Mark – What does this mean???

…just as the prophet Isaiah had written:

“Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
and he will prepare your way.
He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!
Clear the road for him!’

Exodus 23:20

“See, I am sending an angel before you to protect you on your journey and lead you safely to the place I have prepared for you.

Malachi 3:1

“Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. (NLT)

Isaiah 40:3

Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting,
“Clear the way through the wilderness
for the Lord!
Make a straight highway through the wasteland
for our God! (NLT)

“All four Gospels include a quotation of Isaiah 40:3 (Mk. 1:3; Mt. 3:3; Lk. 3:4; Jn. 1:23) but only Mark combine this with words taken from Exodus 23:20 and Malachi 3:1”[1]

The importance of the composite quote:

1. It is located at the beginning of the Gospel, even before John and Jesus have been introduced.
2. This is the only editorial quotation from Mark – all the other quotations (about 20) appear on the lips of Jesus or other characters in the story.
3. The composite quotation of Ex. 23:20/Mal. 3:1 [cf. Mt. 11:10 and Lk. 7:27] is included before the citation of Is. 40:3, even though it clashes with the introductory formula (‘As it is written in the prophet Isaiah’)[2]

There have been two main ways of interpreting this…

“we need an ideology that can explain how Mark can both appropriate Isaiah’s promise of exodus (itself a development of the original exodus tradition), while offering, in Marcus’s words, a ‘radical, cross-centred adaptation of it’ (1992: 36). In terms of this debate, what we need is a more sophisticated biblical theology that can encompass discontinuity as well as continuity, and a more sophisticated literary theory that can combine insights from narrative criticism with insights from intertextuality (taking ‘texts’ in its broadest sense).”[3]

France, quoting Myers states the following:

“by omitting that part of Mal. 3:1 which envisages the Lord appearing in the temple and linking the passage instead to the wilderness location, Mark is already signalling the dismissal of the institutional life of Israel which will be a recurrent theme of his gospel.”[4]

There is more to unpack here, but what seems clear to me is the following:

1. This being the only editorial quotation is highly relevant to the author’s purpose.
2. The author did not feel compelled to use literal quotes, but instead took no small amount of liberty in combining texts to prepare his readers for the story.
3. The quote is both a nod in the direction of the past prophetic tradition as well as a nod to a clear and present change in the thinking and life of the reader/hearer.

I’ll have more on this later.

Meanwhile, let me know what you think!

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[1] Steve Moyise, Evoking Scripture: Seeing the Old Testament in the New (London: T & T Clark, 2008), 6.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Steve Moyise, “How Deep is the Wilderness in Mark 1:1-13,” 2005, 86, http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:RyfmYOYFfK8J:www.chiuni.ac.uk/theology/documents/TheWildernessQuotation.doc+mark+1:2-3&cd=23&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a.

[4] R. T France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 63.

 

Forensic Analysis of the Gospel of Mark – Via Stand To Reason

Found an excellent bit of research regarding a Forensic Analysis of the Gospel of Mark.

Original link on the Stand To Reason blog at STR.org.

Gospel Tradition Formation – Vincent Taylor (Part 2 of 2)

50-65 AD

The second period (50-65 AD) evidences attempts “to gather the scattered elements of the tradition into groups.”  (175)

This early in the development of the church, one must wonder what the main reasons were for beginning to collect and catalog the Jesus stories.  Taylor believes that his was done topically rather than chronologically with a view to Christian instruction and apologetic, with the Pronouncement Stories given the most attention.  (175)  I believe Taylor to be correct in stating that “apologetic” and “instructional” reasons must have been at the forefront.  However, I also believe there to be other reasons as well, Gospel writing for one, and use in the meetings of the church second.  Taylor proposes:

“Could not these stories be arranged in such a way as to promote instruction, and to serve the ends of attack and defence in the face of hostile Jewish criticisms?  In isolation the stories had proved to be valuable; might they not be still more effective in combination?”  (176)

I see his point as plausible, but perhaps this rationale is too aggressive, taking a strong apologetic stance in the face of debate or persecution and minimizing other more practical reasons.

