Scriptural Evolution

There are two recent posts that appeared on blogs I read within the past few hours, and it seemed more interesting to set them side by side under a single heading than to mention each in a separate post.

First, Stephen Carlson blogs about the ending (or lack thereof) in Mark’s Gospel. On the whole his post is fair, but I’m personally not persuaded that the evidence is as evenly balanced as he suggests. (Stephen won’t be surprised by this, having listened to me give a paper about “Mark’s missing ending” at SBL not long ago). Stephen wrote:

…the theory of that the text of Mark’s gospel suffered mutilation almost immediately seems a little too coincident to be plausible. In effect, supposing that the text continued after v.8 against the external evidence (vv.9-20 are decidedly secondary) is a conjectural emendation with a high burden of proof. For me, that onus has not been met.

I don’t find this solution “coincident” – it seems an apt explanation if the earliest version of a manuscript we have seems to already reflect some sort of mutilation. But more importantly, he mentions the burden of proof, and while I agree that there is insufficient evidence to make a watertight case for Mark’s original ending having been lost, the discomfort of multiple scribes copying Mark as well as of at least two other early Gospel authors using Mark seems to provide at least substantial evidence. That Luke and Matthew diverge so markedly exactly where Mark as we know it runs out also fits as well with the truncation scenario as with the view that Mark wished to end there, and their feeling that the story does not end appropriately where Mark’s does seems to tip the scale, however slightly. And so I’m inclined to regard accidental mutilation as the “best fit to the evidence” until someone comes up with a better explanation.

Stephen’s post might be said to be about the evolution of Mark’s Gospel, of its textual transmission, as well as the evolution of the early church’s resurrection narratives. The second post I wish to highlight is about evolution in that other sense, but also about the evolution of the Bible. Peter Carrell insightfully notes that those who reject the idea of evolution and of God creating by that means also have a blind spot when it comes to the evolution of the Bible. They either ignore or fail to notice the slow process (although with evidence that could support punctuated equilibrium) of ancient Israel’s understanding of God, views on the afterlife, and the slow process of the writing of the Biblical books and their formation into a canon. Doesn’t the Bible itself (if not in its statements, then in what it shows itself to be) provide evidence that God works through slow, painful, evolutionary processes?