The Leper, and Simon at Bethany

Mark 1:38-9 sets Jesus and his new disciples (vv. 16-20) as traveling around Galilean towns. In Mark 1:40-45, a leper approaches Jesus and petitions him: "If you will, I shall be cleansed". Jesus quips back "I will, so be cleansed". (Mark had a sense of wit to him.) The next and last time Mark mentions a leper it is one Simon in Bethany, Mark 14 (> Matthew 26:6).

In those days healthy people shunned lepers, and Samaritans and Jews alike shared Scripture to support that. Jews at least were not wholly heartless and had allowed a colony close to Jerusalem, as close to G-d's Temple as Torah could permit. This colony was Bethany.

Early Christian tradition, whose greatest (and basically only) muhaddith was Papias, recalled that Mark told true stories but not in the correct order. For their part, Luke 5:12 sets the event right after Simon Peter is adopted; Matthew 8, after the Sermon on the Mount (Luke will postpone the sermon down from the Mount, for 6:12f.).

Scholars are aware of some slight narrative breaks in what is restored. For instance, between 10:46a: "Then they came to Jericho," and 10:46b: "As he was leaving Jericho..." which as Stephen Patterson points out has become a playground for spurious gospel - Roman era or otherwise. Bell and Skeat wonder about Mark 3:6 as well.

Evan Powell constructed his own argument about Mark (plus what's now John 21) on that foundation. First, that Mark was running a Galilean Gospel, in which Jerusalem is Divinely cursed. Second that Mark is chiastic: what the text begins on Quire One [verso], it would wrap up on the same side of the same page... where it would be the end of the codex. Where Mark 16 ends with Magdalene running from the Jerusalem tomb, Powell restores the overall chiasm by splicing proto John 21 to the end.

Matthew and Luke (and maybe Q before them) develop an evangelical message from the source events. NIV Matthew 11:5 / Luke 7:22 have this to be reported to John [baptising at the Jordan]: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

One could imagine that Mark assumed Simon as some well-known figure in early Christian sainthood, and that the leper in that first chapter was some random townsman. But. Mark liked to set up loose ends and close them; Jesus doesn't bother healing Simon; "Simon the Leper" is otherwise (apparently) unintroduced in this text; we're lacking Patristic witness until the late-Roman commentaries. And a Simon early in the story might have been confused with Cephas; Luke's sequence as a juxtaposition absolutely would have. I conclude Mark in ch. 14 wants us to read "Simon - that leper [from the first chapter]".

And if Evan Powell is to be believed, which I think he is, another agenda of Mark was to rehabilitate Simon Peter from disgrace. Here was a Simon, a leper cleansed in Galilee; there is a Simon from Galilee, cleansed of sin.

Mark, thereby, implies that Simon had traveled from Bethany to Galilee, just to be healed. He then returns to Bethany as Jesus' agent and safehouse-keeper.

BACKDATE 2/23