Before we investigate the real identity of the seventh sign in the Signs Gospel, we'll have a look at the other two apparently missing from GMk: the Water into Wine and the Catch of Fish. We'll find that neither is missing from GMk at all--the Markan author has simply reused them, in just the way that I describe in my research criteria: he has split them in two, and relocated them. The Markan author frequently used splitting, duplicating, and re-using to create the Markan effect of "doubling" that is so famously present in his gospel. These pericopes are no exception.
The Water into Wine technically does not appear in GMk. But notice something interesting: there's a Markan parallel to the Water into Wine right where we might expect it, towards the beginning of Mark's gospel, in Mk 2:19-22:
Jesus said to them, "Can the groomsmen fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they can't fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then will they fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, or else the patch shrinks and the new tears away from the old, and a worse hole is made. No one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the skins, and the wine pours out, and the skins will be destroyed; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins."
As others have noticed, there are key concepts shared here between GMk and GJn:
- Both pericopes, of course, are about wine (OINON).
- Both Mark and John speak of wine in the context of a "bridegroom" (NUMFIOS/N in Mk 2:19, NUMFION in Jn 2:9).
- Both use wine to compare and contrast one drinking-object with another: Mark compares "new wine" in a "new wineskin" with that in an "old wineskin"; John compares "good wine" with "worse wine".
So Mk 2:19-22 seems like a truncated, transformed version of the Water into Wine, preserving the same general concepts, but without an actual working of a miracle. What's actually going on, however, is more complicated, because Mk 2:19-22 is a parallel to the second half of Logion 47 of the Gospel of Thomas:
Nobody drinks aged wine and immediately wants to drink young wine. Young wine is not poured into old wineskins, or they might break, and aged wine is not poured into a new wineskin, or it might spoil.
An old patch is not sewn onto a new garment, since it would create a tear.
And I have previously argued that the Markan author used GTh as a source for Jesus' words.
So I would argue that the reason why this logion was selected for this location is because he encountered the Water into Wine sign, knew the GTh logion, and went to GTh to borrow it and insert it in this position--towards the beginning of the gospel, right where he found the Water into Wine sign. This is evident because the GTh logion doesn't speak of a bridegroom, but GMk does--and that element must have come from the Signs Gospel. The Markan author's linking of a bridegroom with the Thomasine saying about wine and wineskins was inspired by the Water into Wine's linking of a bridegroom with the serving of wine at a feast, and the GTh saying was also a comparison between two different kinds of wine, so the Markan author would have found it doubly appropriate to use in this location. So "Mark" replaced the original symbolism with conceptually-related symbolism from GTh--but he kept the bridegroom element. So we know he originally had the Signs Gospel in front of him, and used GTh to rewrite it.
I also propose that the Last Supper is a transformed version of the Water into Wine, and that what Mark did is divide the sign of the Water into Wine in two, leaving the concepts behind, near the beginning of his gospel, but moving the narrative elements forward, to the end of his gospel:
- The Water into Wine features stone vessels filled with water (UDATOS) that is then carried to the steward, and the Last Supper similarly begins with a man carrying a clay vessel of water (UDATOS).
- Both feature transformations of liquid involving wine: in the miracle at Cana, Jesus turns water into wine, and at the Last supper, the miracle is taken one step further as Jesus symbolically turns wine into his blood.
- The steward in the sign of the Water into Wine has simply been replaced at the Last Supper by Jesus himself--Jesus becomes both the miracle-worker and the distributor of miraculous food and drink.
So why did Mark relocate the narrative elements to the end of his gospel? I propose his primary motivation was that he wanted to conform the apostle Paul's teaching with that of the Signs Gospel.
Paul says in 1 Cor 11 that Jesus "on the night he was handed over, took bread" and "took the cup" and performed what became for Christians the eucharistic ritual. Michael Turton has shown how the Markan author is clearly familiar with Paul's letters, and often seems to be directly adapting passages from Paul, explaining Pauline theology in terms of a concrete narrative scenario involving Jesus. Signs doesn't contain a Last Supper scene, but Mark wanted to create one for his own gospel, because he wanted to illustrate Paul's teaching by way of a historical story about Jesus. It's not that I think early Christians didn't celebrate ritual meals using words resembling Paul's (though I can't say with any certainty when it began), it's just that Turton has shown that Mark is clearly adapting Pauline teachings directly from the Paul's letters, including 1 Cor, so we should assume that the similarity here between the words of institution in the Last Supper and 1 Cor 11 is due to direct influence. Indeed, Paul claims that he knows these words from divine revelation, and not from any historical tradition.
There was a sign in SG that seemed to serve Mark's purposes--the Water into Wine. The symbolism in this sign was too close to Paul's eucharist scene for Mark to ignore, so he decided to use it as a framework for the Last Supper. The theology and the words of institution were still taken from I Cor, but the larger narrative context is from the Signs Gospel, by way of a blending of the betrayal meal in Jn 13 with the Water into Wine sign. The problem for Mark was that this sign lay at the beginning of the Signs Gospel, not at the end, but he knew the meal Paul spoke of happened "on the night [Jesus] was handed over", so he knew where to move it--to the end of the gospel, just before the moment of Jesus' arrest.
And there may also have been a betrayal scene in the Signs Gospel, involving a shared meal between Jesus and another disciple (apparently Judas, though this may not be original to SG). Notice the "dipping" in both gospels: EMBAPTOMENOS in GMk, BAPSAS/EMBAPSAS in GJn. I don't know whether this is Markan or is from the Signs Gospel, however--it's possible that Mark wholly invented the betrayal scene, and John simply adapted it from original GMk. Turton suggests that it was invented from the Pauline detail of being "handed over" (PAREDIDOTO in 1 Cor 11, PARADIDOTAI in 14:21, see also 14:10, 18). Fortna calls Jn 13:1-20 "patently composite" (Fortna 1988) but does not try to reconstruct a version from the Signs Source. I leave it an open question as to exactly where the detail of Jesus' betrayal came from.
At any rate, whether the betrayal language in the Last Supper is Markan or pre-Markan, Mark moved the Water into Wine narrative to that location (leaving behind the symbolic language), conflated it with the betrayal scene, then folded in words of institution with their mini-narrative found in 1 Cor. So the Markan structure we're describing looks like this:
[SG Sign 1] Water into Wine--symbolism (Mk 2:19-20)
[SG Sign 1]/ Water into Wine--symbolism/
[Th 47b] Two kinds of wine (Mk 2:21-22)
....
[SG Sign 1] Water into Wine--narrative (Mk 14:13-14)
[1 Cor 11:23] "night he was handed over" (Mk 14:15-21)
[SG Sign 1]/ Water into Wine--narrative/
[1 Cor 11:23-26] Words of Institution (Mk 14:22-24)
[SG Sign 1] Water into Wine--narrative (Mk 14:25)
Thus, the Water into Wine sign is present and accounted for in GMk: part of it is found in Mk 2, in the question on fasting (attached to Th 47b), and the other part is found in Mk 14, in the Last Supper, transformed and assimilated to Paul's testimony about Jesus' eucharistic banquet (and perhaps also to Christian liturgical traditions).
Next, we'll look at the sign of the Catch of Fish.
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