Peter/Mark of Papias versus Peter/Glaucias of Basilides

The testimony of Papias that the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark out of Peter’s anecdotes is recorded by Eusebius (HE 3.39.15):

And the elder used to say this: ‘Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterwards, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his one concern not to omit anything that he heard or take any false statement in them’ (trans. M. Holmes).

Some argue (e.g., Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8, 23) that the appeal to Mark as the interpreter of Peter is a deliberate rejoinder to the claim by some Gnostic figures that Basilides was taught by Glaucias the interpreter of Peter (Clement, Strom. 7.106). However, I would point out: (a) Imitation is a great means of admiration, but hardly an effective form of refutation. (b) The Peter-Glaucias tradition itself may have been influenced by the Peter-Mark tradition rather than vice-versa. As Birger A. Pearson (‘Basilides the Gnostic’, in A Companion to Second-Centry Christian ‘Heretics’, eds. A. Marjanen and P. Luomanen Leiden: Brill, 2005, 4) writes: ‘The Peter-Glaukias tradition (whoever Glaukias was) can possibly be seen as a Basilidian counter to the Peter-Mark tradition current in Alexandrian ecclesiastical circles’. (c) The aetiological stories of the genetic relationship between ‘heretics’ recorded by the Heresiologists are chiefly polemical rather than historical (though this should be assessed case by case). (d) Irenaeus connects Basilides with a different Gnostic genealogy that is traced through Simon Magus and Menander (Adv. Haer. 1.24.3-7), while the Basilidians themselves laid claim to the teachings of the apostle Matthias (Clement, Strom. 7.108; Hippolytus, Haer. 7.20.1). So I doubt that the Peter-Mark tradition was derived (or contrived) as a response to the Peter-Glaucias tradition found in Basilidian circles.

Helmut Koester on the Provenance of Mark

Helmut Koester is one of the world's leading authorities on early Christian Gospels and gospel-traditions. In his book From Jesus to the Gospels I did observe one acute irony. Concerning the Gospel of Mark, Koester states, "I am, of course, aware of the widespread assumption of scholars that the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome. There is, however, no single piece of evidence. Mark was used by Matthew in Syria and by Luke in Antioch or Ephesus in the last third of the first century. That a gospel written in Rome should have been brought to the East as such an early time seems most unlikely" (p. 29, n. 30). And yet this footnote is attached to the statement above it that "Were it not for the single reference to a passage from Mark in Justin Martyr's Dialogue, we would not have any evidence for the presence of that gospel in Rome in the middle of the second century". My problem is: (1) What is so implausible about the Gospel of Mark reaching Syria/Ephesus when Christians travelled widely and frequently?; (2) Surely the fact that the first external attestation of the Gospel of Mark is in Rome does at least factor in the evidence about its original provenance.

The Messianic Secret

Over at Peje Iesous, Chris Skinner is reading Are You the One Who is to Come? and he offers his own reflections on Mark's "messianic secret". Notably, he regards the secrecy motif as essentially a Marcan construction over and against my efforts at showing its historical character. Let me offer a few thoughts in reply to Skinner:

1. There is no denying that the secrecy motif is a narrative and theological device in the Marcan plot. From the incipit in 1.1 the reader knows who Jesus is, yet the characters in the story bumble along with a mixture of comedy and irony in trying to ascertain who Jesus precisely is. Viewed this way, Mark deliberately creates a literary tension in terms of who Jesus is said to be and who he is regarded as by characters in the Gospel.

2. Nonetheless, I'm convinced that there was a "secrecy" motif in Jesus' ministry for a number of reasons: (a) Simply on account of social realism it make sense. Amidst the various prophetic figures of first century Judea, it was natural to ask "who is this guy?" or "who does this guy think he is?". If Jesus thought himself to be a messiah or deliberately evoking messianic themes in his speech and actions, and if this would have aroused the intervention of the authorities, it is entirely conceivable that he would keep the question, or at least his answer to it, a secret. (b) It is quite probable that Jesus, like other apocalyptic seers, thought himself privy to divine revelations that could not be manifested until the appointed time. One such revelation was the identity of Elijah and the Messiah.

