Talk:Gospel of Mark/Archive 1

message: " The later theory was championed on a historical-critical level by J.J. Greisbach in the 19th century, but was dealt a near death blow by H.J. Holzmann immediately prior to the 20th. While not without its own difficulties, the "Two-Document" (Mark and Q) hypothesis proposed by Holzmann and, most famously, B.H. Streeter has held great weight among scholars (liberal to conservative) for nearly 100 years. Attempts by figures such as William Farmer to revive the Greisbach hypothesis have largely failed, as it raises significantly more problems than it solves." --Does the Wikipedia reader get any information out of this inflated name-dropping? --Wetman 22:17, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You bring up a good point, but my opinion is that information is good, and that information is often tied to specific individuals.  My hope was not incessant name-dropping, but giving the reader "clues," so to speak, about where to look for further information.  Perhaps I have gone too far here - I'm in the thick of researching this stuff on the collegiate level right now, so my perspective regarding density and language is probably not too good.  Nevertheless, theories have a history, and that history is tied to specific individuals who deserve credit (or cursing :).  I won't be offended if these names are removed...but the theories behind them is solid.  Best, --Jcdavis 22:27, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: Go ahead and actually tell the story. Report the developments. Give the reader some telling quotes. Don't just present your favorite conclusions. Let the non-committed reader follow the reasoning and draw her own conclusions. Space and time are available: this is not a paper encyclopedia. Mark is an important text. Try to compensate for your own "earliest possible date" bias: it casts all the rest in an unfavorable light... --Wetman 16:17, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: A raft of further edits by User:Stephen C. Carlson in this inflated style haven't made the entry more accessible: "...despite William R. Farmer's attempt to revive the Griesbach hypothesis in 1964." The suggestion is, that if the reader doesn't know what the "Griesbach hypothesis" is, she shouldn't be reading this entry at all. The contributor would be upset to be informed that this practice is arrogant, I imagine. --Wetman 09:50, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I cut out most of the names because they were wrong (Griesbach was not Augustinian; Holtzmann's work in 1863 is not "immediately prior to the 20th century."; etc.).  My priority is to "get it right" first.  Fixing the link to Griesbach hypothesis (the closing brackets were misplaced) should help the confused reader; that's what links are for.  --scc 18:58, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: --the result was a deadend link, and "J.J. Griesbach" had been edited to "Griesbach." Opaque to the general reader. Made me quite cross (and much too harsh)... --Wetman 00:16, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Name-dropping 

message: I think this paragraph belongs further down. It is rather complicated and more for the specialists. --Harnack 11:34, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Good thought. Moving from general to specific... --Wetman 00:16, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Markan priority among the Synoptics

message: I've made a bunch of edits that I hope will be judged one at a time. They are meant to distinguish Mark from Mark, to identify, disambiguate and link offhand references, to more fairly characterize the scholarship and its bases, to apply logic more explicitly etc. I have deleted a couple of bits that offered no concrete information but posturing. Please continue to edit not revert in the collegial atmosphere that has, generally speaking, been built up at this entry. --Wetman 23:01, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good edits. I was tweaking the characteristics at the same time as you were making your edits, so merged the (small) changes I made.  The only major thing I removed from 'Characteristics' was Only in Mark does Jesus address himself, except for once, as the Son of Man, which was added back in by 68.41.141.167 a few hours ago. I wouldn't mind, except for the fact that, as I have previously demonstrated above, it's completely wrong!  --MHazell 23:21, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New edits

message: The Greek – in the case of all four Gospel accounts – has kata, Latin secondo, both meaning according to. In other words [The] Good News according to .... There is a lively discussion as to the genre of the Gospels, hence their precise title, while not original but very early all the same, may be considered significant. (It is easy to see, why one often encounters of, even in scholarly writings ... it is 9 characters and 1 space shorter, and rolls better off the tongue.)Portress 03:04, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As you suggest, the applied titles are simply a convention. A Wikipedia reader who enters Gospel According to Mark is already redirected to the page. The link "What links here" at the left of the article page will show you the links that would need to be fixed, before you moved on the the other gospels, in order to maintain consistency. Then you'd be renaming the Gospel according to Thomas too? And Gospel of Peter? The "according to" is a rather specific assertion, which doesn't always hold up to critical analysis. --Wetman 04:33, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title: "according to" 

