Jesus as Teacher in the Gospel of Mark

The Function of a Motif

Evan Hershman

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567692474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Evan Hershman seeks to examine Mark's portrayal of Jesus as teacher in comparison with portrayals of teachers in contemporary Greco-Roman literature, and argues that the teaching motif in Mark is used in highly distinctive ways. He argues that careful study reveals Mark's use of the trope does not aim to expound a fully fleshed-out ethical agenda, but rather to emphasize Jesus's unique authority, incorporate conflicts with other claimants to authority into the Gospel narrative, and persuade the gospel audience to accept his Christological vision and its demands on their lives. Hershman develops these three related themes behind the motif of moral instruction, and offers suggestions for how this portrayal of Jesus fits with the historical and social context in which the Gospel was written. By analyzing not only teaching and authority throughout Mark, but also numerous Greek and Greco-Roman texts concerning teachers and learning, Hershman creates a new reading of significant Markan passages - such as the parables discourse and the temple incident - in light of a focus on the importance of Jesus's teachings to the plot of the Gospel.

1

Greek and Greco-Roman Texts on Teachers and Teaching

We begin with a discussion of selected Greek and Greco-Roman texts that discuss teachers and teaching. The selected texts vary widely in their dates of writing, from the period of classical Athens to the time of the Roman Empire. These texts have been selected in order to demonstrate the themes and motifs that persist in this literature before, during, and after the period in which the Gospel of Mark was written. The selected texts are the Memorabilia of Xenophon, the Discourses of Epictetus as recorded by Arrian, and Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana. We will analyze each text with respect to its form, content, and purpose, paying particular attention to the questions of what the teacher depicted in each text is teaching and how they are teaching it. After discussing each of these texts in turn, we will then examine how they, individually and collectively, compare with the Gospel of Mark. These observations will serve as a transition to the study of the Gospel itself.

Before proceeding to the analysis of the texts, it is worthwhile to discuss briefly the role played by education in general in the social and cultural life of the ancient Mediterranean. An extensive literature exists on the subject of ancient education, and there is no need here to summarize it.¹ In any case, much of this literature is concerned with the technical formalities of literate education, the details of which are relatively unimportant in examining the Gospel of Mark. However, a word must be said about the general aims of ancient education.

Among the most persistent themes throughout ancient discussion of education is a concern with the inculcation of cultural and moral values. Education in our own day tends to be (theoretically) concerned with preparation for various career paths, setting moral or ethical concerns aside.² Nothing could be further from the case with ancient education. Greek education, for example, began as a means of promoting the virtues of the elite warrior class that takes center stage in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.³ These virtues included both physical prowess as well as intellectual skill. The Homeric poems themselves became the central texts of Greek (and later Greco-Roman) education, and Homer himself was credited as “having educated all Greece,” as Plato would write: The philosopher alludes to persons who thought all of life should be fashioned in accordance with Homeric example (Resp. 606e).

It is precisely the extent of Homer’s influence that prompted Plato’s extended attacks on poetry in the Republic. But Plato’s conviction that poetry inculcated bad morals by filling the heads of the young with salacious stories about the gods is an indication that he shared the general view that education ought to promote the right kind of values.

The ubiquity of the belief that education should promote proper values is demonstrated by the shock and horror occasioned in some quarters by the teachings of the early Sophists. These wandering teachers would attract students by demonstrating their rhetorical skill at conversing fluently on any subject and promising to teach their students the skill in public speaking necessary for a political career in the Athenian democracy.⁴ The Sophists’ critics (Plato not least among them) charged that the Sophists did a grave disservice to their students and to the polis by placing technical rhetorical skill ahead of the search for truth, which the philosophers prized.⁵ The negative contrast of rhetoric with philosophy became a regular trope, enduring into late antiquity: In the fifth century ce, Augustine of Hippo, in highly Platonic fashion, lambasted the rhetorical education that he had received in his youth for emphasizing empty style and showiness over truth (Conf. 1.18).

Despite the philosophical criticism of rhetoric, teachers of rhetoric also had their own stake in questions about the values imparted by education. The standard rhetorical handbooks of the Hellenistic and Roman periods took care to emphasize that the literary examples supplied for student use should be limited to those which contained values worthy of imitation (μιμήσις).⁶ The specific examples chosen were used in turn to reinforce those same values: “The actions of men and gods [in literature] were explained and judged in terms of accepted mores and so were used to confirm them.”⁷ Rhetorical theory from Aristotle onward also argued that a speaker ought to establish common ground with an audience on the basis of shared cultural standards.⁸

Nor was it only in “higher” education in rhetoric or philosophy that a concern for moral and ethical training prevailed. Robert Kaster has studied in detail the social role of the grammarian, the “elementary” teacher who first taught students language and literature. He emphasizes that in ancient society, the skills of reading and writing were bound up with the concern of the elite and privileged to define themselves over and against their putative inferiors. Consequently, the command of language imparted by the grammarian was more than a basic skill; it was a mark of elite culture: “its acquisition signaled that one possessed discipline, an appetite for toil, and the other ethical qualities that marked a man fit to share the burden of government.”⁹ The grammarian was a “guardian of tradition,” transmitting both language usage preserved uncorrupted by the purported vulgarities of the common folk and “the persons, events, and beliefs that marked the limits of vice and virtue.”¹⁰

The technical skills imparted by education were so inextricably bound up with moral pronouncements that it is a key fact to keep in mind when discussing ancient literature on teachers and teaching. To be specific, two of the texts to be examined, those of Xenophon and Philostratus, are keen to demonstrate that their subjects behaved in conformity with conventional, or at least widely recognized, standards of virtuous behavior and to answer charges that their subjects’ teachings had a deleterious effect on their followers or on society. To anticipate a later conclusion, we will argue that one thing that sets Mark apart from other such texts on teachers and teaching is the Gospel’s lack of such apologetic concerns.

