I some of the statements on dating of Gospel. My source clearly says that 60's-slightly post 70 is position held by large majority of scholars who study issue. If anyone has a reliable source that says different, then let's talk about it here. We can easily include other hypotheses but unless the source for them says they are majority view they need to be labeled as minority position. Note that a minority position doesn't make it any less valid, but we need to accurately relay state of scholarship on an issue, and I have four sources that say majority view is not pre 60 or 80 or after and have cited from Brown's Introduction to the New Testament, which is a generally reliable mainstream source. Roy Brumback 09:51, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
My opinion on this is as follows. If we want to describe something like a concensus, or more reasonably a majority, then 60-80 is broad enough to capture this. If we want the plurality view of scholars today, 65-75 is in my understanding fair. Personally I prefer indulging the years of 60-65 because it includes the possibility that the text was written before Peter died, which is represented by at least one ancient tradition, but as long as we properly describe the material then I will sign off. For that reason, I don’t think the wording “60s to 70 or slightly after” is representative of a majority view of scholarship, and so such wording is better avoided. The year 70 happens to be quite significant concerning dating, and such ambiguity on that year is problematic here. My personal view, just to state where I am, would think 63-68, but of course this article is not about describing my view. So, I would prefer 60-80, but could agree to 65-75 in the right wording. I am not in support of 60s - 70 or slightly after. Lostcaesar 22:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I keep saying I'm not opposed to other views, but what I am opposed to is deciding on our own an average of scholars views. In my opinion and according to most sources I have read the book is dated by most scholars around the year 70. I'm not opposed to certain wording, but when you cite something cite it accurately and on those cited pages that is what is says. On page 127 Brown does say that, but that is his analysis, not him saying what the majority opinion is. On page 217 it says dated to the 68-73 period, not exactly those years. On page 164 he says there is wide scholarly agreement with late 60's to just after 70, and that's what I cited. Roy Brumback 10:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Guys, you keep trying on your own to determine what the scholarly consensus is. You said yourself "What I believe we did last time to get 60-80 was gather a large number of sources and choose an inclusive range that we could say was a consensus range." That is us on our own deciding what the consensus is, not citing a source telling us what the majority of scholars hold. According to the article and Brown's book the opinion of the majority of scholars is late 60's to early 70's. We can easily include the traditional view and the late view, but according to all very reliable sources I have checked, those are not the majority views. If the majority of scholars do not agree with early and late dates, so be it. Put them in but label them as minority positions. Are you opposed to, instead of trying to group them all together, simply labeling one as the majority view and others as minority views.
The Jewish war began before 70, so him having knowledge of it does not mean it was written after 70. According to another book specifically on Mark I have, A Brief Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, ISBN 0809130599, most scholars reject dates much after 70 since if one thinks the discourse refers to the war it is far less accurate then Matthew or Luke and was probably written before the war ended. Circa is vague, late and early are more precise, although not as precise as what the cite says. And I dislike the use of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" for scholars, as they are political terms, not scholarly ones, unless liberal simply means dating it late and conservative means dating it early, in which case just say those who date it late and those who date it early. One could date it early and still be politically liberal or vise versa. Roy Brumback 07:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Roy I will say I agree that terms like liberal, conservative, critical, traditional, and the like are words I think we, in the perfect world, could do without, since they are basically tautological and thus not especially informative. The solution is to cite specific authors and books by name. For example, in a reference we could say X, X, X, and X argued for Y, while Z, Z, Z, and Z, argued for W. But that takes a lot of work. The broad terms mentioned above are better than nothing. Lostcaesar 20:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
What happened to the old Gospel of Mark page? Where did all the comments from Carlson etc go? -Michael —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 140.116.55.72 ( talk • contribs) 22:33, 29 November 2006.
Thanks! 163.17.7.193 11:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)Michael
Based on the recent question asked of me, I neither agree or disagree with Brown's belief that the majority of scholars support dates from 68 to 73 as Brown does not back up his assertion. If he's quoting a Gallop poll or something of that nature and discussing concrete results, then that's something to sink the teeth into. Merely stating it's the case, shouldn't equate to fact. I am bothered by the idea that we seem to compose the entire dating section based upon 1 page from a book. That doesn't seem that we are doing our scholarly duty. Bbagot 16:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Both passages recently deleted by Lostcaesar contain attributes unique to Mark, as stated clearly in the descriptions. Only Mark has Jesus explicitly admit that "the Son" does not know when the end of the world will be, and only Mark allows that Jesus was not able to perform miracles in his own country: Matthew's alternate wording suggests that Jesus chose not to perform miracles because of the lack of faith. Grover cleveland 07:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
The section on elements unique to Mark is a mess. There are significant elements, such as the Messiah Secret. There are petty elements, such as whether the possessed swine are counted. I propose splitting these uniquenesses up among significant and petty lists so that the reader can quickly assess what is special about Mark as what merely happens to be "unique." Jonathan Tweet 07:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Mark chapter 6:4-6 reads as:
Matthew chapter 13:57-58 reads as:
The article here contained the following passage:
Mark does not definitively state that Jesus' ability to perform miracles was not unlimited. One reason why Jesus perhaps could not work miracles except healings is that he chose not to. The only way this becomes remotely like a passage unique to Mark is if we accept the hypothesis that Mark wrote first, that Matthew edited Mark, that Matthew was "beefing up Mark" and then also the interpretation that Mark was definitively stating Jesus' miraculous limitations. Whatever the case, I think this, as an encyclopedia and not and argumentative article, should merely state obvious and uncontroversial uniqueness, which do not require either an interpretation or the acceptance of an hypothesis. wanting to You at the least need a source to support the notion that the passage in Mark should be understood as unique. When I read the passages, they say the exact same thing. Jesus was upset at X people because they had no faith and thus worked no major miracles. Lostcaesar 16:11, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I removed Mark not having the Lord's Prayer as a "characteristic unique to Mark". John also does not have the Lord's Prayer. If we allow a list of things uniquely missing in Mark among the synoptics, then we could have separate items for the entire postulated content of the Q document (e.g. the Beatitudes, the Lost Sheep, the Mustard Seed, etc. etc. etc.).
For the same reason I removed the claim about Mark having the smallest number of parables among the synoptics. Grover cleveland 15:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem with sourcetext is that it requires the selection of a particular version, and for the most part only the KJV is offered, which is seriously outdated. The advantage of Template: bibleverse is that it allows the reader to select from a large number, including modern, translations. Maybe one day sourcetext will be as useful and as npov as bibleverse, but currently it has a long way to go. 75.0.15.230 19:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's the list of versions supported by bibleverse: http://php.ug.cs.usyd.edu.au/~jnot4610/bibref.php#srcref
As far as I know, the only complete bible at sourcetext is KJV. The people behind sourcetext have been promising great things for some time now, however, nothing as of yet has changed. 75.0.15.230 19:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Bibleverse also supports the Catholic and Orthodox Deuterocanonicals and Catholic translations such as NAB. 75.0.15.230 19:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Every two weeks or so I come back here and check this section, and sure enough there are additions of material that is not unique to Mark. Does anyone have a solution to solve this problem other than routine maintenance? Lostcaesar 01:06, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Speaking of things removed, I have removed my name from the entry. I am not scholar, just an educated reader. 163.17.7.193 11:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)Michael Turton
I do plan to put up a section here on Midrash and Mark. But not for another couple of months.
The section contains this passage: "The last twelve verses are missing from the oldest manuscripts of Mark's Gospel" - it is referenced but w/o a page number. I think this statement is misleading because it is too vague. In my understanding, the passage does not appear on the Sinaiticus or the Vaticanus, and these are the oldest manuscripts, so it is correct. However, it is only two manuscripts, and the Sinaiticus's leaf containing this section is not original. Saying "the oldest manuscripts" makes it sound as if there is this horde of first-second century manuscripts without it. Why not be more specific about the two manuscripts? (p.s., I will have a reference for the "gar" sentence as soon as I get back to the library, probably tomorrow - ty for the patience). Lostcaesar 08:58, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
There's more at Mark_16#Possible_Scenarios, if you want to get into it. 75.14.223.78 23:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
just as an aside, someone, or the article mentioned that if Mark originally ended at 16:8, that doesn't appear to be "good news", however, "euaggelion" in the Septuagint always has an ironic twist, see
[6]: "v1: George Aichele (2003) writes: "In the Old Testament, euaggelion appears only in 2 Samuel (LXX 2 Kings) 4:10, where David kills the messenger who brings the “good news” of Saul’s death. In addition, the plural form, euaggelia.appears four times in 2 Samuel 18:20, 22, 25, and 27, where it is used in the description of David’s reception of the “tidings” of Absalom’s death, and in 2 Kings (LXX 4 Kings) 7:9, where lepers discover the abandoned camp of the Syrian army. With the exception of this last instance, the message that is brought is not clearly a good one. None of these texts throws much light on the gospel of Mark’s use of the term, unless one wishes to argue that Mark is using the term ironically.""
