Chreia in the Temple Cleansing in Mark

From some comments on my Chiasm stuff earlier:

I wonder if it's time to start thinking about all of this as evidence for layers of redaction...the bits that are not chiasmed would seem to be later additions, and it's interesting that there seems to be some correlation with those elements that are missing from Luke--I should look into this in more detail. Mr. Turton, have you discovered Ur-Markus? (Or deutero-Mark, as the case may be).

I think the evidence shows that the Bethsaida section contains three types of material: Markan, modified Markan, and totally non-Markan. The last is exemplified by the idiotic "Beware the leaven of Herod" chastisement of the disciples.

(Could we even put the prophetic quotations in v1-3 in this category of later additions? Perhaps it was a revision or addition to an earlier tradition of John-material at the beginning of the gospel.)

Maybe, but it is impossible to tell now. I'd need another section to compare it with.

I might even go further, and suggest that some of the features of the chiasms seem to imply that the author was working with earlier material, struggling with its structure--the occasional ABC parallelism seems to suggest this, as do the brief 1-layer ABBA brackets interspersed throughout.

I agree but not in the way you think. In 12:10-35 there is a chiasm that looks like it informs the reader that Mark knew Paul. It contains 1-layer ABBA chiasms. It is interesting that you see them the same way I do, as indications of source-reliance. But the sources I see are all texts that Mark had access to, not tradition. But some of the ABBA contain chreia, others, long bursts of narrative that come from the author. Like this one:

A And he went up on the mountain, and called to him those whom he desired; and they came to him.
___B And he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons
___B Simon whom he surnamed Peter; James the son of Zeb'edee and John the brother of James, whom he surnamed Bo-aner'ges, that is, sons of thunder; Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
A Then he went home;

Here in my view he gets Peter, James, and John from Paul, and Judas he makes up out the Old Testament. The others I am open to arguments on. So we have a mix of tradition and invention here.

Similarly:

A And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed.

____B And Simon and those who were with him pursued him, and they found him and said to him, "Every one is searching for you."

____B And he said to them, "Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also; for that is why I came out."

A And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

...contains a chreia structure that the writer probably coined himself. I don't think you can say ABBA = this or that. Mark is never that simple (sigh)

My hunch is that the author was working to impose stylistic order on earlier material--and, I would argue further, was using chiasms to insert commentary into the previous text. So I would hypothesize three layers of redaction--one prior to the chiasms, and one following, but I realize this might just be my ideosyncratic opinion.

We sort of see this the same way, but the "earlier material" is in 99% of cases either OT or Pauline. There are no traditions under Mark.

ere's an example of what can be done with your chiasms. Let's look at the temple cleansing. In your Commentary, you cite Geoffrey Troughton in using Nehemiah as an OT basis for this episode. Troughton says:

"According to Davies and Allison, the prohibition against carriage through the Temple is the likeliest source of allusion to Nehemiah." Mk11:16 "and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple" is present only in Mark. It is not present in either Matthew, Luke, or John. It's especially telling that it isn't present in Matthew, since Matthew seems to have had the latest edition of Mark of the three other evangelists.

Ok.....

So, what happens to the chiasm without v16? It looks like it's reduced to an ABCBA structure, which isn't a chiasm at all according to your rules. Perhaps this was an older pericope that the author had difficulty rewriting. However, you'd probably view this conclusion as ad hoc, so let me suggest a different perspective. The center has been reduced to: And he taught, and said to them, "Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers."

You note that the center of Markan chiasms is often a chreia. Aren't we looking at one here?

And he taught, and said to them, "Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'?
***But you have made it a den of robbers."***

Hell yes! That's a great observation. But actually, that comment about centers and chreia was an earlier observation. My later restructuring of my early chiasms in Mark led me to conclude that Markan chreia/parables occur in the bracket directly following the center, more likely. But your basic observation holds: Jesus is speaking in chreia form.

Making for a lovely chreia-chiasm (which previously you could either not see, or not use, because you had to fit v16 in.) This example seems to tell us a few interesting things. For one, it suggests that the later editor was an OT-exegete. We are now left asking what exegesis is original, and what was added later.

We knew the editor(s) was an OT-exegete because the bogus material in the Bethsaida section is also OT-related. I think Matt dropped the reference to vessels in the Temple because, being a heckuva a lot dumber than Mark, he didn't get it. Or else, he knew it was impossible since he knew something about Judaism and the Holy Land, unlike Mark.

Also, as noted above, I have just removed the best piece of evidence that the cleansing is just a midrash on Nehemiah 13:9. Furthermore, if you read Troughton's article in its entirety, you will find that I have made his interpretation of Jesus' cleansing much more irrelevant.

Yes. Don't agree, though.

Finally, I'd like to add that although my solution breaks rule #4, you yourself break it in the bracketing of Gethsemane, in your F bracket there.

No, because the second F bracket there looks like a general admonishment to the readership, at least to me. I cosntructed another rule that when the speaker switches from the conversational mode to a general admonishment, a new bracket is called for. Where I broke my rule is in bracket B there. I need to redo that chiasm as I am very unsatisfied with it!