Updated 10 Dec 2022 (see here)
Log of kiasmatic Mark project. This post and project is a review of the book Decoding Mark. In that book, the author argues that there is a kiasmatic structure throughout the book of Mark, and that kiasmatic structure can be used to correct Mark and partially restore the original.
First off, kiasmus is when the text repeats itself in reverse, like so:
Joshua 1:5-9
As I was with Moses, so I will be with you: I will never leave you nor forsake you
Be Strong and courageous…(repeat).
Be careful to obey all the law…that you may be successful
Keep the Book of Law on your lips
Meditate on it day and night
Be careful to do everything written therein…you will be successful
Be strong and courageous..do not be discouraged.
For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
Mark has many kiasms on a small scale, for example:
The Sabbath
Was made for man
Not man
For the Sabbath
On a small scale, kiasms have a poetic quality about them. On a larger scale, they serve as an organizational scaffolding, to organize the text and emphasize the bigger points being made, such as the main point or a compare/contrast.
The kiasmus was a common literary technique in New Testament times. In my opinion, the origin of the kiasmus was as a mnemonic device. That is it helps people recite passages from memory with a fair degree of fidelity. New Testament peoples were an oral not written culture, something that is obscured to us because we know them mostly through their writings. Most of the people Jesus interacted with knew the scriptures because they were read to them in synagogue, not because they would study them by themselves. Since so much of the culture was conducted orally - news, law, and so forth, memory techniques were many and common. A famous one that survived to our times is the memory palace - piggybacking on a memory of a place to remember all the parts of an oral composition, in their correct order. Another memory device called chunking can then be used. Chunking is dividing the material into larger chunks and then remembering how they fit together. As an example 86-40-11 is easier to remember than 8-6-4-0-1-1. Applied to kiasmus, you could use the repeat in reverse with sections instead of lines to correctly remember the structure of a long story with many parts.
Jonathan Dart claims to have found evidence of a kiasmatic structure throughout Mark and using this has reconstructed the original Mark (or closer, anyways). Kiasmus could serve as an error-detecting code because parts that were inserted into the text will not follow the pattern. Its error-correcting ability is limited though because if you have a part that is not reflected in the kiasmatic reverse, you don’t know if it’s an interpolation, or if its mirror was deleted. But you can combine this information with other clues and suppositions to come up with a pretty good guess.
This post goes over the kiasms he mentions and my thoughts on their validity. Dart also claims that this method proves that Morton Smith’s Secret Mark fragments are correct.
I put the text of David Bentley Hart’s New Testament translation into Dart’s Kiasmatic structure. His translation is chosen because his translation maintains a 1:1 correspondence between a Greek word an an English word. Dart’s method of establishing the kiasmatic correspondence relies heavily on the same word being used in corresponding sections, so a more literal translation should work better. Where the same Greek word is used (per Dart) but Hart uses different words I put the Greek word in italics. I’ve changed some of the words in Hart’s text back to KJV equivalents to suit my taste.
Jonathan Dart says the original Mark has five sections, a prologue, and a conclusion. Each section is a long kiasmus - that is composed of chunks that has a kiasmatic mirror with a single center. And together they form one long kiasmus for the gospel of Mark, in its original composition.
To make looking at these high-level kiasms easier, I put them in tables as the accepted method of indenting lines falls apart with this lengthy text. To use the table read down the first column until you get to the bottom, which is the center of the kiasmus. Then you read up the second column. That is you read each cell of the second column from top to bottom, and then move on to the cell above it. At any point, you can just look over to see the corresponding kiasmatic text.
I’ll go through the sections one by one with my thoughts. The actual table will be underneath that to look at for yourself. Red text means likely interpolation. Blue text - Dart’s additions from Secret Mark or Luke or regular Mark
Bolded/underlined - as per Dart’s notes, the words he thinks establish the kiasmatic correspondence.
There are errors in my text, I only did a quick proofread.
Prologue: Jesus is baptized Mark 1:1-14
Section 1: Jesus is the Bridegroom 1:14-4:12
This section beautifully lined up into a kiasmus as Dart said. The center of it is Jesus saying that his disciples can’t fast while they have the bridegroom with him. This center didn’t work with Hart’s Grammar. I arranged the phrases into the kiasmus, which gives us Yoda-like grammar. I expect Greek doesn’t arrange phrases in a sentence like English does, and I assume that’s what’s going on here.