75.14.223.78
23:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The following may be helpful:
There is a section that gives a list of material unique to Mark. I made the following changes. I moved the section on “literary cycles” to the top, the seemingly most logical place. I removed a footnote commentary that did not pertain to the uniqueness of a Markan passage (it seemed to be an interpretation of the event) – not the proper place for this. I removed one instance of comparison with “Thomas”, presumably the text known as the “Gospel of Thomas”, an apocryphal and non-narrative text. I assume that this section is material unique to Mark when compared with the canonical gospels (or perhaps synpotics). If we compare Mark with apocryphal texts then we will expand the subject greatly, and will reduce the material “unique to Mark”, since other texts (e.g. Gospel of Peter) mention things also in Mark, thereby undoing the usefulness of the section. I removed a passage about a “disputed translation”, since it is not pertinent to the uniqueness of the passage in regards to Mark (a different translation doesn’t make the passage un-unique). I rephrased the seemingly interpretive “in the other gospels the cock crows only once” to the more detached, descriptive, and neutral articulation “the other gospels simply say ‘the cock crew’”, since the words “only once” are unnecessarily interpretive. I hope these edits improve the section. Lastly, I removed the part about Mark’s ending, since its already covered with a dedicated section. Lostcaesar 11:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
IMHO, the above discussion is going nowhere pretty fast. Let's decide on the five proposed changes to the "Other characteristics unique to Mark" section. Please consider each one separately. The words in bold are the ones under particular discussion.
Current text:
Current text:
Current text:
Current text:
Current text:
I hope this clarifies the issue(s). StAnselm 07:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
As it stands, this is appalling:
This clearly draws a false dichotomy between Christians and scholars. It needs to cleaned up, or deleted. StAnselm 23:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
In the adoptionism section, the cite of Ehrman is wrong. He doesn't make the case in Misquoting Jesus that Mark 1:1 necessitates adoptionism. He probably makes it in Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (1996) but I have not confirmed it. I am going to remove it and add for cite request.-- Ari ( talk) 04:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I deleted this material. Like a good editor, I'm putting it here.
Ehrman’s view that this textual variant is of theological significance has been rejected by [[Bruce Metzger]], and the theory has been called “simply a myth” and “simply false” by [[Ben Witherington III]].<ref>Ben Witherington III, ''What Have They Done With Jesus?'' (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006), p. 7.</ref>
All this tells us is that two people disagree with Ehrman. So what? I can find two people to disagree with just about anyone. What this information needs is some reason that Ehrman's conclusion is false. Is it because Mark's theology just exudes trinitarianism? Is it because adoptionism is contradicted elsewhere in the gospel? Is it because adoptionism is wrong and the Bible is never wrong? If you can't give us actual information, don't give us driveby rejections. Jonathan Tweet 06:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
It appears Lostcaesar has quit over a dispute about purgatory. 75.0.7.37 19:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry to see LC retire. He knows a lot and taught me a lot. If we can find Metzger's and the evangelical guy's take on Mark's Christology, let's put that in.
Also, LC said that his explanation for Ehrman's evidence was uncertain and from memory. I think the reason that LC cites as the only reason is just one. (Other evidence is Marks' story line, which fits adoptionism a heck of a lot better than it fits Chalcedonism.) So can we cut the explanation of Ehrman's evidence until we get confirmation? Jonathan Tweet 02:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
So the last change by anon diff completely changed the meaning of the sentence. Both the original and the edit are unsourced. So what is it? Did Jesus teach in parables to obscure his teaching from the unworthy, or to make the teaching them accessible to everyone? I imagine both views are valid. It's probably an issue of "some say X, while others say Y". So can we source these statements and include both? Or does anyone have any ideas?- Andrew c 01:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I removed this newly added section:
Extensive use of literary allusion The Gospel of Mark makes extensive use of literary allusion to the Jewish scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament. In some cases these allusions exist in the other gospels as well, but this is generally due to their having been copied from the Gospel of Mark. In several cases literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark were lost when the scenes were copied by the other gospel writers. The most famous case of literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark comes from the crucifixion scene, which is crafted from literary allusions to Psalm 22 and Amos 8, as shown below.
Mark 15:
24 And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take.25 It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. 26 The inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' 27 And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. 29 Those who passed by mocked him, shaking their heads and saying, 'Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!' 31 In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.' Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.
33 When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34 At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'
The lines in bold are based on the texts from Psalm 22 and Amos 8, as shown below.
Psalm 22:
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. ... 6 But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; 8 'Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver— let him rescue the one in whom he delights!' ... 16 For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shriveled; 17 I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.
Amos 8:
2 He said, 'Amos, what do you see?' And I said, 'A basket of summer fruit.' Then the Lord said to me, 'The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. 3 The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,' says the Lord God; 'the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!' ... 9 On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10 I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.
Some Christians consider these to be cases of prophecy fulfillment. Scholars, however, consider these to be cases of literary allusion, where the author used existing passages from the Jewish scritpures to craft the details of the scene and provide sub-textual meaning to the events. The passage from Amos 8 would be relevant after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which is when it is believed that this work was written, and implies that the meaning of the crucifixion according to the author is a justification for the destruction of the Jewish people by the Romans during the Jewish war of 67-72 CE.
To a large extent, the narrative of the Gospel of Mark is a running series of literary allusions to the Jewish scritpures.
The analysis needs to be attributed to verifiable, reliable sources, and I do not believe it is appropriate for an encyclopedia article to have so much verbatim quoting of primary sources. - Andrew c [talk] 17:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't see the merit of the reasoning for removing this section. The quoted primary source material is not extensive and helps to demonstrate the point. What is the foundation for your "belief" that it is not appropriate?
Also, why was the link in the related articles section removed? These removals are unreasonable. - Malachi151 ( talk) 17:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
This is a well-sourced and well-written article. Is anyone else willing to spend some time cleaning up citations and taking it to Peer Review and then on to GAC? Ovadyah ( talk) 17:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I temporarily added a citation tag to the article to encourage editors to contribute to finding the missing citations. I'm trying to get some folks from various WikiProjects to chip in and make this a quick and relatively painless task. Ovadyah ( talk) 16:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Another possibility, which instead implies a 2nd century date for Mark, is that the entirety of the as the "little apocalypse" Mark 13:14-23 refers to the events of the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135, and which are a much better fit to events described in this text than the First Jewish Revolt of 70. The Emperor Hadrian in the year 130 started to rebuild the ruined city of Jerusalem as a pagan Roman Colony named Aelia Capitolina. The "abomination of desolation" Mark 13:14 in this case alludes to the statue of Jupiter (mythology) that the Emperor Hadrian attempted to install in a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The leader of the revolt, Simon Bar Kokhba]] claimed to be the anointed Jewish Messiah (cf. Mark 13:21-25). The Romans suppressed the revolt with as many as twelve legions, and pursued a scorched earth policy. According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed.[21]
This is not a fringe theory. It is a minority view. I have seen it discussed in several scholarly publications before. Therefore, I am recovering the deleted section until the appropriate references can be located. The hypothesis is supported in part by Clement of Alexandria's description of GMark as the last gospel written. The order of the gospels in the Western textual tradition exactly matches Clement's order (Matthew -> John -> Luke -> Mark). Ovadyah ( talk) 20:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
BTW, it's common courtesy to give editors a week to track down their sources before removing unsourced content. Immediate reverts, except in cases of obvious vandalism, could be seen as a violation of WP:AGF and as WP:OWN. Ovadyah ( talk) 20:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I just reorganized the dating section to first state the traditional viewpoint - and therefore it wasn't necessary to keep the mention of the comparison of the Olivet Discourse there - adding the link to the Introduction to the New Testament by McNeile which has the exhaustive list of references to the Patristic Father's opinions about the dating of Mark. I then separated out each hypothesis in chronological order, and I more or less tried to state each hypothesis in a neutral manner, and not give it "votes" by how many academics do or don't agree with it. There was no reason to keep the section on the alternative ideas including "Jesus prophesied correctly". If someone agrees with that literalist perspective, that puts an end to all textual analysis and actually gives a "timeless/eternal" date to the Gospel ("it was fortold") and makes a section on dating moot (as well as negating any textual comparisons of the various Gospels).
If this gets too complex we can always create a new more detailed subsidiary article on the dating of Mark, since that of course is critical for dating the Synoptics in general.
7Q5 has it's own article, so all that needed to be said was that O'Callahagan and Theide didn't get a scholarly consensus about their find. I'm not at all convinced that this postage-stamp sized piece of papyrus can be said to definitively come from a scroll and not a codex, so that argument may have to be taken out entirely.
Of course, a post-70 date has important implications for the dating of all the Synoptics given the popularity of the Two-source hypothesis. It seems that many people are just not aware of the three separate references to the destruction of the Temple / exile of the Jews in Mark that have been used date it past 70. (No, the Temple wasn't "finished" being destroyed in 73, it was fully destroyed in 70. Masada alone held out till 73.) I don't see that the use of the Little Apocalypse for dating is "controversial". Controversial for who? Those who don't think there are any "ex eventu" prophetic texts? That's why I put in a short explanation and link to Higher Criticism. It's almost impossible for the Little Apocalypse to be an interpolation since it's found in all three synoptics. The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen is also found in all the Synoptics, as well as the (Sayings) Gospel of Thomas, so this argument for the post-70 dating of Mark doesn't just rely on the Little Apocalypse alone.
The parallels with the Second Jewish Revolt seem to be even less well-known to the general public. Again, this causes even more problems with an early date for the Synoptics, but the evidence usually goes something like "we know that Matthew is early because of his Christology and therefore Mark must be even earlier." An interesting idea is the Marcion hypothesis, (an article that I'm working on now) which theorizes that Marcion is a kind of "proto-Mark" who is the source for all three synoptics, and not an edited version of Luke. (Marcion basically is Luke without Q.) There are actually some "minor agreements" between Marcion and Matthew and not Luke and Mark. Interestingly, Luke, who is closest to Marcions's Gospel (or vica versa) has a Little Apocalypse that doesn't mention the "abomination of desolation" but does mention exile and captivity. Mark and especially Matthew emphasize the utter destruction at this time, and in particular Matthew makes reference to a false Messiah "in the wilderness", which is an even closer parallel to Bar Kokhba, since his final headquarters was in the Judean Desert fortress of Herodium. This does rather reverse the order of the Two-source hyptothesis. It may be that Matthew derives from the "Gospel of the Hebrews", and these Ebionites of course were the ones most threatened by the Jewish alleigiance to Bar Kokhba as the Messiah, as opposed to Gentile Christians of Rome, which would have been the audience of Luke (or Marcion, who didn't see a relationship at all to Judaism).
