Von Soden gives on pp. 24 ff. the passages of Mark which he supposes to be derived from the Petrine tradition in a different order from that in which they occur in Mark, regrouping them freely. He puts together, for instance, Mark i. 16-20, iii. 13-19, vi. 7-16, viii. 27-ix. 1, ix. 33-40, under the title “The formation and training of the band of disciples.” He supposes Mark, the pupil of Peter, to have grouped in this way by a kind of association of ideas “what he had heard Peter relate in his missionary journeys, when writing it down after Peter's death, not connectedly, but giving as much as he could remember of it”; this would be in accordance with the statement of Papias that Mark wrote “not in order.” Papias's statement, therefore, refers to an “Ur-Markus,” which he found lacking in historical order.
But what are we to make of a representative of the early Church thus approaching the Gospels with the demand for historical arrangement? And good, simple old Papias, of all people!
But if the Marcan plan was not laid down in “Ur-Markus,” there is nothing for it—since the plan was certainly not given in the collection of Logia—but to ascribe it to the author of our Gospel of Mark, to the man, that is, who wrote down for the first time these “Pauline conceptions,” those reflections of experiences of individual believers and of the community, and inserted them into the Gospel. It is proposed, then, to retain the outline which he has given of the life of Jesus, and reject at the same time what he relates. That is to say, he is to be believed where it is convenient to believe him, and silenced where it is inconvenient. No more complete refutation of the Marcan hypothesis could possibly be given than this analysis, for it destroys its very foundation, the confident acceptance of the historicity of the Marcan plan.
If there is to be an analysis of sources in Mark, then the Marcan plan must be ascribed to “Ur-Markus,” otherwise the analysis renders the Markan hypothesis historically useless. But if “Ur-Markus” is to be reconstructed on the basis of assigning to it the Marcan plan, then we cannot separate the natural from the supernatural, for the supernatural scenes, like the feeding of the multitude and the transfiguration, are among the main features of the Marcan outline.
No hypothetical analysis of “Ur-Markus” has escaped this dilemma; what it can effect by literary methods is historically useless, and what would be historically useful cannot be attained nor “presented” by literary methods.
Von Soden, for instance, germanises Jesus when he writes, “and this nature is sound to the core. In spite of its inwardness there is no trace of an exaggerated sentimentality. In spite of all the intensity of prayer there is nothing of ecstasy or vision. No apocalyptic dream-pictures find a lodging-place in His soul.”
Is a man who teaches a world-renouncing ethic which sometimes soars to the dizzy heights such as that of Matt. xix. 12, according to our conceptions “sound to the core”? And does not the life of Jesus present a number of occasions on which He seems to have been in an ecstasy?
Thus, von Soden has not simply read his Jesus out of the texts, but has added something of his own, and that something is Germanic in colouring.
Albert Kalthoff, Das Christusproblem. Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie. (The Problem of the Christ: Ground-plan of a Social Theology.) Leipzig, 1902. 87 pp.
Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beiträge zum Christusproblem. (How Christianity arose.) Leipzig, 1904. 155 pp.