Excavating The Empty Tomb

[The Grand Nudger]

If the narrative is what is so obviously and blantly similar, then why didn't you use any examples to refute my rebuttal? Why create a narrative based on nothing more than a claim that the narrative styles in these two stories match? Do you live learn and work by faith alone?

What did you think we were talking about in our feeding of the multitudes posts? We were talking about the use of doublets, foreshadowing,and allusion -specifically in the service of pericope - ....it was lost on you there, it will be lost on you here.


In that narrative, the doublet is probably the strongest example - as we read the second telling of the same tale (the second telling more likely being the authors own upsized version of whatever source he drew from) - we the reader know full well how jesus intends to feed the multitudes - by magic, and so we get to watch his disciples fall on their own swords - and learn from their mistakes as party to a third person omniscient narrators thought stream (which includes a dissolution of temporal frame - we are treated to the future in the first narrative - bare bones..it is then rewound and fleshed out for our viewing pleasure).

To conceive of this as a "just-so" story is to ignore the very real and very apparent skill of the author - and his familiarity with the sorts of literary devices that are part of the larger picture and shared ancestry of "western literature". As a "just-so" story it could have been left at the first - naked narrative. This would not have been a suitable vehicle for the authors message - and so he reaches into his bag of tricks and pulls out the doublet...thus investing the narrative with theology. The characters therein do not say the things that they do for any reason other than that it served the purpose of the author. They -have- to wring their hands and play the chorus (you know..the chorus..that other narrative device so commonly employed by greek writers to highlight some aspect of the narrative - keep the audience involved- make it clear...in no uncertain terms, what they should be thinking about...what question they should be asking themselves - to provide a call/response for the narrator to establish the necessity of their next verse........in short..what the disciples are mostly engaged in the business of as foil to jesus throughout the entirety of your narrative?) otherwise the author cannot keep the story moving forward towards the conclusion he wishes to pen.

In short, the narrative is fictitious, the characters exist and act in accordance with the will of the author - because they have to - so that the author can invest his own narrative with his own message. That the author utilizes the doublet (the retelling of a tale with details emphasized differentially between the two..establishing irony and insider knowledge) - that the author alludes to older tales to establish the cultural continuity of the narrative (makes it available and familiar to the audience), that this narrative is both foreshadowed - and serves to foreshadow the next bit of narrative, shows us that the author was - at the very least, familiar with all of these tools which are common to the literary tradition of the time (and remain common, btw).

As pericope, as a story, this narrative is masterful. As a -just so- we could remove one of the two retellings of the tale..and we'd most likely want to remove the more elbaorate version......but this would remove the source of one of the theological underpinnings which is integral to christianity. IOW, to remove the fiction is to remove a critical part of your belief system. Get it?