Jesus and the Empire of God

Royal Language and Imperial Ideology in the Gospel of Mark

Margaret Froelich

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567700872
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Margaret Froelich examines the Gospel of Mark using political and empire-critical methodologies, following postcolonial thinkers in perceiving a far more ambivalent message than previous pacifistic interpretations of the text. She argues that Mark does not represent an entirely new way of thinking about empire or cosmic structures, but rather exhibits concepts and structures with which the author and his audience are already familiar in order to promote the Kingdom of God as a better version of the encroaching Roman Empire. Froelich consequently understands Mark as a response to the physical, ideological, and cultural displacement of the first Roman/Judean War. By looking to Greek, Roman, and Jewish texts to determine how first-century authors thought of conquest and expansion, Froelich situates the Gospel directly in a historical and socio-political context, rather than treating that context as a mere backdrop; concluding that the Gospel portrays the Kingdom of God as a conquering empire with Jesus as its victorious general and client king.

1 Empire Criticism

The analysis of Mark in this study has its basis in the historical and political contexts of its composition. Historical criticism prioritizes the historical, cultural, social, and economic matrices of New Testament texts in order to understand their places in and contributions to early Jesus reverence and Christianity.¹ Thus, examples and uses of historical criticism are wide-ranging and often involve the application of subdisciplines or other hermeneutical models. In large part, this study makes use of rhetorical, historical, intertextual, and narrative exegetical methods. This chapter outlines major contributions to some of those approaches to show the foundations on which I build and to highlight some of the gaps in the research that this book fills.

Methodology

Primarily, this book takes a narrative approach to the Gospel in combination with historical and comparative literary approaches. Consideration of Mark as a narrative will help demonstrate how narrative elements such as character, plot, flow, and perspective convey or limit discourse in Mark. Narrative theory also helps differentiate Mark’s world from the historical realities of the first century—for example, the distinction between “the crowd” as a character in Mark and the real, historical populace of prewar Galilee and Judea—which will allow me to draw conclusions about the author’s possible goals. Through descriptions of historical developments and circumstances in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, I situate both the Judean War and Mark within the trajectory of Roman expansion. My use of texts such as the Res gestae divi Augusti, 1 Maccabees, or the Aeneid demonstrates currents in culture and thought to which Mark’s author would reasonably have had exposure. The combination of these approaches removes some of the “uniqueness” of Mark and of the first-century Jesus movement, but at the same time highlights what was unique about them.

The current chapter surveys several different approaches to Markan studies that have influenced my own research. Imperial-critical and postcolonial approaches have been especially helpful in discerning the types of questions to ask and in framing the answers to them. Although the content of this book is historical and exegetical with little reference to theory, the methodological underpinnings I outline in the next few sections make up an important foundation to the entire study.

Throughout this book the reader will find in-depth studies of significant words and phrases from the Gospel of Mark. These terms are examined in three ways in their historical contexts: with brief summaries of their uses and meanings in pre-New Testament literature; in their narrative contexts within Mark; and in the ways that Matthew and Luke show consistency with or difference from the Markan text. Analysis of Mark’s particular use of this language both in the narrative flow of the Gospel and in the cultural and historical contexts of the early to mid-70s—for example, the fact that the word ἐξουσία (authority) only appears in relation to Jesus (see Chapter 3 of this study)—allows claims regarding Mark’s characterization of Jesus within the story and for his audience. Comparison of Mark to the other Synoptics brings uniquely Markan strategies and concerns to the fore.

Mark’s Community

I refer to Mark’s community repeatedly throughout this study, and so it will be helpful to outline some of the assumptions that go into my discussion. First, I find it more than likely that Mark’s intended audience consists primarily of people who are already Jesus followers, and perhaps have been for some time. There is much scholarly discussion of Mark’s purpose and audience, but my justification for this opinion rests largely on three themes in the Gospel. First, there are various details that clearly expect the audience to have previous knowledge. The reference to Rufus and Alexander in 15:21 and “let the reader understand” in 13:14 indicate address to insiders. Likewise, the division between insider and outsider in ch. 4, where the parable saying (4:11) can just as easily be read as a statement to the audience as to the disciples. Second, the ambiguous treatment of the Twelve suggests some degree of factionalism, or at least disapproval of certain leaders, groups, or ways of interpreting or acting. Such disputes are by definition internal, though they may be aired to outsiders when there is competition for new membership or other benefit. Finally, the Gospel’s focus on suffering as integral to discipleship is a call for renewed or strengthened commitment, not a means of attracting popularity or acceptance. In contrast to Acts, which portrays the martyrdoms of Stephen and others as evidence of the strength and truth of their faith, Mark insists that suffering is necessary and even inevitable but not, in itself, glorious. The Boanerges will suffer, but their suffering will not lead to their glorification (10:35–40). Chapter 13 not only advocates flight from danger but also admits that persecution must be endured. Compared to the glorification and joy of martyrs in Acts and later Christianity, this heavy doom can be a bracing message for insiders, but it is not an evangelization strategy.²

