Re: Mk1.2 and an infinite loop on my computer

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Wed, 19 Feb 1997 21:49:45 -0600

At 2:46 PM -0600 2/19/97, Brian E. Wilson wrote:
>>A snip from Carl Conrad:
>>regarding Mk 1:2, let me say that I don't think this is a question of
>>inerrancy; Mark conflates two OT passages here: 1:2 is from Malachi 3:1
>>while the passage attached to it in 1:3 without interruption is from
>>Isaiah 40:3. Mark intends to identify John the Baptist with Elijah and
>>the key word actually appears in the line-ending EN THi ERHMWi in
>>Isaiah 40:3, which he picks up in 1:4 BAPTIZWN EN THi ERHMWi. In my
>>opinion, Mark is not actually mis-stating the source of his citation.
>
>Carl,
>If there is no error in Mk 1.2, why is there massive manuscript evidence
>- Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Washington plus lots of others - altering
>EN TW HSAIA TW PROFHTH to EN TOIJ PROFHTAIJ ? The fact that Mark
>may not have perceived his error, does not mean to say that he was
>correct to ascribe a quotation which is a combination of Exodus 23.20a
>and Malachi 3.l to HSAIAJ hO PROFHTHJ. He was wrong, as Matthew and Luke
>perceived by refusing to put this material in the same context as Mark.

I'm sorry. I now see that I was answering a different question from the one
you asked. I thought you were asking if Mark made a mistake and my answer
is that I don't think so. I think rather that his copyists and Matthew
thought he had made a mistake, but I suspect that they hadn't understood
his point, which was linking EN THi ERHMWi in the Isaiah passage with his
announcement about John the Baptist. There are numerous instances where
later copyists have "corrected" what they thought was an error in the text
they were copying; sometimes they were right, but at least as often they
messed up a text that was not flawed in the first place.

>Moreover, you say nothing about my friend's parallel problem with
>Matthew 27.9:
>
>TOTE EPLHRWQH TO hRHQEN DIA IEREMIOU TOU PROFHTOU LEGONTOJ, KAI ELABON
>TO TRIAKONTA ARGURIA, THN TIMHN TOU TETIMHMENOU...
>
>The reference to TO TRIAKONTA ARGURIA is from Zechariah 11.7, and is not
>found in IEREMIAJ. Again, the manuscript tradition indicates that this
>was an error recognized in the early centuries by many.
>
>What is wrong with regarding the Scripture as the supremely-
>authoritative, God-breathed imperfect confirmation of the good news of
>Christ? In my view, this is consistent with the above and with every
>part of the Scripture, including the way in which Jesus himself regarded
>Scripture as supremely-authorative, God-breathed and imperfect.

I misunderstood your original question; I thought you were really
interested in what Mark was doing. Your question doesn't really concern the
Greek text as such at all but is getting into the area of higher criticism,
which I think really lies outside the proper area for the list.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/