A stronger case for Mark

Last Saturday I drove up to Saint Malo / Saint Catherine way up the hills north of Allenspark. This morning I went back up there, with my hat this time. I'd learnt my lesson, that tree canopy shifts and doesn't protect the scalp. Anyway. This time I bought a book, Brant Pitre's The Case For Jesus. I've read seven chapters, with a less-fried head.

I am unsure how far Pitre's apologetic tract counts as a work of scholarship. The giftshop charged me five dollars. Five dollars is what the Farooq masjid in west Houston had charged for Ahmad Salamah's book on Sunni and Shia - in 2003 or '4. Also Pitre's Case bears Imprimatur - which, I've learnt, is real episcopal jargon, that the bishops approve it (another bishop, the irrepressible Robert Barron, gets the afterword). I get the impression that the Church like the Saudis print stuff like this at cost and unload it in giftshops.

Despite his restrictions, Pitre has adequately presented The Case For Saint Mark As Evangelist. If we ignore this book's commentary on Matthew, Luke, and John - oh, we'll get to them, believe that - it sets out some basic rules from which we can decide between an anonymous book and a nonanomymous book, and therefrom nonanomymous and pseudonymous. Pitre might even have undersold Mark.

Pitre's example is To The Hebrews, and his first point-of-departure is the manuscript tradition. Now, the MSS record for Mark (at least) is famously as poor as that for Thomas, until the third century AD. Mark's first MS attestation is in scraps before it gets regularly bound into multigospel codices and lections. But wherever we see a header for Marc/k-an text, the header is always "The Gospel kata Mark" or just plain kata Markon. Similar for Latin, and for Sahidic ("Coptic", for Pitre) and the two Aramaics when we get them. Nobody, except the harmonists and maybe Luke, quotes from Mark without saying "this is from Mark".

By contrast, To The Hebrews shows up in MSS anonymously, sometimes even as "anonymous"; sometimes ascribed to Paul (as the later Patristics) and sometimes to Timothy (rare in Patristics!). [OH RIGHT 7/8: Plus to Barnabas, for Tertullian and maybe D/06; but I fully understand if Pitre doesn't want to talk about those neanderthals.]

Pitre argues that even if the Markan MSS are third-fourth century, at least some MSS should stick asterisks by the Markos/Marcus attribution. Nobody does. Every mufassir upon Mark since Irenaeus has assumed Papias and attaches Papias' thoughts on the Markan gospel, to that text which we now consider as the Markan text.

Papias' account of Mark is devoid of context, coming to Eusebius and to us through the filters of Irenaeus and (likely) Pierius. Pitre, I would complain to him, should have noted that we cannot buy a book of Papias like we can of, say, Eusebius - who himself had not commissioned a copy of Papias. This complaint is not however fatal to Pitre.

The reason for that is that Papias' description of Mark, as the amanuensis of Shim'on Mar Kepha, fits Mark's text well. Pitre doesn't say it, but Evan Powell will: Mark admits Peter's failings to put the best possible light upon them. Powell found that in comparison against John 1-20, Mark's Gospel becomes Peter's apologia. Powell went on to retach "John 21" for Mark's conclusion.

I don't know how far Pitre could follow Powell, in a book with episcopal Imprimatur. Pitre takes our John 21 at its word that the "beloved disciple" wrote it. Of interest is that Powell argued that John 1-20 was authentic to John the disciple-then-apostle; although, again, I'm not getting into that here.