Your Mark 5 example is the also the longest string of circumstantial participles that I found in the doing my analysis for the LDGNT project. It was amazing to see Mark background that much action, leaving “touch” as the sole finite verb in the sentence. This ends up being the thematic key, the precipitating event, with Jesus asking who touched him. When I am asked “What difference do participles make?” this is one of the passages I highlight. I would agree that Mark is mistakenly undersold for his style, as is John. Hope to meet you at the upcoming conferences.

“the inelegance and crudity of some of the Marcan constructions may have more to do with the sources that Mark retains without redaction”

I wish I was confident in some reasonably objective way/criteria for distinguishing sources. We can’t just say, “the rough stuff is source and the nice is Mark,” for that would be merely a hypothesis–one which might explain (some/much), but which in itself has not been validated. Any ideas as to how we might provide warrant for such ideas?

It might be relevant to consider Papias’s comments as possibly reliable external evidence for the composition of Mark. If so, we might postulate the rougher Greek as reflecting Peter’s Galilean fisherman’s speech and the other portions as more “native Markan.” I’m not sure that works, but it’s one possible factor to consider. (I think I’ll make another blog post on the external evidence re Markan authorship and composition.)

I’ll need to make some comment on this entire issue before I’m finished, but I need to finish working inductively through the entire corpus and drafting the grammar/syntax notes before I’m in a good place to make any overall assessments.