Gospel of Mark

A discussion of the evidence for the rival variants in Mark 1:2 (primarily "in the prophets" versus "in Isaiah the prophet"), and a review of the scribal tendency toward specificity and its relevance to this variant-unit. 

(With many embedded links.)

The opening of Mark’s Gospel has received substantial scholarly attention over the past century. While initial debates largely centered on nailing down its precise ending, narrative criticism and increased attention to intertextuality have attuned scholars to the ways in which the prologue establishes a set of narrative and theological agendas for the rest of the Gospel. This study builds on many of these previous contributions by drawing attention to the function of Mark’s opening citation (Mark 1:2–3). Specifically, I argue that the composite citation functions as a prophetic script and that the remainder of the prologue functions as its dramatic enactment. Reading the prologue in this way suggests that God is, in fact, the central actor of the prologue, the one who summons and commissions the dramatis personae to enact his will. The script thus discloses that at the heart of the good news about Jesus Christ stands the revelation that Christ is the “you” who both takes up Israel’s vocation as the covenant people (cf. Exod 23:20) and enacts the glorious manifestation of Israel’s Kyrios (cf. Mal 3:1; Isa 40:3).

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Who is Jesus? This is the central question in the Gospel of Mark. At various points in the narrative, Jesus is identified as the Son of God, the Son of Man, and the Messiah. Yet the disciples-and Mark's readers-have much to learn about Jesus' identity and vocation. In the climax of Mark's story, Jesus stands trial before the religious authorities, and the high priest confronts him with the same question. At long last, Jesus gives his own answer, drawing together these three titles. His immediate fate will be determined by the authorities, but the trial will not conclude until the reader also makes a decision regarding Jesus' identity.

This is a proof which contains some mistakes.Full titel: Jan Dochhorn: Man and the Son of Man in Mk 2:27-28. An Exegesis of Mk 2:23-28 focussing on the Christological Discourse in Mk 2:27-28 with an Epilogue concerning Pauline Parallels, in: Eve-Marie Becker et alii (Hrsgg.): Mark and Paul. Comparative Essays, Part II: For and against Pauline Influence on Mark (BZNW 199), Berlin 2014, 147–168.

Este estudio se basa en una investigación previa sobre el relato premarquiano de la pasión. El análisis redaccional muestra que el autor del Evangelio de Marcos ha reelaborado este relato tradicional para unirlo al resto de su narración. Por otro lado, el estudio redaccional de Mc 1-13 revela que el propósito de algunas referencias añadidas por el evangelista fue introducir el relato de la pasión. Estas observaciones permiten proponer una explicación del proceso de composición de este evangelio. El autor de Marcos utilizó el relato tradicional de la pasión como modelo e incluyó en su narración tradiciones y composiciones orales a las que dio forma siguiendo el esquema de un resumen tradicional de la actividad pública de Jesús. De este modo, Marcos “narrativizó” a la tradición sobre Jesús y lo hizo siguiendo el modelo de las biografías antiguas, un nuevo molde literario que tuvo importantes implicaciones teológicas

An introduction to conflations in the texts of New Testament documents - focusing upon, and challenging, Hort's proposals that conflations in Byzantine MSS' texts imply that the Byzantine Text is derivative of the Alexandrian and Western text-types.

Convocation Address at Bethel University, August 29, 2016 about recent troubles in Minnesota, particularly the shooting of Philando Castille, and our responsibility as followers of the Gospel. There is an audio link also available. After you click the link, it's the first one in the queue; fast-forward to 15:00:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/2016-2017-chapel-college-arts/id1148681753?mt=10

The Bible contains a motif often overlooked, but which is highly significant. That is the Absent Master motif. This is just one short article examining the significance of this motif for understanding Biblical Eschatology. I have also produced a series of YouTube videos exploring the subject in deeper detail

This article is an exegetical study of the new teaching of Jesus based on the Gospel according to Mark 1:21-28. The Historical-Comparative Method will be employed to proceed heuristically in this article, following the steps of this method: translation of the original text and textual, redactional, tradition analyses of the phraseology διδαχὴ καινὴ κατ’ ἐξουσίαν. In Mk, διδαχή cannot be the teaching as content because of the simple fact that the redactor never reports about the content. In Lk 4:36, λόγος is used as διδαχή in the sense of word of order or commandment, rule, order, norm; and military regulations or military discipline. This is also confirmed by the use of the verbs ἐπιτάσσω (to order) and ὑπαϰούω (obey), although the latter does not occur in Lk 4:36; One can presuppose that the redactor of Mk might have appropriated the word διδαχή as teaching to justify the work of Jesus as authoritative master, but the tradition talks about the authority of Jesus as a thaumaturge. Keywords Gospel of Mark. Jesus as Master. διδαχή. Teaching. New Testament.

This new volume of essays joins Reading Romans in Context (Zondervan, 2015), also edited by Blackwell, Goodrich and Matson. The book works its way through the Gospel of Mark by comparing a section of the gospel to a particular text from the literature of the Second Temple Period. The chapters are brief and written by experts in the study of the Gospels. But they are also written to appeal to people outside of the insular world of scholarly academics.

