Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative: Considering the Practice of Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material

Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative

Considering the Practice of Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material

Adam Winn

Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative

Considering the Practice of Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material

Copyright © 2010 Adam Winn. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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isbn 13: 978-1-60899-201-0

eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7216-2

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Winn, Adam.

Mark and the Elijah-Elisha narrative : considering the practice of Greco-Roman imitation in the search for Markan source material / Adam Winn.

xii + 136 p.; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

isbn 13: 978-1-60899-201-0

1. Bible. N.T. Mark—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. N.T. Mark—Relation to Kings. 3. Elijah (Biblical prophets). 4. Elisha (Biblical prophets). I. Title

bs2585.52.w56 2010

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

To Brennan Grace Winn, my daughter and little princess who brightens my every day

Acknowledgments

This book is the fruit of a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship done at the Dominican Biblical Institute (DBI) in Limerick, Ireland during the 2008–2009 academic year. This fellowship proved to be a tremendous blessing to my family and me, and it is only fitting to offer words of thanks to those who made it so.

First and foremost, I must thank Thomas Brodie, who granted me the fellowship and supervised my research and writing. His erudition, careful guidance, and flexibility were greatly appreciated and integral to this project’s success. Yet equally appreciated were his collegiality, sense of humor, and friendship—all of which provided for a warm and enjoyable setting for research. Tom, your love and support to myself and my family mean more than words could say. You were truly a father to us.

Many thanks are also due to two additional DBI employees, Margaret (Peig) McGrath and Brendan Clifford, both of whom helped tremdously with our relocation to and life in Ireland. Without Peig, who helped us with everything from setting up a bank account to properly preparing morning tea, I wonder how we would ever have survived. Brendan was the first one to greet us when we arrived in Ireland. Throughout our stay, his many acts of service and his kind words and manner blessed our family greatly.

I must thank the DBI’s board of directors who approved the research fellowship that I received. Your sincere support of both myself as well as the DBI is greatly appreciated. The DBI is doing great work, and you help make that possible.

I offer sincere thanks to my fellow research colleagues at the DBI: Tom Nelligan, John Shelton, and Il-Seung Chung (as well as their families). Your willingness to discuss, review, and critique my work was invaluable, and certainly strengthened the final product a great deal. More significant however, was your encouragement, support, humor, and friendship that brought true joy to our family’s stay in Ireland.

I thank the Irish people and all the friends we made during our time on the Emerald Isle. We were welcomed to your beautiful country with open arms, and you made your country feel like our home.

I thank the people at Wipf and Stock Publishing, in particular Dr. K. C. Hanson, Dr. Chris Spinks, and Christian Amondson, not only for accepting this project for publication, but also for their excellence and professionalism in its production. It has been a pleasure working with all of you.

I thank both my parents and my in-laws, who not only regularly sent us care packages with treats from the states but also made our traveling to and from Ireland finacially feasible. As always, your love and support accompanies all we do!

I thank my family—my wife Molly and my daughter Brennan. Brennan, thank you for enduring such long trips to and from Ireland with your mommy and daddy—for a two-year-old, those trips were quite an accomplishment! You brought joy to every day we spent in Ireland, and I hope one day you can return to that beautiful country. Molly, I thank you for your willingness to go on this adventure with me. While it was not always easy or convenient, it allowed us to create memories of each other and our family that we will share for a lifetime. I look forward to the rest of our adventures together, and I will love you through them all.

Finally, I must thank the God and Father my Lord Jesus Christ, without whom we would have none of the above to be thankful for. For all the blessings and successes in my life, including the success of this book, I give Him all honor, glory, and praise. Amen.

Preliminary Remarks and Abbreviations

All citations from the Old and New Testament come from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted. Any Greek texts from the New Testament are taken from the Nestle-Aland 27th edition. Greek and Latin texts from ancient authors are taken from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise noted.

The abbreviations used in this book follow those provided in The SBL Handbook of Style for Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (edited by P. H. Alexander et al., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999). These abbreviations include those for academic journals, commentary and monograph series, biblical books and other ancient literature.

Introduction

Markan Sources: The Current State of Research

The amount of scholarship put forth for the interpretation of Mark’s gospel in the past century is enormous, with more new Markan scholarship being produced every year. Yet in light of this vast amount of secondary literature on Mark, the dearth of scholarship devoted to Markan literary sources is striking. ¹ This absence is all the more remarkable given the attention paid to source material in the study of the other three canonical gospels. One cannot pick a modern commentary on Luke or Matthew (and to some degree John) and not find a discussion on the source material for these literary works. But in a survey of commentaries on Mark, only three could be found that offer a discussion of Markan source material. Of these three, only one discussed Mark’s use of extant texts—that of C. S. Mann, a proponent of the Griesbach Hypothesis, discusses Mark’s use of Matthew and Luke. ² The other two commentaries only discuss pre-Markan or oral traditions, but offer no discussion on Mark’s use of extant texts as source material. ³ In fact, only three significant studies could be found that seriously consider extant texts as possible source material for Mark’s gospel. ⁴

Why is there such an absence of scholarly consideration of Mark’s use of extant texts? We suggest that the reason is directly related to the limited paradigm that New Testament scholarship has inherited from source, form, and redaction criticism. Source criticism, intentionally or unintentionally, limited the sphere of possible gospel sources to like-texts. It was presumed that for a text to be the source of gospel, it had to a gospel itself, or be quite close to one. All theories in the complicated quest for a solution to the synoptic problem operated on this assumption. Hypothetical texts such as Urmarkus and Proto-Luke were gospels.⁵ Even Q, as much as some interpreters might champion its distinction from our canonical gospels and its identity as a sayings source, includes teachings, parables, and actions of Jesus. Though it may not have a distinct narrative structure, Q is still a collection of Jesus traditions that is similar to the canonical gospels in more ways than it is not. Therefore, given this limited scope in what is a possible source for a gospel, the establishment of Markan priority by source criticism closed the door on the search for Markan sources. If sources for gospels can only be gospel-like material, and Mark is the first gospel, then no avenue exists for uncovering Markan literary sources. We are simply left to conclude that Mark is a unique and original creation—one that is independent of significant literary sources.

