Re: Mark ch 15, v. 2

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun May 31 1998 - 20:06:08 EDT


At 6:08 PM -0400 5/31/98, Edgar Foster wrote:
>---"Carl W. Conrad" wrote:
>
>> I got this note this morning myself; I wondered why it wasn't
>addressed
>> directly to B-Greek--we don't currently have any mechanism for
>preventing
>> people from posting to the list when they're not list-members. But a
>couple
>> of my pet-peeves are (1) individuals addressees in a long
>list--usually
>> this means spam; (2) senders of messages--especially when the
>messages are
>> addressed to real individuals--who identify themselves only by
>pseudonyms.
>> This latter DOES INDEED violate B-Greek protocol.
>
>Thanks for the clarification, Carl. I will keep this in mind for
>future occurrences. Maybe hO is not aware of this policy, so I guess I
>gavwe him or her the benefit of the doubt. At any rate, my apologies.

Off-list.

You have no need to apologize, Edgar. My guess is that the anonymous sender found our web-site and picked out a number of names from the archives and addressed the question to all of them. And since he did NOT actually address his message to the list, he(?) violated no protocol either. Generally when someone has addressed a question off-list to me and I think it of interest to the list, I will suggest that he or she send the question to the list. I didn't mean either to suggest that I consider the message a piece of spam--but I really don't think it's a good idea to pick out a dozen names from a list and post a question to all of them--it would make more sense to post one's question directly to the list.

As for the question itself--regarding the meaning of Jesus' response in Mk 15:2, I've heard/read the same comment again and again, to the effect that Jesus is saying, as you put it, "Yes!" But personally I've never felt CONVINCED that this was right, however plausible it may be. I find it just as plausible to understand Jesus' response in the sense: "YOU're the one who is making that assertion about me"--with the implication that Jesus himself is not making any claim at all.I don't say that I find this latter reading MORE plausible than the other; rather, I've never felt that there's really a preponderance of evidence for one way of looking at the passage over the other. I might add that this is not the only passage of the sort whereof I think our efforts to interpret are reduced to conjecture. I'd just rather honestly admit that I don't feel fully satisfied by the arguments I've heard/read. And that (rather than because of the multiple addressees and the pseudonymous sender--is why I didn't respond to the q
uestion myself.



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