Bethsaida, Secret Mark, and the Not-So-Great Omission, pt. 1

We now begin an examination of the "Bethsaida section" in GMk, so-called because at its beginning in Mk 6:45, Jesus and his disciples set out in a boat for Bethsaida, and at its end in Mk 8:27, there is a healing in Bethsaida of a blind man.

Michael Turton has done excellent work in showing that this section is riddled with non-Markan editing and interpolations, and that there was an earlier, original, "Markan" version, containing much less material than we now find in GMk.  In other words, Turton thinks there was an earlier version of GMk, that lacked much of the Bethsaida section.

What I'll show is that Cerinthus would have had every reason to eliminate the few pericopes in this authentic, earlier version of GMk.  In other words, Cerinthus performed a "Not-So-Great Omission" on original GMk. 


This also explains the phenomena we find in GMt and GLk.  Matthew filled in this section with the material from canonical GMk.  Luke/Marcion, on the other hand, left out the material from canonical GMk, because he didn't find it in Cerinthus.  Thus, "Luke's Great Omission" was based on what I call Cerinthus' "Not-So-Great Omission" (and of course, I actually think it was Marcion who made the Great Omission from canonical GMk, based on Q/GPet, but we'll leave that aside for now).

And this is entirely congruent with the HSH.  Turton's original version of GMk was SGM.  Cerinthus based Q/GPet, in part, on SGM (adding material from the Didache, GTh, and perhaps also the proto-Gospel).  So we'll find that the HSH explains the Great Omission as well as, if not better than, either the Goulder hypothesis, or the 2SH.


The Bethsaida section is generally taken to run from Mk 6:45-8:27a (with some debate about the exact verses marking the beginning and end).  This starts with the water-walking miracle (just following the feeding of the 5000) and ends with the blind man of Bethsaida and the departure for Caesara Philippi. 

The Bethsaida section also happens to coincide with Luke's Great Omission, suggesting to some (like Koester) that Luke used a version of GMk that lacked this section.  Clearly there seems to be some sort of relationship between this section and the Great Omission. 

Now we know that Matthew and Luke (or Marcion) used GMk.  (I take it for granted that the Griesbach hypothesis is too ad hoc to be considered seriously, and most scholars agree with me.)  But Matthew duplicates the Bethsaida section, whereas Luke discards it.  Why would Luke discard it?

Using the principles of analysis I outline here, there are two principal reasons why a gospel author would discard a section that we know is in his source: a theological reason, and a textual reason.  Most attempts to explain the Great Omission focus on the former, trying to find justifications that Luke might have used to leave out this section.  These have been more or less dissatisfying.

One truly textual solution is to assume, like Koester, that this section was missing from the version of GMk that Luke used.  I make an alternative suggestion, however: it wasn't missing the version of GMk that Luke used.  Instead, it was missing from another source that Luke used, and that's why he left it out.  He compared it to GMk, found the Markan material lacking in this other source, and so he favored that source over GMk in this case.

But why would Luke be comparing this source, whatever it was, directly to GMk?  Well, he'd be doing it if...the narrative resembled that of GMk.  So what could this source be?  That answer is easy--we already have a candidate: Q.  In any 2SH, or in the HSH, Luke used Q.  Why not assume that Q was where Luke found the Bethsaida material missing?

Remember, I think that Q was a full-fledged narrative gospel.  And this is where the HSH comes in handy--it shows that Q was indeed a full-fledged narrative gospel.  And in the HSH, Q in turn derived from...a version of GMk, namely Secret Mark (SGM).

So I propose it was Q that lacked the Bethsaida section, in a narrative that otherwise resembled (but was not identical to) that of canonical GMk.  But why would Q lack this section?  Again, it could be either a theological or a textual reason.  I actually propose a little of both, but we'll focus on the textual reasons first, because they are less speculative--the text is a material object we can often analyze, whereas theology is sometimes something we can only guess at.

Q apparently lacked most or all of the Bethsaida section.  Why?  One reason could be...that Q's sources also lacked this section, in whole or in part.  And the HSH proposes...that Secret Mark was Q's narrative source.  (It also suggests that there was a proto-Gospel that served as a source as well, but this is speculative for now.) 

Which leads us right back to the idea that there was, after all, a Markan source that lacked the Bethsaida section.  But the HSH differs from other solutions in that it proposes an intermediary between this earlier version of GMk, and GLk.  That intermediary was Q.

So:

--Matthew used both Q and GMk, and (typically) favored Mark's narrative
--Luke/Marcion also used both Q and GMk but (typically) favored the Q author's narrative.

This is all well and good, but it remains hypothetical--we need some supporting evidence.  How do we know Secret Mark lacked the Bethsaida section?

That's easy--it's right there in Turton's analysis.  Turton shows that the Bethsaida section is full of non-Markan language, i.e. pericopes that can't be broken down into well-balanced chiasms.  Indeed, Turton has an entire excursus on the subject, Mark Without Bethsaida.  We'll turn to this in the next post.