message: It says in the article:
Out of a total of 662 verses, Mark has 406 in common with both Matthew and Luke, 145 with Matthew alone, 60 with Luke alone, and at most 51 peculiar to itself, according to a common concordance.
Unless I misunderstand the way these are counted, this cannot be correct. The number of verses common with Matthew alone and with Luke alone should be equal or less than the number in common with both. Junes 13:57, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shared verses don't seem to add up 

message: Can someone expand or clarify this?Mackm 21:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Mark and Midrash

message: "The Rome-Peter theory has been questioned in recent decades. It is argued that the Latinisms in the Greek of Mark —once seen as an indication of Roman provenance—could have stemmed from many places throughout the Western Roman empire." The wiser readers note the tell-tale "passive of non-attribution" employed in this piece of transparent special pleading. Latin literature was simply not being produced in Syria or in Alexandria in the late first/early second century, quite simply because it would have found few hearers. Official inscriptions are not literature. A couple of concise attributed quotes might clear this unintended obfuscation. 
The average Wikipedia reader asks these straightforward questions: "What kind of grammar or vocabulary reveals itself as a 'Latinism'? Why do Latinisms identify the source of texts? What regions would Latinisms in any text indicate? On what, specifically, are counter-arguments based?" Straightforward answers would be a courtesy to the reader. --Wetman 23:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A needed subsection: '''Latinisms of ''Mark'''''

message: Does anyone know why User:Satanael put the NPOV Tag on the page, but no discussion on the talk page? Can we remove the tag, or is someone going to make a case for POV? --Andrew c 03:16, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: NPOV Tag removed. If someone disagrees with this action, please explain the POV here on the talk page. --Andrew c 17:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV Tag

message: :For instance, Mark 1:1 has been found in two different forms. Half of the discovered texts before the 2nd century contain the phrase "Son of God", while half do not.
Posters at Internet Infidels Board find this statement dubious: there are no complete manuscripts of Mark's gospel from before the 4th century, fragments were quoted by church fathers in the 2nd century (and the earliest fragments do not cover Mark 1:1), and we have no references from the 1st century ("before the 2nd century"). - Mike Rosoft 22:45, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you could re-edit the text and remove the tag. --Wetman 10:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Either somebody got the century wrong, or the passage is completely incorrect. Since I am not an expert on Biblical criticism, I'll leave it for others to correct. - Mike Rosoft 08:26, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Three manuscripts lack "son of God" in Mark 1:1.  They are: Codex Sinaiticus 01 (4th cen.), Codex Koridethi 037 (9th cen.), and Minuscule 28 (11th cen.).  The "half" statistic is only correct for the 4th cen., since the other 4th cen. manuscript of Mark, Codex Vaticanus has the text.  (P45 is 3rd century, but its portion containing Mark 1:1 has not survived the ravages of time.)  It is possible to correct the statement to read before the 5th century, but, though technically correct, the revised statistic is misleading because it accords a much greater relevance to the age of a witness than is normal in the textual criticism of the New Testament.  I would favor something like: "Most  manuscripts contain the phrase "Son of God," but a couple of important ones do not." Stephen C. Carlson 15:34, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The current phrasing is still problematic: Thus half of the early texts contain the important phrase, while half do not. The article lists 3 MSS that do not have the text, while listing 1 MSS that does (and 1 that omits the whole verse). Clearly, we can say nothing about 'half' of the manuscripts listed. If we are talking about 4th century MSS, then I guess the statistic is accurate, but still misleading. It is basically saying "There are two surviving 4th century MSS, and they do not agree on this issue". Unless I am completely missing something, I move that we remove the 'half' wording.--Andrew c 06:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, don't pay attention to those dusty old manuscripts: listen to what Mother Church teaches. I have amended the text in line with Mr Carlson's information given above. --Wetman 15:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1st century manuscripts?

message: What in the world does this section have to do with the Gospel of Mark? I propose moving this information to a more relevent article.--Andrew c 00:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Earliest Christian art portraying Jesus? 

