(July 26, 2012 at 1:28 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Well, also consider that all parts of the OT are "potentially prophetic" in that they can always be made to be so if the author of any subsequent narrative were inclined (and there's a very juicy reason to make them so). Prophecy after the fact and in absentia of fact are two fairly common themes in mythology. It does seem very important to us to "know whats coming", and we've held for a very long time that history repeats itself. I'm unqualified to say why this is for certain but one can see how a practical concern like this can be elevated to the status of the spiritual. Once there, it's a short hop and a skip to all of our myths -where we do find it in abundance-. Consider also that there may be a great deal of filler in the narratives........what do you do when you have a introduction on page 1 and the message on page ten, you have 8 pages of material you need to come up with. The same is true of oral traditions, where patterns of speech or little "mini-stories" ,even down to repetitive phrases and command-call words, are often leveraged as a memory aide.
Consider also, that narratives aren't always written for the purposes expressly stated within them (or assigned to them). Necronimicon being an amusing and more modern example of this. Lent, borrowed, tweaked, altered, forgotten and remembered, satirized, I mean, it's wide open.
I don't think the Gospel of Mark was something that evolved over time. That may be true of say John because when compared to the Synoptics it's quite clear that the story and theology became quite advanced.
Mark has too many explicit and implicit parallels to the OT that just makes me think it wasn't some oral tradition being taught.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