There are lots more sources out there, but I hope that with the few references I added people will be able to start finding many more of them.
Epikouros ( talk) 04:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I find this passage in the article, "Critics argue that the Latinisms in the Greek of Mark could have stemmed from many places throughout the Western Roman empire.", which has no citation, to be problematic for two reasons. The first is the use of the term "critics argue", which is one of those dubious phrases on par with "some claim" and "it is widely believed"; effectively a POV worded to be NPOV. Further, if "critics argue" something, you'd think there would be several available sources to cite that fact. The second problem I have with this passage is that the only sources I could find to cite for it were other free wikis that had effectively copy-pasted this article. One thing that I did find was this [7], which claims that the use of latinisms did not have to do with where the gospel was written so much as it pertained to who the intended audience was (See section 2.1.3. of the document).
I suggest that if we cannot find good, solid evidence needed for a citation of a claim in this article, than we delete the claim.
Basilides/"ούκ ών θεός" ( talk) 22:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Gundry gives an extensive list of Latinisms in: Robert Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross, pages 1043-1044, which is copied verbatim in Ben Smith's textexcavation link below. Gundry concludes the gospel was most likely written in Rome. Ovadyah ( talk) 00:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Some of the unsourced content on the long ending of Mark was lifted verbatim from this website:
http://www.gospelparallels.com/gospelparallels.html
Critics are divided over whether the original ending at 16:8 was intentional, whether it resulted from accidental loss, or even the author’s death. Those who believe that 16:8 was not the intended ending argue that it would be very unusual syntax for the text to end with the conjunction “gar” (γαρ), as does Mark 16:8, and that thematically it would be strange for a book of good news to end with a note of fear (εφοβουντο γαρ, “for they were afraid”). Some of those who believe that the 16:8 ending was intentional suggest a connection to the theme of the “Messianic Secret”. This abrupt ending is also used to support the identification of this book as an example of closet drama.
Opinions please. Should we include this as a reliable source? Ovadyah ( talk) 23:25, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
For those of you who are textual criticism buffs (like me), here is a terrific resource that can be mined to improve the article:
http://www.textexcavation.com/gospelmark.html
and a separate page on the evidence for the short and long endings:
http://www.textexcavation.com/marcanendings.html
I also want to add a section on chiasms in Mark based on the work of Dart and Turton:
http://www.textexcavation.com/turtonchiasms.html
Enjoy! Ovadyah ( talk) 23:44, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortuately, I only have an abstract of Stephen Smith's article on Mark as a closet drama. I know he claims that Mark has a structure typical of Roman closet dramas of the time. This could be expanded into a separate section on the narrative structure of Mark if someone can come up with the complete article. Cheers. Ovadyah ( talk) 00:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Isn't it the Gospel according to St Mark, not the Gospel of Mark? 217.43.226.218 ( talk) 21:00, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Does this suggest that the early greeks felt that this was not divinely inspired but an opinion or memory of mark like another person recounting a conversation with mark. would someone please comment —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.236.103.253 ( talk) 08:41, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Why is this article tagged citations needed? A quick glance through seems to show a large number of existing citations. Do we really need the tag at the top of the article? With the number of existing citations, it seems like a few fact tags placed in key locations would be much more helpful than the banner at the top of the article.- Andrew c [talk] 22:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Can we work to minimize or eliminate the See Also section? The links do not seem directly relevant to the article.
According to a Wikipedia rule of thumb:
Ovadyah ( talk) 22:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The "Losses and early editing" section quotes Metzger "Since the combination of B D W all in support of ...". What are these B, D, and W entities? (Or did I miss something?) Could some sort of explanation or reference or wikilink be given, please? (Incidentally, this quotation lacks direct citation of Metzger's book, although other parts of the article do give the book's details.) Feline Hymnic ( talk) 10:00, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Please see the following excerpt from an article by R.G Price:
The online article can be found here: http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/gospel_mark.htm. Ovadyah ( talk) 02:29, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
See also: Joel Marcus, 'Mark - Interpreter of Paul' New Testament Studies 46/4 (2000): pp. 473-487 shown in part here.
For an opposing view, see The Earliest Gospel by Frederick C. Grant, Chapter 9: Was Mark a Pauline Gospel? Cheers. Ovadyah ( talk) 03:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
A recent edit in the article's lead boldly states that Mark was the nephew of Barnabas. The "Authorship" section similarly boldly states that he was the nephew of Peter. Is either of these possibilities generally accepted? Are they both generally accepted? (I've never heard of either hypothesis before, but I have no qualifications in biblical scholarship.) Could this be clarified, please? (My own feeling is that such details should not be in the lead, but rather in a separate subsection, with an indication of reliability, and with good quality citations... preferably more than one, because it is surprising to the casual reader.) Feline Hymnic ( talk) 19:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
The first paragraph of the Post-70 section is not NPOV. A post-70 dating does not require a disbelief in the possibility of future prophecy. What drives the post-70 dating is the idea that written documents should make sense to their intended audience (reflected in the parenthetical phrase, "Let the reader understand," in Mark 13:14). In other words, it's not whether Jesus could have predicted the Temple's demise, but whether the readers of the gospel would have understood the prediction. Here are two posts from New Testamement scholar Mark Goodacre's blog explaining the difference. I've tried to reword the paragraph to give a more accurate reflection of the post-70 view. Aardvark92 ( talk) 00:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
I cut the following:
Who is Ched Myers, why does his opinion matter, is this view notable? Maybe we could reduce this down to a sentence or two max? Or maybe it isn't even needed at all? Anyway, it concerns me as is, so I have moved it here for discussion, what do others think?- Andrew c [talk] 03:16, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
Whoever added this section, kindly supply references where requested. Don't expect other editors to do all the work for you. Thank you. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 00:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
I placed a tag on this section requesting the missing citations. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 15:41, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
I have asked the editor that created this section, Malachi151, to provide the missing citations. This has been an issue since the section was created in January 2008. If the request is not addressed in the next few weeks, I propose that the section be copied over to the talk page and deleted from the article. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 17:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
The Gospel of Mark makes extensive use of literary allusion to the Tanakh, or Old Testament. citation needed In some cases these allusions exist in the other synoptic gospels as well, but this is generally due to the synoptic gospels sharing a significant amount of text. According to the two-source hypothesis, Mark was used as a source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Under this hypothesis, some literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark were lost when the scenes were copied by the other gospel writers. citation needed One case of literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark comes from the crucifixion scene, which is crafted from literary allusions to Psalm 22 and Amos 8. citation needed
Some Christians specify consider these to be cases of prophecy fulfillment. Scholars, specify however, consider these to be cases of literary allusion, where the author used existing passages from the Jewish scriptures to craft the details of the scene and provide sub-textual meaning to the events. The passage from Amos 8 would be relevant after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 and implies that the meaning of the crucifixion according to the author is a justification for the destruction of the Jewish people by the Romans during the Jewish war of 67-72. citation needed
To a large extent, the narrative of the Gospel of Mark is a running series of literary allusions to the Jewish scriptures. [3] [4]
I copied the section on "Extensive use of literary allusion" to the talk page to allow more time for comments and one more chance to supply the requested citations before the section is removed from the article. In all fairness to the contributing editor, it seems that a critical editor went citation happy by literally requesting a citation for every sentence (axe to grind?), when it is probable that the whole section derives from the secondary sources that are already cited. Perhaps all that is needed are page numbers from these sources to answer the requests for citations. I don't have access to the sources, or I would supply them myself. Comments (and page numbers) are most welcome. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 00:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I think it is quite odd to change a statement that scholars accept a date after 70 which is supported by 7 citations and change it out for a single citation that says a pre-62 date. So which one is it? What I would normally do in this situation is crack open one of 3 college level introductory texts and start seeing if they agree on their dates. From what I've read, the pre-62 view is in the minority, and we clearly already have sources to support the previous version. On top of that, the addition of James Moffat's 1911 work seem a bit odd. I can't say something that old would be necessarily representative of contemporary scholarship. We'd need a really good reason, IMO, to cite something so out of date... like perhaps a contemporary scholar claiming Moffat is still relevant. Also, a lot of undue weight was given to Robinson... who did have a notable work redating the NT. But he is arguing a new position, and it hasn't been accepted by most scholars. Thus, I think the changes that I reverted changed the scope of that section, inaccurately described the scholarly consensus, and thus gave undue weight to minority views. - Andrew c [talk] 01:25, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
A small group of scholars, including the German radical critical scholar Hermann Detering, [5] see a 2nd century date for Mark. [6] [7] [8] These scholars make the case that the " Little Apocalypse" Mark 13:14–23 refers to the events of the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135, and which they see as a much better fit to events described in this text than the First Jewish Revolt of 70. The parallels that they see are as follows: The Emperor Hadrian in the year 130 started to rebuild the city of Jerusalem as a pagan Roman colony named Aelia Capitolina. The Abomination of Desolation ( Mark 13:14) according to this hypothesis alludes to the statue of Jupiter Capitolinus that the Emperor Hadrian attempted to install in a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount. The leader of the revolt, Simon Bar Kokhba claimed to be the anointed Jewish Messiah (cf. Mark 13:21–25). The Romans suppressed the revolt with as many as twelve legions, and pursued a scorched earth policy. According to the second century Roman historian Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed. [9] See also Ten Martyrs [10].
