After the story of the transfiguration the prediction of Jesus’ sufferings comes in between the Scribes’ question about Elijah and Jesus’ answer to that question (Mk ix, 11-13). Loisy thinks Mk xiv, 28, out of place. It certainly disturbs the connection. Jülicher considers Mk xiv, 25, to be later and less original than its parallel in Mt xxvi, 29. The saying in xiv, 9, about the name of the woman being known wherever the story of Jesus is told has been suggested as the remark of some preacher or commentator à propos of the occurrence, and not a saying of Jesus. Wellhausen has even suggested that the whole story in xiv, 3-9, may be a later addition. The saying, “Ye shall say to this mountain” (xi, 23) should probably be placed in Galilee, presumably at Capernaum, where with a wave of his hand Jesus could point to both mountain and sea—not in Jerusalem where Mark gives it. Schmiedel considers Mk xiv, 58, secondary. It has been argued, or almost assumed, that the second feeding of the multitude could not have been written by the same hand that described the first, nor the events narrated in the first thirty-four verses of chap. iv have been written in their present order. If one is at liberty to subtract what he will from the Gospel of Mark, and to rearrange its parts somewhat, he can undoubtedly make a much more readable and better arranged Gospel of it than it now is.
DISCUSSION OF THE ANALYSIS OF MARK BY WENDLING AND VON SODEN
Two attempts have recently been made to resolve our Gospel of Mark into its constituent elements, which are sufficiently successful to be noticed here. The first is that of von Soden, in his Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu, and the second Wendling’s Ur-Marcus.[52]
Von Soden[53] begins by distinguishing two strands of narrative, easily separable from each other by matter and style. The great differences between these two strands betray two different authors. As the clearest instance of the earlier strand, he takes Mk ii, 1-iii, 6, which he contrasts with iv, 35-v, 43. In the first, all the interest is centered in the words of Jesus; in the second, in the events themselves. “Let one compare the story of the Gadarene demoniac with its twenty verses and the debate about fasting with its five verses, and estimate the weight of the religious value of the thots expressed in the two sections.”
Von Soden next separates Mk vii, 32-37, and viii, 22-26 (the healing of the deaf man and the blind man), as quite distinct in character from such stories as those in ii, 1-12, and iii, 1-6. “In the former, the miracle of healing is itself the subject of the representation; in the latter, the miracle is merely a part of the story, whose real subject is Jesus’ forgiveness of sins and his violation of the Sabbath laws.”
In this way von Soden picks out his Kernstücke. To these Kernstücke certainly belong the group of narratives in i, 21-39; ii, 1-iii, 6; xii, 13-44; iii, 20-35; vi, 1-6; iv, 1-8; iv, 26-32; and x, 13-31; perhaps also vii, 24-30; vi, 14-16; i, 4-11. To these narratives which go back to Peter may also belong the brief notices concerning the stages of growth of the apostolic circle, in i, 16-20; iii, 13-19; vi, 7-13; viii, 27-ix, 1; and ix, 33-40.[54] To these passages von Soden adds xiii, 1-6, 28-37. He says that at the basis of the story of the days in Jerusalem, xi, 1-xii, 12, and the passion narrative in chaps. xiv and xv, lie narratives of a similar style; but these latter he does not include in his Kernstücke.
Von Soden then prints the passages which he thus refers to Peter (or the Petrine tradition), “undisturbed by all that our Gospel of Mark has interwoven with them.”[55] The result presents the Petrine nucleus of the Gospel as follows: John the Baptist and the Baptism of Jesus; a Sabbath in Capernaum; the offense of the Jews at Jesus’ forgiving of sins, his association with sinners, his breaking of the Sabbath, and the fact that his disciples do not fast; how the Jews attempt to take him; how Jesus meets the general misunderstanding; parables about the kingdom of God; the question as to who shall enter that kingdom; the development of the apostolic circle; glimpses into the future.
This makes (with the readjustment in the order of some of the sections) a remarkably straightforward and connected narrative. Von Soden’s remarks concerning it are well worth quoting:
These narratives are without any embellishment or secondary interest. They are plastic and concrete in every feature. The local coloring is strikingly fresh and yet in no way artificial. No edificatory remarks are inserted, no reflections, only deeds and striking sayings. No story requires its secret meaning to be explained by symbol or allegory. In no one of them does one feel any occasion to inquire for the meaning, which lies clear upon the surface. Situations and words are too original to have been invented. Everything breathes the odor of Palestine. There is no reminiscence of Old Testament stories. Miracles appear only here and there, and incidentally.... The christological or soteriological question never constitutes the motive of a story. Not once is there any expression from the language of the schools, especially from that of Paul. Words and sentences are reminiscent of the Aramaic. The figure of Jesus itself bears in every reference a human outline. He is stirred and astonished, he is angry and trembles, he needs recuperation and feels himself forsaken of God, he will not have the thotless, conventional designation “good” addressed to him, and confesses that he does not know when all which he sees to be approaching shall be fulfilled. His mother and his sisters fear that he may be out of his mind. This and much else is told with the greatest naïveté. So Jesus lived; so he expressed himself; thus they received him; thus the apostolic circle was formed and developed—this is what the writer intends to tell.[56]
These sections of Mark certainly have a very primary character; so far as their contents is concerned, they may well go back to the Petrine tradition.