Subject: tc-list Mark 16:9-20 Style

From: "E. Bruce Brooks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 02:00:40 -0500

Topic: Mk 16:9-20 Style
From: Bruce
In Response To: Ken Litwak (29 Oct 98)

KEN: . . . The reason is that evidence can be used to prove just about
anything. 
Dawsey has made a case that based on style, Luke and Acts have different
authors.

BRUCE: Could I have a more exact reference on this, please?

E Bruce Brooks
University of Massachusetts

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From: Ken Litwak <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 23:12:00 -0800

James M. Dawsey, "The Literary Unity of Luke-Acts:  Questions of Style. 
A Task for Literary Critics," NTS (1989) 35:48-66.  
Parsosn and Pervo, Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts work from
Dawsey and go further.  So if style can be easily identified, and
stylistic criteria can be used to show that Luke and Acts have different
authors, in spie of the fact that most scholars think they have the same
author, what is to be made of arguments from style?  

  At least may I ask for some methodological rigor?  Define exactly what
constitutes style, what are acceptable exceptions to it by an authorand
how one may expectit to regularly be played out in various situations. 
SInce we lack so much material, I think it's hard to come up with
conclusions in this regard.  How can I validlly say what Mark or LUke or
Paul _could_ have written?  Indeed, in my early forties these days, I
find myself writing words that I have never written before, even though
Ihave known them for years and addressing issues I've never addressed
(it was hard to talk about Java programming three years ago).  I'm
writing stuff in my dissertation on LUke-Acts in a manner I've never
written anything and discussing topics I've never discussed.  It should
be easy to say, based on "style" and vocabulary, that I couldn't
possibly be the author of my dissertation.  So if we want to use style
as a basis, what exactly does that mean?  

Ken Litwak
Trinity College/Univiersity of Bristol
Bristol,England
(and Java instructor in California)

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From: Mike Logsdon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 21:01:09 -0600

Well for Mark it seems that stylistic matters are confined to the singular
"Markan" text though this certainly does not simplify the issue. What you
describe below is more of an issue for multiple texts written by one author
and is somewhat reductionistic. Since this discussion arose in relation to
Mark, your arguments against style as an issue for making decisions about
the ending of Mark seem to dissipate. What I would like to see is your own
methodological rigor? How or on what basis will you make a textual
decision? Ever by Internal issues? What does legitimately consitute an
internal issue? I must assume that textual decision, for you, will always
have to be the oldest reading available in all cases? Otherwise I cannot
see how you would decide between a newer reading over and older reading
except for some type of internal evidence, whatever that may be for you,
which is essentially a matter of style--especially in the case of Mark.

---

From: Ken Litwak <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 20:23:24 -0800

> which is essentially a matter of style--especially in the case of Mark.
  Mike, perhaps I wasn't clear.  My point is not about multiple book
authorship.  My point is that, if so many scholars think that Luke and
Acts had the same author, yet Dawsey and others can argue against common
authorship on stylistic grounds, then "style" must be so slippery a term
that it may be inherently unhelpful.  I don't have a definition of style
that would be helpful.  That's the point.  To make an argument about
style, you need to define the term precisely enough that data you offer
to make an argument should be able to persuade.  IF you don't define he
term carefully enough to account for anomalies, changes in rhetorical
strategy, one-time use of a word or phrase, etc., then I don't know what
kind of evidence you could offer for style that should be taken as able
to persuade (not persuasive but even logical to make an argument based
on it).  So that's what I'm after: a definition of style that is precise
enough that I can take data, apply it to that definition, and come up
with an answer that some text probably is or probably isn't by a given
author.  I don't' expect exactitude, since this is after all the
Humanities, and there's no way to test the validity of our results on
anything other than modern texts.  This is like offering an intertextual
analysis of of the use of the Scriptures of Israel in the NT without
ever stopping to say which of several competing, incompatible views of
intertextuality you are using.

     As for me, I don't think I rely solely upon external evidence.  For
one thing,  if I read one MS of John 17 in which Jesus prays that God
will "not keep them from the Evil one" and every other MS says that he
prayed that would would "keep them from the Evil one", then I presume
this one copyist messed up, and it's not hard in the text to see how he
or she might have put an extra negative particle in.  I can also surmise
from the content of the prayer in John 17 that such a statement would be
out of keeping with what the rest of the prayer said.  So I might well
make a judgment on a reading based on its internal consistency with what
I think the co-text says.  I tend to think, based on how I read the
argument of Romans 1-4, that Rom 5:1 should be read with the indicative
of ECW, not the subjunctive.  

  So turning aside from style as too slippery a criterion doesn't mean
that I am forced to use only external evidence.  Internal consistency,
however, is not style. Style would apply more if, say, Mark always the
Greek vocabulary that would have been found on the 1st century
equivalent of the GRE, instead of the sort of Greek vocabulary one would
have found in the equivalent of the Athens TImes (I am of course being
anachronistic but you surely get the point?).  SO if Mark ALWAYS used
very rare, pedantic vocabulary, and some disputed verse or verses used
common street vocabulary, the authenticity of those verses might be
argued against on this basis of vocabulary, BUT you would also have to
account for the source of the statement, its rhetorical context and
purpose and so forth, which could easily influence one's choice of
vocabulary.  The problem with style, for me, is to assume that it is so
easily quantifiable that apparent exceptions can be clearly identified
and that, a priori, those must be non-Markan, or non-Pauline, etc.  What
do you think?

Ken Litwak
Ph.D. student, NT
Trinity College/Univ. of Bristol
Bristol, England
(and Java instructor in California)