Perhaps this section is overweighted. However, Leadwind should not have deleted the sourced content without discussion, and a 1972 reference is hardly "dated". This smacks of POV editing where an editor just "knows" what is right. Please use less gnosis and more well-sourced content. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 01:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
I removed the subheading for this section. It is idiosyncratic to leave it in after the other two (Pre-70 and Post-70) subheadings were removed. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 16:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
I restored the reference to the 1972 journal article supporting this view. A brief summary is fine, but it was POV censorship to remove the source. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 19:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
The Gospel of Mark (Gk. Κατὰ Μᾶρκον) is the second of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament and was probably the first of the three synoptic gospels to be written. Wouldn't it be just as correct and a bit simpler if it said- The Gospel of Mark (Gk. Κατὰ Μᾶρκον) is the second of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament and was probably the first of the gospels to be written. Nitpyck ( talk) 03:32, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
This article is replete with footnotes, so I'm removing the label saying it's missing citations. If a few scattered individual statements require sourcing, these could be marked individually, or if there are broader issues of verification, some discussion would be helpful. Cynwolfe ( talk) 15:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
The section which states "The phrase "and immediately" occurs nearly forty times in Mark; while in Luke, which is much longer, it is used only seven times, and in John only four times.[61] The word Greek: νομος law ([7]) is never used, while it appears 8 times in Matthew, 9 times in Luke, 15 times in John, 19 times in Acts, many times in Romans" cites Easton's Bible Dictionary and gives a link, but nowhere on that page could I find a reference to the number of times the word "immediately" is used in Mark, or the other gospels mentioned for that matter. Additionally, I'm not sure those numbers are correct, which is why I was checking the reference in the first place. For example, I counted 10 uses in Luke of the Greek words euthys or eutheos which are translated "immediately" depending on which English translation one is using. If this section is going to mention word usage, it should really reference the original language anyway. -- Aubee91 ( talk) 18:52, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Specifically on genre, there is a large quote from Dennis MacDonald on his fringe hypothesis on the Gospels, whereas the standard approach by guys like Graham Stanton and Richard A Burridge is totally ignored.-- Ari ( talk) 08:15, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm usually reluctant to apply these disputed tags, but this latest addition to the Secret Mark section is just POV baloney. Several authors have alleged that Morton Smith's homosexuality was a motive for fabricating Secret Mark. That is quite different from stating that Morton Smith himself claimed that an authentic Secret Mark portrays a homosexual Jesus. Prove it with a verifiable source including page numbers and a quotation from Morton Smith supporting your assertion here on the talk page. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 19:06, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm removing this section for a lack of reliable sources. Proper Wikiquette is to wait about a week after requesting sources, and I waited two weeks. The disputed content can come back if reliable sources are included. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 17:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
A small group of scholars, including the German radical critical scholar Hermann Detering, [11] see a 2nd century date for Mark. These scholars make the case that the " Little Apocalypse" Mark 13:14–23 refers to the events of the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135, and which they see as a much better fit to events described in this text than the First Jewish Revolt of 70. [12] See also Ten Martyrs [13].
I copied the disputed section to the talk page. I have no problem removing content for the right reasons, ie. if content is not supported by reliable secondary sources. That doesn't seem to be the case here. When there are conflicting viewpoints, articles are usually improved by including them to make the article more NPOV. In any case, there are procedures to deal with content disputes. Please follow them. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 18:10, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
After re-evaluating the sources, I am now in favor of deleting this sub-section. Despite my wish to maintain NPOV for the article, it seems to be based on unreliable sources or misattributions to reliable sources that don't say what is claimed. I have posted a notice on the talk page of the contributing editor to back up this content with better sources. If we don't see any progress after a week, I think it should go. Cheers. --
Ovadyah (
talk)
16:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
You took issue with the following ref Early Christian Writings. Please explain. Cheers - Ret.Prof ( talk) 23:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
See the latest update on Secret Mark with many published references, including two new ones, for and against authenticity
here. Cheers. --
Ovadyah (
talk)
15:54, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
The article gives the impression that Bart Erhman advocates that the Gospel of Mark has an Adoptionist christology. This is not accurate. In "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture", Ehrman argues that the Gospel of Mark was favored by some Gnostic groups because it could be used as a proof text for a "Separationist" christology. In Separationist christologies, the human Jesus is distinct from the divine Christ, which entered into him at his baptism. A Separationist christology always requires an aspect of divinity, whereas Adoptionism does not. It is also not accurate to state that the Gospel of the Hebrews had an Adoptionist christology. We know based on quotations by the Church Fathers that the GH depicted God as Jesus' father and the Holy Spirit as his real mother, so that Jesus only seemed (docetic) to be human. Interestingly, while adoptionism was condemned as a heresy by the end of the 2nd century, the GH continued to be regarded as a disputed (but not heretical) text even up to the time of Eusebius in the early 4th century. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 17:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Help will be appreciated from those who are well versed in Gospel episodes. Please see:
The 3rd item includes a list of key episodes in the 4 Canonical Gospels. Suggestions about possible errors or omissions will be appreciated. Please leave messages on one of those 3 talk pages, and not here, in order to focus the discussion. Thank you. History2007 ( talk) 05:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
As the start of this article rightly says this is The Gospel according to Mark. Gospel comes from Godspell which is the English translation of the word ευαγγελιου. ευαγγελιου means good news, and the English translated this into Gospel since there is only the one good news of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ's news is from God. Alan347 ( talk) 15:53, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I am trying to make some very minor changes on the issue of authorship, but keep having my changes reverted without discussion. Many (maybe or maybe not a minority though certainly not a fringe minority) scholars hold that Mark wrote his gospel, and I have sources supporting this. I am not trying to delete or minimize the point that many do not agree with this, but rather add this other widely-held view while mentioning that it is a minority view. Wikipedia policy states that non-fringe minority views should be given due weight and not ignored. I also believe blanket reverts without discussions are also against Wikipedia policy. RomanHistorian ( talk) 17:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
If Mark is seriously considered as the author, then we should be able to find mainstream, nonsectarian sources for that claim. Relying on non-mainstream, sectarian sources is bad form. I've gone back to my books and indeed some of them acknowledge that some scholars (notably Martin Hengel) consider Mark's authorship to be essentially credible. It's all complicated by the detail that there's no historical evidence that Peter ever went to Rome for Mark to record his preaching there. Leadwind ( talk) 16:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
When an editor cits a reference he gives the date of the edition he is using. Please don't change that as it will cause problems. What is appropriate is to add (First published 1881) That will deal with the issue you have raised. Cheers - Ret.Prof ( talk) 15:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
I deleted all this hard work that someone put into the lead. The problem with it is that it's original research that relies on the gospel itself as a primary source. It might seem natural to cite the gospel itself, but the problem is that we editors aren't supposed to be the ones who decide what's important about the gospel. Experts do that, and we cite them. If we editors want to say something about how Mark refers the Jesus, then we should find out what the experts say and cite them. In this particular case, Mark refers to Jesus as the "son of Mary." Why isn't that included in this list? Because an editor has decided which parts of Mark are important to summarize and which aren't. That's not our job. Cite reliable sources, not scripture.
