the gospel of mark a commentary - Baker Publishing Group

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Introduction 9 studies. Some will appear as we read the Gospel of Mark. Studies of individual passages, and books and articles that attempt to trace the Markan redactional activity across the narrative as a whole, have rightly focused upon major themes in the Gospel. They include the secrecymotif,disciples,thekingdomofGod,theSonofMan,theSonofGod,Jewishleadership, the crowds, the function of Galilee, the significance of the crossings of the sea of Galilee, the Gentile mission, eschatology and apocalyptic (see Mark 13), discipleship, suffering, the cross, martyrdom, and the strange ending of the Gospel at 16:8 with the expression e]fobou6nto ga/r (“for they were afraid”). As most redactional studies depend upon speculatively reconstructed pre-Markan tradition, it is not surprising that the conclusions reached by contemporary redactional studies of the Gospel of Mark have not met with universal acceptance among Markan scholars. 35 There is a discernible movement from one approach to the Gospel to another. Source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism are all interrelated, and one leads to the other.ThesamecouldbesaidformorerecentapproachestotheGospelofMark.Difficulties are created by the speculative reconstruction of the world behind the text (sometimes called a “diachronic” analysis of the text). Recent scholarship focuses upon the world in the text (sometimes called a “synchronic” analysis of the text) and how it addresses the world in front of the text. Aninterestintheimpactthatthewholeutteranceofanarrative makes upon a readership is but a logical consequence of the work of the redaction critics. Redaction criticism attempts to trace the theological themes that determine the shape and messageofagospel.Newerapproachesaskhowanarrative’suseofthesethemesimpacts upon a readership. It is not an easy task to classify recent Markan scholarship that has turned to these newer approaches. Some of it uses the techniques developed in the study of modern narratives, tracing an implied author’s manipulation of an implied reader by means of characters, plot, descriptions of place, the use of time, and the many other elementsofa“goodstory.”Thisapproachisgenerallycalled“narrativecriticism.” 36 It opens the possibility of a greater focus upon the impact of the narrative upon the reader in the text and subsequently upon the reader of the text. 37 with the formidable task of assessing over two hundred and fifty essays, articles and books on the Gospel, ninety percent of which were written after 1960.” See also, Kealy, Mark’s Gospel, 198–237. 35Particularly helpful in this regard is the study of Black, The Disciples according to Mark. Black looks at the redactional critical work of R. P. Meye, E. Best, and T. J. Weeden, and shows that each of these studies of the Markan disciples is limited by the recourse to assumptions outside the text itself which are not open to empirical analysis. See also C. C. Black, “The Quest of Mark the Redactor: Why Has It Been Pursued, and What Has It Taught us,” JSNT 22 (1989): 19–39; R. H. Stein, “The Proper Methodology for Ascertaining a Markan Redaction History,” in The Composition of Mark’s Gospel: Selected Studies from Novum Testamentum (ed. D. E. Orton; Brill’s Readers in Biblical Studies 3; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 34–51. 36For an introduction to this approach to a gospel, see F. J. Moloney, “Narrative Criticism of the Gospels,” in “A Hard Saying”: The Gospel and Culture (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 85–105, and for its application to the Markan narrative, see E. S. Malbon, “Narrative Criticism: How Does the Story Mean?” in In the Company of Jesus: Characters in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 1–40. Early attempts to apply narrative criticism to the Gospel of Mark are F. Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969); N. Petersen, Literary Criticism for New Testament Critics (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); and D. Rhoads, J. Dewey, and D. Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (2d ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1999). 37While they cannot be regarded as methodologically identical, a sample of recent narrativecritical studies of the Gospel of Mark can be found in W. H. Kelber, Mark’s Story of Jesus (Philadelphia: Francis J. Moloney Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2002. Used by permission.
