Mark's use of Pauline letters

[rgprice]

This is basically the main thesis of my book: Deciphering the Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed, and also features in the book I'm working on now.

[DCHindley]

Are there scholars who argue that the Eucharist was interpolated in Paul?
I think the Eucharist is a good example of Mark creating a "narrativized version of the contents of the most important letters of Paul the Apostle".
Paul attributes his knowledge of the "Lord's Supper" to revelation. It's interesting that his account lacks a specific set of details when compared to Mark's account of the "Last Supper". It seems that in Paul, the Eucharist is something that Paul has learned from the heavenly Christ and Mark is creating a history out of it. The kind of details highlighted in bold are missing from Paul's account.

Last Supper.PNG

So in Mark, Jesus is clearly speaking to people who are present with him

Back when I cared, this is my analysis of 1 Cor 11:23-29 compared to Matthew and Mark. The fuller account is clearly 1 Cor.

Προς Κορινθίους Α΄ (NA 27th ed)	1 Corinthians (RSV, with changes required by this analysis)	Compare 11:23b-25 with Mt 26:26	(Compare 11:23b-25 with Mk 14:22-25)
14.23a Ἐγὼ γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου, ὃ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν,	14.23a For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you,
23b ὅτι ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ ᾗ παρεδίδετο	23b that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed	Mt 26.26a Now as they were eating,	Mk 14.22a And as they were eating,
23c ἔλαβεν ἄρτον	23c (he) took bread,	26b Jesus took bread,	22b he took bread,
24a καὶ εὐχαριστήσας ἔκλασεν	24a and when he had given thanks, he broke it,	26c and blessed, and broke it,	22c and blessed, and broke it,
		26d and gave it to the disciples	22d and gave it to them,
24b καὶ εἶπεν·	24b and said,	26e and said,	22e and said,
		26f "Take,	22f "Take;
		26g eat;
24b τοῦτό μού ἐστιν τὸ σῶμα τὸ ὑπὲρ *ὑμῶν*·	24b "This is my body which is for *you*.	26h this is my body."	22g this is my body."
24c τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν.	24c Do this in remembrance of me."
25a ὡσαύτως καὶ τὸ ποτήριον	25a In the same way also the cup,	27a And he took a cup,	23a And he took a cup,
25b μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι	25b after supper,
		27b and when he had given thanks	23b and when he had given thanks
		27c he gave it to them,	23c he gave it to them,
25c λέγων·	25c saying,	27d saying,
		27e "Drink of it, all of you;	23d and they all drank of it.
			24a And he said to them,
25d τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον	25d "This cup
25e ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ ἐμῷ αἵματι·	25e (is) the new covenant in my blood.	28a for this is my blood of the covenant,	24b "This is my blood of the covenant,
		28b which is poured out for many	24c which is poured out for many.
		28c for the forgiveness of sins.
25f τοῦτο ποιεῖτε, ὁσάκις ἐὰν πίνητε, εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν.	25f Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."
26 ὁσάκις γὰρ ἐὰν ἐσθίητε τὸν ἄρτον τοῦτον καὶ τὸ ποτήριον πίνητε, τὸν θάνατον τοῦ κυρίου καταγγέλλετε ἄχρι οὗ ἔλθῃ.	26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.	29 I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."	25 Truly, I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."
27 Ὥστε ὃς ἂν ἐσθίῃ τὸν ἄρτον ἢ πίνῃ τὸ ποτήριον τοῦ κυρίου ἀναξίως, ἔνοχος ἔσται τοῦ σώματος καὶ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ κυρίου.	27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.
28 δοκιμαζέτω δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἑαυτὸν καὶ οὕτως ἐκ τοῦ ἄρτου ἐσθιέτω καὶ ἐκ τοῦ ποτηρίου πινέτω·	28 Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 ὁ γὰρ ἐσθίων καὶ *πίνων* κρίμα ἑαυτῷ ἐσθίει καὶ πίνει μὴ διακρίνων τὸ *σῶμα*.	29 For any one who eats and *drinks* without discerning the *body* eats and drinks judgment upon himself.

This is a section I classify as an interpolation in an original letter that was not talking about Christ, in the form of a digression.

To me the original "Paul" knew nothing of Jesus Christ, even his messianism was confined to looking forward to a blessed age to come in which righteous Jews as well as gentiles would benefit equally from. If he was rooting for a human leader (messiah) to usher this period in, I think he would be rooting for a Herodian prince, probably Antipas. And maybe not as a world ruling kingdom, as many Judeans wanted to see, just a prosperous client kingdom like Herod the Great possessed, which was of no small size and revenue.