Otherwise, I use “community” and “audience” somewhat loosely—with the evidence available I am loathe to attempt a fuller description. In fact, I am hesitant to assign said community a unified relationship to the temple, Rome, or the war. Mark, as an author, has identified a problem—the failure of Judean rebellion and Messianic, maybe even parousic, hopes—and has set out to solve it. The extent to which other Jesus followers in the region shared his concerns or went along with his solution is, unfortunately, unrecoverable to us. This study addresses Synoptic reception of Mark where relevant, but the authors of Matthew and Luke are each writing for different sociopolitical situations and with different agendas in mind. They represent intentional rejections of Mark’s approach in some ways and intentional adoptions in others and, overall, simply the shifting needs of the growing and diverse Jesus movement at different periods in time.

Theoretical Approaches

Narrative Criticism

Since William Wrede’s contribution³ there has been steady interest in the Gospel of Mark as a fully formed, intentional literary product. Specifically, narrative and rhetorical criticisms ask what meaning an interpreter can discover from the text of Mark itself, as it has reached us. Putting aside questions of form, redaction, and source history, narrative critics instead consider the perspective of the implied author and audience⁴ and the text’s strategies toward internal meaning. Three major studies of narrative Christology will demonstrate the method’s strengths and weaknesses.

Robert Tannehill

Tannehill’s 1979 article assesses the Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus through development of his “commission” or “task.” He states that a “unified narrative sequence” consists of the (direct or implied) imparting of such a commission; movement toward and obstacles impeding its fulfillment; and its final completion or abandonment.⁵ Tannehill traces Jesus’s commission from the baptism to the crucifixion, although it is not a simple trajectory. As he moves toward the fulfillment of his commission, “Jesus assumes certain roles in relation to other persons in the narrative,” for example, the disciples, the Jewish leadership, those who approach Jesus for healing, and the demons. How these relationships play out over the text’s various subplots adds nuance to the commission and Christology. As the narrative proceeds it reveals that Jesus’s function is not the same vis-à-vis all of the characters. For example, his role as savior does not extend to the demons.⁶ The text receives further complication as characters other than Jesus receive and develop their own commissions. In particular, Tannehill understands Mark to contain three major commissions: Jesus’s, which produces the central plot line of the Gospel; that of the disciples, which is to participate in Jesus’s own commission as “subordinate … but sharing”;⁷ and that of the Pharisees and other authorities to destroy Jesus.⁸ Other characters, such as supplicants in need of healing, have their own commissions confined to individual pericopes. Mark demonstrates and develops its Christology in the places where Jesus’s thread crosses the many others.

Paul Danove

More recently, Danove takes a detailed look at the ways in which the Gospel of Mark creates internal meaning by characterization, context, and the rhetorical use of individual units of language.⁹ He analyzes the Gospel from two points of departure: an investigation of “the ways in which the narrative cultivates specific meanings for words” and “a … study of how the unfolding of the narrator establishes the possibility for interpretive responses.”¹⁰ The Gospel’s—and any narrative’s—rhetorical strategies, Danove argues, build on, confirm, or deconstruct the audience’s preconceived understandings of words, phrases, situations, and characters in order to construct meaning for the narrative as a whole.¹¹ In Mark this includes developing the relationships between God and Jesus and also Jesus and other characters (e.g., the disciples, opponents, or suppliants),¹² as well as developing the audience’s understanding of titles such as “Son of Man” and “Christ.”¹³ He concludes, in agreement with Theodore Weeden,¹⁴ that the purpose of Mark’s Gospel is to problematize the audience’s preexisting be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations of Modern Works
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Empire Criticism
• 2 Kingdom and Imperium
• 3 Rulership
• 4 Military and Conquest
• 5 Salvation
• 6 Jesus as the Son of God
• 7 The Values of Empire
• Conclusion
• Appendix A Judea before the War
• Appendix B Comparisons with Matthew and Luke
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Index of Ancient Authors
• Copyright Page