The ending of Mark is truncated. Not artificial (except in the sense that all writing, all storytelling, is artifice). He elides over the obvious implication that at some point the women did speak up. Is that unlikely? With everyone scattered, with them probably very uncertain about what really did happen, with the inevitable internal rewriting of their experience, whatever it was? So that the story could have ended up something very different from whatever did happen, after so much time for it to grow in their minds.
And it goes on growing in Matthew. That is not the original story. Because the guards sure as hell would have talked. Mark wants us to see the deeper truths behind the story. Matthew just wants to turn it into a goddam documentary, certified as 100% real, with third party witnesses and everything. Matthew is not a subtle writer. There’s a reason they use his gospel for those passion plays. Well, there’s two reasons, but we won’t talk about the other one.)
An artifice, definitely–but can we be sure it doesn’t exist for some reason other than literary style, intentional ambiguity?
We don’t know exactly when stories of the resurrection began to be told. Obviously it wasn’t years, but certainly weeks, possibly months. Because they were scattered, disheartened, and afraid. So there might have been some memory of a few female followers speaking up later about being the first to hear the good news. There could also be those who had visions of Jesus nowhere near his mortal remains in space or time (Paul on the road to Damascus would be an extreme case). Conflicting accounts (Paul’s mention of hundreds of people would tend to back that up). And there were undoubtedly arguments over which visions were true.
So there might be an explanation tacked on as to why this story had not been part of the resurrection story for a while. I know the point Mark is making (assuming Mark isn’t copying too closely from earlier sources), but I don’t think he’d say they told no one for no reason other than a thematic device.
In any event, it’s not the same thing. They are not failing to understand who Jesus is, and in Mark’s account they never see Jesus risen. They understand what has been shared with them. They are simply afraid to speak of it (and the disciples having fled, who do they have to share it with?) But their story, being so close in space and time to the resurrection is especially compelling, and so once shared, becomes popular with many, while others perhaps ask why this hadn’t come up before, and this version of the story Mark is telling is there to explain that–as Matthew’s exists to explain the (intentional) holes in Mark’s story.
Multiple interpretations are possible, and we shouldn’t neglect any of them. Maybe some people believed they had seen Jesus’ spirit, or that he’d come to them in a dream–and others believed they had seen him in the flesh. But for him to be seen in the flesh, it had to be substantiated that his physical body had left the place it was interred (I’m not arguing for or against a literal tomb, but a grave can take many forms–part of a crucifixion victim was found in a cave, which is the original form of entombment).
So a story of somebody looking for his body and not finding it was needed. And had been slowly incubating in the minds of a few grieving women who had loved this man, and were willing to risk everything to perform the rites their religion told them were required. And they never found him. They found something else. And everything was built around that increasingly confused memory.
Iskander Robertson said
what from marks writing would give you the impression that he would throw out miraculous story?
If there’s disagreement on what his sources were we cant show that he would throw out miraculous stories.
For example, there’s nothing in Luke’s writing itself that shows he would leave out miraculous stories but we know that he decided to leave out the walking on water and feeding of the 4,000 because we know it was contained in his sources.
Robert said
But Matthew’s (or Mark’s) angel was NOT rejected as fictional by Luke, who doubles them. It is Mark’s artificial ending of the women not saying anything to anybody that is rejected by all later evagelists.
But the angel rolling the stone away is what’s rejected by later writers. If Matthew is first then the story is purified in the later gospels where only Jesus is needed for the miracles. Jesus doesnt need an angel to come from heaven to roll the stone away for him. They are reduced to heralds announcing the resurrection with minimal physical impact on the natural world.
If we can objectively say the women’s roll in the beginnings of christian faith is minimised in the later gospels and Peter’s (john’s) roll accentuated, the Mark’s “the women told no one because they were afraid” and “go tell his disciples and Peter” is very suggestive of his gospel being placed later in the tradition than Matthew.
If Mark was not intended to end at 16:8 how would we expect his account to continue? (Given these two differences to Matthew) Probably along the line’s of Luke and John.
brenmcg said
But the angel rolling the stone away is what’s rejected by later writers. If Matthew is first then the story is purified in the later gospels where only Jesus is needed for the miracles. Jesus doesnt need an angel to come from heaven to roll the stone away for him. They are reduced to heralds announcing the resurrection with minimal physical impact on the natural world.