3. On William Wrede, it is important to note that Wrede never ascribed the messianic secret to Mark himself, but rather, he contended that Mark merely amplified a tradition already known to him about secrecy tied to Jesus' messianic identity. The messianic secret arose in order to explain why the early church believed Jesus to be the messiah when in fact Jesus' earthly life was widely known to be non-messianic. I focused on Wrede in the book mainly because he's been so influential (e.g., Bultmann just assumed that Wrede was right). But I find his description very problematic on account that he assumes that it was belief in the resurrection that lead to the messianic faith of the early church which is a non sequitur. In addition, what is silenced in Mark is not messianic, and what is messianic is not always silenced!

Rikki Watts: The Psalms in Mark's Gospel

I have an unpublished paper by Rikki Watts of Regent College entitled: "The Lord's House and David's Lord: the Psalms and Mark's Perspective on Jesus and the Temple." The abstract states:

"Four Davidic Psalms (2, 118, 110, and 22), each cited or alluded to at least twice, in this order, and at critical junctures in Mark's narrative, play a key role in his Gospel. In contemporary understanding Psalm 2 was associated with teh future messianic urging of Jersusalem and especially the Temple (e.g. 4QFlor, Pss Sol 17). Psalm 118, concluding the Egyptian Hallel, spoke of Israel's future deliverance under a Davidic king with the restored temple as the goal of Israel's return from exile. Psalm 110's surprisingly elevated royal desgination, uniquely expressed in Melchizedekian preist-king terms, contributed to several portraits of exalted heavenly deliverers, some messianic, who would preside over Israel's restoration (e.g. 11QMelch, 1 Enoch) while Psalm 22's Davidic suffering and vindication described teh deliverance of righteous Zion (e.g. 4QPs). Drawing from the dual perspective of their original contexts and contemporary interpretations, this paper proposes taht Mark's careful arrangement of his psalm citations presents Jesus as both Israel's Davidic Messiah (Pss 2, 118) and the temple's Lord (Ps 110) who, coming to purge Jerusalem but rejected by the temple authorities, announces the present structure's destruction and, through his death and vindication (Ps 22), its replacement with a new people-temple centred on himself."

What do the rest think on this? I concur with the use of Psalm 2 in Judaism and its relevance for the Gospel of Mark. The issue of replacing the temple with a people-temple is perhaps more controversial, although I am willing to give it some air time (the problem is that the early Jerusalem church seems fairly temple-centred in their worship and that requires explanation: two temples in parrallel or one temple inside another). Certain Ps 110 is also a big part of Mark's Christology too.

German Commentaries: Mark

There seems to be a slight neglect of the Gospel of Mark by the Germans in recent decades in view of the dearth of Markan commentaries. However, I recommend these three commentaries.

Gnilka's commentary:
1978. Das Evangelium nach Markus. EKKNT. Düsseldorf, Zürich; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Benziger; Neukirchener Verlag.

Pesch's commentary:
1979. Das Markus-Evangelium. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Schnackenburg's two-volume commentary:
1984. Das Evangelium nach Markus. 4th ed. Geistliche Schriftlesung. Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag.

Book Notice: Binding the Strong Man - Ched Myers

Ched Myers
Binding the Strong Man: A Political reading of Mark's Story of Jesus
(2nd ed.; New York: Maryknoll, 2008)
Available from Amazon.com

