Confused with Gospel of St. Mark

[dje101]

Hello everyone,

I am reading Mark and have two questions:

1). Why the perpetual use of the word “and”?

2). Why, when giving sight to the blind or hearing to he deaf, does Jesus do things kind of abnormally? By this I mean, why does he stick his fingers in the deaf-mute’s ears and spit on the ground?

 

[TypesAndShadows]

As to your first question, I’ve heard that the Gospel of Mark was notoriously considered “badly written”, as in written in an extremely unliterary style. I believe it is a complaint found in many early writers on the topic. The story goes that Mark heard the Gospel from St Peter, when Peter was very old, and didn’t dare to reword or rework anything, because he was afraid to change Peter’s words.

This does make sense to me, but you might have to wait for someone more scholarly on the topic to give you references.

 

[dje101]

As to your first question, I’ve heard that the Gospel of Mark was notoriously considered “badly written”, as in written in an extremely unliterary style. I believe it is a complaint found in many early writers on the topic. The story goes that Mark heard the Gospel from St Peter, when Peter was very old, and didn’t dare to reword or rework anything, because he was afraid to change Peter’s words.

This does make sense to me, but you might have to wait for someone more scholarly on the topic to give you references.

Interesting. Is this a tradition (or Tradition) that the church holds to or is it just a theory?

 

[Gem]

The key to Jesus using material things to work miracles is the Incarnation. Jesus, who up to that time was a purely spiritual being, took on a human nature and a body. He entered our physical world. And despite our current fallen state, physical creation, or matter, is “good” because God made it that way (see Genesis). This mingling of the spiritual and the physical is also found in the Scaraments that Jesus left the Church (water, oil, laying on of hands, etc.) The use of the physical helps us physical beings to relate the God and the purely spiritual.

It’s all part of God’s plan to save as many as possible.

 

[SonCatcher]

2). Why, when giving sight to the blind or hearing to he deaf, does Jesus do things kind of abnormally? By this I mean, why does he stick his fingers in the deaf-mute’s ears and spit on the ground?

Gem’s comment about the sacramental aspect is right on. However, one might then wonder why we don’t spit and stick fingers in ears today.

Jesus’ actions when healing seem to have mirrored those of doctors during that time. By performing the same actions, he shows himself to truly be the “great physician.”

 

[dje101]

Gem’s comment about the sacramental aspect is right on. However, one might then wonder why we don’t spit and stick fingers in ears today.

Jesus’ actions when healing seem to have mirrored those of doctors during that time. By performing the same actions, he shows himself to truly be the “great physician.”

Good point about Jesus being the great physician. It’s just so different compared on how St. Matthew explained it in his gospel. Whenever Jesus healed anyone, he usually just spoke or simply touched the person.

 

[patrick457]

Hello everyone,

I am reading Mark and have two questions:

1). Why the perpetual use of the word “and”?

It’s how Mark writes: he constantly uses “and” and “immediately”, lapses into the historic present (i.e. something like “He goes” and “Jesus says” instead of “He went” and “Jesus said”), uses loanwords from Latin, and occasionally engages in narrative digression. This is more observable in the original: some translations unfortunately obscure these Markan quirks by removing the “ands” and rendering the historical present into simple past tense.

These elements tend to make Mark a ‘vulgar’, colloquial feel: out of the Gospels, Mark is apparently the most oral. The repetitive use of kai “and” and euthys “immediately”, while it does make grammarians break down into tears , help give the work a fast pacing.

 

[NotWorthy]

Patrick, you are correct to point out the “immediately’s”. The OP’s original comment doesn’t show the fast action of Mark by stating that so many sentences begin with just “And”, IMO. There a ton of “And then’s” that begin sentences. To me, its almost like a kid who is so excited to tell a story, that he can’t get the words out fast enough. “And then we did this… and then we did that… and then we did…”.

Mark’s Gospel is all about action, as there is very little dialog. You have, what, 5 parables? Matthew and Luke have 20 and 21 or so. No long dialogs by Jesus either; no Sermon on the Mount (Matthew) or the Plains (Luke) or the Last Supper Discourse (John).

Something I noticed today. There are only 3 women speaking in Mark’s Gospel. Salome, Herod’s step-daughter and niece who asks for John the Baptist’s head, the Syrro-Phoenician woman who speaks of the dogs eating the children’s crumbs, and the women who ask for the body of Jesus’ body to prepare for burial. I don’t know if there is any significance to that, but its just something I noticed.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Hello everyone,

I am reading Mark and have two questions:

1). Why the perpetual use of the word “and”?

2). Why, when giving sight to the blind or hearing to he deaf, does Jesus do things kind of abnormally? By this I mean, why does he stick his fingers in the deaf-mute’s ears and spit on the ground?

I really have no idea about #2, but I do have some ideas about #1. The practice of beginning sentence with “and” in this way is generally referred to as “parataxis” or the style being “paratactic.”