This commentary demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark is a result of a consistent, strictly sequential, hypertextual reworking of the contents of three of Paul’s letters: Galatians, First Corinthians and Philippians. Consequently, it shows that the Marcan Jesus narratively embodies the features of God’s Son who was revealed in the person, teaching, and course of life of Paul the Apostle. The analysis of the topographic and historical details of the Marcan Gospel reveals that they were mainly borrowed from the Septuagint and from the writings of Flavius Josephus. Other literary motifs were taken from various Jewish and Greek writings, including the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Plato. The Gospel of Mark should therefore be regarded as a strictly theological-ethopoeic work, rather than a biographic one.

This outline builds on the foundation laid in The Christology of the Fourth Gospel, contributing also to my Bi-Optic Hypothesis, an overall theory of Johannine composition and the history of the Johannine situation, and the relation between history and theology in the Johannine tradition. It was presented as a short paper at the 2016 SNTS meetings in Montreal along with other handouts.

The article first provides a brief hermeneutic on how to read narratives. Then using that hermeneutic, shows how the serving response of Simon’s Mother-In-Law to her healing by Jesus is not only the proper response to Jesus’ work in her life, but the first explicit example of discipleship in the Gospel. The analysis develops from the perspective of a first-time reading (hearing) of Mark, and from the perspective of subsequent readings (hearings). Service is the pattern of discipleship that Jesus is showing his followers, and the example he will give in Jerusalem—not by leading, per se, but by giving up his own life for them. The very first example of a person who follows in this pattern of service is Simon’s mother-in-law, whose response to being healed was to serve them—even if what she provided was table service

This article seeks to disrupt the deadly deployment of boundaries that mark particular people as normative or queer, socially living or dead. Conversing with the Decapolis of Mark 5:1-20 and Washington D.C.'s prostitution free zones (pfz), the present project deploys a hauntological and critical spatial response, that locates points of contact between transwomen of color in the U.S. capital and the possessed Gerasenes. This article challenges biblical scholars to lean into historiography that sees such stories-from the tombs and from the pfz-as politically active in and of themselves, and with one another. Mark 5:1-20 is imagined here as a place constructed by alliances of queer bodies spatialized into unlivability. Such alliances are resources for thinking beyond the neocapitalist drive to create deadly normativity through insides and outsides, suggesting that biblical texts are always already infused with demands from places where life is suffocated. Keywords Gospel of Mark-Gerasene demoniac-necropolitics-hauntology-queer theory-prostitution free zones © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 |

[Proofs; please cite published version.] While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them, we stand to become not more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquility of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield know-how; rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice.

This is the syllabus for a Gospel of Mark course taught at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary during the Fall 2019 semester. The course itself was subdivided between four sections: Greek Exegesis Online, Greek Exegesis Residential, English Exegesis Online, and English Exegesis Residential.

Students in the class were predominately MDiv Students and many were taking the class not only to fulfill an exegesis course requirement but also in preparation for the exegesis portion of ordination exams for the PCUSA.

In theological research of The Christian Community and in anthroposophical circles, there is a tendency to follow the chronology of John rather than the synoptics. Questioning this tendency initially, this paper follows research by Andrew Welburn, Emil Bock, Rudolf Steiner and others on Essenism and Gnosticism to understand the re-emergence of mystery initiations in Palestine before the christian era and the significance of initiation, death and resurrection for christianity, tracing the independent mystery traditions of each of the four gospels and ending cautiously in favour of the historical accuracy of the second half of John's gospel.

Both Jews and the Christ group faced many sudden changes in the first century. The situation became acute in the 60s and 70s of the Common Era. Earthquakes, famines, plagues and sudden changes in social order were not uncommon in the Mediterranean world. In the 60s and 70s, the Christ group experienced empire-wide persecutions for being accused of setting Rome on fire. Jews witnessed the destruction of both Jerusalem and their sacred temple in Jerusalem after the Jewish war for independence.

How did the Christ group respond to these natural and man-made disasters? Were their responses different from the Jews?

In this paper, I will investigate the first narrative book of the New Testament: the Gospel of Mark. Mark 11 and 13 are examined from the perspective of narrative criticism, and found that Jesus’ words and deeds towards the Second Temple were explicitly portrayed; the narrator intends the narratives to echo with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The narrator communicates a constructive vision of world mission resulting from natural disasters and the First Jewish Revolt to the first readers. Mark’s message is about gospel justice, but it is diametrically opposite to the theodicies in the Jewish literature. As a result, Mark’s gospel shapes the social identity of the Christ groups after 70 by making them different from the Jews and more universally embracive. Mark's gospel decenters the cultural traditions of the existing members and focuses more on the aspects of forgiveness and faith-building of Christ's gospel which has been already stated in Mark 1.

With regard to the present contexts in Hong Kong, this exegetical study may offer some insights to local churches concerning how to be more positive and vital in responding to the recent sudden changes in natural and political environments.