If source criticism shut the door on the search for Markan literary sources, form criticism locked it by proposing that the sources for Mark’s gospel were in fact not literary at all, but oral. The Markan evangelist simply compiled oral traditions from the early church and strung them together to form a rough narrative.⁶ Presumably, the Markan evangelist (or compiler) did not use any extant literature as primary source material. Form criticism gave the definitive answer to the question of Markan sources, and sadly, this answer was left virtually unchallenged by gospel interpreters. In fact, today this assumption of form criticism still dominates virtually all current scholarly discussion of Mark’s origin and formation. With this presumption that the sources for the first gospel were oral, naturally there has been little effort to discern any possible literary sources the first gospel may have used.

After source criticism shut the door on the search for Markan literary sources and form criticism locked it, redaction criticism essentially threw away the key, leaving the door permanently shut. As redaction critics sought to determine when and how one gospel writer was editing the work of another, they established, at least in practice, stringent criteria for determining literary dependence. Generally, two things seem to be required to demonstrate literary dependence: (1) specific agreement in details/order; and (2) strong verbal agreement. With these strict standards for determining literary dependence, any scholar who, in the face of source and form criticism, seeks to establish literary sources for Mark’s gospel faces the near impossible task of doing so.

Here we will give two examples to demonstrate not only the pride of place gospel scholars give to verbal agreement and specific agreement of order/detail in determining literary dependence, but also the difficulty one might face in proving Mark’s dependence on a non-gospel source. Our first example, will be the Johannine account of Jesus healing an official’s son (John 4:46–54). This story is closely paralleled by the Matthean and Lukan account of Jesus healing the son/servant of a Roman centurion (Matt 8:15–13//Luke 7:1–10). The similar details of the two stories can bee seen in the chart below.

The parallels between these stories are striking, and in fact they lead most interpreters to conclude that all three gospels are reflecting the same story/tradition. However, because the stories have little verbal agreement and lack specificity in the agreement of certain details, many interpreters conclude that John’s account of the story is independent of both Matthew’s and Luke’s account.⁷ Although the stories may share a common tradition (likely an oral one!), any literary relationship between John and either of the synoptic accounts is generally rejected.

Another noteworthy example is the four different accounts of the words of institution at the last supper (Matt 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25; Luke 22:15–20; 1 Cor 11:23–25). Below, all four texts are presented in parallel columns.

While there are some minor differences between these four passages, they are strikingly similar in many ways, even with regard to their verbal agreement. But it is generally concluded that these four sayings represent two independent traditions, with Matthew and Mark representing one tradition and Luke and 1 Corinthians representing another.⁸ Again, the minor differences in detail and the lack of strong verbal agreement seem to preclude the possibility that three of these traditions might all ultimately be dependent on the earliest one.

Therefore, source criticism made the search for Markan literary sources irrelevant through the establishment of Markan priority. Form criticism removed the need for the search altogether by promoting oral traditions over literary ones. Finally, redaction criticism provided such strict standards for literary dependence that anyone who still might be interested in the search for Markan sources would find it next to impossible. In light of these three influences, it is no wonder that virtually no attempts have been made by Markan interpreters to find literary sources for the first gospel.

Critiquing the Current State of Research

Here we argue that the search for Markan sources is being restrained unnecessarily by faulty presuppositions and criteria. First, simply because Mark’s gospel is regarded as the first narrative account of the life of Jesus does not mean that it was not without literary precedence or that Mark was not dependent on literary sources. Our knowledge that ancient writing was an imitative art argues against the conclusion that gospel sources must be other gospels. The gospel writers had an abundant number of literary sources from which to construct their narratives (e.g., Jewish Scripture, Greco-Roman epics, etc.). The presupposition that Mark’s gospel relied primarily, if not exclusively, on oral tradition is greatly misguided and again is undermined by our knowledge of ancient writing practices.⁹ We are not claiming that oral traditions did not influence the formation of Mark’s gospel, but we are claiming that literary influences were at least equally influential on the gospel’s formation.¹⁰ It is therefore of great importance that the question of Mark’s literary sources be reopened. If these sources could be determined—even to a minor degree—the interpretive pay off would be significant, shedding light on a vast number of Markan interpretive issues. The topic of Markan sources is far from irrelevant, and should be considered a pressing issue for any Markan interpreter.

Second, the process of detecting Markan sources or Markan literary dependence on other texts is far from impossible. The strict criteria used by redaction critics (and most contemporary gospel interpreters) in determining literary dependence are too restricting, and need to be significantly revised in light of ancient writing practices—in particular the practice of mimesis or imitatio. While strong verbal agreement and specific similarity in detail are certainly strong criteria for determining literary dependence, they are far from the only criteria, and their absence does not and should not automatically preclude such dependence. Any search for Markan sources will require the development of sound criteria for establishing literary dependence, but such development is possible, making the