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Well, for me the evidence is quite persuasive

Posted by diogenes on 2024-April-14 08:09:58, Sunday
In reply to Hmmm. posted by kit on 2024-April-14 06:19:51, Sunday

I think I would greatly prefer to dismiss the Longer Gospel of Mark (LGM) as a forgery, because it would remove a mystery as to what the status of the text is, what is its relation to the Gospel of Mark that we have, etc. But a modern forgery just seems incredibly improbable. The text contains aspects that were only seen as Markan well after Morton Smith's discovery. I'm relying completely on memory here, and I can only urge people to read the scholarly papers and books around this subject, but one example I remember from Brown's study is "And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for [gar] he was rich." The Greek means "because" or "for", but you'll notice that it is a complete non-sequitur. The youth being rich doesn't explain Jesus' going to his house. What it does is provide some context. Now there are similar instances of the unusual use of gar in Mark's gospel, and this wasn't noticed until some time after Smith's discovery. Then there is the Markan Intercalation Technique, whereby a story is put within another story, and the outer and inner stories illuminate each other, such as the cleansing of the Temple between the two parts of the story of the cursing of the fig tree etc. The placing of the passage, and another one mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, in the LGM, is a perfect example of this. And there are many other such details of the text that Brown goes into.

So, for this to be a forgery, Morton Smith (or someone else) would have had to have discovered all sorts of things about the Markan gospel, and then kept silent about them, and then have forged this document, in the expectation that all the other things he'd secretly discovered about Mark would be discovered by others later, thus apparently confirming his forgery... This is all getting rather incredible. It would make Smith (if he is regarded as the culprit) not just a forger, but the greatest forger of all time. And why exactly would he do any of this anyway? No plausible motive has ever been adduced.

A great deal of opposition to the text derives from people reading into it modern gay politics, sort of: Jesus taught him "the mystery of the kingdom"... nudge nudge, wink, wink, say no more! etc. But this is obviously completely anachronistic.

I can only urge those who are interested to read Scott G. Brown's book for the full presentation of the evidence. I found it very persuasive.

One fascinating aspect of this is that, if it is Markan, then we have a synoptic style rendering of the Lazarus story. Furthermore, scholars have suggested that it is an earlier account of the story that later found its way into John. So, for example, in LGM it says "and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb" - whereas in John the cry comes from Jesus. Now it is easy to see why the cry would be switched from within the tomb to Jesus - a cry from within the tomb suggests that the poor man wasn't dead! - but it is much harder to see how it could go the other way; so that LGM seems a more primitive version of the story.

Anyway, we could no doubt debate this forever, and it's all a lot of fun. Many years ago, I went through a phase when I was fascinated about the whole question of "the historical Jesus". I think Geza Vermes' portrait of a very "Jewish" Jesus is the most plausible.

diogenes

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