Mark's Gospel needs very close study

[SeniorCitizen007]

Read Mark 6, 1-3

 

Ask yourself why were the people offended by Jesus? It DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!

 

Now go back to Mark 3, 31-35 and insert this before the reference to peopele being offended ...then finish up with Mark 3, 30.

 

And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. And they were offended at him. Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.

 

Mark 6, 3 is the only reference to Jesus being a carpenter ... but this is a scribal error! The original word was not "carpenter", Greek 'tektwn' .. but "young child", Greek 'teknon'. The Greek "w" and "o" sounds are similar. It read: Is not this (man) the young child (they hadn't seen him since he was a child), the son of Mary ..

 

At some point in time a scribe misheard "teknon" as "tektwn" ... and Jesus became a carpenter!

 

 

 

 

[SeniorCitizen007]

The scribe who made the error that resulted in Jesus becoming a carpenter was probably influenced by "... mighty works wrought by his hands ..."

[Blood]

How would we know if this was a scribal error? "Young child" makes more sense than "carpenter," but as far as I know, there are no early texts with "young child."

[mymistake]

Wait, you have access the the original Mark?  I find it unlikely that a scribe would be able to make the error before the authors of Luke and Mathew could expand on Mark (that is a very tight timeline) but if you have the originals let's see the evidence.

[mwc]

     It's tempting to want to put that there but is there anymore justification for it?  Scribal error is convenient but since we also have the same "mistake" in the other synoptics it seems the error happened right off the bat and became the surviving tradition when people should have been able to catch and correct it.

 

     I'm also wondering how appropriate it would be to call an adult man a "young child" even in that situation?  It seems strange.  Perhaps if we're talking about the story in Luke when he was supposed to be twelve but here it seems a bit odd.  I mean they list off his siblings, of which he's the eldest, and yet call him a young child?  It comes off strangely.

 

          mwc

 

[SeniorCitizen007]

2 hours ago, Blood said:

How would we know if this was a scribal error? "Young child" makes more sense than "carpenter," but as far as I know, there are no early texts with "young child."

 

Christian commentators as early as 200 AD were saying that the texts had become so corrupted that it was unlikely that the original texts could be reconstructed. My studies (over a 40 year period) have led me to think that the original text of Mark was badly damaged at some point and that someone who wasn't fully familiar with the text reassembled the pieces ... and made something of a mess of it. I actually "see" evidence that the text was attacked with a weapon.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hello SeniorCitizen, yours is an interesting suggestion. Off the top of my head, I don't see it as a strong one, though.

1. it requires that the scribe also made an error of copying or of hearing the definite article that introduces the noun in question. τέκνον, child, is neuter, but τέκτων carpenter, is masculine. The article in the ms. tradition is the masculine form of "the." If you start to say or write "ho..." in Greek, the other person expects some masculine form to follow, not a neuter form. THAT would call for the phrase to be introduced by the Greek form "to," which is the neuter article. 

2. what independent grounds do we have for thinking that the townspeople had not seen Jesus since he was a boy? 

Since it relies on two otherwise unsupported assumptions, the suggestion you make does not carry a high probability of being correct, as far as I can see.

 

You doubtless have seen, FWIW, that some early mss. have "is not this the son of the carpenter"... 

[SeniorCitizen007]

Mark 1, 35

And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed

... is followed by (in my opinion)

Mark 1, 40-42

And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean

Mark 1, 43 etc. is by another author. The Greek of verse 43 literally translates as "and snorting like a horse in anger he immediately threw him out".

The word translated as "moved with compassion" actually means "to feel the suffering of another within one's bowels".

There's no way that the Jesus character would send a man he'd just healed to a priest ... Jesus was hostile towards the priesthood.

[SeniorCitizen007]

2 hours ago, mymistake said:

Wait, you have access the the original Mark?  I find it unlikely that a scribe would be able to make the error before the authors of Luke and Mathew could expand on Mark (that is a very tight timeline) but if you have the originals let's see the evidence.

