Passover & the passion narrative before Mark.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

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).

Okay.

I think in the other thread you presented a “real” problem, something that need to be explained. But in this thread your argument does not rely on theological plausibility and therefore it is not a challenge.

- Mark does not mention a passover lamb.
- Paul said that Christ is our passover.
- Therefore a lamb is not needed. It would be rather irritating.
- No theological problem here.

- In Mark the crucifixion occurred during the feast – Mark 15:6.
- Paul said that we should celebrate this feast.
- Pauline theology fulfilled in Mark’s narrative.
- Jesus’ enemies wished that it should not occur during the feast. What a fine ironical twist!

- The time of the passion from the passover meal to the death of Jesus covers a jewish day.
- Historically hardly plausible.
- Theologically no problem: the great day of the Lord, foretold in the scriptures.

I'm not saying that I'm right. I'm just saying that in this thread you don't present a real problem for my assumption. No need for another source than Paul and the LXX.

[iskander]

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).

Okay.

I think in the other thread you presented a “real” problem, something that need to be explained. But in this thread your argument does not rely on theological plausibility and therefore it is not a challenge.

- Mark does not mention a passover lamb.
- Paul said that Christ is our passover.
- Therefore a lamb is not needed. It would be rather irritating.
- No theological problem here.

- In Mark the crucifixion occurred during the feast – Mark 15:6.
- Paul said that we should celebrate this feast.
- Pauline theology fulfilled in Mark’s narrative.
- Jesus’ enemies wished that it should not occur during the feast. What a fine ironical twist!

- The time of the passion from the passover meal to the death of Jesus covers a jewish day.
- Historically hardly plausible.
- Theologically no problem: the great day of the Lord, foretold in the scriptures.

I'm not saying that I'm right. I'm just saying that in this thread you don't present a real problem for my assumption. No need for another source than Paul and the LXX.

- The time of the passion from the passover meal to the death of Jesus covers a jewish day.
- Historically hardly plausible

In the story of Jesus , in the gospel of Mark, he is portrayed as a heretic. He is arrested by a religious authority and his fearful companions flee . During my life, and on the evidence of my late father , I recall cases of " freedom fighters " who had been arrested and executed in the most private manner.
If the story of Mark is to mean anything at all to the non-religious person then, the birth of the man, found by Mark walking to meet a companion, must be considered to be unknown; and his death to contain only possibilities.


For a non-religious person it is easy to accept a " heretic" who was eliminated .The importance of this man depends exclusively on how the change he favoured for his people is perceived by the reader.

[Ben C. Smith]

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).

Okay.

I think in the other thread you presented a “real” problem, something that need to be explained. But in this thread your argument does not rely on theological plausibility and therefore it is not a challenge.

Funny how people are different. I feel like my case on this thread is stronger and my other case weaker. (I think some of that feeling comes from actually having texts in hand which have Jesus crucified right before the Passover celebration, whereas for the hometown rejection the contents of any putative source go unrepresented amongst our extant texts.)

- Mark does not mention a passover lamb.
- Paul said that Christ is our passover.
- Therefore a lamb is not needed. It would be rather irritating.
- No theological problem here.

Good point, especially that second line. I readily grant that there is no theological problem with the Last Supper demonstrating no real Paschal overtones; I just want it on the record that the Eucharist probably had nothing to do with the Passover originally. This is a supporting detail, not a linchpin.

- In Mark the crucifixion occurred during the feast – Mark 15:6.
- Paul said that we should celebrate this feast.
- Pauline theology fulfilled in Mark’s narrative.
- Jesus’ enemies wished that it should not occur during the feast. What a fine ironical twist!

I also grant that, if the timing is a point of difference, that there is irony here. I argued before, and you did not rebut it, that there is plenty of irony here even if the timing itself is not the issue, that is, if what is at stake is the result of the actions taken by the authorities.

I want to point something out about your first line: "the crucifixion occurred during the feast". Well, yes, but to go back to Mark 14.1-2 for a moment...:

1 Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were two days away; and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize Him by stealth and kill Him; 2 for they were saying, “Not during the festival, otherwise there might be a riot of the people.”