As others have pointed, this is not by any means a common construction in Koine or Classical Greek, which has lead to all sorts of derogatory comments about Mark and his “bad” or “vulgar” Greek or “poor education.” However, before we jump all over Mark’s style, one should step back and observe that this parataxis IS the style of Classical Biblical Hebrew narrative (especially in the Torah), so it’s reasonable, at least to me, that Mark is intentionally imitating this very unique biblical style—but the question is of course “why?”

And I don’t really know “why” but I could think of some possible arguments. One might argue that maybe Mark is influenced by some form of colloquial speech in Aramaic or even Hebrew, but this doesn’t line up AT ALL with how Aramaic works nor with how the Hebrew language developed into the common era. Some scholars even argue that people only wrote Hebrew in this paratactic style and that it was never even part of the spoken language, so I don’t think this has anything to do with Peter’s linguistics.

A second reason might be that when the Septuagint was translated, it ALSO preserved this very “non-Greek” sort of literalistic mode of writing to preserve the sense of the underlying Hebrew text, even if would seem very klunky to the average Greek reader.

Another related possible alternative (this may seem a bit “out there,” I don’t know, but this is what I actually think) is that Mark in some sense or at some level thinks/knows/understands that he is actually composing Scripture at the time he is writing, or perhaps even in a sense a “new Torah.” After all, just as in Genesis 1:1, Mark starts off his gospel: “The beginning of the good news…” Mk 1:1). Thus Mark writes his gospel in a very “Bible-y” style to convey to his audience that just as the Torah is important, so too is the good news that he is about to tell you. In other words: Listen up!!! This is big!!! Thus Mark uses the style that the Torah would use tell a story, and not the style that, say, Plato or even Josephus would use to tell a story.

I’d even go so far as to say that Mark’s pretty smart. If someone told me to compose a story using Elizabethan English, I would have a very tough time of it.

 

[Crumpy]

In a book of Jewish traditions someplace on my book shelves, there is a small section on superstitious beliefs in Judaism. According to this, there’s some documentation of the use of spit, but they don’t have many examples. In fact, the second supporting example was Jesus’ use of it, in the gospels.

That’s their spin on it.

Perhaps the use of spit and dirt is supposed to be an echo of creation, when God formed man from the dirt of the ground.

Normally, we read in Genesis, God just says things, and then it’s so – until we get to the creation of man. There, man is made up of existing substances, etc. etc.

 

[nordskoven]

Lysosomes in saliva are a working antiseptic; and saliva also contain enzymes that break down starch/carbs, amylase and ptyalin. Lysosomes, also found in tears, have an anti-bacterial function. Mixing saliva with dirt as Christ did in healing the blind man’s eyes would incorporate another powerful antibiotic nexus. There are people right now who are taking soil samples in virgin soil to analyze in terms of antibiotic properties. NYStatin is one product from a New York State soil sample, now a profitable anti-fungal. One young Jewish man with Crohn’s disease was wasting away to nothing when he found a NAZI discovery. Hitler’s troops were being ravaged by dysentery, and asking the locals what they did, found fresh camel dung contained a soil-based antibiotic. There were, no doubt, no shortage of camels in Jesus’ day and may have been one of the constituents. BLESSINGS!

 

[patrick457]

Patrick, you are correct to point out the “immediately’s”. The OP’s original comment doesn’t show the fast action of Mark by stating that so many sentences begin with just “And”, IMO. There a ton of “And then’s” that begin sentences. To me, its almost like a kid who is so excited to tell a story, that he can’t get the words out fast enough. “And then we did this… and then we did that… and then we did…”.

Mark’s Gospel is all about action, as there is very little dialog. You have, what, 5 parables? Matthew and Luke have 20 and 21 or so. No long dialogs by Jesus either; no Sermon on the Mount (Matthew) or the Plains (Luke) or the Last Supper Discourse (John).

Correct! Here’s part of the first chapter of Mark for a sample:

Beginning of the good-news of Jesus Christ [son of God], as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

Behold! I send my messenger before your face,
Who shall make ready your way.
A voice shouting in the wastelands:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
straight make his paths.”

