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Note: these excerpt threads are
subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority
permits
Dennis MacDonald: "Reading Mark as a Homeric hypertext permits a new solution to the vexing problem of the kind of book Mark intended to write. Earlier scholarship viewed Mark as a passive transcriber of tradition and his gospel as a product of oral-traditional memories of Jesus, but subsequent studies have demonstrated Mark's artful and thorough redaction of traditions into a coherent literary work... In this book I argue, however, that the key to Mark's composition has less to do with its genre than with its imitation of specific texts of a different genre: Mark wrote a prose epic modeled largely after the Odyssey and the ending of the Iliad... Mark's dependence on the Odyssey suggests elegant solutions to some of the most enigmatic and disputed aspects of the Gospel: its depiction of the disciples as inept, greedy, cowardly, and treacherous; its interests in the sea, meals, and secrecy; and even its mysterious reference to the unnamed young man who fled naked at Jesus' arrest. But Mark did not steal from the epics, he transvalued them by making Jesus more virtuous and powerful than Odysseus and Hector..." [3] "Because of Homer's unrivaled hegemony in ancient education, such imitations were common. Youngsters learn their ABGs by identifying them in epic poetry, and only after demonstrating facility with the Iliad and the Odyssey were they promoted to other books. Although it would be hyperbolic to call the epics a Bible for the Greeks, they did function as encyclopedias of religion, history, and culture... Students in ancient schools learned to write largely through mimesis or its Latin equivalent, imitatio... The favorite target for imitation was Homeric epic, especially for the writing of poetry... Imitations of Homer were common in prose as well; students learned to imitate across genres, especially by paraphrasing epic into prose... Prose authors imitated the Odyssey more frequenly than any other book of the ancient world. It was supplemented, parodied, burlesqued, dramatized... No limits obtained to what features of the hypotext an author might imitate: its genre, characterizations, type-scenes, poetic conventions, distinctive motifs... Texts discussing rhetorical imitations frequently mention the practice of occulting or disguising one's reliance on a model... These disguises included altering the vocabulary, varying the order, length, and structure of sentences, improving the content, and generating a series of formal transformations. Although students usually imitated a single work, the experienced author borrowed from many... Skilled authors were bees that took the best nectar from many blossoms to produce textual honey... The observant reader, noticing the markers, will compare the model or hypotext with the hypertext and perhaps judge the imitation superior, whether in literary expression, philosophical acuity, or religious power... The success of these transvaluations required the reader to detect the presence of the hypotext, and to this end the author supplied hypertextual clues. Favorite flags for hypertextuality in prose were signifying names..." [4-6] The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark "Unless the reader recognizes the model, he or she will fail to see the emulation. Unfortunately, the flags or markers often are so subtle and culturally specific that contemporary readers may miss them. What was overt to them often is covert to us... If ancient readers relished the discovery of the arcane, it is not surprising to learn that they also could write with deeper meanings implied. New Testament scholars long have argued that subtle allusions to Jewish scriptures may trigger profound intertextual interpretations... He no doubt had access to traditions and sources, but they by no means determined the shape of his narrative. Like most of his literary contemporaries, he was in control of his own composition, including the creation of stories as alternatives to the dominant religious narratives of his culture. Ancient evangelism was, to a large extent, a mythomachia, a battle among competing fictions. Luke was engaged in a literary battle on at least two fronts: Jewish scriptures in the rear, and Greek poetry up ahead. The principal virtues of his compositions reside not in his linear continuity with historical events or traditions but in his strategic transformation of ancient narratives..." [149-151] Does The New Testament Imitate Homer? "Mark's Jesus was not a national messiah who would inaugurate a kingdom by divine power; he was the crucified one who endured suffering and expected the same of his followers. Indeed, it was