message: The statement "Those who seek to temper the anti-Semitism in Mark..." assumes that there is antisemitism in Mark. Something with which many would disagree. Srnec 04:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: POV

message: There are many direct links to biblegateway.  They should be changed to bibleverse which indirectly links to biblegateway.  Using  bibleverse is easier, smaller and better.  If in the future biblegateway ceases to exists, or wikisource provides better bible sources, only the template bibleverse will need to change. Jon513 19:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  bibleverse 

message: A number of the edits were clearly helpful, but I did a partial revert. First of all, the Manual of Style for dates says that AD is not necessary, unless using a range that starts in BC (you don't type AD 1995), and the wikilinks to the specific year articles add clarity (and they themselves don't use AD in their title either). Secondly, wikicode is prefered to hard HTML, so the blockquote elements are not prefered to a simple colon indent. Next, while there is ongoing debate over the bible verses and external links, the bibleverse template is superior because, once on the external site, it allows the user to choose a default translation from about 90 different ones. Forcing the NIV can be POV pushing, and I do not see why NIV is needed in this context. I hope you understand the partial revert, and thank you for your other edits.--Andrew c 12:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A colon indent is not the same as a block quote. A block quote indents both the left and right margin, whereas a colon only indents the left. I changed the "bibleverse" template because I didn't think that it worked with en dashes; but I see that it does. It would be best to go through the article and change the hyphens to en dashes where elision occurs. Is there a way to avoid repeated reference to the book as seen  here? For example, Mark 2:10, 28; 8:31, etc. instead of the repetition there now. —Wayward Talk 15:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See template:bibleverse-nb. I have added this to a number of the cites so that the book name isn't repeated over and over. As for blockquote vs. a colon indent... I do not care that much either way. I mean, yes, the design of a block quote is slightly superior, but I also have strong feelings about keeping html elements out of editable blocks. So its a toss up. If there were wikicode for a full blockquote, that would easily solve it. Also with blockquotes, you have to be careful about adding too many extra blank lines around it because wikipedia automatically codes for line breaks. Anyway, thanks for your imput.--Andrew c 16:33, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revert of recent edits 

message: The overwhelming majority of my changes were to either add information or relocate it.  Sometimes moving text resulted in redundancies, and these were omitted.  The few other omissions are mentioned below.  I added some references for the passage mentioned in the "Content" section.  I included a few more citations from Church fathers, and other links.  I also moved some subordinate comments and information to the references section.  I think the section on "losses and early editing" needs more information, and its new structure should allow for that.  It at least flows better now.  The previous quote of Papias was unreferenced, I referenced the quote from my Penguin Classics edition (and its translator), and took out the cryptic comment on the previous translation since it no longer applied.  I made some minor changes to the characteristics section to remove a very mild bias.  As for the omissions, I include quote and commentary below:
Removed
Furthermore, Papias' comment does not make it clear that the Mark of whom he spoke is the author of the canonical gospel which bears that name
:I think our readers are intelligent enough to know this (unrefrenced) fact on their own.  We don't need to state the obvious every time a quote is given.
All we can say with certainty, therefore, is that the gospel was composed somewhere in the Roman Empire—a conclusion that scarcely narrows the field at all!"
:A wordy way to say a simple and obvious thought.  The article still contains the thought, just not the quote.
Additionally, tradition holds that Mark was written after the death of Paul and Peter in Rome, who were both killed during Nero's reign.
:This was unnecessary since Irenaeus and the persecution were already well discussed, and since specifics on Peter and Paul are not relevant here.
Jesus seems to be also talking about the End of the world:
:Says whom?  This was just a floating thought.
(At the same time, there is a translation issue that affects the intent: the article "the" is not present in Greek MSS; it was instead added to English translations for flow and compatibility with Church doctrine. "A Son of God" would also be a correct translation, as would the omission the article entirely.)
:Greek articles work a bit differently than English articles, to compare the two languages without discussing this grammatical difference is misleading.  I preserved the point and clarified this in a footnote.
 
I also cut out the few sentences on an Aramaic Matthew (not the place for this).Lostcaesar 02:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganization