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Semitic Style or Semitic Sources?

'...Thus there remain only two possible explanations for the erratic frequency of these 17 syntactical features in Acts 1-15 -- either Semitic Sources lie behind those sections where Semitic frequencies occur, or the writer is deliberately and consciously imitating there a Semitic Style which differs from his own natural style.

As noted earlier, in recent times it has been most common to explain the writer's Semitic style in Acts 1-15 and the Gospel of Luke (particularly in Luke 1 and 2) in this way, namely as a consciously-Semitizing Septuagintal Style -- the writer's conscious effort to provide for his narrative the local color most suited to it, thereby revealing his great artistic skill.

Winter in reference to the Semitisms of Luke 1 and 2 has rightly called this explanation by Sparks "artificial". However, the main refutation of the view that this erratic Semitic style (at least with respect to the 17 syntactical criteria of translation Greek) is due to deliberate imitation of the LXX lies in another direction.

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Semitic-Style Sections in Acts

Why does the writer of Acts 1-15 choose to use a Semitic style ...only in some sections (some of which are Palestinian in setting and some of which are not Palestinian in setting)?

And why does he not adopt this style in the many other places where the Palestinian background is clear and obvious, since according to Sparks the Palestinian setting determines Luke's conscious Semitic style?

Why for example ... should Luke deliberately adopt a Semitic style for narrating Paul's experiences and the healing of a man crippled from birth at Lystra in Asia Minor (Acts 14:8-20) but use his natural non-Semitic style to describe Peter and John's similar experience with a man lame from birth in Jerusalem (Acts 3:1-10)?

Or why should Luke deliberately adopt a Semitic style to narrate the arrest, imprisonment and trial of Peter and the other apostles in Jerusalem in Acts 5:17-32 but not use it for his arrest, imprisonment and trial of Peter and John in Jerusalem in the previous chapter (Acts 4:5-22)?

Or why should Luke's narration of Peter's vision and his visit to Cornelius be told in his natural, non-Semitic style (Acts 10:1-48) but Peter's retelling of it in Acts 11:5-17 be highly Semitized as indicated by these 17 syntactical features?

Finally, why would the writer use a very Semitic style for Paul's sermon in Antioch of Asia Minor (Acts 13:16b-41) but employ his natural, non-Semitic style for Paul's speech before the mob in Jerusalem, which Luke specifically states was delivered in Aramaic (Acts 22:2-21)? There, if anywhere, he surely ought to seek to give an Aramaic coloring to the Greek!

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Semitic-Style Sections in Luke

The same anomalous situation will be seen in Luke's Gospel. If Luke's Semitic style was as Sparks claimed,

"...deliberately devised and cunningly conceived to provide the right background for the action",...

- why, as will be demonstrated in the rest of this study, is the entire Gospel not written in such a style -- for the Gospel material is entirely set in a Palestinian environment?

And why does he tend to lessen these Semitic syntactical frequencies whenever he uses Markan narratives and sayings (as he does nearly 3/4 of the time)? Since all of Mark's material is Palestinian in setting, it is difficult to understand why Luke would make the Markan material he uses less rather than more Semitic.

Further, as will appear subsequently, only about 1/3 of Luke's special material reveals this same Semitic style as does only some of his 'Q' material -- but all of the Q and special material has a Palestinian setting!

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Semitic-Style Sections in Mark and Matthew

This same erratic Semitic style with respect to these 17 syntactical features appears in both Mark and Matthew! Is it to be assumed that they, like Luke, are so skilled as to be able to consiously to imitate the style of the Greek O.T. so as to give appropriate color to their Gospels? And, if so, why do they, like Luke, also do it in some stories and sayings and not others?

One interesting example must suffice for now. Why should Mark adopt a very Semitic style for his narration of the Feeding of the 4000 (Mark 8:1-10) and a very non-Semitic style for his narration of the Feeding of the 5000 (Mark 6:30-44)?

Or, why should Matthew (Matt. 15:32-30) change Mark's narration of the Feeding of the 4000 and eliminate much of this Semitic style, which Matthew uses elsewhere both in his 'Q' and in his 'Special' materials? (cf. ch.1 below for details).

Whatever the explanation for the different kinds of Semitisms found in the Gospels and Acts 1-15, as far as the 17 syntactical criteria of Syntax Criticism are concerned, it is much more probable that where these 17 syntactical features appear with Semitic frequencies, they provide evidence that the writer is, in these instances, dependent upon Semtic sources. '

- Martin, Syntax Criticism...
(underlines & emphasis by author)

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One Discipline Leads to Another

It is also the perception of many scholars that the results of source, form and, especially, redaction criticism impel one to move on to literary criticism. I found out for myself, in an unforeseen manner, that redaction criticism mutates into genuine literary criticism -- a discovery made in the course of writing my dissertation (now published as Loaves and Fishes: The Function of the Feeding Stories in the Gospel of Mark [Scholars Press, 1981]).

The topic of my dissertation was the two stories of a miraculous feeding of a multitude in Mark: the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Mark 6:30-44) and the Feeding of the Four Thousand (Mark 8:1-10). There has been a time-honored consensus, going all the way back to the source critics, that these two stories represent variants of a single traditional story. The Gospel writer included both versions, it is said, almost carelessly. After all, in both versions of the story the disciples seem to have no idea of what Jesus is capable of doing to feed vast crowds. Surely they would not have been so obtuse on the second occasion of a miraculous feeding. Therefore, the standard argument runs, these two stories are actually variants of the same story, each version of which included some mention of the disciples’ initial ignorance of what Jesus is about to do. When the evangelist tells essentially the same story twice, the disciples are accidentally made to look incredibly stupid.

