Reading Mark's Gospel as a Text from Collective Memory

Sandra Huebenthal

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781467458467
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

How did the Gospel of Mark come to exist? And how was the memory of Jesus shaped by the experiences of the earliest Christians?

For centuries, biblical scholars examined texts as history, literature, theology, or even as story. Curiously absent, however, has been attention to processes of collective memory in the creation of biblical texts.

Drawing on modern explorations of social memory, Sandra Huebenthal presents a model for reading biblical texts as collective memories. She demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark is a text evolving from collective narrative memory based on recollections of Jesus's life and teachings. Huebenthal investigates the principles and structures of how groups remember and how their memory is structured and presented. In the case of Mark's Gospel, this includes examining which image of Jesus, as well as which authorial self -image, this text as memory constructs. Reading Mark's Gospel as a Text from Collective Memory serves less as a key to unlock questions about the historical Jesus and more as an examination of memory about him within a particular community, providing a new and important framework for interpreting the earliest canonical gospel in context.

1Exegetical Kaleidoscope:

Images of the Genesis and Interpretation of Mark’s Gospel

A kaleidoscope is an optical device for producing beautiful forms. It is not a scientific tool that can be used to explain the exact nature of things. Its operation is simple: small pieces of colored glass or similar objects are loosely inserted between two clear pieces of plastic and are reflected by mirrors that are longitudinally incorporated in a tube. Light enters through one end of the tube, making colored symmetrical patterns visible; in addition, every twist of the kaleidoscope changes the position of the glass pieces, creating new, beautiful patterns. The attraction of the kaleidoscope lies not in the depiction of the individual elements but in the patterns that are created when the relative location of the objects is changed by a twist of the tube.

Gospel scholarship sometimes resembles the kaleidoscope. The scholarly approach to the complex process of the origin and textualization of Jesus memories and Jesus traditions considers different elements and arranges them in ever-new ways. This method allows for impressions as to what was remembered and passed on, when and in what form the items were collected, up to the moment when the familiar canonical form of Mark’s Gospel came into existence. Retracing this process, however, is nearly impossible. Not only is it determined by a variety of possible factors, but it is also governed by each scholar’s selection of hermeneutical principles, for each turn of the exegetical kaleidoscope leads to different solutions to the research question.

When it comes to Markan scholarship, the status quaestionis is almost a genre in itself, or at the least a distinct research field. There are a great number of surveys on particular topics and areas of interest. There are also general surveys on Markan scholarship, for example, the Literaturberichte of Andreas Lindemann—rich in material and very helpful—each report covering a decade of research on Mark.¹ This great tradition has recently been continued by Cilliers Breytenbach.² We also have surveys about particular questions such as the identity of Jesus,³ genre (Gattung), and its feasibility in a particular sociohistorical situation (Kontextplausibilität).⁴ William R. Telford has even published a whole compendium for working with Mark’s Gospel.⁵ He reviews publications and summarizes research trends since 1980 in his Guide to Advanced Biblical Research, which offers an annotated bibliography in minisurveys that cut helpful paths through the jungle of Markan research. In this way he empowers novices in Markan research to undertake their first autonomous steps—at least to follow the paths of Markan scholarship beyond “Wrede Way” (Wredestraße)⁶ and “Schmidt Street” (Schmidtweg).⁷ The importance and helpfulness of these contributions can be gauged from the statement of specialists on Mark that are commonly not published, like the open confession of one of the grand dames of American Markan scholarship during the Mark Session of the 2012 SBL Annual Meeting in Chicago. She frankly admitted that she had not read all the commentaries published in the last two decades—because there are simply too many of them!⁸

In light of this state of research it might be wise to follow Breytenbach and ask “not only what was published, but rather what questions have not been addressed.”⁹ The fact that research areas such as Mark as history, Mark as literature, Mark as story, and Mark as theology are eagerly discussed in the international discourse leads to the justifiable conclusion that new methods and new hermeneutics are habitually put to the test with this particular text.¹⁰ It is remarkable, however, that the whole discourse on memory and questions of cultural-scientific readings of the Bible are mostly absent from recent research surveys and commentaries.¹¹ The search for monographs (Einzelstudien) addressing these topics is similarly frustrating and fruitless. It seems that this particular approach appears in Jesus research only when it is occasionally used to answer questions like what is remembered, who remembers, and how this recollection takes place or what implications these recollections might have for Early Christian identity formation processes.

