Evangelical marginalia

A (Christian) Minister by name of James Snapp the Younger piped in, last year, at the ongoing Distigmai kerfuffle. I'm not here pretending to know anything about that; apparently I didn't miss much, anyway.

I am here to consider evangelical in-line tafsir by the evangelist himself. In Islam, there exists a tradition by which Muhammad commented upon the Qurân which Allâh revealed upon him. How about Christianity with its scriptures?

Snapp suggests similar for John 5:3b-4. Namely: someone whom Snapp assumes (for shorthand if nothing else) is the apostle John composed the first part of what we call "John 5:3", so v. 3a. But then people kept badgering the owner-of-the-text, as Snapp muses: why were these sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people waiting near the pool instead of swimming in its water?. Snapp sees John 5:3b-4 as an interpolation, yes; but as an interpolation by the final editor of the Gospel. For Snapp that means: by John.

Evan Powell had in the 1990s actually argued for John as the author of John 1-20 at least. Powell went harder into the Johannine Gospel as multilayered. Powell figured that John 21 wasn't even John's, but Mark's. Maybe there was a "John Jr." (Polycarp?) who added that coda at around the same time that one added vv. 3b-4 to John 5. Problem: we don't own much external evidence for any John explicitly without ch. 21. I do recall Tertullian claiming ch. 20 as the terminus, once; although he was aware of a John with ch. 21, also. Snapp is big on Mark 16's longer version, against Powell; if he accepts that, he's hardly about to abandon John 21. Snapp might instead count John 21 as the Evangelist's marginalium, after the thought, appended to his own text.

Snapp brings in 1 Corinthians 1:16 as a Pauline marginalium as got inlined into the text without editing, and nobody ever came along to smooth all that over. This would be a stronger case in my opinion.

Another stronger case might, in fact, be Mark 13:14. The whole chapter is Mark's summary of Jesus' mission as the Christ of God. This v. 14 refers to an abomination that desecrates at the Temple; the text herein interjects let him that readeth understand. That author cannot be Christ; Christ is speaking, and we don't read an audition. Then the text in some codices says this comes from "Daniel the prophet". Everyone is fine assuming that the former gnomic invitation comes from Mark's first edition and presentation of Christ's word. The questions cluster around the subsequent asterisk; saying basically, "you goyische n00bz out there are to understand that this means the Book of Daniel, go read it if you haven't".

Was that asterisk by Mark? Well... Mark is said to have spread his gospel to Rome and to Alexandria. He is also known to be a follower of Paul, who was famously big on preaching to goys.

I find plausible that Mark himself had permitted copies of his gospel to go out, to gentiles, with additional annotations.