John the Baptizer appeared in the wasteland, preaching a baptism of repentance to remission of sins, and going out to him were the whole country of Judaea and all the Jerusalemites, and they were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins, and John was clothed with camel’s hair and a belt of leather around his waist, and was eating locusts and honey of the field, and was preaching, saying, “He comes – one mightier than I – after me, of whom I am not worthy, having bent down, to loosen the strap of his sandals! I baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit,” and it came to be in those days, Jesus came from Nazaret of the Galilee, and was baptized in the Jordan by John; and immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens tearing apart and the Spirit like a dove descending on him; and a voice [came] from the heavens: “You are my son, the beloved! In you I take delight;” and immediately the Spirit drives him out into the wasteland, and he was in the wasteland forty days being tested by Satan and was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. And after John had been handed over, Jesus came into the Galilee, preaching the good-news of [the kingdom of] God, [and saying] that the time is filled up and the kingdom of God is drawing near – “Repent, and believe in the good-news!” And, walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon, dragnet-casting into the sea (because they were fishers) and Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you become fishers of men,” and immediately, having left the nets, they followed him, and having gone on a little farther, he saw James of Zebedee and John his brother – and they were in the boat mending the nets – and immediately he called them, and, having left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hirelings, they went off after him, and they go on to Capharnaum; and immediately on the sabbaths, having entered into the synagogue, he was teaching, and they were being awestruck at his teaching because he was teaching them as having authority and not as the scribes, and immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, saying, “What to us and to you, Jesus the Nazarene? You have come to destroy us! I have known you who you are: the holy one of God,” and Jesus rebuked him, [saying,] “Be muzzled shut, and come out of him;” and the unclean spirit having torn him and having shouted a great voice came out of him, and they were all amazed that they debate among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching! With authority also the unclean spirits he commands and they obey him,” and the fame of him went out immediately everywhere to all the surrounding region of the Galilee.​

If that doesn’t exhaust you and make you gasp for breath, I don’t know what will.

 

[patrick457]

For the record, Richard A. Horsley in Hearing the Whole Story: the Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel points out something very curious: Mark apparently structures his narrative around repetitions, not just of phrases and words, but even syllables and sounds. (Some authors also think that Mark employs a chiastic structure: in other words, the Gospel is one whole series of repetitions!) Here again is the pericope of the demoniac in Capharnaum, this time in (transliterated) Greek:

Kai eisporeuontai eis Kapharnaoum,
kai euthys tois sabbasin eiselthōn eis tēn synagōgēn edidasken.
Kai exeplēssonto epi tē didachē autou;
ēn gar didaskōn autous hōs exousian echōn,
kai ouch’ hōs hoi grammateis.
Kai euthys ēn en tē synagōgē autōn anthrōpos en pneumati akathartō,
kai anekraxen legōn:
Ti hēmin kai soi, Iēsou Nazarēne?
Ēlthes apolesai hēmas?
Oida se tis ei, ho hagios tou Theou.
Kai epetimēsen autō o Iēsous, [legōn]:
Phimōthēti, kai exelthe ex autou.
Kai sparaxan auton to pneuma to akatharton
kai phōnēsan phōnē megalē exēlthen ex autou.
Kai ethambēthēsan hapantes,
hōste suzētein autous legontas:
Ti estin touto?
Didachē kainē kat’ exousian;
kai tois pneumasin tois akathartois epitassei,
kai upakouousin autō.
Kai exēlthen hē akoē autou euthys pantachou
eis olēn tēn perichōron tēs Galilaias.

 

[TypesAndShadows]

I’ve dug up my copy of “Who Chose the Gospels?” (C.E. Hill) to find where I got this idea of the Gospel of Mark being dictated to Peter. It points to St. Irenaeus’s “Against Heresies” (AD 180) first:

Wherefore also Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter, does thus commence his Gospel narrative…
(3.10.5)
newadvent.org/fathers/0103.htm

It then points to Eusebius’s “Church History” (before AD 325):

1. Papias gives also in his own work other accounts of the words of the Lord on the authority of Aristion who was mentioned above, and traditions as handed down by the presbyter John; to which we refer those who are fond of learning. But now we must add to the words of his which we have already quoted the tradition which he gives in regard to Mark, the author of the Gospel.

1. “This also the presbyter said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.” These things are related by Papias concerning Mark.
   (3.39.14-15)
   newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm

Papias himself, who is quoted by Eusebius here, is supposed to have collected his traditions about AD 100.

Hill (the author of “Who Chose the Gospels?”) then says that the Greek word translated “order” does not only refer to chronological order, but also to literary arrangement and skill in composition.

And again, in Church History, Eusebius writes:

Chapter 15. The Gospel according to Mark.

1. And thus when the divine word had made its home among them, the power of Simon was quenched and immediately destroyed, together with the man himself. And so greatly did the splendor of piety illumine the minds of Peter’s hearers that they were not satisfied with hearing once only, and were not content with the unwritten teaching of the divine Gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark.

1. And they say that Peter — when he had learned, through a revelation of the Spirit, of that which had been done — was pleased with the zeal of the men, and that the work obtained the sanction of his authority for the purpose of being used in the churches. Clement in the eighth book of his Hypotyposes gives this account, and with him agrees the bishop of Hierapolis named Papias. And Peter makes mention of Mark in his first epistle which they say that he wrote in Rome itself, as is indicated by him, when he calls the city, by a figure, Babylon, as he does in the following words: “The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, salutes you; and so does Marcus my son.”
   (2.15.1-2)
   newadvent.org/fathers/250102.htm

Justin Martyr hints at this tradition.

I can’t see anything else referring to the unliterary style of Mark, so I can’t support that further myself. But it certainly seems to be an old tradition, that the Gospel of Mark is Peter’s account dictated, and it would explain the oral nature of it.