It was gentile followers of Jesus, over there in areas heavily populated by Jews and southern Syria, who had transformed Jesus from a Judean messiah to a divine-like redeemer in the crucible of the war years 66-73 CE. These "Christians" (big C) also wrote things that got into the Gospels as they have been handed down.

They may seem highly correlated, but correlation does not tell us the direction of travel of a tradition, or whether the traditions of the various compared texts all drew from some sort of common tradition.

DCH

[lsayre]

Correlation does not imply causation.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQfacqVvOEM[/youtube]

[rgprice]

@DCHindley

"23b that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed"

I would note that "betrayed" is poor translation. This is really, "23b that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was delivered up"

Paul uses the same Greek elsewhere to clearly mean "sacrificed" not "betrayed:

"Romans 8:
32 He who indeed His own Son did not spare, but for us all did deliver him up, how shall He not also with him the all things grant to us?"

The use of "betrayed" is what gives the impression that Paul is relaying the Gospel tradition, but in fact, it was Mark who derived his scene from Paul. The betrayal was Mark's invention, but it does not exist in Paul's letter.

[gryan]

I am convinced the author of Mark studied and digested Galatians. Here is the latest evidence I'm looking at from a paper shared online by a Gary Nolan:

"In Gal 2:7 Paul reports the disciples “Perceiving that I have been entrusted with” the Gentile
mission. In Gal 2:14 Paul reports concerning Peter and the disciples, “I perceived that they
walked not uprightly” because Peter “withdrew and separated himself” from eating with
Gentiles. My suggestion is that Mark echoes themes from Romans and Galatians in order to
foreshadow Paul’s dual perceptions in Galatians and he used as catchwords the same terms Paul
used to describe the theme. For example, later in this essay I suggest that Mark’s singular use of
perceive that (Mark 2:16) in Mark’s account of Jesus eating with sinners is a catchword that
links the account to Gal 2:14: Paul perceived that Peter was wrong for not eating with Gentiles."

https://nobts.academia.edu/GaryNolan

[rgprice]

@gryan

In my original research I identified 23 references to the Pauline letters in Mark across Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians. I've identified a few more since. I've looked for potential references to Colossians and Ephesians, but haven't found any. I also haven't seen anyone else identify potential relationships with those letters. I hate to rely on this kind of lack of evidence, since its possible I've just missed them, but to me this suggests that either Mark was written before Colossians and Ephesians, that the writer of Mark possessed an original collection that did not contain Colossians and Ephesians, or that the writer of Mark did not consider Colossians and Ephesians authentic Pauline letters.

On another note, as I lay out in the book I'm working on, I think that Marcion's Gospel was written within the same community that produced Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. Much of the supposed "Q" material shares many qualities with Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. The Sermon on the Plain sounds a lot like the prayers/sermons in Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans.

[andrewcriddle]

On traditional dating of the Apostolic fathers 1 Clement Ignatius and Polycarp. Also statements attributed to early Gnostics that seem to be exegesis of Paul (e.g. Basilides according to Hippolytus When, therefore, he [Basilides] says, the entire Sonship shall have come, and shall be above the conterminous spirit, then the creature will become the object of mercy. For (the creature) groans until now,(Romans 8:19-22) and is tormented, and waits for the manifestation of the sons of God, in order that all who are men of the Sonship may ascend from thence. )

Andrew Criddle

Is there any potential for bias within the traditional dating?

Some of the traditional dates may be too early. (FWIW I date Ignatius to the time of Hadrian not that of Trajan.) However they are IMO pre-Marcionite. (If you date Marcion to the time of Antoninus Pius which is probably right although some scholars would begin his activity earlier.)

Andrew Criddle

[gryan]

@ rgprice

I've been into what I call "echolocation" for maybe ten years, and I got my start reading the echos of "thief in the night" in Mark and 2 Peter. I went from there to reading James Tabor's book, Jesus and Paul. He finds echos of the Lord's supper in the Gospels and generally argues that Paul's greatest victory was literary influence.

I've come to suspect 1 Thes is pseudo-Paul. Today, I'm wondering if the author of 1 Thes was influenced by gMark 13 somehow.

I find echos not only of Paul, but of Eph and Col and the pastorals in Hebrews and to some extent also in John, but now that you point it out, I have not detected echos of Eph and Col in Mark, as I recall.

