Mark, Peter’s Son, and the Reception of 1 Peter

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, 2003

THE GOSPEL OF MARK, WHICH FOR CENTURIES lived in the shadow of the other gospels, has become the center of intense investigation. Scholars have written such a plethora of books and articles that it is nearly impossible to keep pace with their literary output. Nevertheless, the student of Mark will welcome the recent arrival of two new commentaries. While neither book provides an exhaustive survey of scholarly research, both are suitable additions to any pastor's library. The first, by Edwards, is in a series whose stated goal is to produce commentaries designed to "loosen the Bible from its pages." As D. A. Carson writes in his introduction, authors in the series "interact with the most important informed contemporary debate, but avoid getting mired in undue technical detail" (p. x). Edwards succeeds admirably in achieving this goal. His commentary is thoroughly informed by recent scholarship, as the footnotes clearly document, but his reading of Mark's gospel is focused on the exposition of its message against the backdrop of first-century Palestine.

Oral Tradition, 2010

Jewish and Christian, and especially Protestant Christian, emphasis upon the sacred book and its authority have combined with scholarly interests and techniques, as well as the broader developments in the modern West. .. to fix in our minds today a rather narrow concept of scripture, a concept even more sharply culture-bound than that of "book" itself.-William Graham (1987) Mark's Gospel. .. was composed at a desk in a scholar's study lined with texts.. .. In Mark's study were chains of miracle stories, collections of pronouncement stories in various states of elaboration, some form of Q, memos on parables and proof texts, the scriptures, including the prophets, written materials from the Christ cult, and other literature representative of Hellenistic Judaism.-Burton Mack (1988) It was not necessary that the Gospel performer know how to read. The performer could learn the Gospel from hearing oral performance.. .. It is quite possible, and indeed even likely, that many Gospel performers were themselves illiterate.. .. It was certainly possible for an oral performer to develop a narrative with this level of structural complexity.. .. In Mark the number of interconnections between parts of the narrative are quite extraordinary.-Whitney Shiner (2003) The procedures and concepts of Christian biblical studies are often teleological. The results of the historical process are assumed in study of its early stages. Until recently critical study of the books of the New Testament focused on establishing the scriptural text and its meaning in the context of historical origins. Ironically that was before the texts became distinctively authoritative for communities that used them and were recognized as Scripture by Oral Tradition, 25/1 (2010): 93-114 established ecclesial authorities. Such teleological concepts and procedures obscure what turn out to be genuine historical problems once we take a closer look. How the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of Mark, came to be included in the Scriptures of established Christianity offers a striking example. On the earlier Christian theological assumption that Christianity as the religion of the Gospel made a dramatic break with Judaism as the religion of the Law, one of the principal questions was how the Christian church came to include the Jewish Scriptures in its Bible. We now see much more clearly the continuity of what became Christianity with Israel. The Gospels, especially Matthew and Mark, portray Jesus as engaged in a renewal of Israel. The Gospel of Matthew is now generally seen as addressed to communities of Israel, not "Gentiles" (Saldarini 1994). And while Mark was formerly taken as addressed to a "Gentile" community in Rome, it is increasingly taken as addressed to communities in Syria that understand themselves as the renewal of Israel (Horsley 2001). Far more problematic than the inclusion of the Jewish Scripture (in Greek) is inclusion of the Gospels in the Christian Bible. The ecclesial authorities who defined the New Testament canon in the fourth and fifth centuries were men of high culture. The Gospels, however, especially the Gospel of Mark, did not meet the standards of high culture in the Hellenistic and Roman cultural world. Once the Gospels became known to cultural elite, opponents of the Christians such as Celsus, in the late second century, mocked them for their lack of literary distinction and their composers as ignorant people who lacked "even a primary education" (Contra Celsum 1.62). Fifty years later, the "church father" Origen proudly admitted that the apostles possessed "no power of speaking or of giving an ordered narrative by the standards of Greek dialectical or rhetorical arts" (Contra Celsum 1.62). Luke had asserted, somewhat presumptuously perhaps, that he and his predecessors as "evangelists" had, in the standard Hellenistic-Roman ideology of historiography, set down an "orderly account" of events in the Gospels. Origen, who knew better, had to agree with Celsus that the evangelists were, as the Jerusalem "rulers, elders, and scribes" in the second volume of Luke's "orderly account" said about Peter and John, "illiterate and ignorant" (agrammatoi kai idiotai, Acts 4:13). Nor would the Gospels, again especially Mark, have measured up as Scripture on the model of previous Jewish scriptural texts. The Gospels stand in strong continuity with Israelite-Jewish cultural tradition; indeed they portray Jesus and his followers as its fulfillment. Yet they do not resemble any of the kinds of texts included in the Jewish Scriptures or other Jewish scribal compositions, whether books of Torah (Deuteronomy), books of history (Judges; 1-2 Kings), collections of prophecies (Isaiah, Amos), collections of instructional wisdom (Proverbs 1-9; Sirach), or apocalypses (Daniel). Rather the Gospels tell the story of a popular leader they compare to Moses and Elijah who focused on the concerns of villagers in opposition to the political and cultural elite and who was gruesomely executed by the Roman governor. Consideration of the oral and written aspects of scripture may be one of the keys to addressing the question of how the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of Mark, became included in the Bible by the ecclesial authorities of established Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries. Only contemporary with or after the Gospel's official recognition as part of Scripture do we find Christian intellectuals producing commentaries that are more than spiritualizing allegories or moralistic homilies on Gospel passages. Research in a number of interrelated (but often separate) areas is coalescing to suggest that the Gospel of Mark developed in a largely oral communication 94 RICHARD A. HORSLEY

Peter Lang, 2014

This commentary demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark is a result of a consistent, strictly sequential, hypertextual reworking of the contents of three of Paul’s letters: Galatians, First Corinthians and Philippians. Consequently, it shows that the Marcan Jesus narratively embodies the features of God’s Son who was revealed in the person, teaching, and course of life of Paul the Apostle. The analysis of the topographic and historical details of the Marcan Gospel reveals that they were mainly borrowed from the Septuagint and from the writings of Flavius Josephus. Other literary motifs were taken from various Jewish and Greek writings, including the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Plato. The Gospel of Mark should therefore be regarded as a strictly theological-ethopoeic work, rather than a biographic one.

