The Gospel According to St. Mark

The Woman of Canaan

“…63 Vincent Taylor's attempt to explain the miracle in terms of a "telepathic awareness of what is happening at a distance" attributes to the Evangelist too sophisticated and modern a view. 64 The suggestion that prior to their incorporation within written Gospels the dialogue and miracle enjoyed independent circulation seems a more viable hypothesis. From that vantage point the answer to the second question might read: "The event did not take sign-an answer to prayer which could not be mere coincidence-a miracle, perhaps, something to which they might point and exclaim, "There!…”

The child in the Gospel of Mark

“…However, wherever it belongs, we cannot doubt the genuineness of the saying in Mk 10:15, nor can we reasonably doubt Jesus' actions. 55 Thus if the original pericope reflected Jesus' attitude to children, this has almost disappeared through the additions made to it and the context with which it has been provided. 56 This begs the question: as early as Mark's redaction of the traditional material, are we seeing a dilution of Jesus' sayings, by the deliberate welding together of different apothegms and chreiae so as to change the flavour of the text?…”

Gnomic Quatrains in the Synoptics: An Experiment in Genre Definition

“…Although the Matthaean form is (probably redactionally) more parallelistic than the Lucan, both are in GQ form. 44 Parallelism alone is an unsatisfactory criterion for reconstruction; still, when stripping away a possible accretion produces not only 'better' parallelism, but also parallelism belonging to a known Synoptic genre, both the hypothesis that accretion has taken place and the description of the genre are strengthened. 38 Ex hypothesi, v. 36 ought to be a redactional addition, either from some stage of Q tradition 39 or by the evangelist, 40 made to an intact but misunderstood quatrain.…”

“…V. Taylor long ago pointed out that this fifth element spoils the parallelism of the unit at the same time introducing the new, suspiciously Marcan theme of the obsolescence of the old. 44 Parallelism alone is an unsatisfactory criterion for reconstruction; still, when stripping away a possible accretion produces not only 'better' parallelism, but also parallelism belonging to a known Synoptic genre, both the hypothesis that accretion has taken place and the description of the genre are strengthened. That such accretion did take place in the writing of Synoptic tradition is attractively illustrated from the Lucan addition (v. 39) of yet another related but inappropriate gnomic saying.…”