It is the vision of a practical community assemblage of stories into which a Gospel narrative would be formed by a writer among the community that Taylor suggests reveals “like purpose in the pre-Gospel period, the results of which Mark took over and embodied in his work.”  (176)  The focus, then would not be what did the community need that necessitated Mark to write as he did, but how was the community using the Jesus stories that allowed Mark to fashion his literary narrative alongside the use of the oral tradition.  So, Taylor rightly points out that “for all its originality, Mark was not a work begun de novo, but a composition which gathered into itself earlier attempts to serve religious and apologetic needs.”  (180)

Too often, perhaps, we read the gospels with an authorial view similar to that of the epistles, as if Mark sat down to compose the first Gospel on his own much like we see that Paul may have done or like a modern-day author composes a book.  Yet, one of the most important things to take away from a study of the Gospel tradition formation would be that this was a collective work…a communal work.  The Gospel writers had material to use that was both theologically consistent and practically effective because it was maintained by early Christians as they met and shared their faith in Christ and life with Christ with one another.  Perhaps the takeaway hermeneutical principle here is less attention to authorial intent and literary analysis and a more purposeful study of what the early churches held dear and why.

Finally for this period, Taylor believes that the “sayings collections” were the source of Q.

“Although Q was the work of an individual, it was rooted in the life of primitive Christianity, and its fortunes must have reflected the circumstances of its origins: it changed, as it was bound to change, because it was the responsive to the life it fed…The simplest and most natural view is that Q began as a sayings-source pure and simple…Q was an innovation prompted by the needs of catechetical instruction.”  (182)

I find this short collection of quotes problematic on a number of fronts.

1. How is Q believed to be the work of an individual?
2. Why do we have no physical evidence for Q?
3. When did the churches actually begin catechesis,which appears to be later than 50-65 AD, how can we be certain that Q was used?

That said, it does make sense that somewhere among the churches, someone was writing and gathering sayings and stories about Jesus, but I see no legitimate reason to classify them as a single source document.

65-100 AD

According to Taylor, the third period (65-100 AD) consisted of Gospel compilation, during which time “on a much larger scale, the Evangelists carried forward the work of those who first grouped Pronouncement-Stories and expanded Q.”  (185)  Personally, I believe a pre-65 AD date for Mark is most probable.  Whatever Mark’s sources, most likely he had quite a bit of first hand knowledge of material from Peter.  Here, Taylor writes with a more definitive tone:

“The Petrine stories and a knowledge of the progress of events derived from Peter, supplied him with an outline into which he inserted single stories and small collections of primitive material in such a way as to show how Jesus, the Messiah, came to His Passion and His Cross.  The links with earlier stages are unmistakable.  Mark is not a skilled writer; and the developments of his Story is due, not so much to his editorial powers and doctrinal ideas, as to the tradition he knew and the special advantages he enjoyed.”  (187)

So, we see that Taylor supposes that much of Mark’s genius comes from sources outside himself, specifically Petrine material, oral tradition, and perhaps even other written traditions/compilations.  Again, we revisit the idea of a consistent storyline and recall of events sufficient enough to be crafted into a narrative that the church received and confirmed.  While it may be true that Mark pulled from other written documents such as Thomas and Q, one must answer the question that begs an answer: Why was Mark so eagerly received by the church, but other sources such as Thomas were found to be less appealing?  I believe we can easily conclude that perhaps Mark simply provided the most accurate rendition of the historical facts, which resulted in a robust transmission of the Gospel among the churches.  To me, this makes the best sense given the evidence.

Finally, Taylor closes with the following:

“Far from losing the idea of Inspiration, we are led to see that the Spirit of God must have been at work upon a grander scale, not coercing men or using them as blind instruments, but elevating their minds to perceive, to transmit, and to interpret the best elements in the tradition.  Literature has no books which can justly be compared with the Gospels, which indeed come from men, but in the last analysis are the gift of God, seals of His grace and sacraments of His love.”  (189)

Perhaps the simplest and best answer regarding Gospel tradition formation is that God himself was involved in the process to ensure that the truth was preserved.  I would agree with Taylor, the evidence presented only strengthens the idea of divine inspiration and in no way diminishes it.  It is in the formation of the Gospel traditions that I see both a high view of the Gospel accounts (and therefore the scriptures as a whole) as well as a high view of the church dynamically and spiritually preserving the truth about Jesus Christ.