The American Journal of Theology

In the spring of 1910o I published a little work called The Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus, forming one of the series called "Modern Religious Problems" edited by Dr. A. W. Vernon. In a work of 131 small pages much must be assumed rather than proved, and I am very grateful for the opportunity afforded me by the editors of the American Journal of Theology to explain more at length and in detail the view of the Gospel according to Mark which I sketched in my little book. I am inclined to believe in the traditional authorship of this gospel, and that a chief source of the information possessed by the author consisted of what he had heard from Simon Peter. Now-a-days such an opinion calls for some detailed defense. At the present moment there is going on in Germany a prolonged controversy about the general historicity of the New Testament under the title "Hat Jesus gelebt ?" ("Did Jesus ever live?"). The leading skeptics are Professor Jensen, the Assyriologist, and Professor Arthur Drews; the defenders are "liberals" such as Professors Jiilicher and Weinel. I do not propose to follow this controversy here, but I mention it to show that an investigation of the historicity of the Gospel according to Mark is not out of place.' ' See on this controversy the article by Professor Case in the last number of this Journal, pp. 20-42. i6g 'Ata0ois, or something similar. In any case, "the parts of Dalmanutha" do not belong to real geography. s "Banereem filii tonitrui, quod conrupte Boanerges usus optinuit" (Lagarde, O S, 669). 6 According to Eusebius (O S, 282:83), this is ; Macye&dhn, a then known locality in the neighborhood of Gerasa. That it does not quite fit the context only shows that Matthew's emendation was not based on authentic tradition. 7 So the Greek minuscule numbered 28 (sic) and the Sinai Palimpsest (Syr. S). This piece of Greek evidence is fatal to Wellhausen's conjecture that N'1. in Syr. S does not mean "the hill" (Wellhausen's Marcus, ed. 2, p. 6i).

A brief study of Mk 8:27-30 using the narrative method.

The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context, 2004

Revised Standard Version, apart from those instances in which the author felt the need to propose an alternative translation of the passage quoted. The author wishes to offer a special word of thanks to Prof. dr. H.J. de Jonge for his valuable comments and advice. Acknowledgement should be given also to Dr.

2014

This thesis proposes that Mark had in mind a motif of the relationship between - and the interchange and development of - Jesus' identity and authority as His identity was increasingly revealed to the disciples. This study takes into account Christology (particularly Markan) and its development in scholarship, the concept of the Messianic Secret, Markan literary structure, and the history of and varying views regarding the passage that might be considered 'turning point' in Mark's narrative. This latter is explored because I propose here that when viewed through the lens of Christ's Identity and Authority, the turning point of Mark should be placed at the Mount of Transfiguration rather than the preceding (and most commonly held) pericope of Peter's confession of faith.

Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2023

In Mark, Herod Antipas orders John the Baptist's execution by a σπεκουλάτωρ. Thus, Mark becomes the first witness to the use of the word σπεκουλάτωρ in Greek. The Latin word speculator was used in the first century mainly in respect of the praetorian speculatores soldiers who acted as the emperor's personal guard in Rome and who were involved in the events of the civil war in the years 68-70 CE. Mark's use of the word σπεκουλάτωρ (along with other factors) points to the city of Rome as the gospel's origin, since the vast majority of attestations of the word speculator occur in the city of Rome, where these soldiers mainly carried out their duties.

This document discusses the literary structure of Mark with selected analysis in the footnotes

This paper explores the origins and development of the Gospel of Mark in Syriac Christianity. After surveying the sparse accounts of the origins of the Syriac New Testament in general, we consider the origins and preservation of the Gospel of Mark in the Syriac traditions. This includes its attestation in the various Syriac New Testament translations, including the presence of Mark in the Diatessaron. A brief overview of the reception of Mark in Greek will enable us to offer points of comparison with its reception in Syriac Christianity. We will then be in a place to assess a small aspect of the reception of the Gospel of Mark in some segments of Syriac-speaking Christianity.

For centuries, the Church paid little attention to the Gospel of Mark because it was considered as merely an abbreviated version of Matthew, with little value of its own. Some other biases against Mark included: Mark is an indirect witness, and therefore, less important than Matthew and John; It has little material of its own; It is the shortest of the gospels; does not show any theological development (Luke deepens in mercy, Matthew in the expected Messiah, John in Christology). These views changed radically in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Mark came to be viewed as the first Gospel written and so of significant historical value. Mark was now considered the oldest of the Gospels with few interpretations of the editor and would subsequently turn into a historical source closer to the facts. In recent years, scholars have come to appreciate Mark’s Gospel as a unique literary work with its own narrative structure, theological themes, and Christological purpose. The Gospel reveals a fascinating and unique portrait of Jesus, an important contribution to the Church’s understanding of Jesus the Messiah and the Son of God. In what follows we shall attempt a summary of the basic historical, literary and theological questions around the Gospel according to Mark.