...I think it is evident that "the feast" is the entire affair, both the Passover proper and the entire week of Unleavaned Bread. Our Pauline source in 1 Corinthians 5.7-8 can confirm this notion:

7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

This means that "during the feast" indicates a period about one week long. And yet both Jesus and the authorities are rushing along. On your view, the reason for the rush is apparently the following:

- The time of the passion from the passover meal to the death of Jesus covers a jewish day.
- Historically hardly plausible.
- Theologically no problem: the great day of the Lord, foretold in the scriptures.

Okay, that is not a terrible reason, I admit. The trouble is, I still see it as more strained than the alternative: nothing is mentioned about the single day from Passover meal to crucifixion being special, whereas "before the feast" is announced in connection with the "the opportune time".

And about the scenario being "historically hardly plausible"... I think it seems pretty convenient that later gospels (those of John and Peter) would be handed a narrative which by one simple move — turning the Last Supper into a meal before the Passover rather than the Passover itself — could (A) turn Jesus symbolically into the Passover lamb in a direct way by having him crucified while the actual lambs are being sacrificed and (B) make the authorities' headlong rush not only more historically plausible but indeed also necessary from their own point of view, while (C) not losing any degree of irony, since the authorities are unwittingly fulfilling Jesus' timeline, and (D) not encountering any resistance from the Last Supper itself, since it was already bereft of uniquely Paschal features to begin with.

I am just not sure I can swallow the convenience of it all.

I'm not saying that I'm right. I'm just saying that in this thread you don't present a real problem for my assumption. No need for another source than Paul and the LXX.

I understand, and of course you are more than free to disagree with me. For my part, I appreciate the incisive comments and observations.

Ben.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Funny how people are different. I feel like my case on this thread is stronger and my other case weaker. (I think some of that feeling comes from actually having texts in hand which have Jesus crucified right before the Passover celebration, whereas for the hometown rejection the contents of any putative source go unrepresented amongst our extant texts.)

I understand and from your POV you're absolutely right. If there are sources then it is likely that other texts reflect these sources. (Look, how I must put forth an effort to understand this "normal" consideration. )

[Ben C. Smith]

Look, how I must put forth an effort to understand this "normal" consideration.

Like a champ.

[iskander]

The Last Supper & Passover: Overlooking the Obvious?
This close analysis of Mark has aimed to reveal the Passover meal material to be a
superimposition on an underlying tradition at variance with it — a lens, or filter, through
which Mark wished the story now to be understood. Because Mark thereby generated
problems left unresolved, evidently the entire case for the Last Supper as a Passover meal
crumbles. For Matthean and Lukan chronologies replicate Mark’s, their primary source;
whereas John and, before him, Paul take other directions. Simple solutions, if adequate, may
be preferable to convoluted solutions suspect for that reason alone.[8]

By Michael J. Cook
Professor of Judeo-Christian Studies
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati campus
March 2013
Mark inserted verses 14:12-16, says Prof Cook
http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/2013/coo378022.shtml

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=524&start=10

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

by the way
I have lost my faith in sources with the comparison of Mark 14:3ff and John 12:1ff. I assume that you know the case. David Friedrich Strauß also referred to it in his famous „The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined”.

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.”

1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

- The story is changed in important ways.
- But John has several direct quotations of Mark’s story.

I think that it should be the other way around in the “source model”: the wording is changed more than the story.

One sees here rather creative writers at work than redactors of sources.

[Adam]

The wording is changed more than the story because the original eyewitness write-up of it was in Aramaic. In the translation to Greek contrasting words were used that mean the same thing.
Neither Mark nor John copied each other. They stem from a common source.

[Charles Wilson]

The wording is changed more than the story because the original eyewitness write-up of it was in Aramaic. In the translation to Greek contrasting words were used that mean the same thing.
Neither Mark nor John copied each other. They stem from a common source.

Adam --

I guess that makes three of us: You, Jay Raskin and yours truly.

More later on this.

CW

[Ben C. Smith]

by the way
I have lost my faith in sources with the comparison of Mark 14:3ff and John 12:1ff. I assume that you know the case. David Friedrich Strauß also referred to it in his famous „The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined”.

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.”

1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

- The story is changed in important ways.
- But John has several direct quotations of Mark’s story.

I think that it should be the other way around in the “source model”: the wording is changed more than the story.

But you think that either Mark or John served as a source (whether redacted heavily or redacted lightly) for the other, right? You are saying that they just do not share a common (now lost) source, right?