REGARDING CROSSAN'S TERM MEGAPARABLES
Why does Crossan coin the term megaparables? I know, I know, this coinage establishes a verbal tie-in with the term parables. Nevertheless, the conventional names for megaparables out of the ancient world are epics and myths. As Crossan defines and explains and uses the term megaparables, megaparables are epics and/or myths. But they are not history, even though the four canonical gospels include characters based on historical persons. They are fiction, just as epics and myths out of the ancient world are fictions. But the four canonical gospels are constructed as hero stories. As works about a hero, they stand in the tradition of the ILIAD, the ODYSSEY, and the AENEID out of the ancient world.
As Crossan knows, Dennis R. MacDonald has documented certain textual evidence in the Gospel of Mark that shows that the author was familiar with Greek expressions used in the Homeric epics. See MacDonald's book THE HOMERIC EPICS AND THE GOSPEL OF MARK (Yale University Press, 2000).
I would extrapolate from MacDonald's evidence and make the inference that the author of the Gospel of Mark was deliberately fashioning a hero to match and perhaps surpass the Homeric hero Achilles. To make a long story short, when Achilles does at long last decide to return to the war with the Trojans, he makes this decision with the certain knowledge that he will not live to return home. Through a revelation that his goddess-mother gave him, Achilles knew that two possible fates awaited him: (1) he could leave the war now and return home alive or (2) he could return to the war, in which case he would not return home alive. Faced with this choice, he at long last decided to return to the war, thus sealing his fated death.
In the spirit of one-upmanship with the Homeric epic, the anonymous author of the Gospel of Mark portrays his non-violent hero as predicting in advance his own death in Jerusalem not once, not twice, but three times. For the three predictions, see Mark (1) 8:27-33; (2) 9:30-32; and (3) 10:32-34. (There are parallel three-prediction passages in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.) So we would have to be obtuse not to get the point that he knew beforehand that he was walking into his death in Jerusalem and that he kept walking toward Jerusalem. This is good storytelling. Over the centuries, far more people have known the story of Jesus the non-violent hero than have known the story of Achilles the violent hero.
But Crossan prefers to refer to the epic hero story fashioned in Gospel of Mark as a megaparable.
However that may be, we may wonder what kind of hero the anonymous author of the Gospel of Mark is fashioning, apart from being non-violent. The author is fashioning a non-violent hero to serve as a model of courage because he is willing to face his own predicted death. But that's not all that the author is fashioning into his hero.
Like many other early followers of Jesus after his death, the author is preoccupied with the servant songs in the book of Isaiah (specifically in the part of the book that critical biblical scholars refer to as Second Isaiah, a prophet whose identity is not known). For the four servant songs, see Isaiah (1) 42:1-11; (2) 49:1-6; (3) 50:4-11; and (4) 52:13-53:12. As a result, the author is fashioning Jesus-the-hero to be a servant of God in an exemplary way. To be a servant of God is a great honorific in the Hebrew Bible.
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