It calls him the [[Son of Man]],<ref>{{bibleverse-nb||Mark|2:10}} (Jesus; to teachers of the law), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|2:28}} (Jesus; to Pharisees), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:31}} (Jesus via Mark, to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:38}} (Jesus; to disciples and Caesarean crowd), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:9,12}} (Jesus via Mark; to Peter, James, and John), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:31}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|10:33}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|10:45}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|13:26}} (Jesus; to Peter, James, John, and Andrew), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:21}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:41}} (Jesus; to Peter, James, and John), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:62}} (Jesus; to high priest w/ chief priests, elders, and teachers of the law)</ref> the [[Son of God]],<ref>verbatim in {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|3:11}} (evil spirits; to Jesus), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|5:7}} ("Legion" i.e. evil spirits; to Jesus), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|15:39}} (centurion at crucifixion; to undefined audience); contextually implied in {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|1:11}} (voice from heaven; to John the Baptist), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:38}} (Jesus as eschatology; to disciples and crowd), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:7}} (voice from cloud; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|12:6}} (Jesus as parable; to chief priests, scribes, and elders), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|13:32}} (Jesus as eschatology; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:61}} (Jesus; to chief priest); included in some manuscripts of {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|1:1}} (Markan author as character introduction; to audience)</ref> and the [[Messiah]] or [[Christ]].<ref>{{bibleverse-nb||Mark|1:1}} (Markan author; to audience), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:29}} (Peter; to Jesus), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:41}} (Jesus; to John), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|12:35}} (Jesus; to a large crowd), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|13:21}} (Jesus; to Peter, James, John, and Andrew (v. 33)), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:61-62}} (Jesus; to high priest), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|15:31}} (chief priests, teachers of the law; (mockingly) to each other)</ref>
Leadwind ( talk) 16:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
I've stated in the lead and in the authorship section a concise summary of the contemporary, non-Mark-author view. I primarily used a university-level textbook from 1998 by a leader in the historical Jesus field. He reviews the scholarship on every ancient source about Jesus, including all four canonical gospels. Good, scholarly information was stripped out of this page and others in defense of a minority view, and it's time to put that information back in. The majority shouldn't keep the minority from including their opinions (given due weight), and neither should the minority keep the majority from stating the majority view. This goes for all the gospel articles that recent editors have undermined with their campaign against the majority view of current scholarship. Leadwind ( talk) 17:03, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
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I some of the statements on dating of Gospel. My source clearly says that 60's-slightly post 70 is position held by large majority of scholars who study issue. If anyone has a reliable source that says different, then let's talk about it here. We can easily include other hypotheses but unless the source for them says they are majority view they need to be labeled as minority position. Note that a minority position doesn't make it any less valid, but we need to accurately relay state of scholarship on an issue, and I have four sources that say majority view is not pre 60 or 80 or after and have cited from Brown's Introduction to the New Testament, which is a generally reliable mainstream source. Roy Brumback 09:51, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
My opinion on this is as follows. If we want to describe something like a concensus, or more reasonably a majority, then 60-80 is broad enough to capture this. If we want the plurality view of scholars today, 65-75 is in my understanding fair. Personally I prefer indulging the years of 60-65 because it includes the possibility that the text was written before Peter died, which is represented by at least one ancient tradition, but as long as we properly describe the material then I will sign off. For that reason, I don’t think the wording “60s to 70 or slightly after” is representative of a majority view of scholarship, and so such wording is better avoided. The year 70 happens to be quite significant concerning dating, and such ambiguity on that year is problematic here. My personal view, just to state where I am, would think 63-68, but of course this article is not about describing my view. So, I would prefer 60-80, but could agree to 65-75 in the right wording. I am not in support of 60s - 70 or slightly after. Lostcaesar 22:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I keep saying I'm not opposed to other views, but what I am opposed to is deciding on our own an average of scholars views. In my opinion and according to most sources I have read the book is dated by most scholars around the year 70. I'm not opposed to certain wording, but when you cite something cite it accurately and on those cited pages that is what is says. On page 127 Brown does say that, but that is his analysis, not him saying what the majority opinion is. On page 217 it says dated to the 68-73 period, not exactly those years. On page 164 he says there is wide scholarly agreement with late 60's to just after 70, and that's what I cited. Roy Brumback 10:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Guys, you keep trying on your own to determine what the scholarly consensus is. You said yourself "What I believe we did last time to get 60-80 was gather a large number of sources and choose an inclusive range that we could say was a consensus range." That is us on our own deciding what the consensus is, not citing a source telling us what the majority of scholars hold. According to the article and Brown's book the opinion of the majority of scholars is late 60's to early 70's. We can easily include the traditional view and the late view, but according to all very reliable sources I have checked, those are not the majority views. If the majority of scholars do not agree with early and late dates, so be it. Put them in but label them as minority positions. Are you opposed to, instead of trying to group them all together, simply labeling one as the majority view and others as minority views.
The Jewish war began before 70, so him having knowledge of it does not mean it was written after 70. According to another book specifically on Mark I have, A Brief Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, ISBN 0809130599, most scholars reject dates much after 70 since if one thinks the discourse refers to the war it is far less accurate then Matthew or Luke and was probably written before the war ended. Circa is vague, late and early are more precise, although not as precise as what the cite says. And I dislike the use of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" for scholars, as they are political terms, not scholarly ones, unless liberal simply means dating it late and conservative means dating it early, in which case just say those who date it late and those who date it early. One could date it early and still be politically liberal or vise versa. Roy Brumback 07:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Roy I will say I agree that terms like liberal, conservative, critical, traditional, and the like are words I think we, in the perfect world, could do without, since they are basically tautological and thus not especially informative. The solution is to cite specific authors and books by name. For example, in a reference we could say X, X, X, and X argued for Y, while Z, Z, Z, and Z, argued for W. But that takes a lot of work. The broad terms mentioned above are better than nothing. Lostcaesar 20:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
What happened to the old Gospel of Mark page? Where did all the comments from Carlson etc go? -Michael —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 140.116.55.72 ( talk • contribs) 22:33, 29 November 2006.
Thanks! 163.17.7.193 11:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)Michael
Based on the recent question asked of me, I neither agree or disagree with Brown's belief that the majority of scholars support dates from 68 to 73 as Brown does not back up his assertion. If he's quoting a Gallop poll or something of that nature and discussing concrete results, then that's something to sink the teeth into. Merely stating it's the case, shouldn't equate to fact. I am bothered by the idea that we seem to compose the entire dating section based upon 1 page from a book. That doesn't seem that we are doing our scholarly duty. Bbagot 16:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Both passages recently deleted by Lostcaesar contain attributes unique to Mark, as stated clearly in the descriptions. Only Mark has Jesus explicitly admit that "the Son" does not know when the end of the world will be, and only Mark allows that Jesus was not able to perform miracles in his own country: Matthew's alternate wording suggests that Jesus chose not to perform miracles because of the lack of faith. Grover cleveland 07:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
The section on elements unique to Mark is a mess. There are significant elements, such as the Messiah Secret. There are petty elements, such as whether the possessed swine are counted. I propose splitting these uniquenesses up among significant and petty lists so that the reader can quickly assess what is special about Mark as what merely happens to be "unique." Jonathan Tweet 07:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Mark chapter 6:4-6 reads as:
Matthew chapter 13:57-58 reads as:
The article here contained the following passage:
Mark does not definitively state that Jesus' ability to perform miracles was not unlimited. One reason why Jesus perhaps could not work miracles except healings is that he chose not to. The only way this becomes remotely like a passage unique to Mark is if we accept the hypothesis that Mark wrote first, that Matthew edited Mark, that Matthew was "beefing up Mark" and then also the interpretation that Mark was definitively stating Jesus' miraculous limitations. Whatever the case, I think this, as an encyclopedia and not and argumentative article, should merely state obvious and uncontroversial uniqueness, which do not require either an interpretation or the acceptance of an hypothesis. wanting to You at the least need a source to support the notion that the passage in Mark should be understood as unique. When I read the passages, they say the exact same thing. Jesus was upset at X people because they had no faith and thus worked no major miracles. Lostcaesar 16:11, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I removed Mark not having the Lord's Prayer as a "characteristic unique to Mark". John also does not have the Lord's Prayer. If we allow a list of things uniquely missing in Mark among the synoptics, then we could have separate items for the entire postulated content of the Q document (e.g. the Beatitudes, the Lost Sheep, the Mustard Seed, etc. etc. etc.).
For the same reason I removed the claim about Mark having the smallest number of parables among the synoptics. Grover cleveland 15:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem with sourcetext is that it requires the selection of a particular version, and for the most part only the KJV is offered, which is seriously outdated. The advantage of Template: bibleverse is that it allows the reader to select from a large number, including modern, translations. Maybe one day sourcetext will be as useful and as npov as bibleverse, but currently it has a long way to go. 75.0.15.230 19:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's the list of versions supported by bibleverse: http://php.ug.cs.usyd.edu.au/~jnot4610/bibref.php#srcref
As far as I know, the only complete bible at sourcetext is KJV. The people behind sourcetext have been promising great things for some time now, however, nothing as of yet has changed. 75.0.15.230 19:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Bibleverse also supports the Catholic and Orthodox Deuterocanonicals and Catholic translations such as NAB. 75.0.15.230 19:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Every two weeks or so I come back here and check this section, and sure enough there are additions of material that is not unique to Mark. Does anyone have a solution to solve this problem other than routine maintenance? Lostcaesar 01:06, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Speaking of things removed, I have removed my name from the entry. I am not scholar, just an educated reader. 163.17.7.193 11:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)Michael Turton
I do plan to put up a section here on Midrash and Mark. But not for another couple of months.
The section contains this passage: "The last twelve verses are missing from the oldest manuscripts of Mark's Gospel" - it is referenced but w/o a page number. I think this statement is misleading because it is too vague. In my understanding, the passage does not appear on the Sinaiticus or the Vaticanus, and these are the oldest manuscripts, so it is correct. However, it is only two manuscripts, and the Sinaiticus's leaf containing this section is not original. Saying "the oldest manuscripts" makes it sound as if there is this horde of first-second century manuscripts without it. Why not be more specific about the two manuscripts? (p.s., I will have a reference for the "gar" sentence as soon as I get back to the library, probably tomorrow - ty for the patience). Lostcaesar 08:58, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
There's more at Mark_16#Possible_Scenarios, if you want to get into it. 75.14.223.78 23:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
just as an aside, someone, or the article mentioned that if Mark originally ended at 16:8, that doesn't appear to be "good news", however, "euaggelion" in the Septuagint always has an ironic twist, see
[6]: "v1: George Aichele (2003) writes: "In the Old Testament, euaggelion appears only in 2 Samuel (LXX 2 Kings) 4:10, where David kills the messenger who brings the “good news” of Saul’s death. In addition, the plural form, euaggelia.appears four times in 2 Samuel 18:20, 22, 25, and 27, where it is used in the description of David’s reception of the “tidings” of Absalom’s death, and in 2 Kings (LXX 4 Kings) 7:9, where lepers discover the abandoned camp of the Syrian army. With the exception of this last instance, the message that is brought is not clearly a good one. None of these texts throws much light on the gospel of Mark’s use of the term, unless one wishes to argue that Mark is using the term ironically.""
75.14.223.78
23:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The following may be helpful:
There is a section that gives a list of material unique to Mark. I made the following changes. I moved the section on “literary cycles” to the top, the seemingly most logical place. I removed a footnote commentary that did not pertain to the uniqueness of a Markan passage (it seemed to be an interpretation of the event) – not the proper place for this. I removed one instance of comparison with “Thomas”, presumably the text known as the “Gospel of Thomas”, an apocryphal and non-narrative text. I assume that this section is material unique to Mark when compared with the canonical gospels (or perhaps synpotics). If we compare Mark with apocryphal texts then we will expand the subject greatly, and will reduce the material “unique to Mark”, since other texts (e.g. Gospel of Peter) mention things also in Mark, thereby undoing the usefulness of the section. I removed a passage about a “disputed translation”, since it is not pertinent to the uniqueness of the passage in regards to Mark (a different translation doesn’t make the passage un-unique). I rephrased the seemingly interpretive “in the other gospels the cock crows only once” to the more detached, descriptive, and neutral articulation “the other gospels simply say ‘the cock crew’”, since the words “only once” are unnecessarily interpretive. I hope these edits improve the section. Lastly, I removed the part about Mark’s ending, since its already covered with a dedicated section. Lostcaesar 11:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
IMHO, the above discussion is going nowhere pretty fast. Let's decide on the five proposed changes to the "Other characteristics unique to Mark" section. Please consider each one separately. The words in bold are the ones under particular discussion.
