Intertextual production of the Gospel of Mark

The intertextual production of the Gospel of Mark is the viewpoint that there are identifiable textual relationships such that any allusion or quotation from another text forms an integral part of the Markan text, even when it seems to be out of context.

Overview

It is commonly maintained that the Gospel of Mark was originally written in Greek, and that the final text represents a rather lengthy history of growth. For more than a century attempts have been made to explain the origin of the gospel material and to interpret the space between the related events and the final inscripturation of the contents of the Gospel. For that reason the emphasis has been on the growth and not on the making of the Gospel.[1]

Few scholars have taken the intertextual production of the written Gospel seriously.[2] Certain data beliefs and assumptions concerning the Gospel have become so dominant that very little progress has been made in the history of interpretation of the Gospel (see e.g. Peabody 1987:3ff).[3] However the intertextuality of the Gospel of Mark has been recognized by scholars such as Thomas L. Brodie,[4] Willem S. Vorster,[5] Dennis R. MacDonald,[6] and Bartosz Adamczewski.[7]

Traditional view

It is normally argued that the followers of Jesus transmitted his words and deeds by telling and retelling things he did and said. In view of the folkloric nature of many of the stories of and about Jesus, the aphoristic character of many of his sayings, the many parables he apparently told his followers, and the role of oral communication in that period.[8]

Therefore it is probable that Mark was informed about the story of Jesus by way of tradition. It is also probable that his audience would have known these traditions and others, such as the institution of the Lord's Supper, and controversy stories. Thus it is argued that Mark based his written story of Jesus on traditional material which he received and decided to put into written form.[8]

This is also the way in which the origin of the material was explained in the early church. The earliest witness to the authorship of Mark is the quotation from Papias of Hierapolis (c 140 CE) in the history of Eusebius (Hist Eccl III 39:15), according to which the Gospel was based on "memory" of the things Peter had told Mark (see Breytenbach 1992).[8]

Precursor texts and intertextual relationships

In Mark we have a text, written in Greek with different allusions to and quotations from precursor texts. These include parables, miracle stories, controversy stories, bibliographies, stories of cult heroes, speeches about the future, stories of suffering and resurrection stories. In addition Mark apparently knew themes, words, phrases and stories from the Old Testament. He must have had acquaintance with the Elisha cycle and with other performers of miracles. He must also have known the economic, political and other cultural codes of his time.[9] We still do not know exactly how Mark went about creating his story of Jesus — that is, how he made his Gospel, but some scholars such as Willem S. Vorster argue for an intertextual production of the Gospel. Vorster writes:

The relationship between the final text of the Gospel of Mark and precursor and other texts is an intertextual relationship. There is no causal relationship between this new text and the texts out of which Mark made his text. Mark quoted other texts, and his story alludes to other texts and absorbed other texts. This is how his story becomes meaningful and different from other stories with the same theme when the reader interprets Mark's texts in the light of other texts known to him/her.[10]

There is no reason to doubt that the written Gospel of Mark echoes many different precursor texts and intertextual relationships.[11] Other scholars that also argue for the making of the Gospel are:

  • Burton L. Mack maintains that Mark's Gospel was "...not a pious transmission of revered tradition. It was composed at a desk in a scholar's study lined with texts and open to discourse with other intellectuals. In Mark's Study were chains of miracle stories, collections of pronouncement stories...". Mack assumes that Mark had different Hellenistic Jewish texts, the Scriptures and other Christian texts in his study as a possible influence in the production of the Markan text in the first century (Mack 1988:322-323). [9]
  • Pieter J. J. Botha, on the other hand, maintains that the Mediterranean world of the first century was predominately oral. Mark came from an oral community and his Gospel should be seen as oral literature. Mark told his story of Jesus orally and at some stage dictated it to somebody who wrote down his words. It still bears the signs of oral literature. Per Botha, Mark is taken seriously as the producer of a text and not simply as a conduit through which a stream of tradition flowed, or a (passive) exponent of a community out of which his text arose (Botha 1989:76-77; see also Vorster 1980).[12]

Whereas Matthew and Luke use the Old Testament within a promise-fulfilment scheme, Vorster argues that Mark's use of the Old Testament is totally different.[13]

