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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
If we are frank, we have no idea whether there was a pre-Marcan Gospel, in the sense of a continuous written account of Jesus. It is widely believed that there was a continuous Passion narrative before Mark, and it is often thought that there were some collections of pericopae, like the controversy stories in 2.1–3.6; but denials that there was a continuous story, in some sense like our Mark, are as weakly supported as assertions of the same. It could be that Friedrich Schleiermacher was right, and that certain διηγ⋯σεις existed before Mark, to which Luke had access. We might think it rather singular that so elaborate a work as Mark should appear de novo, like Athena from the head of Zeus. But we have no evidence to take us beyond conjecture.
1 For Dennis Nineham, on his seventieth birthday; in appreciation of his teaching, and his friendship, his fine commentary on Mark and his lifelong insistence on the transformability of Christianity. The paper was first presented at the Pre-Synoptic Traditions seminar of SNTS at Bethel, Germany in July, 1991.
2 Luz, U., ‘Das Jesusbild der vormarkinischen Tradition’, in Strecker, G. ed., Jesus Chtistus in Historieund Geschichte (Fs. H. Conzelmann, Tübingen, 1975), 347–374Google Scholar, is built on evidence from Q, a hypothetical source whose existence I have attempted to discredit. See my Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNT MS20, Sheffield, 1989) esp. ch. 1–2.Google Scholar For denials of a pre-Marcan Gospel see Trocmé, É., The Formation of the Gospel according to Mark (ET, London, 1975 = French 1963).Google Scholar
3 ‘Ueber die Schriften des Lukas, ein kritischer Versuch’ (1817), Sämtliche Werke, I 2 (1836), 1ff.
4 ‘A Pauline in a Jacobite church’, in Seybroeck, F. van et al. (eds), The Four Gospels 1992 (FS F. Neirynck, 3 vols., BETL 100, Leuven 1992), II, pp. 859–876.Google Scholar
5 I am especially indebted to Joachim Gnilka's Das Evangelium nach Markus (EKKII/1, 2, Zürich/Neukirchen-Vluyn3 1989).Google Scholar
6 Beside Gnilka, see especially Lührmann, Dieter, Das Markusevangelium (HbNT3, Tübingen 1987)Google Scholar, Guelich, Robert A., Mark 1–8.26 (Word 34A, Dallas 1989).Google Scholar
7 The matter critical of the apostles is susceptible to another, if less plausible, explanation: that Mark offers these critical tales for pastoral reasons – so for example Best, Ernest, following Jesus (JSNT MS 4, Sheffield 1981)Google Scholar, and other writings; Hooker, Morna D., The Gospel according to St Mark (Black, London 1991).Google Scholar Such a view is even more implausible for Jesus' family, though it is defended by Bauckham, R., Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh, 1990), 46–49.Google Scholar
8 Hengel, Martin, The Johannine Question (ET London/Philadelphia, 1989), 57–63Google Scholar, correctly sees Cerinthus as allied to the opposition attacked in 1 Jn. 4.1ff., 5.6ff.; but for some reason he ignores the following paragraph on the Ebionites, and makes Cerinthus ‘a Judaeo-Christian… with some popular philosophical learning’ (60). In fact he isa straighforward jewish Christian, and his ascription of the creation to a being other than God is in line with similar opposition beliefs hinted at in Ephesians and the Pastorals.
9 Vielhauer, P., in Hennecke, E.Schneemelcher, W., New Testament Apocrypha (ET London 1963), 153–158Google Scholar; dating, 156.
10 The Ebionite Gospel (GE) is plainly dependent on all three Synoptic Gospels, though perhaps especially on Matthew; so that the purest form of Ebionite doctrine to which we have access is Irenaeus' account. But GE is a document of the Ebionite community, even if partly corrupted by orthodoxy; and it gives support in general to Irenaeus.
11 In the Jewish-Christian Gospel of the Hebrews, ‘the whole fount of the Holy Spirit’ descends on Jesus and rests on him (Jerome, Comm. on Isaiah IV, ad Isa 11.2, in NT Apocrypha, 163f.).
12 We are not without evidence of a possessionist opposition to the Pauline gospel over this period: 1 Jn.4.1–3, 5.6–8 are written against them (cf.Hengel, The johannine Question, 57ff.), and so are Jn. 8.31–59, and the Nicodemus passage, 3.1–21, and the letters of Ignatius. I have an account of this in A Tale of Two Missions (London: S.C.M. 1994).Google Scholar
13 The question arises whether the acts of power are in evidence because such can only be done by dead men raised to life, or because John had done miracles in his lifetime. The latter option is preferred by Gnilka, I, 248, and Guelich, 329f.
14 This is contested by Gnilka, I, 248, as the opinion of Baptist disciples, on the ground that Mark does not dispute such a claim; but his Gospel may be seen as a whole as the disputing of a possessionist christology – see below.
15 Marcan redaction is stressed by Gnilka, I 44, and Guelich, 10; but the issue is muddied by the presence of the same combination of texts (Mal. 3.1, Exod. 23.20, Isa. 40.3) in Matt. 11 and Lk. 7, with the same Marcan alterations. The ascription to Qthen causes impossible difficulties: cf. my ‘Luke's Knowledge of Matthew’, Strecher, G. (ed.), Minor Agreements: Symposium Göttingen 1991 (Göttinger Theologische Arbeiten 50, Göttingen 1993), pp. 143–162.Google Scholar
16 Paul's opponents spoke of ⋯μ⋯ρα κυρ⋯ου, the same expression as in Mal. 3.23, as having arrived (1 Thess. 5.2, 2 Thess. 2.2 [with articles]).
