From: Jim West (jwest@Highland.Net)
Date: Wed Jun 17 1998 - 14:31:48 EDT
At 02:04 PM 6/17/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>The discussion of hODON POIEIN has been extraordinarily fascinating to me,
>the more so since (as I admitted in an earlier posting) I'd always been
>somewhat troubled by the strangeness of this phrasing in this particular
>pericope. Now let me ask: Has anyone ever noticed, or have ever been any
>studies of the Marcan use of ARTOS, "loaf" as a sort of leitmotif (I don't
>have to use German spelling, do I?) in Mark?
>
>I first noticed this in the usage of ARTON FAGEIN in Mark 3:20 and 7:2 & 5;
>I'm not aware of ARTON ESQIEIN as a distinct idiom, yet many versions seem
>to translate it in these passages as simply "eat" or "dine." In 7:2 & 5 the
>ARTOUS seem superfluous--unless this really is an idiom, as, for all I
>know, it may in fact be in Aramaic, although I don't believe it is in
>Greek--nor do I believe there's a distinctive Latinism PANEM EDERE involved
>here.
>
>More interesting to me was the discovery that ARTOS seems to be a leitmotif
>binding together the entire Marcan sequence beginning with the first
>feeding narrative in chapter 6 and continuing down through the second
>post-feeding crossing of the lake:
>6:37,38,41,44,52;7:2,5,27;8:4,5,6,14,16,17,19. Certainly there is the
>deliberate linking of the feeding narratives with the Last Supper by
>phrasing 6:41 EULOGHSEN KAI KATEKLASEN TOUS ARTOUS KAI EDIDOU TOIS MAQHTAIS
>AUTOU ... But the teaching about "what goes into the body and what comes
>out of the heart" in the first pericope of 7 is introduced by the
>deliberate phrase ARTOUS ESQIOUSIN. And then there is the bread/crumbs
>motif in the pericope of the Syro-Phoenician Woman, and finally in the last
>pericope of this sequence, which proves that Mark's telling of TWO
>wilderness feedings (Jewish & Gentile--with 12 and 7 baskets of crumbs?) is
>quite deliberate, there is the typically Marcan demonstration of disciples'
>misunderstanding (if not outright witlessness) in Jesus' questions to them
>about the left-over bread fragments.
>
>There's no way that all this can be fortuitous. I'm just wondering if there
>have ever been any studies of this ARTON FAGEIN motif as such. It is surely
>another piece of evidence of what Edward so utterly rightly calls attention
>to: the painstaking care of Mark as a composer of his gospel narrative. And
>also, Edward, isn't this a piece of your "Exodus Traditions" in Mark?
>
>
>
>Carl W. Conrad
Carl,
The motif of "eating", etc, has been examined By John Dominic Crossan in his
recent "The Birth of Christianity", (p. 330-331), and in his earlier "The
Historical Jesus" , passim, especially ch. 13. Briefly, he sees something
extraordinarily important in the very clues you have seen.
I think that if his sociological paradigm is applied to Mark, "eating,
bread", etc. turn out to be very important motifs, as you have seen.
Best,
Jim
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Pastor, Petros Baptist Church
Adjunct Professor of Bible,
Quartz Hill School of Theology
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