Requesting some help -

From: dmurphy (dmurphy@sjc.edu.bz)
Date: Fri Dec 26 1997 - 10:08:39 EST


Dear Carl,

Happy St. Stephan's Day! I hope your Christmas was deeply restful and
joyous.

Let me first thank you personally for your willingness to enter briefly
into the discussion of Crosstalk with your message concerning the
meaning of Mark 7:19c. I think that Bob Schacht may have forwarded to
you one or other of my contributions in that regard. I succeeded in
recovering your e-mail address personally (I had lost all my addresses
by an inadvertent mistake when I moved from Nicaragua to Belize this
past July) by finding it in a message that Yuri sent from Toronto.

If you have the time, I would much appreciate your sharing with me your
expertise concerning the translation of the Greek of Mk 7:4a -- kai ap
agoras ean me hrantizontai (baptisontai) ouk esthiousin.

During the last half year I have been deeply impressed by the work of
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story
of Jesus (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988).

At the end of this message I copy for you, in case it is material Bob
didn't send on to you, some more general paragraphs that I sent to
Crosstalk concerning my evaluation of Myers's work. At the moment the
passage from Myers that is occupying my attention is the following:

      "Of particular interest is Mark's mention of the marketplace
       (agora) in 6:56 and 7:4. This narrative site represents of
       course the economic sphere, and Mark later refers to it as the
       public site of scribal 'piety' that oppresses the poor (12:38ff.)
       The practice of 'sprinkling (hrantisontai) food would appear to
       refer to Pharisaic concern to guard against consuming produce
       that may have been rendered unclean at some stage of the
       production process (it had nothing to do with hygiene). Impurity
       could have been contracted in one of two ways: the farmer could
       have sown or harvested in violation of Sabbath or other
       regulations; or the fruits may have not undergone proper
       separation for tithes. We have already seen (above, 4,D,ii) that
       Pharisaic control over production and distribution were touchy
       issues for Galilean peasants." (p. 219)

Myers is translating 7:4 in a quite unusual way in this interpretation.
I find the interpretation itself strongly founded in the entirely of his
literary and social analysis throughout his book. But I want to be sure
that his way of translating hrantisontai (baptizontai) from the Greek is
truly justified. (In the type of commentary Myers is writing -- and
with the particular audience he has in mind as its readers -- he made
the decision not to become involved in many complex textual or
translational issues. His book, as is, runs to 500 pages.)

Textually Myers chooses the reading hrantisontai. With the limited
resources I have available to me here in Belize, I discover that this
textual reading is favored both by Kurt Aland (in his Synopsis Quattuor
Evangeliorum) and by Alfred Schmoller (in his Handkonkordanz zum
griechischen Neuen Tatament) whereas the reading of baptizontai in place
of hrantisontai is accepted (and given a letter B) in the United Bible
Societies The Greek New Testament. As far as I can see the textual
problem is not critical, since both Greek words can have the meaning of
"sprinkle."

Although I don't have access to a large number of translations, I find
that all I have consulted translated ean me hrantizontai in a way
similar to The New Jerusalem Bible: "without first sprinkling
themselves."

My question: although this seems almost an "accepted" translation, it it
the only one gramatically justified? Even though Myers doesn't enter
into such a *gramatical* (as distinguished from literary/social)
justification, my reflections lead me to such a grammatical
justification as well.

In the context I can see solid grammatical reasons for understanding
"foods" as being the implied subject of the passive "are sprinkled"
(hrantizontai) and the implied object of "eating" in 7,4,a -- especially
when, as Myers shows on literary/social grounds, this is the preferred
understanding in the immediate and wider context of the Gospel. The
"accepted" translation seems simply to take for granted that
hrantizontai (or baptizontai) is to be understood as a middle voice
expression -- and doesn't, as far as I'm aware, even try to show why the
activity of "eating (foods)" is the *one* activity (of various possible
activies) specified by Mark as requiring, for the "the Pharisees and all
the Jews" (v. 3), a "sprinkling" of the implied subject "they."

Even though it is a highly unusual, is there any grammatical reason for
eliminating the passive understanding of hrantizontai with the implied
(from the context) subject "foods"? In my judgment, Myers throughout
his book does an excellent job of showing how readers and translators
down through the centuries have failed to catch many of Mark's meanings
-- and have therefore misunderstood and mistranslated --because of a
failure to be aware of specifically social (in the wider sense of
social, economic, and political) circumstances in which Mark was
writing.