17 So Gnilka, I 49–54, esp. 50; cf. Lührmann, 38; rejected by Guelich, 33.
18 Bultmann, R., History of the Synoptic Tradition (ET Oxford21968 = 2nd German edition, 1931), 253f.Google Scholar, thought the addition was made either by Mark or his source to an original version.
19 The Elijah parallel is noted by Nineham, D. E., The Gospel of Saint Mark, (London, 1963)Google Scholar, 64, and by Gnilka, 156ff., Lührmann, 38f., Guelich, 36–40; but the significance of the passage is seen, more or less tentatively, as the portrayal ofjesus as a new Adam – tempted by Satan, with the wild animals, fed by angels (Vit. Adae4). There is however no place in the Adam story for the Spirit, the desert, the violence of ⋯κβ⋯λλει or the forty days, all of which are features of the Elijah story; the angelic feeding may not have been a strong tradition in Mark's time; and such a use of the Adam typology would be isolated. The temptation element, without a mention of Jesus' withstanding it, seems secondary.
20 So Gnilka, 75: ‘Wir werden damit zu rechnen haben, dass der Erzähler der vormarkinischen Überlieferung unmittelbar an 1 Kön 19 anschliesst und so eine christliche Form der Berufungsgeschichte gestaltet.’
21 I 75.
22 Cf. Jn. 3.2, ‘Rabbi, we know…’ Becker, Jürgen, Das Evangelium nach Johannes (ÖTK 4/1 Gütersloh, 2 1985), 132Google Scholar: ‘Diese Christologie… wird also von einer Gruppe in der joh Gemeindeverband vertreten.’
23 I 81. Guelich, 57, speculates on a word-play between 
and 
; or it is sometimes thought that there is a connection with Ἀαρων τ⋯ν ἅγιον κυρx1F77;ου in Ps. 105.16 – but the force of this would be obscure.
24 The instruction to offer what Moses commanded would also be congenial to the PMG and alien to Mark.
25 Gnilka, II 30–36, makes Mark introduce the three disciples, and blacken Peter; but he denies that F. Hahn is right in supposing an original divine address, ‘This is my servant’. Cf. Hahn's detailed proposal of the development of the story, Christologische Hoheitstitel (FRLANT 83, Göttingen, 1966), 310–312, 334–340.Google Scholar It is an interesting speculation that the PMG once closed with the Transfiguration, ending ‘And looking round they no longer saw anyone with them’, as in 2 Kgs. 2, and without ‘Hear him’ – cf. Bultmann, History, 259–261.
26 Irenaeus, A.H., 1.26.1.
27 There is no space here to do more than indicate an approach to the Son of Man problem. It now seems clear (i) that ‘the Son of Man’ does not occur in Dan. 7.13 (‘one like a son of man ’ is not the same); (ii) ‘a/the son of man’ was a phrase in regular Aramaic use to mean ‘one’; (iii) it is quite unlikely that Mark and Matthew, who spoke Aramaic, would have misunderstood the phrase and supposed it to be a title. On the other hand Ps. 8.5ff. soon became part of the Pauline churches' armoury against Jewish-Christian claims of the authority of the heavenly powers. Paul cites ‘All things are put in subjection under him’ (=Jesus) in 1 Cor. 15.24–28; and the same text was used in the same context at Eph. 1.22. Heb. 2.6–9 develops this (probably before 70): ‘What is man that thou rememberest him, or νἱ⋯ς ⋯νθρώπου that thou visitest him…’ Jesus, God's eternal Son, is the νἱ⋯ς ⋯νθρώπου, who (i) was made for a little while lower than the angels (in the Incarnation); (ii) tasted death for all (on the cross); (iii) was crowned with glory and honour (in the resurrection); (iv) has the powers under his feet. The four evangelists then all exploit this theme as a counter not only to Jewish-Christian speculations on the powers, but much more to their denials that Jesus-Christ was divine-human unity: he becomes ⋯ νἱ⋯ς τοǾ ⋯νθρώπου who must suffer and rise; and the similarity of Dan. 7.13 then enables the parousia to be drawn in. We thus have an explanation for the post-Pauline development of the text: Jesus can never have used the phrase theologically.
28 II 322. Lührmann similarly takes Ps. 22.1 as code for the psalm as a whole, which he thinks a pre-Marcan, Aramaic community has used to express Jesus' faith. Nineham, 427ff., is at his most splendidly sceptical.
29 It is sometimes suggested that even if people did not know the whole psalm so well, they would be aware that it ended in vindication; but Isa. 53 ends in vindication, and we have the impression that verses from it are cited in NT times as individual oracles, without consciousness of the context.
30 We may wonder why he felt bound to include them when they were so alien to his theology; but this is often a problem in redactions. Why does Luke retain ‘and not neglect the other’, viz. tithes? Or why does the Jerusalem psalmist retain ‘Before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh…’ (Ps. 80.2) ? Perhaps every Christian knew Jesus’ dying words by Heart.
31 This quirk explains why there is no scandalised citation of GE on the crucifixion in Epiphanius.
32 According to Irenaeus, the Ebionites believed that ‘Jesus rose from the dead’, and this is likely to be right, for Epiphanius does not report any Ebionite unorthodoxy on the resurrection. It is likely that they believed in a non-physical resurrection, such as we find being refuted by Ignatius in Smyrn. 3 (where the ‘docetists’ are just Jewish Christians, who deny that Christ suffered). Ignatius' counter-arguments are the recent extensions of the Pauline resurrection tradition which come in Lk. 24 and Jn. 20. We may think that Mark's story of the empty tomb is an earlier attempt to stress that the physical body of Jesus had risen, against a spiritualising PMG doctrine such as Paul seems to oppose in 1 Cor. 15.