New Testament

Title: "Then Jesus began to tell them ..." (Mk 13,5). Mk 13 and the redaction of the first discourse of Jesus: at the origins of the synoptic tradition.

Chapter 13 of the Gospel according to Mark reports the first discourse attributed by ancient sources to Jesus of Nazareth. It is a document of extraordinary interest both from the historical-literary point of view and from the historical-of-the-ideas point of view.
As regards the historical-literary value of this chapter, it allows us to study the process of aggregation of materials - of textual and oral constitution - which led, in the 70s of the first century, to the first literary definition of a magisterium attributed to the preaching of Jesus the Nazarene. This choice increased the kerygmatic announcement of Christian missionaries - up to that moment, it was limited only to the "gospel of Jesus' Easter" - and represents one of the characteristic features of the synoptic tradition.
As regards the historical value historical-of-the-ideas of Mk 13, the fact that Jesus' first discourse was configured as a "little apocalypse" must obviously be emphasized, allowing this data to reconnect the genesis of the most ancient evangelical materials to that same Jewish tradition of the second temple within which both Jesus of Nazareth and his first disciples and the first Christian missionaries were formed.
The development of the course will follow three Argumentative Units:
I Argumentative Unit: From Jesus to the first textual aggregations (the sources of the "Pauline tradition", the "synoptic tradition", and the "archive tradition"): context and distinctive characters of the beginnings of the first Christian writing (from Paul to the crisis of 60s of the first century).
II Argumentative Unit: from the Synoptics to the birth of a Christian "literature". From the para-literary culture of the origins to the first evidence of a "Christian literature": reform, discipline and survival of the primitive characters of Christian writing (from the 70s of the first century to the 30s of the second century).
III Argumentative Unit: Mk 13.
The first Unit will present the role played both by textuality and by writing in the story of the Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth and within the first preaching of his Easter. The context in which the first Christian writings were born, their religious purposes and the typical features (from an objective point of view, not contenutistic) that isolate them from the historical-literary panorama of the ancient world will be the subject of specific analysis. The description of these markers will be accompanied by the presentation of the methodologies and the critical tools developed by biblical sciences to analyze these complex documents.
In the second Unit, particular attention will be paid to the so-called "Synoptic question", probably the most striking outcome of the primaeval Christian practice of writing, reading, producing and circulating manuscripts. At the same time, we will discuss the progressive emergence, even in Christian production, of typically literary characters, trying to motivate this process of revision and containment of the first Christian culture of the text.
Particular attention will be paid to the critical-literary and historical-critical approach of the Formgeschichte.
Finally, the last Argumentative Unit will be dedicated to the reading and commentary of Mk 13: the analysis, commentary and critical evaluation of this document aim to reconstruct the sources, contexts, reasons, purposes and contents of this Gospel page.