Porphyry is right about it being literary clickbait, immediately provocative. It does force us to reconsider how little we actually know about the provenance of the gospels, especially Mark. Good to cogitate on for a bit. The question I would have for Walsh if I ever get the chance by way of pushback would be the nature of the synoptic problem which she also briefly mentions without much detail.

As far I as I know the situation where two authors quote so extensively from another is unique in ancient literature. There is stuff like magical grimoires and cookbooks where it is necessary to repeat the spell or the recipe exactly but nothing with a narrative. Wouldn’t the best explanation for this be a continuity of belief? Plus, Mark has such a definite point of view that relies so much on the Hebrew scriptures that it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t have some sort of theological agenda. (Which is why I suspect he was a diaspora Jew like Paul rather than a gentile.)

Maybe I’ll get to ask Walsh about it at some point.

The subject she broaches that I think bears a lot more discussion is the rather artificial scholarly partition between ancient Greco-Roman literature and the writings of the New Testament. I once asked Prof Ehrman about attempts by classicists to translate the New Testament. (I was thinking particularly about my favorite Homer translator Richmond Lattimore.) He disparaged such attempts because they aren’t NT scholars. But greek expertise is greek expertise, right? The writings of the NT are ancient Greco-Roman literature, right? I found this territoriality rather odd.

ps Porphyry has been scarce as of late. Hope all is well.

Then in serving as a relief from depression we have not squandered our time. Take care.

This brings to mind the nature of these online “communities”. If we absent ourselves we simply disappear. There is no way to casually withdraw. There is a simulation of intimacy but its reality?

I have written before about the Internet Monk forum I participated in mostly in the 2010s. There were four or five people I regularly interacted with for several years whose posts I anticipated, people who I thought I got to “know” in some sense. And then they were gone.

At work I have phone meetings regularly with people on the West Coast I’ve never actually physically met. Strange.

I hope no one expects some profound wisdom here. Merely an observation. I do hope cultural historians are investigating these online communities, how they originate, mutate, grow, die.

Thanks, Robert.

Is this the same Ian Mills who had a ** you do not have permission to see this link ** while he was a graduate student at Duke?   If so I’m glad to see he got an academic position.  Not easy these days.

More importantly, I will again point to the fact that what is often considered ‘word-for-word’ agreement in English translation is not to be exaggerated when looking at the Greek text of the gospels. Greek is a highly inflected language, and while much is obviously copying of an earlier work, it is always modified in a variety of ways. Much more importantly, the overall comparison of the works of Matthew and Luke have so much material and arrangement that is novel, I still think the gospels are not all that different than what might be considered relatively common literary practice, especially within a rather small, mostly illiterate movement focused on a very small literary foundation. 

But however we characterize it I think scholars would agree that both Matthew and Luke privileged Mark’s text.  Even if Luke knew Matthew he would almost certainly also had to have access to Mark’s text to treat it the way he did in his own gospel.  Walsh only mentions the “synoptic problem” briefly in her book.  But it seems clear the relationship between the synoptics raises questions about her thesis. If we had four gospels that simply retold the same story, well, as you say, there are many examples of that in ancient lit.   It’s hard not to see something else going on here.  Perhaps Mills can shed some light on the matter.   Given the opportunity, my question for Prof Walsh! 

…how this detracts from Robin Faith Walsh’s thesis…

My own perceptions of course.  It may be that Walsh has ideas that she simply hasn’t expanded upon yet.

Her view is that the authors of the gospels were creative cultural elites*.  She doesn’t deny there were communities and oral traditions but she tends to divorce them from the production of the surviving literary tradition.  (For example, her viewpoint almost requires that the gospel writers knew of Paul’s letters.)  From what she describes I would expect to see four different gospels all telling the same story.  But there seems to be some sort of unique literary relationship between the gospel writers, i.e., the “Synoptic Problem”.  I don’t think she’s addressed that part of it adequately.   Why didn’t Matthew and Luke, each possessing material exclusive to themselves and to each other, simply do like John and write their own versions?  They privileged Mark’s text.  We can’t read their minds of course but of the possible explanations it seems to me a continuity of belief would be a logical perspective.  That would tie the literary tradition to some sort of community I would think. 

I’m not saying Walsh is wrong.  I just want to think through some of the implications of her views.   If she is right, what would we expect to find? 

* Almost certainly true.  Walsh’s strongest claim is that the gospels were literary creations and not curated collections of oral traditions, contra Ehrman, et al.