From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Aug 26 1995 - 14:28:00 EDT
My apologies for letting that note to James Tauber go to the list; I
thought I had deleted the cc line in it and sent to himself only.
At 11:49 AM 8/26/95, WINBROW@aol.com wrote:
> ... An article has just come out that I am eager to
>study carefully. Stephen H. Smith of England contributed an article to
>Novvum Testamentum entitled A Divine Tragedy: Som Observations on the
>Dramatic Structure of Mark's Gospel. He refers to some earlier studies that
>have suggested the the structure of Mark was influenced by the form of the
>Greek tragedy. I am not sure yet that I can agree with this but I have long
>felt that Mark sought to get his readers to embrace the world mission of the
>gospel by the way he told the story.
Interesting idea and worth checking into, certainly. It certainly appears
that the Passion Narrative has been pieced together, no doubt at least
partially from historical recollection of actual events, but also in a very
considerable degree by intense study and selection of OT passages on the
Suffering Servant and the suffering righteous man. I don't think it's an
accident that the sequence of the passion narrative has lent itself more
than any other part of the gospel to dramatic representation and settings
to music. It has also struck me often that Mark's PN (which I assume to be
the earliest surviving form of it--didn't Kelber propose that Mark even
created it?) also has in it to an extraordinary degree a characteristic of
Greek tragedy: an overhanging fate governing a sequence that appears
inevitable in its forward movement; moreover, it is a narrative (Mark's
telling, at least) permeated with a sense that all the characters imagine
that they are acting out their own intentions freely although externally
they appear to be following a determinate course, while on the other hand
Jesus, who appears to have no freedom of action at all, is the ONLY free
agent in the drama.
Wasn't there a book a few years back by Dan O. Via on patterns of Greek
comedy in the gospel? I never read it, but I remember discussing it with
John Hollar, the late editor (and previously a grad student of mine in
Classics) at Fortress Press , which published it.
One other reflection that is purely speculative but perhaps worth
mentioning. The incident of the mock coronation in the passion narrative
has struck me as a dramatic & ritual motif more than any other; wasn't
there some such humiliation of the king in the Babylonian New Year ritual?
Also, it is a scene a little bit like the selection of Claudius by the
Praetorian Guard to be emperor, perhaps originally just a playful jest that
was soon ratified in fact. I should check into Suetonius' account of the
death of Caligula or see what other sources for this there are, as my
strongest memory of it is shaped by Robert Graves' marvelous historical
novel, _I Claudius_.
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/
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