The New Christian Jewish Passover Haggadah

I wanted to start a thread about this book by John Bowman.
I mentioned it a couple times on this forum.
I was reading in a book, today, The Gospel and the Gospels (which is another book I mentioned at least once), that at least one textual critic wrote an essay that was published in a scholarly book, that out of the four Gospels, Mark is the only one that can truly be described as a Gospel.
This is the topic of the book I would like to discuss and one is the title and the other is the subtitle, between the one I used in this thread's title, and The Gospel of Mark.
I really don't have much to say in this initial post other than to introduce the topic, which is this book on the Gospel of Mark and to say what my intention is with this thread, which I will describe as briefly as I can.
This is a very technical book and I have already recommended it to at least two members here. It requires a little degree of knowledge in Greek and Latin and Aramaic and Arabic and Hebrew plus something else not easy to get a handle on which is the knowledge of the rabbinical writings, something the author is an expert in. I find myself spending more time looking things up than reading the book so I want to describe the things I discover in that process for the general benefit of whoever might read it, and in particular, those people who take my advice and pick up, or rather have delivered, a copy of this book.

כאן שאין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה

The above quote is found in the page that begins the book and apparently is like a dedicatory remark, though there is a formal dedication on the following page.
Bowman cites Mekhilta Beshallah 40b
My guess by looking at this is that there is a concept about what happened to the Israelites in the wilderness and I would compare it to the saying we hear from Alice in Lewis Carroll's story, "One step forward, two steps back".

In his brief introduction Bowman mentions work done on Mark including Form Criticism but sees a lack of that type of work where it takes in the entire book as a single form, something he is going to attempt to rectify with this book.
I could note that what he is saying here has been now recognized by other scholars of the Form Criticism variety. It would be important to keep in mind this book was written in '63 and its official publication date in '65.
He agrees with a couple theories on Mark to the extent that he thinks it was used liturgically but seems to disagree on it being designed with that purpose in mind.
Now we run straight into the reason for this thread, on the second page of the Brief Introduction.
Concatenation, what? One definition that might fit is: a series of interconnected events, concepts, etc.
The next phrase along with that word, is disjecta membra, which is, according to Wikipedia, Latin for “scattered fragments”. So, put together, he is asking if that is what Mark really is, a slicing together of otherwise disconnected bits of information, as opposed to something originated as a whole. He then says even if it is that, the spliced work, then we still have to consider why it was, in just the way that it was. Then he states his main theses which is it was meant to be modeled after the Passover Haggadah, but with Jesus being the main character, and to be used for a Christian version of Passover.
For anyone not familiar with a Jewish Seder, the Haggadah would be essentially the manual for how you proceed and also has the lines people would recite and the appropriate stories connected with the first Passover.

NOVUM TESTAMENTUM LATET IN VETERE

The New Testament in the Old lies concealed
The Old in the New is revealed

the quote comes from St. Augustine. for more, go to ibiblio

And so the first chapter of Bowman's book on Mark is titled.
He gets into some rabbinical type terminology right away, so I want to take a look at them as I come across them, along with whatever other technical terms I find that I think should be illuminated a bit.

• Maggid - a traditional Eastern European Jewish religious itinerant preacher, skilled as a narrator of Torah and religious stories. en.wikipedia.org...
• Darshan - A preacher of the more scholarly sort was called a "darshan", and usually occupied the official position of rabbi. (same link as above)
• Aramaic - basically, Syrian
• Hebrew - language most of the Old testament is found written in, other than the older Greek version, though a lot of the Greek may have been originally in Hebrew.
• Synagogue - place of assembly at a local level for the prescribed reading of the Torah.
• Meturgemans - a middle man between the speaker and the audience who could give explanations or translations or even ask questions of the speaker on behalf of the audience.
• Targums - translations of the text into Aramaic.
• Oral Law of the Elders - "The Oral Torah commands obedience to the Pharisee Rabbis and gives them the prerogative to create new commandments called takanot ("enactments")." quote from www.hebrewyeshua.com...
• Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi - probably the same person as Yehudah HaNasi, may have been the author of the Haggadah of Pesach en.wikipedia.org...
• Talmud - "a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history." en.wikipedia.org...
• Mishnah - "the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah"." en.wikipedia.org...
• halakhic - of a legal nature.
• Haggadic Midrashim - non-legal expositions.
• Midrash Rabba - the collection of the Haggadic Midrashim writings.
• Pesikta Rabbati - parts separated from the Midrash Rabba and distinguished for use on specific occasions.
• Jewish Apocalyptic literature - including parts of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel and others in the OT canon. Also includes some non-canonical writings though some can be disputed as being Christian in origin.
• Qumran caves - where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
• eschatological - having to do with "end times".
• Early Prophets - Samuel would be a definite example.
• Jewish canon - now days called the Tanach as an acronym for, law, prophets, writings, what Christians call the Old Testament.
• fixed Revelation - the idea that the canon stands for all time as the authoritative scripture.
• Higher Criticism - looking at things in the most basic point of view, such as asking, "What is this and where did it come from."
• Rabbinic Jewish - being "Jewish" and specifically in relationship to rabbinical traditions.
• Dead Sea Sectarian - whatever the people at Qumran had that set them apart from the mainstream Judaism of their time.