precisely because he suffered that he would be victorious and return as the Son of Man to punish his foes. Paul had advocated a similar christology, but he did not write a gospel. Mark did and thus needed literary models for his suffering protagonist. He found partial inspiration in the Septuagint. The passion narrative, for example, bulges with possible allusions to psalms of lamentation and poems of suffering servants. But Mark's primary inspiration, I suggest, was Homer's presentation of Odysseus... | ...the earliest evangelist was no mere editor; he was an artist uninhibited in his creation of theological fiction. Mark not only handed on tradition; more than anyone else in the early church with the possible exception of Luke, he created it... These Marcan myths became constitutive of early Christian reality, just as myth is constitutive of the reality of every major religious tradition. Such traditions are not fixed and static but externally porous, internally plastic, multiple, and continously renegotiated cluster of texts, symbols, and practices. By replacing ancient Greek myths with myths of his own, Mark was doing what he was supposed to do: adapting cultural monuments to address new realities..." [15-16|190] The Homeric Epics & The Gospel of Mark "The most obvious similarities between the Gospel of Mark and Homer seem to pertain to characterizations. Like Odysseus, Jesus is a wise carpenter who suffers many things and sails on the sea with associates who are foolish and even treacherous. Like Odysseus, Jesus comes to his 'house,' the Jerusalem Temple, which has fallen into the hands of his rivals, the Jewish authorities, who, like Penelope’s suitors, devour widows’ houses. Blind Bartimaeus calls to mind the blind seer Tiresias; the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus for burial resembles Odysseus’s nurse Eurycleia ('Renowned-far-and-wide'), who recognized her lord’s identity when washing his feet. The youth who flees naked at Jesus’ arrest and reappears at his tomb is an ersatz-Elpenor, whose soul met Odysseus in the nether gloom. Mark’s so-called 'Messianic Secret' derives from Odysseus’s disguise to keep the suitors in the dark concerning his identity. Jesus, too, seeks to silence those who witness his great deeds lest word get back to his foes. The calming of the sea transforms the tale of Aeolus’s bag of winds; the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac borrows from the stories of Circe and Polyphemus; the beheading of John the Baptist resembles the murder of Agamemnon; the multiplication of loaves and fish for five thousand men and again for four thousand men and women reflects the twin feasts in Odyssey 3 and 4, the first of which feeds four thousand five hundred men at the edge of the sea. Jesus walks on water like Hermes and Athena. The Transfiguration of Jesus before Peter, James, and John is a transform of Odysseus’s transfiguration before his son, Telemachus. Odysseus’s picaresque entry into the city of the Phaeacians inspired Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The cleansing of the Temple imitates Odysseus’s slaying of the suitors, and the agony at Gethsemane echoes Odysseus’s agony during his last night with Circe before going off to Hades. As we shall see, Mark also borrowed extensively from the Iliad..." [1-2] My Turn "Several aspects of the Acts of Andrew indicate that its author wanted to write a Christian Odyssey. The Acts begins with Andrew, the former fisherman, sailing with the aid of his god from Achaea to rescue Matthias from Myrmidons, Achille's allies in Homer... Andrew is tied to his cross like Odyseus to the mast, symbolizing the apostle's voyage to his true homeland. His soul 'speeds toward things beyond time, beyond law, beyond speech, beyond body, beyond bitter pleasures full of wickedness and every pain.' This use of the siren episode from the Odyssey correlates with contemporary allegories of Odysseus as a cipher for the soul seeking to return to its immaterial home beyond the imperling sea of matter... Lesser characters in the Acts of Andrew also play roles mimetic of characters in the Odyssey... The attentive reader may also find recastings of Achilles, Hector, Helen, Menelaus, Heracles, Zeus, Hera, Haphaestus, Ares, Dionysus, and several other gods and heros. Not only is Andrew a Christianized Odysseus, he is also a Christianized Socrates, willingly going to his death while educating his comrades concerning his soul. By means of this contrastive characterization, the Acts of Andrew replaces the ethically questionable traits of Homeric hereos with Christian virtues... In addition to the Odyssey the author of the Acts imitated or alluded to several other works of Greek classical antiquity..." [13-14] The ACTS of ANDREW |