When I was in theological college I had a revolutionary experience where I decided to leave Paul for Jesus in my immediate studies. I had naively thought that Paul had all the good theology and the Gospels (except perhaps for John) were merely the warm-up act for Paul. It was in a class on "Jesus and the Gospels" with, of all people, a pastoral studies lecturer that exposed us to study of Gospel of Mark with a social-scientific slant, it was there that the Gospels came alive to me in a fresh new way and I saw Jesus in ways that I never imagined. Since that time, Mark has always been my favourite Gospel and I have nearly twenty Gospel of Mark commentaries in my library. One book that I have found immensely stimulating is Ched Myer's liberationist reading Binding the Strong Man. Now I am no liberation theologian, but there are elements of this book that do make you really, really think about the social location of Jesus and Mark's readers and the socio-political implications of the Gospel story. In this 20 year anniversary edition are a number of testimonies by people as to how Ched Myer's book has influenced them. What caught my eye was this comment from Christopher Rowland of Oxford Uni:

"What I think is so striking about Ched Myer's Binding the Strong Man is that it's apparent on every page that it is written by a person whose understanding comes from within the struggles of life, and who knows, mutatis mutandis, what it is to follow Jesus 'in the way' and to understand the Bible out of that context. Ched understands something about the text, because he knows that what it means to be a follower of Jesus puts one in a position of being a nonconformist and an activist. If you're not, then one will miss things about the text and not grasp the wisdom and insight which is hidden in this strange story of a marginal Jew which we now as the Gospel of mark" (p. xliii).

Myers identifies three subplots in the Gospel of Mark: (1) There is Jesus' creation of a new community built around himself and his messainic preaching; (2) There is Jesus' mission to the crowds who teem with the poor and oppressed; and (3) There is Jesus' confrontation with the powers that held Israel in their dark grip. Let me give an example of Myer's approach with his summary of Mark 2.16-28:

"Jesus has challenged the ideological hegemony of the scribal and priestly classes by underminning their control of the redemptive media of purity and debt codes. This alone would be a programmatic statement, but Mark is not done. He now turns to the Pharisaic movement, which represented a different - though in Mark's view equally problematic - approach to the ideological maintenance of the people of God. I have noted above how the Pharisaic sect, which included both priests and scribes, pursued a program to extend the imperatives of the symbolic order to the masses while themselves following a rigorous practice of purity. Their attempts at building a popular base put them in direct competition with Mark's community. In the next three episodes Jesus' direct action campaign confronts the central tenets of the Pharisaic holiness code: their rules of table fellowship, pulic piety, and maintenance of the Sabbath" (pp. 157-58).

I should add another fairly unknown work on Mark that is a little gem and that is Herman C. Waetjen's volume A Reordering of Power. When you read his commentary on the passion narratives you will need a hankerchief or a kleenex nearby.

The exorcism of Jesus

The second volume of Joel Marcus' AB commentary on Mark 8-16 is due out soon. In a recent essay on "Identity and Ambiguity in Markan Christology" (in Hays and Gaventa Seeking the Identity of Jesus) Marcus argues that Jesus himself is exorcised in the Marcan crucifixion scene:

"If Jesus' death is demonic, then the death scene represents an ironic, kenotic reversal of the situation in the Beelzebul controversy (3:22-30), in which Jesus is presented as 'the Stronger One,' whose exorcisms prove him mightier than Satan. Now it is Satan who has suddenly, albeit temporarily, gained the upper hand, and Jesus' demonic cries might almost be taken as confirming the scribes' earlier charge: 'He has Beelzebsl ...' (3:22). This is not completely surprising, since there is often an ambiguity about exorcists, whose power over the demons may be seen by hostile critics as an indication that they are on the demons' side. The exorcist, therefore, inhabits a dangerously liminal space because of his commerce with the demons, and this commerce may either lead to his own possession or testify that he is already possessed. The Markan Jesus' demonic possession on the cross, if that is what it is, may thus be the terrible result of his grappling with the powers of darkness - a grappling that he undertakes for the benefit of demon-possessed humanity. The 'Son of the Most High God,' as the Gerasene demoniac calls him (5:7), takes his place among the possessed in order that humanity may be definitively delivered from is demons. Mark, then, may undestand Jesus' earlier exorcisms in the Gospels as proleptic of Jesus' own exorcism at the cross, just as he understands the healings in which Jesus raised people from sickness (2:9, 11-12; 3:3; 9:27; cf. 10:49) or death (5:41) as proleptic of Jesus' own 'being raised' by God (14:28; 16:6)."

