Mark 13:9-11
9 “You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. 10 And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. 11 Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.“
Verse 13:10 breaks the flow of text, is misplaced (what in context is the preaching to all nations supposed to be prior to?), interrupts the advice being given to the disciples and is a secondary insertion into Matthew’s original,
Matthew 10:17-20
“you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the nations. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.“
Luke’s version follow’s Matthew,
Luke 21:12-15
“They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. And so you will bear testimony to me. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.“
Mark 13:10 is itself not original but is again taken from Matthew who has used it correctly as the event which must occur prior to the end times
Matthew 24:14 “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.“
Clever.
But would not Mark’s oddness be the harder reading here, and therefore more likely the one that got cleaned up in the editing by Matthew (and Luke)?
I will pop my popcorn and await those with vastly greater textual skills than I (and a command of the Greek) to jump in.
Looking for the harder reading is just one tool in deciding priority. But the later synoptic writers are not simply editors looking to make corrections to the original. They are creating their own piece, rearranging material and introducing new ideas.
Does the error by Mark here look like the error of an original writer or an error introduced by a secondary work?
The passage in Mark could have been interpolated by someone wishing to back off from Mark’s general imminent apocalyptic viewpoint I suppose. In that case Matthew and Luke are simply following the original passage in Mark which they would have had spread out in front of them as they composed (and copied). Matthean priority is a lost cause.
Robert said
You’re also wrong to say that Luke has followed Matthew, as should be clear in the chapter numbers. Matthew has placed these verses in Chapter 10, when Jesus first sends out his disciples to teach (cf Mk 6), but Luke placed these verses in his Chapter 12, long after Jesus sends out the twelve to preach (Lk 9) and even after he sends out the 72 to preach (Lk 10), and he also repeats a version of them in Lk 22, the same as Mark’s context. And you have already cited where Matthew too has retained a different part of Mark’s words in the same Markan context.
Matthew 24:4-8 “Watch out that no one deceives you….Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.”
is matched with Luke’s
Luke 21 “Watch out that you are not deceived…Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines.”
Luke then goes straight into “they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues…” . These are the verses Matthew had placed earlier in chapter 10. Notice however how Luke introduces these verses that Matthew had placed much earlier but Mark places right there and then – Luke 21:12 “Before all this however … “. Highly suggestive that Matthew and not Mark is the source.
Matthew’s use of the phrase “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” is correctly used in context – right before the end-times, not before the holy spirit tells the disciples what to say in court.
In answer to your question, the immediately preceding context in Mark makes it very clear what the preaching to all nations is prior to
The issue here is that “you will be brought before governors and kings but dont worry about what to say to them because the holy spirit will tell you” is the original single unitary concept. As Matthew and Luke and Q if it existed all agree on.
Mark may have originated this concept but he has stuck “And the gospel must first be preached to all nations” into the middle of it. Either way its a secondary addition. In its immediate context it makes no sense – by the time the disciples have been brought before governors and kings and the holy spirit tells them what to say, the gospel must first be preached to all nations?
Mark is showing signs of secondary additions to original single unitary concepts – and the original version looks a lot like what we get in Matthew.
Mark is not simply an editor correcting errors – he’s a second author rearranging and adding in his own ideas. These errors are the kind of issues that show up when two authors have composed a piece. It shows up all over Mark.
We’d expect the original author to have the greater coherency of thought as we get with Matthew.
brenmcg said
Looking for the harder reading is just one tool in deciding priority. But the later synoptic writers are not simply editors looking to make corrections to the original. They are creating their own piece, rearranging material and introducing new ideas.Does the error by Mark here look like the error of an original writer or an error introduced by a secondary work?
From the vantage point of this non-scholar, it certainly looks oddly placed. That said, there are plenty of things throughout Mk and the NT more broadly that strike me as oddly placed. But, my lack of credentials aside, it’s one thing to assert the label of “error” and quite another to build up the argument as to why it is in error. Without doing so, I fear, is to begin seemingly with begging the question.
I agree that the Mk position feels oddly placed, where it does not feel as much so in Mt/Lk. However, its odd placement in Mark in isolation is not the full context of the analysis, but rather its odd placement relative to Mt/Lk, as to who was likely editing whom. One could seemingly generate numerous plausible scenarios as to why it arose in Mk this way (rushed writing, snippets of non-Mt/Lk sources, miscopying his own prior draft, post-publication scribal error, interpolation, etc.), but when juxtaposed with the way Mt/Lk have it, the harder reading criterion suggesting Markan priority jumps off the page as something to contend with.
I often find your points thoughtful, if unorthodox. If you please, rather than dispensing of it as one amongst many, explain why not the harder reading criterion here.
Hngerhman said
I often find your points thoughtful, if unorthodox. If you please, rather than dispensing of it as one amongst many, explain why not the harder reading criterion here.
The harder reading criterion is used to decide on an original version. If A and B have slightly different wording then, all things being equal, the one with the harder reading is more likely to be original.
Here however is different – we’ve already decided on what the original version is and conclude from this there is an “error”.
That is, the “error” in Mark 13:9-11 is characterized by the belief that a secondary idea has been inserted into an original concept.
If we don’t think “you will be brought before governors and kings but don’t worry about what to say to them because the holy spirit will tell you” is the original concept we don’t think there is an “error”.
As you say Mark may well have come up with the original concept and inserted the secondary idea in a re-drafting. Who knows?
However the fact is Matthew is the gospel with the original concept kept pristine and Mark is the gospel with a secondary insertion. If we accept the premise of the synoptic problem, that either Matthew is copying Mark or Mark is copying Matthew, then all things being equal, Matthew is the more likely the originator of the concept.
Thank you.
brenmcg saidHere however is different – we’ve already decided on what the original version is and conclude from this there is an “error”.
…
If we don’t think “you will be brought before governors and kings but don’t worry about what to say to them because the holy spirit will tell you” is the original concept we don’t think there is an “error”.
Apologies, I seem to have missed the part where that was decided. I would agree it’s weird, but whether an error, is that not also part of what’s in question, as well as whether it was intentional or unintentional?
Here’s where I start wading farther into an area than my knowledge justifies… I’m neither expert in Markan style, nor able to read it in the Greek, so my aesthetic sense for what is oddly placed may not track with what a 1st century gospel writer thinks is normal.
I can say with certainty that is, empirically, often the case – there are lots of things that my eye/ear find odd/oddly placed in Mark and throughout the gospels. If that were arbiter of non-original text, there’d be little left to talk about. As mentioned one could generate several scenarios / thought experiments that could account for this placement, none of which would rely upon Mark taking from Matthew (or Luke), and none of which am I sufficiently qualified to decide amongst, at least not without significant language and textual aid.
I don’t mean to cop out here, but me appealing to my aesthetic sense to motivate a judgment of the secondary nature of a source, I don’t trust my gut that much here. I would love to hear a tight argument on it, though!
Robert said
All things are not equal, and it is important to take all things into consideration.
Yes but before taking all things into consideration one must consider each piece of evidence individually on its own merit. Only then can everything be brought together to see where the totally of evidence points.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)