Current text:
Current text:
Current text:
Current text:
Current text:
I hope this clarifies the issue(s). StAnselm 07:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
As it stands, this is appalling:
This clearly draws a false dichotomy between Christians and scholars. It needs to cleaned up, or deleted. StAnselm 23:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
In the adoptionism section, the cite of Ehrman is wrong. He doesn't make the case in Misquoting Jesus that Mark 1:1 necessitates adoptionism. He probably makes it in Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (1996) but I have not confirmed it. I am going to remove it and add for cite request.-- Ari ( talk) 04:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I deleted this material. Like a good editor, I'm putting it here.
Ehrman’s view that this textual variant is of theological significance has been rejected by [[Bruce Metzger]], and the theory has been called “simply a myth” and “simply false” by [[Ben Witherington III]].<ref>Ben Witherington III, ''What Have They Done With Jesus?'' (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006), p. 7.</ref>
All this tells us is that two people disagree with Ehrman. So what? I can find two people to disagree with just about anyone. What this information needs is some reason that Ehrman's conclusion is false. Is it because Mark's theology just exudes trinitarianism? Is it because adoptionism is contradicted elsewhere in the gospel? Is it because adoptionism is wrong and the Bible is never wrong? If you can't give us actual information, don't give us driveby rejections. Jonathan Tweet 06:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
It appears Lostcaesar has quit over a dispute about purgatory. 75.0.7.37 19:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry to see LC retire. He knows a lot and taught me a lot. If we can find Metzger's and the evangelical guy's take on Mark's Christology, let's put that in.
Also, LC said that his explanation for Ehrman's evidence was uncertain and from memory. I think the reason that LC cites as the only reason is just one. (Other evidence is Marks' story line, which fits adoptionism a heck of a lot better than it fits Chalcedonism.) So can we cut the explanation of Ehrman's evidence until we get confirmation? Jonathan Tweet 02:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
So the last change by anon diff completely changed the meaning of the sentence. Both the original and the edit are unsourced. So what is it? Did Jesus teach in parables to obscure his teaching from the unworthy, or to make the teaching them accessible to everyone? I imagine both views are valid. It's probably an issue of "some say X, while others say Y". So can we source these statements and include both? Or does anyone have any ideas?- Andrew c 01:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I removed this newly added section:
Extensive use of literary allusion The Gospel of Mark makes extensive use of literary allusion to the Jewish scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament. In some cases these allusions exist in the other gospels as well, but this is generally due to their having been copied from the Gospel of Mark. In several cases literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark were lost when the scenes were copied by the other gospel writers. The most famous case of literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark comes from the crucifixion scene, which is crafted from literary allusions to Psalm 22 and Amos 8, as shown below.
Mark 15:
24 And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take.25 It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. 26 The inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' 27 And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. 29 Those who passed by mocked him, shaking their heads and saying, 'Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!' 31 In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.' Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.
33 When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34 At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'
The lines in bold are based on the texts from Psalm 22 and Amos 8, as shown below.
Psalm 22:
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. ... 6 But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; 8 'Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver— let him rescue the one in whom he delights!' ... 16 For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shriveled; 17 I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.
Amos 8:
2 He said, 'Amos, what do you see?' And I said, 'A basket of summer fruit.' Then the Lord said to me, 'The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. 3 The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,' says the Lord God; 'the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!' ... 9 On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10 I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.
Some Christians consider these to be cases of prophecy fulfillment. Scholars, however, consider these to be cases of literary allusion, where the author used existing passages from the Jewish scritpures to craft the details of the scene and provide sub-textual meaning to the events. The passage from Amos 8 would be relevant after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which is when it is believed that this work was written, and implies that the meaning of the crucifixion according to the author is a justification for the destruction of the Jewish people by the Romans during the Jewish war of 67-72 CE.
To a large extent, the narrative of the Gospel of Mark is a running series of literary allusions to the Jewish scritpures.
The analysis needs to be attributed to verifiable, reliable sources, and I do not believe it is appropriate for an encyclopedia article to have so much verbatim quoting of primary sources. - Andrew c [talk] 17:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't see the merit of the reasoning for removing this section. The quoted primary source material is not extensive and helps to demonstrate the point. What is the foundation for your "belief" that it is not appropriate?
Also, why was the link in the related articles section removed? These removals are unreasonable. - Malachi151 ( talk) 17:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
This is a well-sourced and well-written article. Is anyone else willing to spend some time cleaning up citations and taking it to Peer Review and then on to GAC? Ovadyah ( talk) 17:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I temporarily added a citation tag to the article to encourage editors to contribute to finding the missing citations. I'm trying to get some folks from various WikiProjects to chip in and make this a quick and relatively painless task. Ovadyah ( talk) 16:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Another possibility, which instead implies a 2nd century date for Mark, is that the entirety of the as the "little apocalypse" Mark 13:14-23 refers to the events of the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135, and which are a much better fit to events described in this text than the First Jewish Revolt of 70. The Emperor Hadrian in the year 130 started to rebuild the ruined city of Jerusalem as a pagan Roman Colony named Aelia Capitolina. The "abomination of desolation" Mark 13:14 in this case alludes to the statue of Jupiter (mythology) that the Emperor Hadrian attempted to install in a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The leader of the revolt, Simon Bar Kokhba]] claimed to be the anointed Jewish Messiah (cf. Mark 13:21-25). The Romans suppressed the revolt with as many as twelve legions, and pursued a scorched earth policy. According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed.[21]
This is not a fringe theory. It is a minority view. I have seen it discussed in several scholarly publications before. Therefore, I am recovering the deleted section until the appropriate references can be located. The hypothesis is supported in part by Clement of Alexandria's description of GMark as the last gospel written. The order of the gospels in the Western textual tradition exactly matches Clement's order (Matthew -> John -> Luke -> Mark). Ovadyah ( talk) 20:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
BTW, it's common courtesy to give editors a week to track down their sources before removing unsourced content. Immediate reverts, except in cases of obvious vandalism, could be seen as a violation of WP:AGF and as WP:OWN. Ovadyah ( talk) 20:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I just reorganized the dating section to first state the traditional viewpoint - and therefore it wasn't necessary to keep the mention of the comparison of the Olivet Discourse there - adding the link to the Introduction to the New Testament by McNeile which has the exhaustive list of references to the Patristic Father's opinions about the dating of Mark. I then separated out each hypothesis in chronological order, and I more or less tried to state each hypothesis in a neutral manner, and not give it "votes" by how many academics do or don't agree with it. There was no reason to keep the section on the alternative ideas including "Jesus prophesied correctly". If someone agrees with that literalist perspective, that puts an end to all textual analysis and actually gives a "timeless/eternal" date to the Gospel ("it was fortold") and makes a section on dating moot (as well as negating any textual comparisons of the various Gospels).
If this gets too complex we can always create a new more detailed subsidiary article on the dating of Mark, since that of course is critical for dating the Synoptics in general.
7Q5 has it's own article, so all that needed to be said was that O'Callahagan and Theide didn't get a scholarly consensus about their find. I'm not at all convinced that this postage-stamp sized piece of papyrus can be said to definitively come from a scroll and not a codex, so that argument may have to be taken out entirely.
Of course, a post-70 date has important implications for the dating of all the Synoptics given the popularity of the Two-source hypothesis. It seems that many people are just not aware of the three separate references to the destruction of the Temple / exile of the Jews in Mark that have been used date it past 70. (No, the Temple wasn't "finished" being destroyed in 73, it was fully destroyed in 70. Masada alone held out till 73.) I don't see that the use of the Little Apocalypse for dating is "controversial". Controversial for who? Those who don't think there are any "ex eventu" prophetic texts? That's why I put in a short explanation and link to Higher Criticism. It's almost impossible for the Little Apocalypse to be an interpolation since it's found in all three synoptics. The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen is also found in all the Synoptics, as well as the (Sayings) Gospel of Thomas, so this argument for the post-70 dating of Mark doesn't just rely on the Little Apocalypse alone.
The parallels with the Second Jewish Revolt seem to be even less well-known to the general public. Again, this causes even more problems with an early date for the Synoptics, but the evidence usually goes something like "we know that Matthew is early because of his Christology and therefore Mark must be even earlier." An interesting idea is the Marcion hypothesis, (an article that I'm working on now) which theorizes that Marcion is a kind of "proto-Mark" who is the source for all three synoptics, and not an edited version of Luke. (Marcion basically is Luke without Q.) There are actually some "minor agreements" between Marcion and Matthew and not Luke and Mark. Interestingly, Luke, who is closest to Marcions's Gospel (or vica versa) has a Little Apocalypse that doesn't mention the "abomination of desolation" but does mention exile and captivity. Mark and especially Matthew emphasize the utter destruction at this time, and in particular Matthew makes reference to a false Messiah "in the wilderness", which is an even closer parallel to Bar Kokhba, since his final headquarters was in the Judean Desert fortress of Herodium. This does rather reverse the order of the Two-source hyptothesis. It may be that Matthew derives from the "Gospel of the Hebrews", and these Ebionites of course were the ones most threatened by the Jewish alleigiance to Bar Kokhba as the Messiah, as opposed to Gentile Christians of Rome, which would have been the audience of Luke (or Marcion, who didn't see a relationship at all to Judaism).