The Interpretation of the Text "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs (Mk 7:27b) from the Perspective of the Syropoenician Woman;
Collectanea Theologica  LXXXV (2015) nr 3, pp. 33-48
The article presents an analysis of Mk 7,24-30 in the context of Mk 7,1-23 (the criticism of the Jewish integrism, tradition and rituals. It shows dialogue between Jesus and syrophoenician woman in two different points view: the perspective of Jesus and the perspective of woman. Jesus' statement is characterized by theological depth and universality, the statement of the woman is contextualized, based
in fact on its domestic experience and Hellenistic customs.

This article juxtaposes Jesus of Nazareth’s ‘provocative one-man street theatre’ in the Jerusalem temple reported in the biblical Gospels (Mark 11:15-19 and parallels) with actress Rachel Griffiths’ ‘art installation, one-woman protest’ at Crown Casino, Melbourne, in 1997. The juxtaposition is undertaken as a means of apprehending in the (post)modern world the radical nature of ancient prophetic symbolic actions (sign-acts) in the Bible, such as Jesus’ temple-action. I consider that Griffiths’ casino-action echoes the style and content of the ancient prophetic symbolic actions.  I suggest that the affronting and offensive style and content of such actions may generate an ‘alienation-effect’ (Brecht) provoking critical engagement with a commonly assumed reality. And in the ‘society of spectacle’ (Debord), in which a revolution against the spectacle can only take the form of spectacle (Baudrillard), the appropriation of powerful images from the Bible may introduce an alternative reality.

ENGLISH: The article shows how the characters of the Gospels are a key for communication. They are used as mechanisms that question the reader or the hearer and present them as models or anti-models of values, attitudes and reactions with regard to Jesus, which require them to challenge themselves. In particular, a study of the verb ‘to listen/hear’ together with its semantic field in the Gospel of Mark shows a range of character types who reject or accept Jesus, or else who remain ambiguous. From the so-called ‘minor characters’ there emerges a pattern of encounters with Jesus, the ultimate goal that the Gospel seeks to elicit, which is triggered by an initial ‘listening/hearing’.

CATALÀ: L'article mostra com els personatges són una clau comunicativa dels evangelis. Són utilitzats com a mecanismes que interpel·len el lector o oient i els presenten models o antimodels de valors, actituds i reaccions davant de Jesús amb les quals estan cridats a confrontar-se. En concret, l'estudi del verb «escoltar» i el seu camp semàntic en l'evangeli de Marc mostra un ventall de tipus de personatges que rebutgen o accepten Jesús, o bé romanen ambigus. A partir dels anomenats «personatges menors» s'extrau un itinerari del trobament amb Jesús, finalitat última que l'evangeli vol provocar en el lector, que és desencadenat per un «escoltar» inicial.

Ab Urbe Condita remains a riddle as the history of Rome both in its content and its presentation despite the many interpretations. Livy, as its author, has also been enigmatic to his readers over centuries. This paper argues that the riddle of Ab Urbe as a literary work and the enigma of Livy as an author can be solved in understanding the clues to irony in the Preface. Keywords Clues to intentional irony-verbal-situational-structural irony 1 Modern Scholarship on Ab Urbe Condita A survey of modern scholarship on the subject of this paper seems to be out of a purely antiquarian interest for its own sake. Scholars have continued to fault Livy for not measuring up to their expectations of him. P. G. Walsh criticized him for his lack of balance about the past, for presenting the past as credible. 1 T. J. Luce generously complimented Livy for his careful and deliberate artistry and his originality as a thinker as for innovations. Nonetheless, he noted that Livy was verbose and negligent. 2 A. J. Woodman challenged the bizarre common notion that historians of classical times, including Livy, wrote with the same aims as the modern historians. 3 Interestingly, Gary B. Miles concluded, "A major reason for scholarly uncertainty and disagreement [on when the first pentad was written] is that the language of Livy's Preface is vague". 4 Miles blamed Livy's language in the Preface for leaving a small chronological detail unresolved. At least Miles recognized the importance of the language of the Preface. Yet, in the thirty-five references to the Preface in the body of his work, not once did Miles attempt to delve into the problem posed by the language of the Preface and find a solution for it. Jason P. Davis, bewildered at Livy's beliefs and unbeliefs, wrote, "Thus, we are left with something of a dilemma: there are reasons to think that Livy prefers not to accept the traditional Roman position on prodigies, and equally good reasons to think the opposite". 5 Davis seems unaware that the clash between the narrator's and the implied author's views is 1 Walsh 1961, 138-90

In Mark chapter 5 we read the unusual story of an exorcism by Jesus. In every exorcism Jesus had done he had simply exorcised the demons out of someone. There was never a case of the demon being exorcised out of someone and into something else. But in this narrative the demons ask Jesus to be sent to the pigs and Jesus does exactly as they requested. The immediate result is that the pigs die and the final result is that Jesus is asked to leave that area. This is striking because the demons actually asked Jesus not to be sent out of the country (5.10). But now he is forced to leave the country. At surface level it appears that the demons actually managed to drive Jesus out of Gerasenes and stop him from ministering to the people in that area-thereby keeping the area in their control spiritually. This article takes a narrative approach to this story as explained in the gospel of Mark and argues that although it appears like a temporary defeat eventually Jesus succeeds and is able to minister to the people in that region.