Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §7.3
makes no difference. But the suggestion of different 'editions' invites a word of
caution. Certainly, as textual criticism has made us all too aware, any act of copying
will have introduced variants, both deliberate and unintended. No one doubts
that documents were absorbed and redacted by others, or, for example, that the
ending of Mark (16.9-20) was later added by scribes. But what seems to be in
view, on Koester's reconstruction at any rate, includes more extensive recensions
of the same work. This raises the question whether the processes at this point are
being conceived too much in terms of the modern literary pattern of several editions
of a book. Should we not rather be attempting to adjust our thinking away
from the literary mindset of the modern world and to re-envisage the situation in
terms of oral tradition? The point then being that much of the traditioning process
would include oral variations of the traditions used by Mark, as also oral
memories of those who heard readings from Mark's version of the Jesus tradition.
More attention needs to be given to the possibility that Evangelists were
able to select the version of tradition they used from more than one version, written
or oral. We will return to this question later (§§8.3-6).
A very large consensus of contemporary scholarship dates Mark somewhere
in the period 65-75 CE. 22 The ancient tradition (from Papias) that the Gospel
was composed by Mark, from his recollections of Peter's preaching, 23 fits to
some extent with other references 24 and makes better sense in the context of oral
transmission than most seem to appreciate, 25 but the evidence is too sparse for
sound hypothesis building. And the issue of where Mark was written and for
whom it was written remains unresolved, 26 being also caught up in the question
of whether we can (or should) identify a particular community/church with the
Gospel — another question to which we shall have to return. 27 So far as the value
of Mark as a source is concerned, we shall have to be content with the firm consensus
that Mark is the earliest written Gospel to have survived intact, that it appeared
about forty years after Jesus' death, and that it contains traditions about
Jesus which must have circulated in the generation prior to that date.
22. See, e.g., M. Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (London: SCM, 1985) ch. 1;
M. D. Hooker, Mark (BNTC; London: Black, 1991) 5-8; Schnelle, History 200-202; Brown,
Introduction 161-64.
23. See above, chapter 4 n. 90.
24. 1 Pet. 5.13 (Mark as Peter's 'son'); Justin refers to 'Peter's memoirs' as containing a
passage which is found only in Mark 3.16-17 {Dialogue 106.3); cf. also Phlm. 24; Col. 4.10.
25. See below, chapter 8 n. 216.
26. See, e.g., the review in W. R. Telford, Mark (NTG; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic,
1995) 23-26, 150-51. We will have to return to the subject in vol. 3.
27. See further below, §§7.4b and 8.6d.
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