Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Why is Mark linked to Peter? Maybe....

I got to thinking -- a bad habit when you have 40,000 chinese characters awaiting translation -- and revisited Mk 16:2-8 to see if I could create a chiasm. The problem is that 16:8 cannot possibly be the end of the gospel, because there is no A' bracket involving geographical location/ movement to balance the A bracket.......
A And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.

B And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?"

C And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; -- it was very large.

D And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed.

D And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you."

C And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them;

B and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.

A It was the last day of the feast of the unleavened bread and many people were going out, returning to their houses since the festival was over.
...so, with cheerful disregard for good methodology, I leapt over to the Gospel of Peter to borrow the last line. It doesn't really work -- there's no transition there between B' and A', and the C' and B' brackets are doublets that suggest they originally might have been the center of the chiasm -- but while I was rooting around in Gospel of Peter, I realized that if Mark had originally written an ending that resembled GPeter, the legend of his connection to Mark might have its roots there. Here's the last section of GPeter:

"(58) It was the last day of the feast of the unleavened bread and many people were going out, returning to their houses since the festival was over. (59) But we, the twelve disciples of the Lord, were weeping and grieving, and although everyone was mourning because of what had happened, each departed for his own house. (60) But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew took our nets and went out to the sea. And with us was Levi, the son of Alphaeus, whom the Lord [. . .]"

Imagine if early versions of Mark had a sudden shift to the first person at that point, with Peter as the narrator (GPeter almost certainly knows the Synoptics). Then the legend of Mark's connection to Peter originated as an etiological myth to explain why the "I" suddenly cropped out in the now-vanished ending.

Just a suggestion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Jesus was actually 3 persons. Maybe if you listen to your inner self you will realize the multiplicity of yourself. And ofcourse you never really die as we understand death.

Christ, the historical Christ was not crucified. He had no intention of dying in that manner.

Mary came because she was full of sorrow for the man who believed he was her son. Out of compassion she was present. The group responsible wanted it to appear that one particular portion of the Jews had crucified Christ and never dreamed that the 'whole Jewish people' would be blamed.

Christ was a great psychic. He caused the wounds to appear on his body and appeared both physically and in out-of-body states to his followers.

Peter 3 times denied the Lord (Mth 26) saying he did not know Him because he recognized that the person was not Christ.

The plea, 'why has thou forsaken me?' came from the man who believed he was Christ-the drugged version. Judas pointed out that man. He knew of the conspiracy and feared that man would be captured. Therefore he handed over to the authorities a man known to be a self styled messiah, to save-not destroy the historical Christ.