Mark, John, and Answerability: Interfluentiality and Dialectic between the Second and Fourth Gospels

Abstract

The relation between Mark and John, the Bi-Optic Gospels, is one of the most difficult and most important subjects in biblical studies. Upon correct inferences of this set of intratraditional and intertraditional relationships many other judgments falter or stand. Seeking to make an advance over monodimensional source- and redaction-critical theories, an overall theory of Markan-Johannine interfluentiality identifies at least six stages in the developments within and between these two traditions, seeking to make the best sense of their textual similarities and differences. Along the way, several advances are argued over prevalent critical approaches, leading to an assessment of John’s relation to Mark as being interfluential in the oral stages of their traditions, augmentive and corrective to Mark in John’s first edition as “the second gospel”, and harmonizing - in that the final edition of John tends to reconcile itself with the other Markan Gospels. As the final Markan interpolation includes Johannine content, interfluentiality indeed continues. In service to an overall theory of interfluentiality stands Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of polyvalent dialogism, applicable to historical narratives as well as fictive ones, wherein answerability within the cognitive experience of authors seeks to reconcile disparities between life and art. In that sense, an ongoing history of dialectical engagement between these bi-optic renderings of Jesus’ ministry inform also a broader understanding of John’s distinctive relations to the Lukan, Q, and Matthean traditions, and most importantly to their common subject: Jesus.

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