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The Results of Redaction Criticism

That is the usual scholarly accounting of the two feeding stories in Mark. Suspecting that rather than explaining the stories, this theory just explained them away, I applied standard redaction critical techniques to them to see if I could detect where Mark was borrowing from tradition and where he was editing that tradition. I found I could not substantiate the supposition that both stories were inherited by the evangelist from the tradition. The shorter and less colorful of the two stories, the Feeding of the Four Thousand (Mark 8:1-10), may well have been inherited from the tradition -- its vocabulary and compositional style are unlike that of most of the Gospel and may betray an origin in a source used by the evangelist. The Feeding of the Five Thousand (Mark 6:30-44), on the other hand, was probably composed entirely by the Gospel writer. The vocabulary and style of this story was absolutely congruent with the vocabulary and style favored by Mark when he is editing his sources. In addition, careful analysis suggests that the older, traditional form of the story served as a model for the evangelist’s own composition.

At this point redaction criticism reaches an impasse. The redaction critic is supposed to find the word or phrase that reveals the editorial activity of the evangelist in shaping the tradition he inherited. But what is one to do when he finds instead that the evangelist has composed an entire story? That is, what is one to do when one finds that Mark was not simply an editor of tradition, but a fine storyteller in his own right? Redaction criticism, with its orientation toward editors and editing, is no longer helpful at this point.

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Literary Criticism: The Next Level

If the editor is really an author (who just happens to edit), then we need a critical method that will help us to appreciate and to understand the author as an author and his Gospel as a genuine literary work. Redaction criticism serves us well in our quest to understand the Gospels, but eventually its usefulness wanes, and one must turn to a genuine literary criticism of the Gospels in order to continue the quest.

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The Results of Literary Criticism

With regard to the feeding stories in Mark, the interesting literary question is not what the Gospel writer was trying to say when he composed the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Altogether, the storyteller chooses to tell us not one but two feeding stories. It is irrelevant that one story is traditional in origin and the other his own composition. Mark, as the author of the Gospel, bears full responsibility for the entire narrative, regardless of how much traditional material he may have incorporated into the story. The literary critic, concerned with interpreting the Gospel as an integral, literary whole, must deal with both feeding stories with equal seriousness. Therefore, even if my thesis that Mark himself composed the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand were to be conclusively refuted, I would still insist that both stories need to be taken seriously as episodes in Mark’s story about Jesus. From a literary critical perspective, it simply will not do to explain away the tensions arising between the two stories by labeling them variants of pre-Gospel tradition.

One can no longer dodge the admittedly distasteful conclusion that the author intends for the disciples to come off badly in this pair of stories. They look dense because that is the way the author paints them. Indeed, Mark has used rich irony in the feeding stories and throughout the Gospel. When the second feeding incident begins to unfold, it is narrative artistry and not careless editing that makes the disciples say, “How can one feed these men with bread here in the desert?” The reader, remembering the earlier feeding incident, knows very well how Jesus is able to satisfy the needs of the crowd. But the disciples seem oblivious of his power. They skewer themselves on their own words, while the reader watches and learns from their mistakes.

Of course, in a thorough literary critical interpretation of the Gospel, one would expect the portrait of the disciples in the feeding stories to be consistent with the portrait of the disciples elsewhere in the Gospel. This in fact seems to be the case; several scholars have suggested that the theme of the obtuseness and failures of the disciples pervades the Gospel of Mark. Upon further literary study it may prove to be the theme of the Gospel, perhaps replacing the “messianic secret” in the affections of students of Mark’s Gospel.

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The Value of Literary Criticism

The literary criticism of the Gospels, as illustrated by this interpretation of the feeding stories, has much potential to benefit both the academy and the church. I have already indicated the way in which literary criticism furthers the development of approaches used in Gospel studies, while at the same time it represents a major shift in orientation away from the longstanding preoccupation with historical questions. I have suggested that a host of literary questions have long awaited careful consideration, and that now the time has come to give them the attention they deserve. There is much work to be done in this long-neglected vineyard.

But to state even more sharply the challenge that literary criticism presents to both the academy and the church, I would say that our work is to rediscover a sense of the wholeness of each of the Gospels. When we do that, we will begin to hear once again the unmistakable voice of each individual evangelist as he tells us his own version of the story of Jesus, from beginning to end.

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Conclusion: New Methods and Viewpoints

The challenge of literary criticism confronts a guild of biblical scholars who have been predisposed to disintegrate the Gospels into supposed component pieces. The church, too, has often stifled the voice of each evangelist, either by disintegrating his Gospel into bite-sized lectionary texts, or by harmonizing the Gospels, melting them together into one variegated lump of Gospel lore.

Few biblical scholars have taken seriously both feeding stories in Mark; similarly, how many sermons have you heard on both stories, as a pair? Such sermonizing would feel awkward for most of us, for that is simply not the way expository preaching is usually done. And yet a literary critical reading of Mark suggests that this pair of stories belongs together, and if we wish to understand what Mark had in mind by writing his Gospel, we had best keep them together. Or to state the challenge of literary criticism yet another way, perhaps we should note that the Gospel writers produced neither volumes of learned exegesis nor sermons. Rather, they told stories; and if we wish to understand what the Gospels say, we should study how stories are told.

- Fowler, Using Literary Criticism on the Gospels

¹⁸ "...Having eyes, see you not? and having ears, hear you not? and do you not remember?
¹⁹ When I broke the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took you up?

They said unto him, "Twelve."

²⁰ "And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took you up? "

And they said, "Seven. "

²¹ And he said unto them, "How is it that you do not understand?"

- (Mark 18-21)