Mark 1:1

The beginning…

…this is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The first word in Mark is the Greek word Ἀρχὴ – the beginning. 

Yes, Bill Maher, Mark skips the story of Jesus’ birth…but not because it isn’t important.  Mark gets right to the point that the moment Jesus stepped forth from the desert that day way back when that the story begins. 

All the years of believing this day would come, of hoping for the Messiah, of revealing the rule of God began that day.  And from that day forth the world would change because Jesus Christ, the Son of God was revealed to the world, and as Mark’s Gospel story was told both in that day until now, Jesus continues to be revealed. 

The story, as Mark tells it starts there.

So, this is what we may call artistic license today.  Mark’s story begins in action because that is the whole point – God is up to something…something big!  Ben Witherington makes a good case that this first line in Mark serves as a good introduction to a biography on Jesus.  And since ancient Greco-Roman biography allows for a lack of birth narrative, Mark seems to be emphasizing to the hearer/reader that this story bears all the depth, weight, and fervor of a change that only God himself could pull off.  The good news is news of victory, and God sent his son to prove it.  The story commands attention from the start, and centers the story on Jesus. 

Imagine hearing this story for the first time. 

Until now, only short stories or remembrances of Jesus had been shared among the early church.  Perhaps, on occasion, an eyewitness to an event in the life of Jesus would share their testimony.  But now, Mark had written it down as narrative, as a biography of sorts.  This is a complete story.  One that powerfully illustrates God’s intentions through the ages.  One that can be shared among all the churches.  A story that will be told many times and that continues with and through the church…

Gospel Tradition Formation – Vincent Taylor (Part 1 of 2)

In preparatory reading for the study of Mark, I found that R. T. France and others referenced Vincent Taylor quite a bit, so I perused his work, The Formation of the Gospel Traditions.  (London: Macmillan, 1953 [1935]), and discerned quite a bit of good information relating to oral tradition in the earliest church.

As an aside, I also found a nice little story relating to Vincent Taylor over the pond on Jim Gordon’s blog Living Wittily.   

In this study, Taylor is looking specifically at oral traditions told by the early church before the Gospels were written.  He proposes three periods of development: 30-50 AD, 50-65 AD, 65-100 AD  (169)

30-50 AD

The first period began with Jesus stories, remembrances of things Jesus said or did.  Eyewitness testimonies, both in the disciples of Jesus as well as others who had seen his miracles and deeds or heard his teachings circulated through the early church. 

Taylor was the first to refer to these as “pronouncement stories” concerning Jesus, and he believed that the early pronouncement story was “of interest to the first Christians because it bore directly upon questions of faith and practice.”  (23)  Basically a pronouncement story is a short story about something Jesus said (pronounced) in a situation that reveals his seemingly unique ability to discern and reply wisely to potentially compromising situations.  This is very much the sort of story that early Christians would recall when discussing situations in which the wisdom of Jesus Christ would sustain and encourage them as the church met with one another in various gatherings.  Soon these stories became an early oral form of the Gospel tradition. 

Taylor writes that M. Albertz believed this tradition:

“took shape in the early Christian assemblies where individual Christians had the right to bring forward narratives for the strengthening and instruction of their fellow-members. ‘If,’ he says, ‘we want to make for ourselves a vivid picture of the teachers of primitive Christianity, we must not forget these narrators who understood how to serve in the meetings the growing apologetic interests of the members of the community by the presentation of apposite words of the Lord.’”  (27)

And quoting Schmidt:

“When Christians were together, they narrated one to another concerning the words and deeds of the Lord, one relieving, one supplementing one another.”  (27-28)

These early stories and traditions formed immediately following the Resurrection, as the first Christians preserved:

“cycles of connected reminiscences associated with the various centres of the Ministry of Jesus…Naturally this information was very much fuller than that which is accessible to us in the Gospels; but it was not guided and sustained by a biographical interest, and accordingly it soon began to perish by an inevitable process of attrition.  Practical interests were uppermost, and thus is was that within about a decade the Gospel tradition came to be mainly a collection of isolated stories, sayings, and sayings-groups.”(169-170)

Both fascinating as well as frustrating is the idea that early on the information was “much fuller” (John 20:30 comes to mind), giving the impression that the early church perhaps forgot much of what Jesus said and did, or perhaps carefully retained by divine inspiration only that which was necessary for faith and practice, or perhaps anything of a myriad of options in between!  But this I will save for a future post. 

