[B-Greek] Mark 4:11
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Feb 17 14:00:21 EST 2007
4:9 KAI ELEGEN hOS ECEI WTA AKOUEIN AKOUETW 10 KAI hOTE EGENETO KATA
MONAS HRWTWN AUTON hOI PERI AUTON SUN TOIS DWDEKA TAS PARABOLAS 11
KAI ELEGEN AUTOIS hUMIN TO MUSTHRION DEDOTAI THS BASILEIAS TOU QEOU
EKEINOIS DE TOIS EXW EN PARABOLAIS TA PANTA GINETAI
On Feb 17, 2007, at 12:33 PM, Anthony Buzzard wrote:
> Can anyone comment on this: Is there a special nuance intended by the
> word order of "to you has been given the mystery of the
> Kingdom"? UMIN TO MYSTERION DEDOTAI THS BASILEIAS TOU THEOU (Mark
> 4:11). Why is the mystery detached from the Kingdom? Does this
> provide some sort of emphasis on "given" or "mystery"?
I hardly think that the MUSTHRION is "detached" from the Kingdom;
it's not as if there were anything about the position of THS
BASILEIAS TOU QEOU that obscures its syntactic relationship to
MUSTHRION. I think it is worth looking at the whole sequence of
4:9-11, which is why I've cited it above. I've commented a bit more
fully on this sequence in my online "Brief Commentary on the Gospel
of Mark" (http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Mark/). I think that verse 4:9
points both backward to the parable of the sower just narrated by
Jesus and forward to this saying about MUSTHRION and PARABOLAI, hUMIN
and EKEINOIS TOIS EXW. "You guys get/have got the secret; to those
outsiders everything comes -- in riddles." This Marcan passage and
its synoptic parallels are the focus of a celebrated little book of
literary criticism by Frank Kermode entitled _The Gensis of Secrecy_
(http://tinyurl.com/24jpf7)
In view of the fact that the parable of the sower concerns
receptivity to what engenders growth and fruitfulness and those ideas
are explicitly related to the gospel and its hearers in the
interpretation which follows upon this little exchange between Jesus
and the disciples, it is curious that those to whom the secret "has
been given" turn out to find the parable a "riddle" that needs
explanation. In Mark's gospel the disciples recurrently display a
remarkable obtuseness to what is told them. I do think that Mark is a
"playful" writer: perhaps the evangelist is winking at us when he
puts DEDOTAI (get it? heh, heh) between MUSTHRION and THS BASILEIAS
TOU QEOU.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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