The Memorabilia of Xenophon

The earliest of the four texts to be examined in this chapter is the Memorabilia of Xenophon, written in the fourth century bce.¹¹ Xenophon (ca. 430–355?), a wealthy Athenian who became famous for his military exploits, knew Socrates when he himself was a young man. He wrote the four books of the Memorabilia as a defense of Socrates after the philosopher’s condemnation and death in 399 and as a record of conversations that he attests occurred between Socrates and various interlocutors.

Because Xenophon’s account of Socrates’s life and views contains significant differences from the more influential version of Plato, his “Socratic” works have regularly played a part in debates concerning the “historical Socrates.”¹² However, since our focus here is on the Memorabilia as a literary work rather than on questions of historical accuracy, there is no need to deal with the vexed “Socratic question.” Therefore, we will not discuss the reliability of Xenophon as a reporter of the views of the historical Socrates. It is Socrates the teacher portrayed in the work itself, not the historical teacher Socrates, who can profitably be compared with Jesus the teacher in the Gospel of Mark.

At its broadest level, the Memorabilia is structured into two parts. The first is a short section at the beginning of the work in which Xenophon attempts to refute the charges against Socrates, with himself as the implied narrator (1.1-2). It is worthy of summarization here, since several of its themes will be important for the work as a whole.

After recounting the charges made against Socrates—that he introduced new gods while not recognizing the established ones and that he corrupted the Athenian youth—Xenophon deals with each charge in turn. In response to the accusation of impiety, he portrays Socrates as a model of traditional religiosity: Socrates worshiped the traditional gods, offering them sacrifices both publicly and privately (1.1-2), and never took up for discussion the cosmological matters popularly associated with philosophers (1.1.11-15).¹³ His appeal to his famous “divine sign” is, Xenophon argues, no more remarkable than everyday practices of divination accepted by common opinion and tradition (1.1.2-5). Finally, Socrates frequently exhorted his companions to seek advice from the gods about everyday matters (1.1.6-9).

Next, at 1.2, Xenophon addresses the charge that Socrates corrupted the Athenian youth. Xenophon responds by listing Socrates’s virtues. Foremost among these is Socrates’s “continence” or “self-control” (ἐγκράτεια):

It is also amazing to me that some were convinced that Socrates corrupted the youth. Beyond what I have already said, he was the most self-controlled [ἐγκρατέσατος] of all persons with respect to the desire for sex and food, and he was the strongest of all with respect to cold and heat and all harsh things. And what is more, so educated was he in needing only what was moderate, that, even having very little, he was quite easily satisfied. (1.2.1, author’s translation)

“Self-control” is a key aspect of Xenophon’s presentation of Socrates and his teaching, and we will return to it later. In the present context, self-control is the chief virtue of Socrates, which he passed on to his companions not so much by direct teaching as by his own example (1.2.3, 8). But shortly after this, Xenophon does say that Socrates also taught continence or self-control by means of his words. Socrates teaches both by example and by speaking:

I find that all teachers show their disciples how they themselves practice what they teach, and persuade them by argument. And so it was with Socrates: he showed his companions that he was a gentleman [καλὸν κἀγαθόν] himself, and talked most excellently of goodness and of all things that concern human life. (1.2.17-18, LCL)

The more specific aspect of the charge that Socrates corrupted the youth is then summarized: He taught the youth to despise their elders and the laws of the city (1.2.9). This charge is personified by Critias and Alcibiades, notorious political figures who both associated with Socrates (1.2.12). Xenophon’s response is to argue that these two did not care to actually learn what Socrates had to teach but only associated with the philosopher because they hoped to learn how to speak well from him and thereby improve their political standing (1.2.14-15). Further, they neglected to maintain the lifestyle of moderation or self-control, which they had learned from Socrates, and fell into ambition and lawlessness (1.2.24).

In the concluding summary of the opening defense, Xenophon reiterates the claim made throughout the first two chapters: that, far from being impious or corrupting the youth, Socrates was extremely pious by the most conventional assessments of the city and improved the youth greatly by exhorting them to self-control above all else, which he demonstrated in his own conduct.

1.3 onward consists of the “memorabilia” [ἀπομνημονεύματα] proper: “In order to support my opinion that he benefited his associates alike by actions that revealed his own character and by his conversation, I will set down what I recollect of these” (1.3.1, LCL). The conversations at first seem to be a completely random assortment and further seem not to have any strong connection with the opening defense portion of the text. The opinion of much scholarship has been that that the Memorabilia is not a unified work and was perhaps a combination of two disparate works: a “defense” and a collection of remembrances.¹⁴

The work of Vivienne Gray calls into question this earlier scholarly opinion. Her argument is that there existed

a rhetorical precedent for the bipartite combination of defence and exposition in the combination in various types of lawcourt speech of a refutation of the charges against a defendant and positive exposition of the virtues of his life.¹⁵

Gray argues further that the Memorabilia also employs the technique known as “amplification” in ancient rhetorical theory in order to fully bring out the nuances and complexities of the teachings of Socrates. This amplification leads to the unfolding, as the work proceeds, of more complex understandings of the methods and aims of Socrates’s teachings.¹⁶

Based on the work of Gray, we may take it as well-founded that there is a certain unity in the Memorabilia.¹⁷ While there is neither space nor nee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Greek and Greco-Roman Texts on Teachers and Teaching
• 2 Teaching and Authority in the First Half of Mark
• 3 Teaching and Authority in the Second Half of Mark
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Modern Authors
• Copyright Page