The one exception to a diminishment of material would seem to be the Passion story, which was preserved more fully in preaching, teaching and during the agape meal.  This makes sense given the accounts in the written gospels as well as the Pauline material. 

So who shaped and preserved these early stories?  Taylor believes,

“The principal agents who shaped the tradition were eyewitnesses and others who had knowledge of the original facts.  Constant repetition, especially in connexion with early celebrations of the Supper, gave relative fixity to the Story, and yet not such a fixity as to leave no room for additions.  Early Christian leaders moved from one community to another (cf. Acts 8:1, 14, 26; 9:32, etc.), and, as a result of this, details prized in one community would find entrance into the story of another community.  Moreover, the Passion Story as it was told in important Churches would often replace local versions, which were felt to be less worthy, or wanting in Apostolical authority.  In this way the Markan Story came to establish itself far and wide.

Now this is a truly fascinating point:  there were room for additions to the stories.  Imagine a time before any written New Testament texts were available to the church.  How interesting that the church sought out verity regarding Jesus among one another, and primarily as “told by those who had seen the Risen Lord.”  (171)  How did they do this?  What was the process?  It seems there was a large degree of honor and trust as well as knowledge of those who had truly been an eyewitness to Jesus’ words and deeds.  Further, it seems that they did this in community.

Taylor comments further on the eyewitnesses,

“That many saw Jesus, and that the women visited the Tomb were known, but the exact nature of the Resurrection Body of Jesus and the precise succession of events were not known, with a result that our knowledge to-day is limited to what, after all, is the essential thing – traditions of men who affirmed that they saw Jesus after His death.  (171)

So we see, then, that Jesus’ words continued to live and provide support as they were told and retold, as the community went about the daily tasks of fitting their faith in Jesus to the world around them and answering challenging questions with Jesus’ words of spirit and everlasting life. 

While the daily use and remembrance of Jesus’ words was an integral part of the life of the first Christians, the narrative tradition suffered.  Seemingly, the early Christians were “interested in the actions of Jesus, but they were more interested in His Passion and in what He had said.”  (174)  They loved to tell both the pronouncement stories as well as the action stories revealing the supernaturality of Jesus, believing that absolutely nothing could overpower his might.  (174)  One can imagine sitting among fellow Christians recalling Jesus’ mighty deeds…”Remember when Jesus said or did…” 

Yet, this communal strength soon began to reveal a loss of connectedness.  The larger story, the complete story, the cohesiveness had begun to unravel.  Perhaps this is where the Gospel writers stepped in.  Perhaps, here the writer of Mark sought to weave it all together again, so that the church would not lose the whole story.  It is here, at the end of this first period, that Taylor describes the situation as follows,

“Christian hands are full of jewels, but there is no desire to weave a crown.”  (175)

(See Part 2 of 2 here)

On Genre – Part 2

Going a step deeper into the genre of Mark’s gospel with H. C. Kee’s work Community of the New Age: Studies In Mark’s Gospel, I found it interesting that he promotes Mark’s structure as being based on “an apocalyptic community.”

Indeed, there are apocalyptic themes and language in Mark, as is clearly attested in many introductory works (cf. Bailey and Vander Broek’s Literary Forms in the New Testament pgs 122-129), but what caught my eye was Kee’s implication that the gospel of Mark came out of, was developed, or was formed in an apocalyptic community.  In my mind, that takes the whole discussion of genre/structure to another level.

Kee cites the Old Testament book of Daniel as “the classic document produced in the apocalyptic category.” (65)  Next, he goes on to cite thematic and structural similarities between Daniel and Mark.  Finally, he reveals the aims of apocalyptic texts as follows:

1. The rule of God and its triumph
2. The defeat of the hostile powers
3. The redefinition of the community
4. The certainty of the outcome
5. Stand firm!

