Just finished: Perspectives on the Ending of Mark: Four Views

While at Southeastern I was fortunate enough to get to attend a conference on the last twelve verses in Mark. Speakers included Daniel Wallace, David Alan Black, Maurice Robinson, J.K. Elliott, and Darrell Bock as the "moderator". Fortunately, B&H Academic has published their papers in a short book titled Perspectives on the Ending of Mark: Four Views.

I won't go into great detail about the papers, but I will say that I find a great deal of Elliott's argument very persuasive as well as Dr. Black's and Dr. Robinson's. That is to say, I suppose, the only argument I didn't find persuasive is Dr. Wallace's. Dr Wallace argues that the ending at 16:8 with the postpositive γαρ is original. Elliot notes that if this were some kind of clever device on Mark's part, a cliff-hanger, then it was entirely too clever for Mark's immediate audience. Already by Justin Martyr's time the longer ending seems to be known. Robinson also cites Larry Hurtado who shares the belief that if Mark ended with a γαρ it was so clever that nobody got it until modern scholarship came along.

I think a conglomeration of the three views I find persuasive could work. One thing I'm thinking about is Elliott's proposal that a leaf was lost (a leaf perhaps containg Mk 1:1-3 as well, though Elliott admits the leaves could have been lost at different times). Lets say that Mark published a Gospel that did not end at 16:8 and then due to either scribal error (which Elliott finds unlikely) or due to a leaf being lost, the LE found its way into the manuscript witness. It would have to have happened extremely early, I think, in order for both Justin Martyr and Origen to know of the LE. The manuscript(s) containing the LE would have had to have found their way, or served as exemplars for manuscripts which found their way, into both Judea (where Justin was) and Alexandria (where Origen was) within a very short amount of time.

Another issue I thought about is the Patristic witness of the LE. Unless one of the Fathers wrote a commentary or worked their way through a lectionary, how would you know that a Church Father only knew up to 16:8?

James Crossley, William Lane Craig, and Ghosts

I suppose since I've taken this title for my blog, I should actually blog about the NT from time to time. I was watching James Crossley's debate with William Lane Craig over on Mike Bird's and Joel Willitts' blog and I heard Dr. Crossley say something interesting about the disciples seeing Jesus and thinking he was a ghost (Mk 6:49-50), not someone who was walking around bodily. This was by no means the crux of his argument - he mentioned it once or twice and moved on to other evidence for his position.

All the same, I had just read Jason Robert Combs' (of Yale Div) article in RBL titled, "A Ghost on the Water? An Absurdity in Mark 6:49-50."(1) Combs' argument is that Mark uses this story to show that Jesus is not, in fact, just a ghost by virtue of the fact that he's on the water. Combs goes through primary sources from antiquity showing that it was a common belief that ghosts could not walk upon water.

Mark's "ghost sighting" is characteristic of ancient ghosts stories in three ways:

1) It occurs at night (6:48 - τεταρτην φυλαχην της νυχτος) during the fourth watch, which allowed for there to be some early morning light - (2)which was thought to be necessary to see ghosts, as the ancients did not share our sentiment that spirits luminesce. And 3) it caused the disciples fear.

However, Mark departs drastically from the typical ghost story by having Jesus appear on the water. Combs gives the rhetorical reasoning:
"The disciples' lack of understanding has long been recognized as a Markan theme that appears throughout the Gospel. Here it forms a striking narrative portrayal of cognitive dissonance: the disciples clearly want Jesus to be something that he is not, to the point that they are willing to believe the absurd (JM: That Jesus is a ghost) when Jesus approaches them as something much grander than they had imagined. Gods and divine men walk on water; ghosts do not. But when the disciples see Jesus walking on water, they believe the impossible rather thant he obvious. Mark's insertion of this absurdity, "because they saw him walking on the sea they thought he was a ghost" (6:49), emphasizes in dramatic fashion the discpiles' misconstrual of Jesus' messiahship."

(1)Journal of Biblical Literature; Summer2008, Vol. 127 Issue 2, p345-358.

Authors, Redactors, and Compilers, Oh my.

I'm reading through William Telford's The Barren Temple and the Withered Tree which is a discussion of Mark 11, specifically how the cursing of the fig tree relates to the cleansing of the temple.

I wanted to share this, out of the chapter "Source and Redaction in Mark 11":

"The first of these hands, a redactor of Mk I, R, was responsible for verses 20-24, and it was his version of Mark that Matthew used. Verses 25 and 26 are, however, late glosses. In addition, Hirsch posits a second redaction of Mark that occured before R's version adding verses 20-24 to Mk I. This version, Mk II, omitted the first visit to the Temple and the fig-tree story (verses 11-14) and brought together for the first time therby the Entry and Cleansing pericopes." (pg. 43)

He then goes on to give a chart describing the textual history. I find the argument really intriguing, but there's just something about all this redacting and authoring that doesn't sit well with me. Perhaps he's right, but do we punt to a "redactor" if we can't figure out why certain verses "sound a disharmonious note" too quickly? (ibid.)

The Last Twelve Verses in Mark Conference at SEBTS

A conference is scheduled for April 13-14, 2007 at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary concerning the last twelve verses in Mark.

Speakers include: Daniel B. Wallace, Maurice Robinson, Keith Elliot, David Black, and Darrel Bock.

I'm looking forward to this conference due to 1) The chance to meet scholars like Bock, Wallace, and Elliot (Robinson and Black teach at my school, so I've already had the privilege of meeting them) and 2) the chance to see argumentation in favor of the last twelve verses being original (a la Black and Robinson). I certainly don't hold to the view that the last twelve verses are original, but I'm not convinced that 16:8 is the original ending either.