote:I used to approach these texts with a default view to their integrity unless that integrity could be proven beyond much doubt. I no longer think that is a sound approach. We have ample evidence in the record that these texts were added to and subtracted from; that they were reworked into other texts without notice; and that they are only a precious few among many, many others of their kind. The assumptions (A) that all of this redactional and scribal busywork happened only after Mark and not before and (B) that we possess in a critical treatment of our earliest copies of Mark (century III) the original text, as penned by the author, are ones that I simply cannot make; they would have to be argued for.
My impression is that our POV's are much more similar than your view and the approach of the old Redaction criticism. I think it will continue to go in the direction that in the future one will assume a greater unity of the narratives.
Ben C. Smith wrote:I used to approach these texts with a default view to their integrity unless that integrity could be proven beyond much doubt. I no longer think that is a sound approach. We have ample evidence in the record that these texts were added to and subtracted from; that they were reworked into other texts without notice; and that they are only a precious few among many, many others of their kind. The assumptions (A) that all of this redactional and scribal busywork happened only after Mark and not before and (B) that we possess in a critical treatment of our earliest copies of Mark (century III) the original text, as penned by the author, are ones that I simply cannot make; they would have to be argued for.
My impression is that our POV's are much more similar than your view and the approach of the old Redaction criticism. I think it will continue to go in the direction that in the future one will assume a greater unity of the narratives.
I think I occupy something of a mediating position between yours and that of the redaction critics.
With you, I am highly skeptical of our ability to reconstruct the actual wording and order of lost sources; I present specific wordings and orders as object lessons so as to make the overall argument easier to visualize, but do not tend to use those specific wordings and orders as conclusions upon which to build further hypotheses (unless by sheer speculation).
With them, I am willing to posit that lost sources actually existed; and I think that the same considerations that went into suspecting a source in the first place can shed light on at least some of the contents of that source (in this case, I think the Last Supper was not a Passover meal in the source, but that is all that I am really willing to venture, since that is the only tension I investigated so far in the text).
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