With these sections von Soden contrasts the remaining parts of the Gospel, in which he finds not only much interruption of the primary narrative, but much interpretation, much allegorizing, much absence of actual situations, much reminiscence of Old Testament stories, much influence from Paul, and many reflections of the experiences of individual Christians and the Christian church.[57] No one can work thru this analysis of von Soden’s without feeling that it is easy to distinguish between primary and secondary elements in the Gospel of Mark, and that von Soden has at least pointed out many of the junctures between these two.
The attempt of Wendling in his Ur-Marcus[58] is still more thorogoing. The basis of his discussion is Mark’s 4th chapter, where he considers the two strands most easily separated. To the original belong iv, 1-9, and vss. 26-33. Vss. 10-25 are later; they have been inserted mechanically, yet so as to respect the older text; they have no organic connection with the rest of the chapter, and even contradict its situation. Jesus is teaching from a boat (and other boats are with his); then suddenly, in vss. 10-25, he is alone with his disciples who ask him the meaning of the parable of the Sower. He gives his explanation, and again without any indication of change of situation he is in the boat surrounded by the other boats, with the people still on the shore, and the storm comes up and is stilled.
This little insertion (iv, 10-25) also contains theories of the writer, quite contradictory to those of the writer of other parts of the Gospel. In other places, Jesus speaks to all the people in parables “as they were able to hear him”; he stretches out his hand over the multitude of his disciples and says, “These are my mother and my sisters”; he is the teacher of the crowd, who understand him better than his own family; there is nothing in his parables that needs explaining. But in this insertion (iv, 10-25) the theory of the writer is that the parables are “mysteries,” enigmas, which not only need to be explained (by the allegorical method), but which are spoken for the express purpose of preventing the people from understanding. Without the key which Jesus gives, even the disciples do not understand them. The section is also marked by Pauline influences.[59]
Two clews are thus given, aside from interruptions in the narrative, by which the work of a second writer may be detected. He has the Geheimnis-Theorie of the parables, and he has in thot and vocabulary reminiscences of the Pauline school. Applying these tests to another section which seems to interrupt the narrative where it stands, Wendling adds a second insertion—iii, 22-30. This is the section about the dispute with the Pharisees, which comes in inaptly between the introduction (iii, 20, 21) and the continuation (iii, 31) of the story of Jesus’ family who have come to take him home. It seems to have been inserted in this place because the Pharisees also said “he hath a devil.” By repeating in vs. 30 the ἔλεγον ὅτι which he found in vs. 21, the redactor preserves for the continuation of the original story precisely the same connection it would have had without his interpolation; and by the use of the same words in vs. 22 he connects the interpolation with the opening narrative. His hand is seen in the superfluous repetition of words, especially of the subject, as in iii, 24, 25.[60]
To these two insertions should be added a third, iii, 6-19. The motives for it seem to be copied from narratives in other chapters. It consists (in part) of generalization and interpretation, both marks of the redactor’s work. It also contains his Geheimnis-Theorie.
To these should be added i, 34b (“he suffered not the demons to speak, because they knew him”), because of the presence in it of this same theory. Nor does i, 45, fit where it is; the connection without it is good; it also contains the favorite theory of the redactor that the more Jesus told people not to proclaim him, the more they did so, and the more he tried to seclude himself the more they found him.
To these again, on somewhat other grounds and not so securely, should be added the little groups of loosely strung logia which are found in vi, 7-11; viii, 34-ix, 1; ix, 40-50; x, 42-45; xi, 23-25; xii, 38-40; xiii, 9-13. The ground for asserting these to be additions is that these logia are not closely connected in the passages in which they occur, and that they share this characteristic with the similar group of disconnected sayings in the first and best attested interpolation, iv, 21-25.
In i, 1-3, 14b, 15, the word εὐαγγέλιον arouses a natural suspicion. The same word also occurs in four other places (viii, 35; x, 29; xiii, 10; xiv, 9), all of which are in passages which are suspicious upon other grounds; consequently with the three instances in chap. i, they are ascribed to the redactor.
With the exception of the interpolation in iv, 10-25, the section i, 16-iv, 33, appears to be a unit, and belongs to the oldest stratum. But with iv, 35, says Wendling, begins a new section, easily distinguished from that just mentioned. It copies the motives and the characteristics of other sections.[61] The writer is to be distinguished, however, not merely from the writer of the earliest stratum, but from the author of the insertions already identified. None of the criteria of the latter’s manner appear in the section beginning at iv, 35. It shows no trace of Pauline conceptions, has none of Jesus’ prohibitions to the demons, its Heimlichkeit is of a different sort, and goes back to Old Testament exemplars. And since the insertion in iv, 10-25, presupposes the story of the storm on the lake in iv, 35-v, 43, this latter is older than the former. The writer of this section (iv, 35-v, 43) therefore stood between the writer of the original strand, and the evangelist or redactor. The last writer (Wendling calls him Ev) worked over the combined work of his two predecessors.
To the author who is intermediate between the first writer and the Evangelist, Wendling assigns twenty-nine different sections, some of considerable length and some of only a verse or part of a verse. They are as follows: i, 4-14a; iv, 35-v, 42; v, 43b; vi, 14, 17-30, 35-44; ix, 2-8, 14-27; x, 46-xi, 10; xiv, 12-20, 26-35a, 36-37, 39-41a, 42, 47, 51-56, 60-62a, 63, 64, 66-72; xv, 16-20, 23, 24b, 25, 29-30, 33, 34b-36, 38, 40-43, 46-xvi, 7a, 8—about two hundred verses or parts of verses in all.