From: CWestf5155@aol.com
Date: Thu Aug 10 2000 - 12:03:42 EDT
Return-path: <CWestf5155@aol.com>
From: CWestf5155@aol.com
Full-name: CWestf5155
Message-ID: <ca.8ae3a9d.26c42b8f@aol.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 12:00:15 EDT
Subject: Re: [b-greek] Re: New theme at Mk 9:42?
To: c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 111
In a message dated 8/9/00 1:42:11 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net writes:
<< UBSGNT3 puts a new heading over Mk 9:42 which suggests a major break in the
semantic (thematic) structure of Mark. Is this correct? I don't think so and
neither did the late William L. Lane (Mark, NICNT 1974). Lane said that this
warning was directed at the disciples and specificly the action reported by
John in Mk 9:38. Lane (1974) could find only three scholars* who agreed with
him on this.
Turning now to our ongoing investigation of discourse issues what can be
discovered about this question by applying some of criteria for detecting
discourse boundries to Mk 9:42?
First of all Mk 9:42 is highly cohesive with the preceeding text. There is
continuity of agent, location, participants, action, and time. If we accept
Lane's analysis then we also have continuity of theme.
There is also a clear anaphoric link between:
Mk 9:42 hENA TWON MIKRWN TOUTWN and
Mk 9:37 hEN TOIOUTWN PAIDIWN DEXHTAI
What about the GAR and KAI?
Mk 9:41 hOS GAR AN POTISHi . . .
Mk 9:42 KAI hOS AN SKANDALISHi . . .
According to Levinshon** the discourse function of KAI in Mark is inclusive
of both KAI and DE as they are used in Matt. Luke and Acts. KAI in Mark can
be simply connective or developmental. For this reason the presence of KAI
in Mk 9:42 is not very useful for our purpose of detecting the presence or
absence of a discourse boundry.
I would suggest that:
Mk 9:41 hOS GAR AN POTISHi . . .
Mk 9:42 KAI hOS AN SKANDALISHi . . .
form a contrastive parallelism. This is similar to what H.B. Swete says
about this. Swete breaks the thematic paragraph between Mk 9:40 & 41. Note
that this pattern appears in Mk 9:37 hOS AN hEN TOIOUTWN PAIDIWN DEXHTAI.
Anyway this is a complicated problem since one also has to decide what to do
with Mk 9:43-50. William lane makes Mk 9:43-50 a thematic paragraph but
there seems to be a real strong thematic link between Mk 9:41-42 and 43-50.
>>
Clay,
I think that I agree with your observations about this passage (and
presumably I agree with Lane, though I haven't checked Mark, NICNT yet).
I supppose that the UBSGNT3 determined that the verbal chain of SKANDALIZW
(vv. 42, 43, 45, 47) determined the topic of the paragraph: it's about
sinning.
Glancing over the headings and the paragraph breaks of this 'scene' (9:33ff)
in the UBSGNT3, I think this is an excellent candidate to exemplify the need
for the revision of headings and paragraphs. In my opinion, in this passage,
the editorial decisions do more to obscure the flow of thought, cohesion and
coherence than they do to help it. It looks like a set of miscellaneous
teachings that Mark arbitrarily puts together.
I'm with you on your links between 9:42 & 9:37, as well as the contrastive
parallelism.
Let me make a few more observations:
I see the interpersonal structure and the roles of agent/subject and
object/goal/recipient as being very significant.
hOS (AN) as subject/agent in vv. 37, 40, 41 & 42 create a unifying pattern,
even though the referents switch back and forth.
SE as object/goal links vv. 43-48 (and perhaps through v. 50, if you want to
see vv. 49-50 as and expansion of PUR in v. 48).
Summarizing the interpersonal structure:
v. 37 hOS AN hEN TWN TOIOUTWN PAIDIWN DEXHTAI
Whoever (of the disciples?) welcomes such children...
v. 40 hOS GAR OUK ESTIN KAQ hUMWN
For whoever (of the outsiders) is for us...
v. 41 hOS GAR AN POTISH hUMAS POTHRION
For whoever (of the outsiders) is for you...
v. 42 KAI hOS AN SKANVDALISH hENA TWN MIKRWN TOUTWN
And whoever (of the disciples?) 'stumbles' one of these little ones
Hey, this looks a bit chiastic, doesn't it?
vv. 45-48 (50) cover 'what if your own body members (hand, foot, eye)
'stumble' you
It looks to me like all these relationships might expand how leadership gets
fleshed out in different relationships--including the relationship to
yourself (self-discipline). Maybe it is something like 'The responsibilities
of a servant-leader in interpersonal relationships'. This topic would be
explicitly introduced in v. 35).
I'd say that SKANDALIZW in v. 42 creates cohesion across the interpersonal
shift at v. 43, and does not determine a boundary. This is very common. A.
Vanhoye, in his description of the structure of Hebrews calls these 'hook
words', which George Guthrie catagorizes in an extremely complex way in his
dissertation on Hebrews. Dik calls it 'forward harmony' in Theory of FG, vol
1, p. 321.
Cindy Westfall
PhD Student, Roehampton:
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:33 EDT