One thing that stuck out like a sore thumb, is the section about new wine and wineskins. It has no mirror unlike everything else, so I’ll mark it red as a possible interpolation. Dart forces a fit with counting the ‘new’ disciples v. The old of the Pharisees, which requires counting disciples of the Pharisees - a forced misuse of the grammar IMO. Two of the ‘news’ he is counting are in a phrase that is not included in the best texts.
The theme of the section is ‘messengers’. To see what a Bridegroom and messengers have to do with each other see my New Testament Notes: The Galilean wedding.
Section 2: He charged them to tell no man, 4:13-6:46
The kiasmus is not so clear but there is sufficient to show that there once was a kiasmus. Dart often uses words to show a correspondence, which is fine, except sometimes the words he relies on aren’t significant - such as ‘all’ or ‘given’. Still I think if you get a general sense of the sections, they do go together with their kiasmatic mirror. Perhaps the text was scrambled or altered here.
This kiasmus might also work if you chose as its center, “Little girl, I say to you arise.” Or even possibly, “Be not afraid, have faith”. Dart thinks the theme of Mark is messengers and not/saying messages, which makes the center “he charged them at length that no one should know of this…”. Dart’s center does work beautifully with the phrase ‘brother of James’, which is awkwardly worded in one of the instances. “He went into his native country” would also work with that, which would make it a compare/contrast type of kiasmatic center. To be clear these other centers have problems, its just the kiasmus is muddled in this section as compared to section 1.
Interpolation Section 6:47 - 8:26.
No overall kiasmatic structure (According to Dart) so these must be added at a later date. I accept this as accurate without trying to find a kiasmus in it because there are other strong reasons to doubt the validity of these stories.
Those stories are: Walking on water, Argument over purity laws, Gentiles can beg scraps of the gospel, like dogs underneath a table, Spit and finger in the ears in healing a mute deaf, Feeding the four thousand, Sign seeking argument with Pharisees-Red Sky, Chewing out the disciples for not understanding “beware the leaven of the Pharisees”, Foretelling his death and resurrection
The only real loss here, IMO, is the story of Jesus walking towards them on the water, saying I-AM, do not be afraid, and Peter walking on the water until he doubts. By theme, I would expect this would have gone in the end of section 2, which has lots of do not be afraid, and have faith. Overall though, I feel the correct sequence is feeding the 5,000 > Bread Sermon > Jesus asking them who they say he is. Removing those verses restores it, albeit Mark does not go into the Bread Sermon.
Section 3: Messengers Mark 8:27-10:52
Kiasmatic correspondences are good here.
The section is where the passages from Secret Mark fit in, and indeed they correspond well with their kiasmatic mirrors.
He adds a new center from Luke - it is a kiasmus with fire on the end so it matches the center as is (fire) and merely extends the kiasmus if added in. This is the passage where Samaritans reject Jesus because he is going to Jerusalem and the Boanerges want to call down fire. Unlike the other passages he borrows from Luke, there is no reason to suspect that this was Luke copying an earlier version of Mark. Its focus (center) on messengers is a little redundant, but Dart does see that as the main theme of Mark, and the center here is the center of the entire book of Mark because this is the middle of the five sections. He jsutifies this by saying it works in another book length kiasmus layered atop the ones I am looking at here - it brings the halves of Mark into balance - 305 verses on each side. I thought verses were added later, so there is no reason why the kiasmatic center and the verse center should be the same. I will talk about this other kiasmus briefly after I finish going through the sections.
Section 4: Well said, Teacher Mark 11:1-14:9
Again I see the kiasmatic structure clearly, but it seems a little off, like perhaps Dart didn’t cut the chunks completely right or perhaps the text is suffering from slight scrambling and accumulated minor changes.
Section 5: and Jesus said, I-AM Mark 14:10-16:8
This section has two more Luccan additions in the text to make the kiasmus work. His theory is Luke copied from an earlier version of Mark than Matthew did, so it had fewer edits and preserved the kiasms better. These two borrowings from Luke do look like they were from sections Luke had copied from Mark, or from the same source as Mark.
Luke 23:40-43 is plausibly the Luccan version of a Marccan source. The correspondence words to establish them as fitting into the original kiasmus are also plausible, but they are all common words, so I don’t see this proof as establishing it without any doubts.