As regards the developments in the field of hermeneutics and methodology, Fernando F. Segovia has defined three stages: (1) historical critical, (2) literary criticism/(socio)cultural criticism, and (3) cultural studies/ideological criticism.¹² Segovia locates the greater paradigm changes in biblical scholarship at the transitions between the stages, namely the narrative turn in the 1970s and the cultural turn in the 1990s. Cultural studies is not only relatively new but also a relatively broad area of research; a large share of the contributions to the field occur in the greater area of reception history and the history of effects.¹³

Narrative criticism is still the preferred method in the international research discourse on Mark,¹⁴ but there is also activity in other synchronic and diachronic research areas, which contributes to questions regarding both the origin and the interpretation of the text. There is an overall consensus emerging that the primacy of synchrony (Primat der Synchronie) cannot be bypassed when it comes to questions of what lies behind the text.¹⁵ It remains a problem, however, that the research insights of the different hermeneutical and methodological approaches usually remain separate and unrelated fields:

Whereas Jesus researchers approach the Gospels as source materials to be excavated and sifted for valuable evidence, narrative critics approach the Gospels as creations in themselves to be explored and appreciated holistically, including their gaps and tensions. Thus one finds in key English-language scholars of the quest for the historical Jesus little interest in or use of the results of narrative criticism. Narrative criticism and historical Jesus research, at least in the United States and England, seem to have begun and remained as parallel tracks rather than as intersecting approaches.¹⁶

This judgment applies not only to English-speaking scholarship but also to the German research context. As hinted already, the separate ways of Jesus research and Markan research might be one reason why memory-theoretic approaches have up to now not gained currency in Markan scholarship.¹⁷

In the wake of narrative criticism and reader-response criticism, the spectrum of different approaches to texts was extended, embracing, for example, cultural studies and postcolonial criticism, which could be described as “first cousins of reader-response criticism.”¹⁸ Since the turn of the millennium, aural/oral criticism and performance criticism also joined the club.¹⁹ In most cases, Mark’s Gospel was chosen as the preferred test case for the new approach.²⁰ Seen against this background, it comes as no surprise that the secondary literature on Mark has grown into an unmanageable glut; there is no end to the writing of books! Accordingly, remarks in the introductions of doctoral theses can at times be quite ironic: “It may seem that another book on Mark is the last thing we need in the field of biblical studies.”²¹

Taking up the image of the kaleidoscope, the following pages will neither chronologically retrace the history of gospel origins in its different stages nor provide a survey of the research history on Mark’s Gospel. In fact, the aim is to show—similarly to a gaze through a kaleidoscope—which patterns emerge if the elements involved are aligned in a particular way and what new kinds of images occur when a new turn challenges the usual perceptions. Such an approach to the phenomenon of gospel origins is tied to a particular perspective and cannot be exhaustive. It is nevertheless helpful to show the tentativeness of these explanatory images, which will be enriched in this monograph by another tentative explanation. This latest turn is the cultural-scientific/memory-theoretic approach in the wake of the cultural turn.²²

As the quest for the origins and textualization of the gospels is one of the core questions not only for New Testament scholarship but for theological research per se, this field has been developed in particular depth. To use a familiar image, each stone has been lifted and turned around several times to be analyzed with the help of varying methods and research questions. Research literature on the question of gospel origins (Evangelienentstehung) is accordingly quite extensive and includes contributions about Gattung, historical investigation (Historische Rückfrage), and theological purpose(s).