[MrMacSon]

.
Besides rgprice's book, Deciphering the Gospels, other authors who have proposed or discussed Mark's uses of the Pauline letters include

• Tom Dykstra (2012) Mark, Canonizer of Paul
  
  “For over 150 years the idea that Mark used the Pauline epistles has been recurring in New Testament research. Now in the work of Tom Dykstra, wide-ranging work and thoughtful, the truth of that idea emerges with a clarity it never had before. The result is to give a fresh sense of the origin and nature of Mark, of all the New Testament books, and of the quest for history.”
  Thomas Brodie, [then] Director, Dominican Biblical Institute, author of The Birthing of the New Testament*
  
  * Brodie's The Birthing of the New Testament shows a lot of intertextuality between the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Pauline epistles and the Gospels

• Paul and Mark: Comparative Essays Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity, 2014, edited by Oda Wischmeyer, David C Sim and Ian J Elmer
  
  The hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark was heavily influenced by Pauline theology and/or epistles was widespread in the nineteenth century, but fell out of favour for much of the twentieth century. In the last twenty years or so, however, this view has begun to attract renewed support, especially in English language scholarship. This major and important collection of essays by an international team of scholars seeks to move the discussion forward in a number of significant ways; tracing the history of the hypothesis from the nineteenth century to the modern day, searching for historical connections between these two early Christians, analysing and comparing the theology and christology of the Pauline epistles and the Gospel of Mark, and assessing their reception in later Christian texts. This major volume will be welcomed by those who are interested in the possible influence of the apostle to the Gentiles on the earliest Gospel.

• David Oliver Smith (2015) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels
  
  This book examines the Synoptic Gospels, Hebrews, and Paul's Epistles finding many intriguing similarities, suggesting that the Synoptic evangelists used extensive parts of the epistles to weave into their stories of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. David Oliver Smith then compares these epistle-based passages to the theoretical lost gospel Q and finds that a large portion of what many New Testament scholars consider to be contained in Q may have its inspiration in the Epistles.

• Thomas P. Nelligan (2017) The Quest for Mark's Sources: An Exploration of the Case for Mark's Use of First Corinthians
  
  By analyzing and comparing sections of Mark and 1 Corinthians, most notably the account of the Eucharist in both texts, Nelligan argues Mark used 1 Corinthians as a literary source and that this was done using well-established literary techniques used in the wider Greco-Roman and Jewish literary world.

• Mark and Paul: Comparative Essays Part II. For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark, 2017,
  edited by Eve-Marie Becker, Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Mogens Mueller
  
  This volume brings together an international group of scholars on Mark and Paul, respectively, who reopen the question whether Paul was a direct influence on Mark. On the basis of the latest methods in New Testament scholarship, the battle over Yes and No to this question of literary and theological influence is waged within these pages. In the end, no agreement is reached, but the basic issues stand out with much greater clarity than before. How may one relate two rather different literary genres, the apostolic letter and the narrative gospel? How may the theologies of two such different types of writing be compared? Are there sufficient indications that Paul lies directly behind Mark for us to conclude that through Paul himself and Mark the New Testament as a whole reflects specifically Pauline ideas? What would the literary and theological consequences of either assuming or denying a direct influence be for our reconstruction of 1st century Christianity? And what would the consequences be for either understanding Mark or Paul as literary authors and theologians? How far should we give Paul an exalted a position in the literary creativity of the first Christians? Addressing these questions are scholars who have already written seminally on the issue or have marked positions on it, like Joel Marcus, Margaret Mitchell, Gerd Theissen and Oda Wischmeyer, together with a group of up-coming and senior Danish scholars from Aarhus and Copenhagen Universities who have collaborated on the issue for some years. The present volume leads the discussion further that has been taken up in: “Paul and Mark” (ed. by O. Wischmeyer, D. Sim, and I. Elmer), BZNW 191, 2013 [listed above^^^].

[schillingklaus]

1 Cor 15:23-26 is a blatantly late interpolation, but the received synoptic cena is even later.

1 Cor adds the bread to the original cena, and it establishes the order bead-wine against Didache's order of wine-bread, which was inspired by common Jewish meals.

The eucharisted bread was already established in the feeding miracles, not the cena, who just introduced the wine (indispensable in Jewish meals). This follows from interpolated character of the stories of the cena, as best described by Jean Magne in Logiques des Sacrements.