Edgar, there's not really very much involved. I have made the comment
several times, over the past year or two, that I thought that Mark, to
judge by his weird Greek, would not have passed a first-year Greek
composition course. A month or so ago Edward Hobbs wrote me and said he
thought Mark was a better writer than I had been willing to concede. I got
to thinking about it and wrote him that I guess it really depended upon how
much of what we deem "bad Greek" was in his sources and how much "bad
Greek" is really evident in what we can fairly reasonably deem redactional.
Upon pondering it and looking more closely at the passages I thought really
sloppy, I decided to suspend judgment until I could test it more
adequately. I am inclined to think, however, that the sections where I find
the worst Greek are very likely unaltered pieces of Mark's inherited
tradition rather than his own composition. This would be hard to prove to
everyone's satisfaction, but it's my new working hypothesis, for what it's
worth.
Yes, it DOES look very much like we're going to have the Cardinals in a
World Series with the Yankees. I wouldn't put it beyond the Braves to stage
a 3-game comeback, but at least it seems improbable now.
Regards, c