If we can objectively say the women’s roll in the beginnings of christian faith is minimised in the later gospels and Peter’s (john’s) roll accentuated, the Mark’s “the women told no one because they were afraid” and “go tell his disciples and Peter” is very suggestive of his gospel being placed later in the tradition than Matthew.
If Mark was not intended to end at 16:8 how would we expect his account to continue? (Given these two differences to Matthew) Probably along the line’s of Luke and John.
The angel rolls the stone away and Jesus is already gone. So honestly, what sense does that make? If Jesus arose in physical form, how did he leave? Did he roll the stone away then roll it back again, so the angel could do it? Why didn’t the tomb guards see him leave?
Matthew’s story makes no sense on any level except as a rewrite of Mark’s story, which may for all we know be a rewrite of a still-earlier story.
Mark’s story is logical on its own terms. Joseph rolled the stone in front of the tomb himself, meaning it’s not that big. Several women could shift it, and they saw him bury Jesus. They come back to tend to the body (there’s a slight plothole here, since why would Joseph, himself a devout Jew, not have done all that was required? Actually, why didn’t they just ask him if they could clean and wrap the body while they watched the burial taking place? He’s clearly sympathetic.)
They find the stone rolled away–there are no guards mentioned in Mark–why would there be? It’s hard enough to believe there was a tomb, or a member of the Sanhedrin who’d offer Jesus free burial in his own crypt. The women wouldn’t be there at all if they thought there were guards present to guard against a hoax resurrection (a later invention, that Matthew contributed to.) They come assuming they can roll the stone away themselves, but instead they find a young man in white robes, with no outward signs of being a supernatural entity. He tells them Jesus is gone, and his male followers will meet him in Galilee (where obviously they have already fled). They tell no one, but who would they tell? The other followers are gone. And what would happen to them if it got out they were saying Jesus had risen?
Matthew’s story reeks of bad script doctoring. He has to fix everything he feels Mark got wrong. But he himself doesn’t know what happened. He wasn’t there. He’s not Matthew the disciple. He never once interjects himself into the story. He’s rewriting Mark and Q and possibly other sources. But like all bad script doctors, he makes the problems worse, not better. His story makes no sense at all on its own terms. Jesus shows up to tell the women what they already know. Why? Because Matthew wants to prove Jesus really did rise. But then why not have Jesus there at the tomb? Why doesn’t the stone roll aside and Jesus walks out? Because he’s rewriting Mark. And he has enough respect for the material he’s rewriting not to want to change it that much.
Robert said
You’re just making stuff up. Luke does not say Jesus rolled away the stone instead of the angels. Like Mark before him, he simply does not say who rolled away the stone.
But, of course, we cannot objectively say that. In Matthew and John, the women are the first to see the resurrected Jesus. Likewise, the role of Mary Magdalene is increased in some later gospels, for example, being the unique recipient of long revelatory discourses that she later recounts to the male disciples who resent her privileged role.
Yet another unjustified “If”.
If statements can never be unjustified, theyre speculative and the possible consequences are what’s interesting.
If Luke and John are accepted to be later than Matthew then we see the roll of the women as progenitors of the believe in the empty tomb being reduced and Paul/John being increased. In Matthew christian belief in an empty tomb is solely reliant in the claims of the women.
Culturally this development makes sense.
So in two observations we can see a line of development from early gospels to later one’s which makes historic and cultural where Mark is to be placed further along the line of development than Matthew.
We don’t see if we place Luke or Mark first. There’s no clear cultural or historical reason for Matthew to change Mark and have the women tell everyone.
godspell said
The angel rolls the stone away and Jesus is already gone. So honestly, what sense does that make? If Jesus arose in physical form, how did he leave? Did he roll the stone away then roll it back again, so the angel could do it? Why didn’t the tomb guards see him leave?
Right it doesnt make sense so we might expect later writers to edit that part out and have the exact timing of the opening of the tomb left unsaid.
Mark’s story is logical on its own terms. Joseph rolled the stone in front of the tomb himself, meaning it’s not that big.
