Allegiance, Opposition, and Misunderstanding

A Narrative Critical Approach to Mark's Christology

MacDonald

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532611308
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Estudios bíblicos

The central aim of the Gospel of Mark is to introduce the reader to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In this book, MacDonald examines not just what the Gospel writer says, but also how he says it. When the Gospel of Mark is examined as a complete work, and the motifs of allegiance, opposition, and misunderstand are traced through the narrative, Mark is seen to be a rather sophisticated literary work. The Gospel writer is not simply a compiler of tradition, but one who shaped his narrative for specific rhetorical aims, namely, that his audience--both ancient and modern--would recognize Jesus as the Son of God and respond to him with allegiance.

1

Introducing a Narrative Critical Approach to “Son of God” in Mark

Setting the Stage: Introduction

For numerous Christians throughout the ages the assertion that Jesus is the “Son of God” has been understood as a simple proposition, one that possess ontological and cosmic dimensions. After all, orthodox, trinitarian theology is something that the Church affirmed, and something that the Holy Scriptures seems to clearly teach.

In the Gospel of Mark, for example, the locale to which the majority of our time and attention will be given, Jesus is called the Son of God in the opening line (textual issue not withstanding). He is next named “Son” by a voice from heaven at the baptismal scene (Mark 1:11). The demonic world seems to clearly understand this reality based on the narrative of Mark (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7). At yet another significant juncture, the transfiguration (Mark 9:7), Jesus is again called “Son” by a voice from heaven. The reality that Jesus is the Son of God is hinted at, implied, and referenced a number of times (Mark 12:1–2; 13:32; 14:36; 15:39), the final time by the most unlikely of voices, a Roman centurion. Obviously, then, the divine sonship of Jesus is a significant theme in Mark’s Gospel.

For many, it is an axiom that does not require much defense or explanation. However, the application of higher criticism to the Synoptic Gospels has yielded a host of interpretation about Jesus’ identity and the manner in which the Evangelists understood the title. In the twentieth century, opinions about how this title is to be understood abounded—with some arguing that the Gospel writers were drawing from Divine Man mythology in the Greco-Roman world, and others proposing that it primarily refers to Jesus as “Son of David Messiah.”

One of the reasons for the diverse manner in which the title is understood is that the various disciplines used to approach the primary documents seemed to function in relative isolation. For example, a classic historical critic of the New Testament may ignore the literary dimensions of the text and arrive at an understanding of Jesus that is somewhat, if not entirely, at odds with the Jesus in the actual story. Or, to put the example in reverse, the narrative critic that ignores that historical dimension of the primary documents may arrive at a conclusion that is primarily subjective in nature because it is not anchored to anything in the first century. This impasse can be bridged by taking a comprehensive approach to the question. Any answer to what it means to be the “Son of God,” and how Mark understood this reality, and how he intended his audience to both appropriate and respond to this truth, must take into account all the data that is available. Such a significant and complex question cannot be treated from a singular vantage point. Any approach to this question must engage deeply with the author (implied and, to a lesser degree, historical); text (from a historical critical and narratival perspective); and the reader (implied and historic). This is the task at hand.

Although this study is firmly committed to a narrative critical approach, subjectivity must be avoided at all costs. Thus, the manner in which form, redaction, and social-scientific criticism will come into play must be explained. In this chapter, the foundation for the present study is laid out. After examining what roles the various disciplines will fill, and how the ever-important “secrecy” theme in Mark is to be understood, the central thesis of the study will be stated and explained.

Form Criticism and the Evangelist as “Author”

There is little doubt that, originally, the tradition about Jesus was spread, not through written documents, but through oral traditions. This is hinted at in Luke 1:2. Individual told individual, and the story spread. To make the telling and remembering process more effective, and to communicate certain points and expectations, certain devices or forms were used. This is where the discipline of form criticism comes into play.

The term “form criticism” is taken from the German word “Formgeschichte.” Form criticism was first applied to the Old Testament by Hermann Gunkel in the early twentieth century. His two major works on Genesis and the Psalms demonstrate a preoccupation with uncovering the oral traditions that underlie the various passages that make up these books. The first New Testament scholar to use the word as part of a title was Martin Dibelius in 1919. Other scholars that applied it to the New Testament included Bultmann and Schmidt. Following Bultmann were his students, Ernst Käsemann and Günther Bornkamm.1 These individuals understood the Gospels to be the result of a community, rather than one particular author.2 Aside from these German authors, Vincent Taylor in Britain adopted it as well in 1933, though with many modifications.3 In the first half of the twentieth century, form criticism was highly touted as a significant breakthrough in biblical studies and was almost beyond challenge.4

Form criticism, which had its zenith of influence in the twentieth century, has roots that go back to century earlier. Much of the approaches found in form critical studies of the Gospels come from the early work done on the life of Jesus. When the church’s dogma was challenged, and the relationship between history, faith, and literature was studied in depth, questions began to emerge. These questions included: In what way can the Gospels be described as history? Or, how did myth and legend shape and form the oral traditions that were eventually codified in what we call the New Testament? Once it was accepted by scholars that the Gospels were made up of sources rather than a single witness or source, the interest of these scholars extended into extrapolating what kinds of sources were present in the texts, and, additionally, how they came to be shaped and molded by the mythologization process (e.g., Bultmann).

As a goal, form criticism seeks to uncover the various forms or units and their original historical context. The answers for where the events described/narrated in the Gospels actually originated may, according to the form critic, be the historical Jesus, the Gospel writers, or the Christian community and its Sitz im Leben. In many respects, the process of investigation was not actually such that its central goal was uncovering the historical Jesus. This, it was thought, was almost entirely impossible to accomplish. It was not the historical Jesus that held the key to the present day application and significance for the Christian faith, but, rather, primitive Christianity; thus uncovering it became central. Along this line, Wright explains,

Form-criticism, the tool usually associated with Bultmann, was not, at its heart...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introducing a Narrative Critical Approach to “Son of God” in Mark
• Chapter 2: Legitimacy of a Narratological Approach to Mark
• Chapter 3: Placing “Son of God” in History, Research, and Context
• Chapter 4: Son of God in Mark
• Chapter 5: A Synchronic Approach to Son of God Theology in Mark
• Chapter 6: Concluding Thoughts and Reflections
• Appendix
• Bibliography