After hearing from you, Carl, if you have the time to answer, I will
want to get back to Steve Davies on a number of questions (and
objections) that he raised concerning my message, which he received on
Dec. 23. I'm particularly interested in showing to Steve a quite
different understanding, on the part of Myers, of Mark 1:40-45 from that
which Steve himself simply has taken for granted.

Hoping you will be able to help me and with sincere Christmas prayers
for you and your family and work,

Don Don Murphy, S.J.
                                  Melhado Hall Jesuit Community
                                  St. John's College
                                  P.O. Box 548
                                  Belize City, Belize
                                         C.A.
-------
Below are the passages I mentioned above from an earlier message I sent
to Crosstalk:

"In my judgment a particular strength of Myers's work, aside from his
clear knowledge of the field of Markan scholarship over the last
century, is his bringing to the text of the Gospel the combined insights
of two relatively new methods of study of the synopitic Gospels,
sociological exegesis and literary criticism: 'Since the late 1970's,
two major new trends have been extablished in synoptic scholarship:
sociological exegesis and literary criticism. What better text than
Mark to test my own attempt to synthesize these two new methods?' (p.
13).

"In countless ways this synthesis has both startled and deeply
challenged me. One of the clear emphases of Markan thought that arises
out of the use of this synthesis is that of 'The Symbolic Order of
Ancient Judaism: A Matrix Model,' examined specifically in the case of
'Purity and Debt' and 'Torah and Temple -- all of this treated in an
introductory fashion on pp. 69-79 and then in depth throughout Myers's
systematic commentary on all sections of the Gospel.

"One of the sections dealing with the 'Purity' theme is Mark 6:53-7:23.
 
"Myers's overall "Socio-Literary Reading Strategy" as applied to this
section is entitled 'The Structures of Segregation: The "Leaven"' of the
Pharisees (6:53-7-23).' Myers studies this section under two rubrics:
'i. Attacking Exclusive Table Fellowship: Pharisaic Practice' and 'ii.
Attacking Oral Tradition: Pharisaic Ideology' (all of this on pp.
217-223).

"Myers shows that 7:1-23 is the final part of this larger section. He
shows, likewise, that this part is carefully layered:
     'Once again, Mark's composition provides the key to interpretation.
      The debate unfolds in three layers:
        1. the conflict is set up with a short excursus concerning
           Pharisaic practices of ritual washing (7:1-5);
        2. Jesus begins by challenging not the purity code itself but
           Pharisaic oral tradition (7:6-13);
        3. Jesus returns to the original question by renouncing the
           kosher regulations of the purity code (7:14-23)." (p. 218)'

"Myers continues:
      'The first and third parts are thus related, each defined by the
       repetition of their respective themes: in the first case the
       objection of the Pharisees; in the second, Jesus' counterthesis:
        1. 7:2 "They noticed that some of his disciples were eating
                  with unclean hands."
           7:5 "Why do your disciples . . . eat their food with
                  unclean hands?"
        3. 7:15c "It is the things that come out of a person that make
                  that person unclean."
           7:23 "'All these things come from within and make a person
                  unclean."
       'This compositional structure is didactic, stating the problem
        and the solution, while also isolating the middle section (2).
        There Jesus attacks 'the tradition of the elders' (introduced
        in 7:3,5), which represents the deeper issue of legitmating
        ideology. Accordingly, I will read (1) and (3) together, and
        then look at (2) below.' (p. 218)"

"My reason in quoting the above introductory section from Myers's
treatment is to highlight the importance of seeing everything that Mark
writes in this section as carefully planned and integrated -- by Mark!

"I quote a section from Myers on his following page for a different
reason:
      'Of particular interest is Mark's mention of the marketplace
       (agora) in 6:56 and 7:4. This narrative site represents of
       course the economic sphere, and Mark later refers to it as the
       public site of scribal 'piety' that oppresses the poor (12:38ff.)
       The practice of 'sprinkling (hrantisontai) food would appear to
       refer to Pharisaic concern to guard against consuming produce
       that may have been rendered unclean at some stage of the
       production process (it had nothing to do with hygiene). Impurity
       could have been contracted in one of two ways: the farmer could
       have sown or harvested in violation of Sabbath or other
       regulations; or the fruits may have not undergone proper
       separation for tithes. We have already seen (above, 4,D,ii) that
       Pharisaic control over production and distribution were touchy
       issues for Galilean peasants.' (p. 219)

"My reason for quoting this passage is to exemplify and highlight the
importance of social analysis (referring to social, economic, and
political aspects) of the experience that Mark and his community were
living."



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