There are lots more sources out there, but I hope that with the few references I added people will be able to start finding many more of them.
Epikouros ( talk) 04:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I find this passage in the article, "Critics argue that the Latinisms in the Greek of Mark could have stemmed from many places throughout the Western Roman empire.", which has no citation, to be problematic for two reasons. The first is the use of the term "critics argue", which is one of those dubious phrases on par with "some claim" and "it is widely believed"; effectively a POV worded to be NPOV. Further, if "critics argue" something, you'd think there would be several available sources to cite that fact. The second problem I have with this passage is that the only sources I could find to cite for it were other free wikis that had effectively copy-pasted this article. One thing that I did find was this [7], which claims that the use of latinisms did not have to do with where the gospel was written so much as it pertained to who the intended audience was (See section 2.1.3. of the document).
I suggest that if we cannot find good, solid evidence needed for a citation of a claim in this article, than we delete the claim.
Basilides/"ούκ ών θεός" ( talk) 22:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Gundry gives an extensive list of Latinisms in: Robert Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross, pages 1043-1044, which is copied verbatim in Ben Smith's textexcavation link below. Gundry concludes the gospel was most likely written in Rome. Ovadyah ( talk) 00:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Some of the unsourced content on the long ending of Mark was lifted verbatim from this website:
http://www.gospelparallels.com/gospelparallels.html
Critics are divided over whether the original ending at 16:8 was intentional, whether it resulted from accidental loss, or even the author’s death. Those who believe that 16:8 was not the intended ending argue that it would be very unusual syntax for the text to end with the conjunction “gar” (γαρ), as does Mark 16:8, and that thematically it would be strange for a book of good news to end with a note of fear (εφοβουντο γαρ, “for they were afraid”). Some of those who believe that the 16:8 ending was intentional suggest a connection to the theme of the “Messianic Secret”. This abrupt ending is also used to support the identification of this book as an example of closet drama.
Opinions please. Should we include this as a reliable source? Ovadyah ( talk) 23:25, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
For those of you who are textual criticism buffs (like me), here is a terrific resource that can be mined to improve the article:
http://www.textexcavation.com/gospelmark.html
and a separate page on the evidence for the short and long endings:
http://www.textexcavation.com/marcanendings.html
I also want to add a section on chiasms in Mark based on the work of Dart and Turton:
http://www.textexcavation.com/turtonchiasms.html
Enjoy! Ovadyah ( talk) 23:44, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortuately, I only have an abstract of Stephen Smith's article on Mark as a closet drama. I know he claims that Mark has a structure typical of Roman closet dramas of the time. This could be expanded into a separate section on the narrative structure of Mark if someone can come up with the complete article. Cheers. Ovadyah ( talk) 00:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Isn't it the Gospel according to St Mark, not the Gospel of Mark? 217.43.226.218 ( talk) 21:00, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Does this suggest that the early greeks felt that this was not divinely inspired but an opinion or memory of mark like another person recounting a conversation with mark. would someone please comment —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.236.103.253 ( talk) 08:41, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Why is this article tagged citations needed? A quick glance through seems to show a large number of existing citations. Do we really need the tag at the top of the article? With the number of existing citations, it seems like a few fact tags placed in key locations would be much more helpful than the banner at the top of the article.- Andrew c [talk] 22:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Can we work to minimize or eliminate the See Also section? The links do not seem directly relevant to the article.
According to a Wikipedia rule of thumb:
Ovadyah ( talk) 22:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The "Losses and early editing" section quotes Metzger "Since the combination of B D W all in support of ...". What are these B, D, and W entities? (Or did I miss something?) Could some sort of explanation or reference or wikilink be given, please? (Incidentally, this quotation lacks direct citation of Metzger's book, although other parts of the article do give the book's details.) Feline Hymnic ( talk) 10:00, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Please see the following excerpt from an article by R.G Price:
The online article can be found here: http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/gospel_mark.htm. Ovadyah ( talk) 02:29, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
See also: Joel Marcus, 'Mark - Interpreter of Paul' New Testament Studies 46/4 (2000): pp. 473-487 shown in part here.
For an opposing view, see The Earliest Gospel by Frederick C. Grant, Chapter 9: Was Mark a Pauline Gospel? Cheers. Ovadyah ( talk) 03:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
A recent edit in the article's lead boldly states that Mark was the nephew of Barnabas. The "Authorship" section similarly boldly states that he was the nephew of Peter. Is either of these possibilities generally accepted? Are they both generally accepted? (I've never heard of either hypothesis before, but I have no qualifications in biblical scholarship.) Could this be clarified, please? (My own feeling is that such details should not be in the lead, but rather in a separate subsection, with an indication of reliability, and with good quality citations... preferably more than one, because it is surprising to the casual reader.) Feline Hymnic ( talk) 19:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
The first paragraph of the Post-70 section is not NPOV. A post-70 dating does not require a disbelief in the possibility of future prophecy. What drives the post-70 dating is the idea that written documents should make sense to their intended audience (reflected in the parenthetical phrase, "Let the reader understand," in Mark 13:14). In other words, it's not whether Jesus could have predicted the Temple's demise, but whether the readers of the gospel would have understood the prediction. Here are two posts from New Testamement scholar Mark Goodacre's blog explaining the difference. I've tried to reword the paragraph to give a more accurate reflection of the post-70 view. Aardvark92 ( talk) 00:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
I cut the following:
Who is Ched Myers, why does his opinion matter, is this view notable? Maybe we could reduce this down to a sentence or two max? Or maybe it isn't even needed at all? Anyway, it concerns me as is, so I have moved it here for discussion, what do others think?- Andrew c [talk] 03:16, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
Whoever added this section, kindly supply references where requested. Don't expect other editors to do all the work for you. Thank you. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 00:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
I placed a tag on this section requesting the missing citations. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 15:41, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
I have asked the editor that created this section, Malachi151, to provide the missing citations. This has been an issue since the section was created in January 2008. If the request is not addressed in the next few weeks, I propose that the section be copied over to the talk page and deleted from the article. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 17:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
The Gospel of Mark makes extensive use of literary allusion to the Tanakh, or Old Testament. citation needed In some cases these allusions exist in the other synoptic gospels as well, but this is generally due to the synoptic gospels sharing a significant amount of text. According to the two-source hypothesis, Mark was used as a source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Under this hypothesis, some literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark were lost when the scenes were copied by the other gospel writers. citation needed One case of literary allusion in the Gospel of Mark comes from the crucifixion scene, which is crafted from literary allusions to Psalm 22 and Amos 8. citation needed
Some Christians specify consider these to be cases of prophecy fulfillment. Scholars, specify however, consider these to be cases of literary allusion, where the author used existing passages from the Jewish scriptures to craft the details of the scene and provide sub-textual meaning to the events. The passage from Amos 8 would be relevant after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 and implies that the meaning of the crucifixion according to the author is a justification for the destruction of the Jewish people by the Romans during the Jewish war of 67-72. citation needed
To a large extent, the narrative of the Gospel of Mark is a running series of literary allusions to the Jewish scriptures. [3] [4]
I copied the section on "Extensive use of literary allusion" to the talk page to allow more time for comments and one more chance to supply the requested citations before the section is removed from the article. In all fairness to the contributing editor, it seems that a critical editor went citation happy by literally requesting a citation for every sentence (axe to grind?), when it is probable that the whole section derives from the secondary sources that are already cited. Perhaps all that is needed are page numbers from these sources to answer the requests for citations. I don't have access to the sources, or I would supply them myself. Comments (and page numbers) are most welcome. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 00:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I think it is quite odd to change a statement that scholars accept a date after 70 which is supported by 7 citations and change it out for a single citation that says a pre-62 date. So which one is it? What I would normally do in this situation is crack open one of 3 college level introductory texts and start seeing if they agree on their dates. From what I've read, the pre-62 view is in the minority, and we clearly already have sources to support the previous version. On top of that, the addition of James Moffat's 1911 work seem a bit odd. I can't say something that old would be necessarily representative of contemporary scholarship. We'd need a really good reason, IMO, to cite something so out of date... like perhaps a contemporary scholar claiming Moffat is still relevant. Also, a lot of undue weight was given to Robinson... who did have a notable work redating the NT. But he is arguing a new position, and it hasn't been accepted by most scholars. Thus, I think the changes that I reverted changed the scope of that section, inaccurately described the scholarly consensus, and thus gave undue weight to minority views. - Andrew c [talk] 01:25, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
A small group of scholars, including the German radical critical scholar Hermann Detering, [5] see a 2nd century date for Mark. [6] [7] [8] These scholars make the case that the " Little Apocalypse" Mark 13:14–23 refers to the events of the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135, and which they see as a much better fit to events described in this text than the First Jewish Revolt of 70. The parallels that they see are as follows: The Emperor Hadrian in the year 130 started to rebuild the city of Jerusalem as a pagan Roman colony named Aelia Capitolina. The Abomination of Desolation ( Mark 13:14) according to this hypothesis alludes to the statue of Jupiter Capitolinus that the Emperor Hadrian attempted to install in a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount. The leader of the revolt, Simon Bar Kokhba claimed to be the anointed Jewish Messiah (cf. Mark 13:21–25). The Romans suppressed the revolt with as many as twelve legions, and pursued a scorched earth policy. According to the second century Roman historian Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed. [9] See also Ten Martyrs [10].