Not to get off topic, but have you ever watched videos by Rabbi's? I find them fascinating, they just know so much more about the OT and the meta-physical aspects of it than Christians seem to.

reply to post by graphuto


I'm not worried about staying on topic.
If you have any opinions or disagreements, then chime in.
Some of these things, as in books, are very interesting to me, as researching these things, I did read some of them, by way of book previews on Amazon and put a couple on my wish list.
Pesikta Derab Kahana is one I would buy if I ever get that far along in actually buying things on my list.

Christianity, properly defined is a religion based on the Bible, sometimes called the Christian Bible, with a particular emphasis on the part peculiar to Christians, the New Testament.

The New Testament derives its name from the fact that within it is the description of a new covenant, one similar to the old covenant that the Jews claimed for themselves.

With the former covenant in hand, the Jews saw it as a constitution for a nation, set apart from the world, based on the law which was the articals of incorporation.

Now with the covenant of the latter days, Christianity sees themselves as a nation of all peoples, in the world but not of the world, but connected to a spiritual world.

Christians, like the Jews, have in their history, a defining moment for a birth of the nation, where with the Jews, it is the Israelites crossing over the Red Sea.

With the Christians, it is Jesus crossing the boundaries of death and life. Where the Jews have the Passover celebration to commemorate theirs, the Christians have baptism and communion.

Through baptism we spiritually join Jesus in that journey through death to new life, and mystically live through Jesus as the giver of life in eating the symbols of Christ's flesh and blood.

Bowman uses a term, testimonies, on page 3, where he starts out talking about the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and how this describes the sort of motivation they would have had to look through the scripture to find what could be testimonies of the Messiah. There is a concept among different biblical scholars that there is a such thing as a testimonies, meaning people back around the time of Christ would go through scripture and compile a personal list of all the scripture they thought described what the Messiah would be like, and how they expected him to act. Further, the writers of the NT would make use of these testimonies to inform them on what scriptures matched up with what sayings or what actions Jesus had done.
On page 4 Bowman mentions discussion of the adoption into the canon of Ezekiel. This seems to have been done by the Greet assembly, concluding in 70 A.D. en.wikipedia.org...
Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther were all written outside of Israel so had to be accepted as a special class and their entry involved much debate. Bowman mentions that this debate continued and increased in intensity even after it was already in, so would have been a contentious issue when Mark was written.

The main Samaritan Messianic verse is Deuteronomy 18:18
I will raise up a prophet like you for them from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I command.

18 προφήτην ἀναστήσω αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῶν ἀδελφῶν αὐτῶν ὥσπερ σὲ καὶ δώσω τὸ ῥῆμά μου ἐν τῷ στόματι αὐτοῦ καὶ λαλήσει αὐτοῖς καθότι ἂν ἐντείλωμαι αὐτῷ

This word at the end, ἐντείλωμαι , looks important to understand. Is it The Lord having the prophet say what He commands, or is the prophet given command? This is a form of the word, entellomai, peculiar to the Septuagint, meaning it is not found in the NT spelled like this. Not that common in the NT or the OT, Aorist Tense, Middle Voice, Subjunctive, first Person, Singular.
Here is a verse to see what another word with the same morphology looks like.
Numbers 17:5 • εκλεξωμαι • And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout; thus I will put a stop to the complaints of the Israelites that they continually make against you.

Where the word is Choose. You can see how the subjunctive mood affects the understanding, where it is conditional. Any particular staff may or may not be chosen. To take this back to the main verse we want to analyse, the one of the potential possible "words" may or may not be commanded to be spoken.
Another example of this construct, but a little more complex.
Numbers 23:8 • αρασωμαι • How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce those whom the LORD has not denounced?

A little problematic since it does not match with the NASV above. In the LXX, it is two words, where the arasomai word is to swear or lay down an oath, and the following word is the actual word, curse. So it is more like, "to swear a curse”. So the conditional aspect is: out of all the various nations which may or not be cursed, why this particular one? Going back to the primary verse under consideration, the question may be asked, why this particular "word" among potential possible "words" should be commanded to be spoken?

The answer to my earlier question is that there is nothing special about the word, command, other than it would seem to be at The Lord's discretion (whatever words He decides to command to be spoken), and does not give power of command to the recipient of this choice.