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Mk1:6 = Mt3:4
In the current debate of Marcan priority, I suggest looking at some examples
and get other people's feel for who edited whom. This example is the
description of John the Baptist in Greek with a literal translation:
Mk1:6a KAI HN O( IWANNHS ENDEDUMENOS TRIXAS KAMHLOU
Mt3:4a AUTOS DE O( IWANNHS EIXEN TO ENDUMA AUTOU APO TRIXWN KAMHLOU
Mk1:6b KAI ZWNHN DERMATINHN PERI THN OSFUN AUTOU
Mt3:4b KAI ZWNHN DERMATINHN PERI THN OSFUN AUTOU
Mk1:6c KAI ESQIWN AKRIDAS KAI MELI AGRION
Mt3:4c H( DE TROFH HN AUTOU AKRIDES KAI MELI AGRION
Mk1:6 "And John was clothed with camel's hair and a leather belt
around his waist and eating locusts and wild honey"
Mt2:4 "And John himself had his garment of camel's hair and a leather
belt around his waist and his nourishment was locusts and wild honey."
It seems to me that Matthew is noticeably more polished. Although EIXEN TO
ENDUMA AUTOU is wordier than ENDEDUMENOS, it avoids certain oddities in
Mark's expression. In Mark, both TRIXAS KAMHLOU (a material, camel hair)
and an article of clothing (ZWHNH) are worn, while Matthew creates a
parallelism is in the object of the first verb (both are articles of
clothing). In addition, the ENDUW ZWNHN of Mark seems poorly worded unless
some other verb such as PERIZWNNUMI (cf. Rv1:13) was ellided.
Matthew's use of simple verbs is much cleaner than Mark's awkward
periphrastic, especially in clause (c) (HN . . . ESQIWN), and he handles
the conjunctions more neatly (DE for clauses, and KAI for the compound
object, versus Mark's KAI for every case).
I don't have an explanation for Matthew's addition of AUTOS, though.
Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen Carlson : Poetry speaks of aspirations, : ICL, Inc.
scc@reston.icl.com : and songs chant the words. : 11490 Commerce Park Dr.
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