Now, while I certainly see these elements in the gospel of Mark, I think that the attempt to link the literary structure to Daniel and further to ascertain the writer and readers of Mark to be “an apocalyptic community” stretches the plausibility of the case beyond what seems reasonable.  It is at this point that it seems more confidence is put in the recipients than the text itself; that the story cryptically speaks more about the hearers and readers than about Jesus himself.

I think that in light of more recent scholarship (cf. Bauckham’s, The Gospels For All Christians) the genre of Mark’s gospel should simply focus on the text as a preservation of the purpose and mission of Jesus Christ.  Some may classify this as  Greco-Roman biography, others, seemingly the church itself classified it simply as gospel.  In doing so, we diminish neither the content of the gospel nor the richness of the text as written, most likely in this case, by Mark.  This frees us to see, hear, and feel the story of Jesus and draw the impact of the story into our hearts and minds. 

It is in this way that the stories about Jesus were preserved among the community for future generations.  In short, the focus was intended to remain on the good news of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.

On Genre (and Rabbit Trails) – Part 1

As I begin my in-depth studies in Mark, I have been especially enjoying R.T. France’s work, and became sidetracked by some of his introductory comments and footnotes.  For some odd reason, I am one of those who read footnotes as voraciously as the rest of the text, often wondering why this is not covered with the attention and respect it deserves.  But enough about “rabbit trails”…

It appears that many these days prefer to see Mark classified as Greco-Roman biography.  Certainly, Ben Witherington  and Ernest Best make this case in their work on Mark.  Then another take is that it is generally uncategorizable, seemingly unable to fit neatly into any one category, thus the development of something new to the first century literature – gospel.

That said, a little rabbit trail caught my eye, especially since I am reading and writing with the earliest church in mind.  First, thanks to a footnote from R.T. France, I came upon H. C. Kee’s work Community of the New Age: Studies In Mark’s Gospel  and second, (thanks to a quote from Kee) is Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis.

First, in chapter three of his book, Kee is delving into the literary genre of Mark and begins by explaining why Mark doesn’t fit into the genre of a tragedy. 

To make his point, Kee quotes Auerbach stating that any one gospel account “fits into no antique genre,” and is:

“too serious for comedy, too everyday for tragedy, politically too insignificant for history – and the form which was given it is one of such immediacy that its like does not exist in the literature of antiquity.”

That alone would be enough to convince most that the gospels seemingly defy categorization, are altogether “other,” and are perhaps in need of a new classification.  But Auerbach goes on to pay the gospels, and indeed the earliest Christians, an even higher honor by stating “that the gospels evoke ‘the most serious and most significant sympathy’ within us because they portray:

‘something which neither the poets nor the historians of antiquity ever set out to portray: the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within the everyday occurences of contemporary life, which thus assumes an importance it could never have assumed in antique literature.'”

 So, according to Auerbach, it is the general church community as a whole that makes this unique among writings and unclassifiable in genre.  The community not only maintains the essence of the gospel among one another, but also promotes and develops the gospel material into fruition among “common people” and in “everyday occurences.”  The picture this paints for me is one of vibrant gatherings of the church flourishing not in any technically religious manner, but in the everyday life shared with one another.

In short, I see that Mark was both writing with his immediate church communities in mind, those churches with which he had contact, as well as the churches throughout the Empire.  At this point, I doubt that his intention was to write a traditional Greco-Roman biography, though this may fit the bill from both a reader/hearer in the first century as well as an academic point of view today. 

No, I am inclined to see Mark as a more evangelistic/pastoral work, taking on some of the more popular methods of writing and transmission with the goal being to speak directly to the church at large in an edifying manner with the intent to preserve the tradition in writing.  Many see that the gospel of Mark is a collage of sorts drawn together with purpose, so in this way, nothing I am saying is new.  Yet, I think there is something to be said for a more holistic view, or one that takes in account not simply that the so-called Markan community needed a gospel, but that this was quite possibly what the churches were already saying and doing among one another, and therefore was preserved by the writer of Mark in narrative form.