Perhaps this section is overweighted. However, Leadwind should not have deleted the sourced content without discussion, and a 1972 reference is hardly "dated". This smacks of POV editing where an editor just "knows" what is right. Please use less gnosis and more well-sourced content. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 01:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
I removed the subheading for this section. It is idiosyncratic to leave it in after the other two (Pre-70 and Post-70) subheadings were removed. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 16:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
I restored the reference to the 1972 journal article supporting this view. A brief summary is fine, but it was POV censorship to remove the source. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 19:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
The Gospel of Mark (Gk. Κατὰ Μᾶρκον) is the second of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament and was probably the first of the three synoptic gospels to be written. Wouldn't it be just as correct and a bit simpler if it said- The Gospel of Mark (Gk. Κατὰ Μᾶρκον) is the second of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament and was probably the first of the gospels to be written. Nitpyck ( talk) 03:32, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
This article is replete with footnotes, so I'm removing the label saying it's missing citations. If a few scattered individual statements require sourcing, these could be marked individually, or if there are broader issues of verification, some discussion would be helpful. Cynwolfe ( talk) 15:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
The section which states "The phrase "and immediately" occurs nearly forty times in Mark; while in Luke, which is much longer, it is used only seven times, and in John only four times.[61] The word Greek: νομος law ([7]) is never used, while it appears 8 times in Matthew, 9 times in Luke, 15 times in John, 19 times in Acts, many times in Romans" cites Easton's Bible Dictionary and gives a link, but nowhere on that page could I find a reference to the number of times the word "immediately" is used in Mark, or the other gospels mentioned for that matter. Additionally, I'm not sure those numbers are correct, which is why I was checking the reference in the first place. For example, I counted 10 uses in Luke of the Greek words euthys or eutheos which are translated "immediately" depending on which English translation one is using. If this section is going to mention word usage, it should really reference the original language anyway. -- Aubee91 ( talk) 18:52, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Specifically on genre, there is a large quote from Dennis MacDonald on his fringe hypothesis on the Gospels, whereas the standard approach by guys like Graham Stanton and Richard A Burridge is totally ignored.-- Ari ( talk) 08:15, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm usually reluctant to apply these disputed tags, but this latest addition to the Secret Mark section is just POV baloney. Several authors have alleged that Morton Smith's homosexuality was a motive for fabricating Secret Mark. That is quite different from stating that Morton Smith himself claimed that an authentic Secret Mark portrays a homosexual Jesus. Prove it with a verifiable source including page numbers and a quotation from Morton Smith supporting your assertion here on the talk page. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 19:06, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm removing this section for a lack of reliable sources. Proper Wikiquette is to wait about a week after requesting sources, and I waited two weeks. The disputed content can come back if reliable sources are included. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 17:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
A small group of scholars, including the German radical critical scholar Hermann Detering, [11] see a 2nd century date for Mark. These scholars make the case that the " Little Apocalypse" Mark 13:14–23 refers to the events of the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135, and which they see as a much better fit to events described in this text than the First Jewish Revolt of 70. [12] See also Ten Martyrs [13].
I copied the disputed section to the talk page. I have no problem removing content for the right reasons, ie. if content is not supported by reliable secondary sources. That doesn't seem to be the case here. When there are conflicting viewpoints, articles are usually improved by including them to make the article more NPOV. In any case, there are procedures to deal with content disputes. Please follow them. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 18:10, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
After re-evaluating the sources, I am now in favor of deleting this sub-section. Despite my wish to maintain NPOV for the article, it seems to be based on unreliable sources or misattributions to reliable sources that don't say what is claimed. I have posted a notice on the talk page of the contributing editor to back up this content with better sources. If we don't see any progress after a week, I think it should go. Cheers. --
Ovadyah (
talk)
16:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
You took issue with the following ref Early Christian Writings. Please explain. Cheers - Ret.Prof ( talk) 23:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
See the latest update on Secret Mark with many published references, including two new ones, for and against authenticity
here. Cheers. --
Ovadyah (
talk)
15:54, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
The article gives the impression that Bart Erhman advocates that the Gospel of Mark has an Adoptionist christology. This is not accurate. In "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture", Ehrman argues that the Gospel of Mark was favored by some Gnostic groups because it could be used as a proof text for a "Separationist" christology. In Separationist christologies, the human Jesus is distinct from the divine Christ, which entered into him at his baptism. A Separationist christology always requires an aspect of divinity, whereas Adoptionism does not. It is also not accurate to state that the Gospel of the Hebrews had an Adoptionist christology. We know based on quotations by the Church Fathers that the GH depicted God as Jesus' father and the Holy Spirit as his real mother, so that Jesus only seemed (docetic) to be human. Interestingly, while adoptionism was condemned as a heresy by the end of the 2nd century, the GH continued to be regarded as a disputed (but not heretical) text even up to the time of Eusebius in the early 4th century. Cheers. -- Ovadyah ( talk) 17:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Help will be appreciated from those who are well versed in Gospel episodes. Please see:
The 3rd item includes a list of key episodes in the 4 Canonical Gospels. Suggestions about possible errors or omissions will be appreciated. Please leave messages on one of those 3 talk pages, and not here, in order to focus the discussion. Thank you. History2007 ( talk) 05:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
As the start of this article rightly says this is The Gospel according to Mark. Gospel comes from Godspell which is the English translation of the word ευαγγελιου. ευαγγελιου means good news, and the English translated this into Gospel since there is only the one good news of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ's news is from God. Alan347 ( talk) 15:53, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I am trying to make some very minor changes on the issue of authorship, but keep having my changes reverted without discussion. Many (maybe or maybe not a minority though certainly not a fringe minority) scholars hold that Mark wrote his gospel, and I have sources supporting this. I am not trying to delete or minimize the point that many do not agree with this, but rather add this other widely-held view while mentioning that it is a minority view. Wikipedia policy states that non-fringe minority views should be given due weight and not ignored. I also believe blanket reverts without discussions are also against Wikipedia policy. RomanHistorian ( talk) 17:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
If Mark is seriously considered as the author, then we should be able to find mainstream, nonsectarian sources for that claim. Relying on non-mainstream, sectarian sources is bad form. I've gone back to my books and indeed some of them acknowledge that some scholars (notably Martin Hengel) consider Mark's authorship to be essentially credible. It's all complicated by the detail that there's no historical evidence that Peter ever went to Rome for Mark to record his preaching there. Leadwind ( talk) 16:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
When an editor cits a reference he gives the date of the edition he is using. Please don't change that as it will cause problems. What is appropriate is to add (First published 1881) That will deal with the issue you have raised. Cheers - Ret.Prof ( talk) 15:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
I deleted all this hard work that someone put into the lead. The problem with it is that it's original research that relies on the gospel itself as a primary source. It might seem natural to cite the gospel itself, but the problem is that we editors aren't supposed to be the ones who decide what's important about the gospel. Experts do that, and we cite them. If we editors want to say something about how Mark refers the Jesus, then we should find out what the experts say and cite them. In this particular case, Mark refers to Jesus as the "son of Mary." Why isn't that included in this list? Because an editor has decided which parts of Mark are important to summarize and which aren't. That's not our job. Cite reliable sources, not scripture.
It calls him the [[Son of Man]],<ref>{{bibleverse-nb||Mark|2:10}} (Jesus; to teachers of the law), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|2:28}} (Jesus; to Pharisees), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:31}} (Jesus via Mark, to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:38}} (Jesus; to disciples and Caesarean crowd), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:9,12}} (Jesus via Mark; to Peter, James, and John), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:31}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|10:33}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|10:45}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|13:26}} (Jesus; to Peter, James, John, and Andrew), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:21}} (Jesus; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:41}} (Jesus; to Peter, James, and John), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:62}} (Jesus; to high priest w/ chief priests, elders, and teachers of the law)</ref> the [[Son of God]],<ref>verbatim in {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|3:11}} (evil spirits; to Jesus), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|5:7}} ("Legion" i.e. evil spirits; to Jesus), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|15:39}} (centurion at crucifixion; to undefined audience); contextually implied in {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|1:11}} (voice from heaven; to John the Baptist), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:38}} (Jesus as eschatology; to disciples and crowd), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:7}} (voice from cloud; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|12:6}} (Jesus as parable; to chief priests, scribes, and elders), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|13:32}} (Jesus as eschatology; to disciples), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:61}} (Jesus; to chief priest); included in some manuscripts of {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|1:1}} (Markan author as character introduction; to audience)</ref> and the [[Messiah]] or [[Christ]].<ref>{{bibleverse-nb||Mark|1:1}} (Markan author; to audience), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|8:29}} (Peter; to Jesus), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|9:41}} (Jesus; to John), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|12:35}} (Jesus; to a large crowd), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|13:21}} (Jesus; to Peter, James, John, and Andrew (v. 33)), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|14:61-62}} (Jesus; to high priest), {{bibleverse-nb||Mark|15:31}} (chief priests, teachers of the law; (mockingly) to each other)</ref>
Leadwind ( talk) 16:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
I've stated in the lead and in the authorship section a concise summary of the contemporary, non-Mark-author view. I primarily used a university-level textbook from 1998 by a leader in the historical Jesus field. He reviews the scholarship on every ancient source about Jesus, including all four canonical gospels. Good, scholarly information was stripped out of this page and others in defense of a minority view, and it's time to put that information back in. The majority shouldn't keep the minority from including their opinions (given due weight), and neither should the minority keep the majority from stating the majority view. This goes for all the gospel articles that recent editors have undermined with their campaign against the majority view of current scholarship. Leadwind ( talk) 17:03, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
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