Marcus' words could be said to comport with a couple of things mentioned in the Gospel of Luke such as Luke's comment that after the temptation in the wilderness: "When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time " (Luke 4:13) and what Jesus says to the cohort who come to his arrest: "Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour-- when darkness reigns" (Luke 22:53). But then again, it is another thing to say that Jesus was demon possessed, and the expiration of Jesus on the cross is more of a person giving up of his spirit (i.e. breath of life) signifying his death, than the expulsion of an unclean spirit.

Mark's Christology

How is this for a statement:

Mark’s story of Jesus essentially unpacks the designation ‘Jesus Christ’ from the incipit so as to show that the Messiah that Christians confess is made known as the:

-The Son of God who is beloved by the Father, commissioned for his messianic mission by reception of the Spirit, and exercises command over God’s enemies be they demons or the armies of Rome.
-The Son of Man who is authorized to speak for God, appointed to suffer and rise from the dead, and to judge the inhabited world.
-The Son of David who heals the afflicted of Israel and is greater still than David himself.
- The King of the Jews who, in an ironic twist, at the end of his triumphus is enthroned as the King of Israel on the cross and there reveals the true power of his kingship by refusing to save himself by saving others instead.

Honour and Shame in Mark's Gospel

When I was in theological college, I took a course on Jesus and the Gospels and my lecturer, Jeff Pugh, introduced us to social-scientific criticism of the New Testament. What I found particularly helpful was his interpretation of the Gospel of Mark through the categories of honour and shame. Jeff showed, with great pathos and pastoral effect, that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus enters into the competitive honour game of challenge-response in the honour stakes in his encounters with his opponents. In fact, as the credentials of his opponents gradually increases in the narratives (Scribes --> Pharisees --> Saducees --> Herodians --> High Priests --> Pilate), Jesus is up to the task. And despite the fact that Jesus' honour is overtly attacked, Jesus emerges as more honourable than his opponents because, despite their protestations, Jesus defends God's honour (see esp. Mk. 3.20-35). Indeed, seeking honour in servitude represents a whole new praxis for his followers to emulate (Mk. 10.41-44), and Jesus makes the "cross", the quintessential symbol of the dishonourable death, the criterion for honouring him and God.

In a fairly recent article, David Watson ('The "Messianic Secret": Demythologizing a Non-Existent Markan Theme,' Journal of Theology) writes:

"Mark not only proposes a new context for securing honour, but through the actions of Jesus promotes new criteria by which honor is established. God's own Son has shown a new way of living, and those who wish to be a part of this new community centered on Jesus must be ready to adopt a vision of honorable behavior quite different from that held by the vast majority of people in the wider culture. By enduring dishonor from outsiders, showing compassion and humility, becoming a servant, and putting others first - all of which Jesus does in Mark's gospel - Christians displayed honorable behavior according to the standards of their own group. Thus, they achieved honor among other Christians."

Petrine and Pauline Perspectives in the Gospel of Mark

The huge dispute between Paul and Peter in Antioch as recorded in Gal. 2.11-14 is well known. And some have argued that there is no indication that the rift between the two Apostles ever healed and Paul and Peter remained in competitition and rivalry with each other. So it goes, it was not until Luke-Acts and the rise of "early catholicism" in the early second century that this division between Pauline and Petrine Christianities was mended.

I have another proposal. Mark, according to tradition is associated with Peter in Rome. And if Richard Bauckham is correct, the Gospel of Mark shows traits of eyewitness testimony throughout (i.e. Peter's testimony). What is more, the Gospel of Mark also has a Pauline perspective of Christ's death (10.45), on the Law (7.19c), and on the Gentile mission (13.10). If these two premises are correct, do we have evidence of a synthesis of Petrine testimony and Pauline theology in the Gospel of Mark?