Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Larry Hurtado and literary analysis

Professor Larry Hurtado has written an excellent literary analysis of the final chapter of the Gospel according to 'Mark'

But it is all literary analysis. There is no methodology there for extracting any historical data from the Gospel, except trying to find out what the author might have wanted people to believe.

It is treating the Gospels like 'Romeo and Juliet'.

This is how the Gospels should be treated....

3 Comments:

Blogger Phil C said...

"It is treating the Gospels like 'Romeo and Juliet'."

No it isn't.

It's addressing why Mark writes about the events in a different way to the other gospel writers. That's a perfectly valid thing to do.

If you had two accounts of a year in Winston Churchill's life, and were trying to work out why one focused on some things, and the other focused on other things, analysing the structure of the two accounts is perfectly valid.

Hurtado is not making an attempt to "[extract] any historical data from the Gospel".

8:37 AM  
Blogger Steven Carr said...

But Larry Hurtado is treating the Gospel of Mark like Shakespeare scholars analyse the characters in Romeo and Juliet.

You just have to read Hurtado's post to see him do that.

'It's addressing why Mark writes about the events in a different way to the other gospel writers'

Because the other writers copied from 'Mark' and changed whatever offended their own private theological agendas, rewriting 'history' and deceiving their readers by never telling them they were changing whatever did not suit them?

8:43 AM  
Blogger Phil C said...

"Because the other writers copied from 'Mark' and changed whatever offended their own private theological agendas, rewriting 'history' and deceiving their readers by never telling them they were changing whatever did not suit them?"

How do you know that? Not by reading scholars that use literary analysis of the gospels, surely?

5:37 AM  

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