The Gospel Renegades have finished their reading of Mark, struggling mightily with the strange ending in chapter 16. An excerpt from our exchanges:....Connor: I am attracted by Bill [Berg’s] idea that ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ [in chapter 16] originally began a longer sentence [and hence a different ending from what we have in the mss.]. Manuscripts do have a lot of trouble at their endings. Mice or whatever took their toll. And yet Mark keeps surprising me by his abruptness — starting where he does, short-changing the teaching for the miracles and the polemics, hurrying on when one wants more time, more detail … so I’m still puzzled. Maybe that’s the way I should be? McKIM My “Mark the journalist” riff wasn’t meant to suggest literal reporting but rather his artlessly chronological cataloguing of events, names & places, the resulting fragmentation of J’s “message” amid an interruptive sequence of miracles ... So yes, Bob, the effect is puzzling, unless we just say that Mark is the least competent of the gospelers, or that the needs of his original audience were very different from ours.... CONNOR Rick, this seems to me quite likely. Not easy to live on the dark side of the Pax Romana. So is there ANY analogy to our situation? McKIM Or are we, despite all differences, left at sea in the same boat as Mark’s original readers, commanded to wait watchfully (and fearfully!) for Jesus to come walking across the water and steer us home? And so Mark leaves the Renegades as he found us, full of questions … READ MORE:
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 14:21:02 +0000