 

The original text of Mark is embedded in what we have today ... over half of which is by a later author. Scholars talk about the Paulinian and the Petrine influences in Mark. The original text has a mathematically-based structure to it. It was written in sections of exactly 51 words. One day, hopefully, computers will succeed in extracting it. One thing of interest is that it wasn't Peter's mother-in-;law Jesus healed ... it was his own mother-in-law. There is a sequence ... a heckler in the synagogue ... his mother-in-law ... an outcast leper. All three are a direct challenge to him. It makes no sense if it was Peter's mother-in-law he healed. Altering the text so that the mother-in-law is Jesus' identifies a 51 word section.

[mymistake]

19 minutes ago, SeniorCitizen007 said:

The original text of Mark is embedded in what we have today ... over half of which is by a later author. Scholars talk about the Paulinian and the Petrine influences in Mark. The original text has a mathematically-based structure to it. It was written in sections of exactly 51 words. One day, hopefully, computers will succeed in extracting it. One thing of interest is that it wasn't Peter's mother-in-;law Jesus healed ... it was his own mother-in-law. There is a sequence ... a heckler in the synagogue ... his mother-in-law ... an outcast leper. All three are a direct challenge to him. It makes no sense if it was Peter's mother-in-law he healed. Altering the text so that the mother-in-law is Jesus' identifies a 51 word section.

 

 

You are taking too strong of a position on this.  I'm all for finding the flaws of the Bible but let's not get ahead of ourselves because mistakes hurt our own credibility.  Use the words "may" and "might" more often.  Let people know you are offering conjecture rather than established fact.

[SeniorCitizen007]

Everything in the original Gospel of Mark (which I claim is embedded in the Gospel we have today) was very carefully thought out. Everything has meaning. There was nothing superfluous. The text was composed using the same mathematical structure as is found in the original text of Romans 1, 1-17 ... which is embedded in Romans 1, 1-17 as it exists today.

 

Consider Mark 1, 19

 

 And when he had gone a little farther thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets ...

 

How is the reader supposed to respond to the image of James and John and their father, with their HIRED servants "mending their nets"?

 

' ... one of the most enduring recurrent images in classical Greek literature, the use of yokes and nets as a metaphor for control'.

 

Prior to this Jesus met Simon and Andrew ... who were casting a net.

 

... this wasn't in the original text.

 

Catholicism uses Jesus as an instrument for control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SeniorCitizen007]

What does Magdalen really mean?

 

It was a custom amongst the Greeks when at the meal table to clean their fingers with the moist inner portion of a loaf of bread ... then throw it under the table for the dogs to eat. This discarded bread was called 'Magdalen' .

[mymistake]

15 minutes ago, SeniorCitizen007 said:

Everything in the original Gospel of Mark (which I claim is embedded in the Gospel we have today) was very carefully thought out. Everything has meaning. There was nothing superfluous.  

 

Those are two very bold claims.  Given how many errors are known it is statistically unlikely that no part of the original book of Mark was lost.  You are assuming that every mistake adds to the text but none take away from it.  Secondly how do you establish the motive of the author or that the author had to skill to give every detail meaning?  Sounds like wishful thinking.

 

19 minutes ago, SeniorCitizen007 said:

The text was composed using the same mathematical structure as is found in the original text of Romans 1, 1-17 ... which is embedded in Romans 1, 1-17 as it exists today.

 

Now you are going too far.  I hate the Bible and think it is rubbish but let's keep our criticisms grounded in fact.

 

 

[SeniorCitizen007]

The mathematical structure used is really quite simple and easy to do. The poet Ovid used a far more complex structure to protect his works. These techniques can be used in a full length novel. If a significant word used frequently throughout the book is arranged so that its first letter is always an even number of letters from the beginning the total of the positions divided by the number of times the word is used can be arranged to be the first letter of a significant word in the book. If one is really smart it can also be arranged for the significant word to always be an odd number of words from the beginning. As it gets more complex one can point readers to "secret messages" within the text. Their is evidence that sometime in the 7th century (a 100 plus years after Mohammed's death) the Koran was structured according to a mathematical system based upon the number 19.

 

https://submission.org/miracle.html

 

 

[sdelsolray]

Woo woo spotted.