Ernst Käsemann once said in a response to his teacher Rudolf Bultman that “science progresses antithetically” (“Wissenschaft bewegt sich ja in Antithesen vorwärts”).²³ Research on the origins of the gospels and the understanding of the Gospel of Mark well illustrate the deeper truth of this axiom. This area shows—maybe much better than other possible examples—that every thesis is sooner or later replaced by its antithesis.²⁴ In the course of research history, many of these tensions remained unresolved and present continual challenges and paradoxes. This status applies, for example, to the following binaries in the contested field “gospel origins”:

• memory of an individual (applicable to an eyewitness) vs. memory of a group (social memory)
• apostolic or original community (Urgemeinde) vs. community of commemoration
• history or biographical historical narrative (Biographische Geschichtserzählung) vs. kerygma
• historicity vs. fictionality
• evangelists as collectors vs. evangelists as theologians
• evangelists as conservative redactors vs. evangelists as formative theologians
• textualization in layers vs. textualization in one shot
• interpretation in segments (such as stages of origins [Wachstumsstufen]) vs. interpretation in flux (text-based or based on the final form of the text)
• interests of a hierarchical position or position of power vs. interests of a community
• authority (of the original community or an apostle) defended vs. authority or normativity created
• creation of the text for a community vs. creation of the text within a community
• missionary text (ad extra) vs. realized memory (ad intra).

These antitheses form the basis for the particular patterns of understanding that can occur when the glass pieces in the kaleidoscope are turned. In the remainder of this chapter, I briefly introduce some of these images, locating them briefly in a cultural-scientific/memory-theoretic perspective. The aim is to provide a first impression of the complexity of the area of research and to gain an initial sense of the nature of a cultural-scientific/memory-theoretic approach.

Starting Point: Farewell to Traditional Ideas

Tradition has long assumed that the gospels were direct reports of the events with and around Jesus. This idea lasted for several centuries and was shattered only in the course of the Enlightenment, before it was finally abandoned. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the consensus that the gospels, including Mark and Q, are not direct reports and that the texts do not present a reliable bridge to the history of Jesus began to gain currency.²⁵ In the wording of the time, one could say that the insight became established that the offense of the resurrection (the so-called Easter ditch, or Ostergraben) cannot be bypassed by the gospels, and the way back to those events cannot be retraced. It became increasingly clear that the gospels present not so much records of Jesus’s life and teachings as “the proclamation of the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”²⁶ It also became clear that the agents behind the written gospels who carried the memory of Jesus have a certain impact on the formation and transmission of the material and inform these traditions:

Thus the community’s Easter faith gains an independent methodological significance as a phenomenon mediating between the Jesus of history and the Synoptic sources. In addition, the question whether the Synoptic sources claim to be authentic reports is added to the question whether they do indeed report authentically.²⁷

The question as to how kerygma and report might be related is not addressed here but is further carried along like flotsam to reemerge in the discourse much later. From a hermeneutical point of view, we are dealing with two different categories: proclamation (Verkündigung) claims to be authentic, while a report seeks to be objective. There are different criteria for both categories. Martin Kähler pointed in that direction already in 1892, when he understood gospels to be proclamation and thus not suitable for historical inquiries:

We do not possess any sources for a “Life of Jesus” which a historian can accept as reliable and adequate. I repeat: we have no sources for a biography of Jesus of Nazareth which measure up to the standards of contemporary historical science. A trustworthy picture of the Savior for believers is a very different thing.²⁸

The difference between both is virtually understood to be material. Today, scholars would rather speak of a formal difference:

For historical facts which first have to be established by science cannot as such become experiences of faith. Therefore, Christian faith and a history of Jesus repel each other ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Werner H. Kelber
• Abbreviations
• 1. Exegetical Kaleidoscope: Images of the Genesis and Interpretation of Mark’s Gospel
• Mark’s Gospel and Social Memory Theory
• Jesus Memories and Identity Formation in Mark 6:7–8:26
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Scripture Citations
• Index of Other Ancient Sources