Mark tells us its extremely large, but only in chapter 16, almost as an afterthought, as if he didnt realise it needed to be large in chapter 15 when Joseph rolled it in front of the tomb.
In Matthew the women only go to look at the tomb, when they arrive we get the earthquake and angel. Mark having removed these realises he needs something impressive to have happened and only then decides to tell us the stone was extremely large.
They find the stone rolled away–there are no guards mentioned in Mark–why would there be? It’s hard enough to believe there was a tomb, or a member of the Sanhedrin who’d offer Jesus free burial in his own crypt. The women wouldn’t be there at all if they thought there were guards present to guard against a hoax resurrection (a later invention, that Matthew contributed to.) They come assuming they can roll the stone away themselves, but instead they find a young man in white robes, with no outward signs of being a supernatural entity. He tells them Jesus is gone, and his male followers will meet him in Galilee (where obviously they have already fled). They tell no one, but who would they tell? The other followers are gone. And what would happen to them if it got out they were saying Jesus had risen?
The best way to understand the story of the guards and the agreement to say “the disciples stole the body” is that Matthew was writing at a time when these things were being said. And that Mark Luke and John were writing at time when these things weren’t an issue. But the only way to this is to place Matthew either after all of Mark, Luke and John or before them.
Matthew’s story reeks of bad script doctoring. He has to fix everything he feels Mark got wrong. But he himself doesn’t know what happened. He wasn’t there. He’s not Matthew the disciple. He never once interjects himself into the story. He’s rewriting Mark and Q and possibly other sources. But like all bad script doctors, he makes the problems worse, not better. His story makes no sense at all on its own terms. Jesus shows up to tell the women what they already know. Why? Because Matthew wants to prove Jesus really did rise. But then why not have Jesus there at the tomb? Why doesn’t the stone roll aside and Jesus walks out? Because he’s rewriting Mark. And he has enough respect for the material he’s rewriting not to want to change it that much.
But the story of the centurion calling Jesus the son of god only makes sense in Matthew. He’s terrified by what he sees and in his realisation of what theyve done.
Even Luke realises he needs to change it to “surely he was a righteous man”.
godspell said
Nope, sorry. Matthew is editing, but he’s doing it badly (if you can say he’s doing a bad job writing certain parts of the story, why not that he’s doing a bad job rewriting them?)The bigger story is the later story–and you’ve admitted this.
The more complete story is suggestive of a later story, it doesn’t determine that it is.
For instance, Mark telling us the name of the synagogue leader who’s daughter has died, and the name of the blind man healed before Jerusalem are more complete versions than Matthew’s. Which is suggestive of a later gospel.
I don’t know Greek (it is, in fact, Greek to me). Bren has been studying it. Robert may have some insights to share. But a few lines might not be enough to establish priority.
What does (and just about unequivocally) is that Mark’s Greek is poor–he was writing in Greek, we gather, because it was the language most of his expected readership all knew, not because he was especially fluent in it. His writing is powerful, but his command of the language he’s using is, according to qualified scholars, less than fully fluent.
This is not the case with Matthew and Luke. Their Greek is much better.
So why, if Mark is copying one or both of those gospels, is he turning their well-turned phrasings into awkward ones? He’s not. Probably one of several reasons they saw the need to write new gospels, drawn heavily from Mark, is that they found his Greek painful to read. They wanted to fix it. On the whole, reading in translation (and therefore spared the pain of bad Greek, which would just be Greek to me anyway), I find Mark the superior storyteller. But to anyone who was very familiar with the Greek used at that time, his gospel would be irritating to read, even if you admired the stories he told, the style and presentation he employed.
It is impossible to come up with a good reason for Mark to turn good Greek into bad Greek. He could just copy what he read. My guess is he was using earlier sources that were not in Greek, and needed translation. He wanted to make these stories available to a larger readership, all the more important since fewer and fewer Christians knew Hebrew or Aramaic–the latter of which was spoken by many non-Jews, which probably included Mark.
The more converts Christian evangelists made, the more educated people would be in their ranks, and that’s another argument for Markan priority. Matthew and Luke were part of a slightly later group, which included some more polished Greek stylists.
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