- the Water-Walking
- the Feeding of the 4000
- the Blind Man of Bethsaida
These three pericopes were the only ones written by the original Markan author, i.e. the author responsible for most of the Gospel of Mark as we know it--its overall narrative, its structures, and its characteristic features. Turton simply calls this author "Mark" (though this author was not the editor of the canonical GMk.)
So there was an original version of GMk that featured these pericopes alone, in this order, in this section of the gospel.
We know that Matthew nevertheless used canonical GMk in composing his gospel, because he has all the material in the Bethsaida section that the canonical author has. But did Luke/Marcion also use canonical GMk?
Helmut Koester, for one, thinks that Luke actually used an earlier version of GMk--one that lacked the Bethsaida section, and that explains the Great Omission (because the Great Omission is basically the Bethsaida section). Well...
...what if Koester is just describing Turton's original GMk? Original GMk could be the same as Koester's version--it just also contained the three pericopes in this section that Turton has identified as the work of the original Markan author. Still, if Luke/Marcion used Turton's original GMk in this way, there would nevertheless have been an omission--it would just have been a "Not-So-Great" Omission. But why would Luke (or Marcion) have omitted these three pericopes?
According to my methodology, there must be either a textual reason, or a theological reason. But neither Luke nor Marcion would have been likely to omit these pericopes for theological reasons. They each would have been motivated to keep at least one or two of these pericopes, so it isn't reasonable to assume that either was responsible for omitting them.
Marcion would not have wanted to omit the Water-Walking. On the contrary, he would have been very interested in presenting this spiritual, almost ghostly Jesus, manifesting his power to the disciples. And in the case of the other two pericopes, Marcion would have had no motivation whatsoever to leave them out.
And Luke, for his part, would have mistrusted the Water-Walking, but would have been very interested in the Feeding of the 4000. The symbolic implications of it are clear: the Gentiles are fed, and afterwards the fragments are gathered together into seven baskets. This represented the seven deacons, who were responsible for sharing the community meal with the gentile followers of Jesus. Luke portrays this in detail in Acts, so there's no reason why he would have left it out here. Nor is there any reason why Luke would have left out the Blind Man of Bethsaida. So theological reasons for either Luke or Marcion abandoning these pericopes are not immediately obvious.
But there isn't a good textual reason either, if Luke/Marcion used original GMk (=SGM) directly. Up until this point in the narrative, Luke/Marcion has been using GMk consistently and in order. So there is no reason why he should have left them out.
Goulder points this out in his opus Luke: A New Paradigm (p. 436); through Lk 9:17, Luke has included nearly all of GMk, leaving out only the Beelzebul pericope and the death of John the Baptist. And he'll use the Beelzebul pericope later, in Lk 12, and he does mention John's death; he just doesn't include the extended story that Mark does.
To his credit, Goulder himself does try to account for the Great Omission, ussing the Farrer Hypothesis framework (i.e. that Luke knew both canonical GMk and GMt). But his treatment of the Bethsaida section and the Great Omission in general is inadequate and surprisingly all-too brief, taking up only a single page of text (pp. 436-7). Surely this is somewhat remarkable, considering how much detail Goulder goes into with the rest of Luke (several hundred pages in two volumes).
Goulder can only offer the suggestion that Luke "wished to limit his account of Jesus' ministry in the Gospel to Galilee and Judea," offering as supporting evidence the fact that "he seems similarly to excise a great loop of Paul's missionary life in Arabia". But this of course is no evidence at all, since Luke had no textual record of Paul's mission in Arabia at all, whereas we can be quite certain that he used GMk. So all we have is Goulder's guess that Luke/Marcion wanted to restrict his description of Jesus' mission to Galilee
Goulder also tries to justify this idea based on his claim that Luke "has a clear tendency in Acts to tidy up the story into geographically discrete units", and that therefore any ministry by Jesus outside of Galilee would be "peripheral to his mission". But in order to fit the data to his hypothesis, Goulder admits that "'Galilee' for this purpose has to be interpreted rather liberally: it includes 'the country of the Gergesenes opposite Galilee' (8.26-39), and Bethsaida, also east of the Jordan, but none of the Decapolitan hinterland." I hardly see how this constitutes a "geographically discrete unit", so I fail to see how Luke's narrative style in Acts has anything to do with the Great Omission here. Nor am I sure it makes any sense to imagine Luke consulting a gazeteer--or even any sort of map--of the Levant to make sure Jesus does visit the Decapolis, but avoids the "Decapolitan hinterland". Goulder makes a brave effort here, but the support for his explanation is flimsy at best.
He also claims that we can find "echoes" of the missing Bethsaida section here and there elsewhere in Luke's gospel. This may be so (or not), but I don't claim that Luke/Marcion didn't know this material at all; he was using canonical GMk. The question is why he would abruptly leave out this rather large section of GMk after faithfully following Mark's narrative for so long.
So the Goulder-Farrer Hypothesis seems to fail rather badly in this very critical matter. There seems to be no good theological or textual reason for Luke (or Marcion) to have left these pericopes out of his gospel, no matter what version of GMk he was using. Nor does my suggestion that Koester's original GMk is the same as Turton's GMk help at all, because we're still left without a reason why Luke or Marcion would have left out the three original pericopes in this section.
However...
...assuming a Two-Source Hypothesis, we know that Luke/Marcion used Q. And I have argued (using my Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis) that there was a Q, and that it was a gospel, written by Cerinthus--and that the "Gospel of Peter" is a fragment from that gospel. Meaning, Luke/Marcion used Q. Does this give us any clues?
Well, the Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis assumes Cerinthus wrote Q
If Cerinthus had been the one to leave them out of a Q gospel, that could provide a textual reason why Luke/Marcion left them out of his gospel--along with the rest of the Bethsaida section. He left these pericopes out...because he didn't find them in Q. In fact he left the entire Bethsaida section out, because he only found it in canonical GMk--the rest of it wasn't in Q either (being the work of the canonical Markan author). For Cerinthus hadn't used canonical GMk--he'd used original Mark, i.e. SGM. All he knew in this section were these three pericopes. And he omitted them.
So, Luke/Marcion compared Q to canonical GMk, found the material in Mk 6:45-8:26 missing in Q, and favored that account over canonical GMk. He felt uncomfortable including this uniquely Markan material in his gospel, so he just left it out.
Now if I'm right, then Cerinthus would have needed a reason to leave these three Markan pericopes out of his gospel. Can we find such a reason for each pericope? I argue we can. I'll present these reasons in my next post.
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