10 THE GOSPEL OF MARK A further development of this focus upon the reader, again adopting the terminology of contemporary literary criticism, has been called reader-response criticism. The turn toward the reader has opened the way to a number of further so-called postmodern approaches. This is something of a caricature, but one could say that an increased focus upon the reader lessens focus upon the text itself. Such readings become more subversive, finding surprising and new interpretations in a never-ending interplay of possible meanings, many of them strongly determined by the fragile and highly fragmented situation of the postmodern reader. Indeed, granted the all-determining role of the reader, the givenness of an ancient text can almost disappear, as all that matters is the reader. 38 Side by side with the growth in interest in the literary world which generated the text, and the ongoing impact of the Gospel as “story,” has been the study of the cultural and especially the sociopolitical world that determined the shape of the narrative, its plot, and its characterization. Drawing upon cross-cultural studies, the Gospel of Mark is found to be rich in its portrayal of marginalized artisans, farmers, and tradesmen, a wandering charismatic preacher, an oppressive taxation system, corrupt Jewish leadership exploiting those lower on the social scale, and the presence in the nation of an unscrupulous army of occupation. As with narrative criticism, reader-response criticism, and the more postmodern readings, a sociopolitical approach to the Gospel of Mark shows that the perennial problems of the use and abuse of power, subverted by the Markan understanding of the person and message of Jesus, are still eloquently addressed in our contemporary world. 39 Far from its former situation as the Cinderella of the New Testament, the Gospel of Mark has been the subject of intense focus from the days of the source critics till our contemporary scholarly world, marked by a multiplication of interpretative methods. There is no sign of any waning of this interest. Fortress, 1979); A. Stock, Call to Discipleship: A Literary Study of Mark’s Gospel (GNS 1; Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1982); B. M. F. van Iersel, Reading Mark (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1988); M. A. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989); J. D. Kingsbury, Conflict in Mark: Jesus, Authority, Disciples (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989); D. H. Juel, A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Der Erzähler des Evangeliums: Methodische Neuansätze in der Markusforschung (ed. F. Hahn; SBS 118–119; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985). The list is by no means exhaustive. Markan interpretation has shifted considerably from Bultmann’s view that “Mark is not sufficiently master of his material to be able to venture on a systematic construction himself” (History, 350). It is Mark’s “systematic construction” that interests these scholars. 38An excellent introduction to these less stable readings, as well as to a reader-response approach to the Gospel of Mark, is R. M. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). For a general introduction to the more subversive, postmodern, readings of biblical texts, see The Bible and Culture Collective, The Postmodern Bible (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). As a contemporary literary critic puts it: “Once you take seriously the notion that readers ‘construct’ (even partially) the texts that they read, then the canon (any canon) is not (or not only) the product of the inherent qualities of the text; it is also (at least partly) the product of particular choices of the arbiters of choice who create it—choices always grounded in ideological and cultural values, always enmeshed in class, race, and gender” (P. J. Rabinowitz, “Whirl without End: Audience-Oriented Criticism,” in Contemporary Literary Theory [ed. C. D. Atkins and L. Morrow; London: Macmillan, 1989], 94). 39Three important and instructive sociocultural readings of the Gospel of Mark are F. Belo, A Materialist Reading of the Gospel of Mark (New York: Orbis, 1981); H. C. Waetjen, AReorderingof Power: A Socio-Political Reading of Mark’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989); and C. Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990). More general, but useful, studies are: K. C. Hanson and D. E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998); E. W. Stegemann and W. Stegemann, Francis J. Moloney Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2002. Used by permission.
Page 2 and 3: THE GOSPEL OF MARK A COMMENTARY FRA
Page 4 and 5: TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations . .
Page 6 and 7: Table of Contents ix The First Mira
Page 8 and 9: Table of Contents xi SECTION 4 Epil
Page 10 and 11: ABBREVIATIONS AB ABD ABRL AGSU AnBi
Page 12 and 13: Abbreviations xv RGG RNT RSR SANT S
Page 14 and 15: PREFACE In 1985, at Catholic Theolo
Page 16 and 17: I INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL OF MAR
Page 18 and 19: Introduction 3 terial in both Matth
Page 20 and 21: Introduction 5 pel of Mark, that Je
Page 22 and 23: Introduction 7 Testament scholars a
Page 26 and 27: Introduction 11 Who, Where, and Whe
Page 28 and 29: Introduction 13 Redaction critics,
Page 30: Introduction 15 Rome or the Romans.

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