The phrase “Handed over” occurs a lot in Greek, and is translated in various ways in KJV. The kiasmus here does seem to knowingly match up that phrase.
Conclusion - He Died 15:34 - 16:8
There clearly is a kiasmus here, though a bit loose in places. He proposes that the original ending, which we don’t have, just repeats the beginning - gospel, messengers before your face, make straight his paths. That has a rather poetic effect, bring us full circle and pointing to the messengers (apóstoloi) spreading the gospel and also to Elijah, who is to come before the Lord’s return.
Final thoughts
Yes, there is something to all the proposed Kiasmus. Unfortunately, Kiasmus are not error-correcting, and so these changes can’t be established as having been authoritative without doubts. A tool perhaps, but no more. Dart does add another Kiasmus layered on top of the ones mentioned here that goes through the whole book and centers on an overall halfway point. That kiasmus is broken into two more kiasms with centers at the quarter and three-quarter marks (roughly speaking) as well as eight lenghth kiasms. The sections also break into halves as well. This layering and epicycling of Kiasms does increase the predictive power greatly and may explain why some of the Kiasms have to be fairly loose. I’ll put the centers and a description of them following this section, so you may evaluate for yourself. I will also put a few telling correspondences. The fact that different Kiasms can be found (and I know of someone who has made a different Kiasm for Mark centering on the second of three occasions when Jesus prophesied of his death and resurrection), means that either Mark knowingly made many and layered them, or it means that this method of finding Kiasms (catchwords, relating the theme of a chunk of text) can and does yield things that were never intended.
How does this change the message of Mark? I found the rich young man that Jesus loved = Lazarus makes for an interesting story. ‘With man it is impossible for a rich man to enter heaven, but it is possible with God. QED’
Dart says it discredits the twelve, Jesus’ family, and the women disciples. (In a more thorough way than the Mark we have now.) In the catholic tradition, Mark was Peters's stump speech, and his assistant John Mark wrote down his words following a particular talk to a bunch of soldiers (who had pidgin Greek as their common tongue). If true, it would imply the discrediting of Peter was an act of humility and penance, along the lines of: “I am but a man” recorded in Acts. The problem with Dart’s interpretation is if you discredit the twelve apostles you discredit Jesus (as he quotes a scholar responding to him). In other words, if the women never bore witness, and the twelve did not witness the resurrection as implied by his interpretation, how do we know about Jesus? And how did Christians come to respect these people as founders of the faith? Were they supposed to have parachuted into a thriving movement after the fact and taken it over?
Other Kiasms
The overall Kiasmus, selected correspondences and center
This is from the Kiasmus that covers the whole book of Mark. Here I’ve just put in the endpoints, the one with the patch of cloth, the not obvious addition from Luke, secret Mark, and around the center.
Dart says that each of the large Kiasms will split in half to smaller kiasms, and those too often can split. There are bridging kiasms as well that link sections together. I want to go into some detail in the second half of the 3rd Kiasm with the quarter, eighth, and sixteenth kiasms, but am struggling how to represent them in one piece. The table could work for the big Kiasm, and then indentations within, but how to get a finer scale than that? I will think about that and add to the post according to my best ideas.
Update:
Kiasmus of the 3rd section, second half. (Center is 3/4 of the way through the 3rd section). I was going to get the kiasmus of the 4rth quarter as well, and see if I could fit both into the same table, but it goes over a little bit into the third quarter. Therefore, fitting it into the table format is not workable, as it is not contained to one side.
I also note that this kiasmus is fairly similar to the overall proposed Kiasmus above, with a slighly shifted center. Thinking on my notes with the other possible centers of the 2d act, it occurs to me that we might be reading too much into the overall Kiasmus and overlooking the basic small scale structure. If the basic text was a series of small interlocked kiasmus, such that the back leg of one Kiasmus served as the front leg of a new Kiasmus you could potentially find a myriad of centers, and also find new kaismus centered on the half and quarter marks of existing ones. As you get further away from the center the blocks of text grow larger, making it easier to find correspondences in large chunks of text that were, after all, written by the same author, in the same style, about the same general subject. Or there could in fact be some large scale Kiasmatic structure, but kept fairly loose, which could then be used to ‘prove’ several different Kiasmatic centers. For example, I’m aware of another author opining that the Kiasmus in Mark is clearly focused on Jesus predicting his death on resurrection the second time, with the first and third predictions kiasmatically linked.