Allusions to and quotations from the Old Testament are usually absorbed into Mark's story in such a manner that, except for a few cases where he specifically mentions the origin of the quotation, the allusions and quotations form part of the story stuff. They are so embedded into the story that, if it were not for the references in the margins and a knowledge of the Old Testament, the reader would not have noticed that Mark uses an allusion or a quotation (see Mk 15:24). This is best seen in Mark's story of the passion of Jesus.[11]

It has often been noticed that psalms of lamentation such as Psalms 22, 38 and 69 concerning the suffering of "the just", are knitted into the passion narrative in such a manner that one can Say that the passion narrative of Mark is narrated in the language of the Old Testament. The point is, however, that the allusions and 'quotations' form such an integral part of the passion narrative that it ts impossible for the naive reader to realize that the text is enriched by its intertextual relationships concerning the suffering of the Just.[11]

One possible inference from the use of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark is that the author created a new story with the aid of intertextual codes that helped him to communicate his own point of view. The Old Testament quotations and references formed part of the new story that Mark created in order to convince his readers of his point of view concerning Jesus and the implications of Jesus' life, works and words for the prevailing situation.[14]

Midrashic production

In addition to the many studies on the texts behind and in the Gospel of Mark, some scholars that argue for the Gospel as the rewriting of Old Testament stories are:[15]

  • Wolfgang Roth sees evidence that suggests Jewish midrashic influence was present in the production of the Gospel (see Roth 1988).[16]
  • Dale and Patricia Miller argue that New Testament writers created new "midrashim" on older texts. They argue that Mark did not simply interpret the Old Testament midrashically. Mark created a new midrash, i.e. "midrashim" as new Scripture in typical Jewish fashion. This is another way of seeing the importance of creativity in Mark's Gospel (see Miller & Miller 1990).[10]

Robert M. Price, and Daniel Boyarin have noted the Jewish mode of scriptural interpretation termed midrash, embedded in the Gospel of Mark.[17][18]

John Shelby Spong also sees a midrashic production of the Gospel, but clarifies his use of the term "midrashic"—as “interpretation” or “literary borrowing”—which is divergent from the traditional usage of the term "midrash", Spong writes:

I have used the word midrash only as the modifying adjective, midrashic, both to indicate the broadness of the way I am employing this concept and also to leave the word midrash to its special Jewish understanding.[19]

Philip S Alexander holds that in modern usage the term "midrash becomes simply a fancy word for ‘Bible interpretation’" and therefore its usage should be discontinued.[20]

Mark had no respect for the original OT context

A possible conclusion about the use of the Old Testament in the Gospel is that Mark had no respect for the original context of the quotations and allusions to Old Testament writings in his text. The story of John the Baptist at the very beginning of the Gospel proves the point.[21]

In the first place the very first quotation (Mk 1:2-3) does not come from Isaiah the prophet, as Mark asserts. It is a composite reference to Exodus 23:20, Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 which he connects to Isaiah the prophet. The quotation is taken out of context and worked into his story of John and Jesus in order to show the relationship between the two. The beginning of the Gospel does not prove the fulfillment of the Old Testament, it characterizes John as the predecessor of Jesus. Only at a later stage does the reader realize the resemblance between the apocalyptic John and the apocalyptic Jesus.[21]

John Dominic Crossan and Howard Clark Kee argue that Mark's citation of scripture is not representative of ignorance or editorial sloppiness, but rather represents combinations and alterations of scripture texts that cohere with Mark's intent to create a new story to communicate his own point of view.[22][23][24]

Contra Mark as only compiling "Jesus tradition"

Mark did not hesitate to use the Old Testament out of context, therefore it is probable that he did the same with the "Jesus tradition" he received. This underscores the argument that he retold tradition for his own purposes. By doing this Mark created a new text from other texts, traces of which can be seen in his text.[10]

Mark was not a conservative redactor, he not only reshaped his story of Jesus by retelling the story for the sake of a particular situation, he also told it from his own perspective. However, whether Mark transmitted tradition conservatively or creatively is of little significance, even eyewitnesses shape their messages for their own purposes.[14] Jan Vansina (1985:5) observes:

[M]ediation of perception by memory and emotional state shapes an account. Memory typically selects certain features from the successive perceptions and interprets them according to expectation, previous knowledge or the logic of 'what must have happened', and fills the gaps in perception.

This is all the more true of the Jesus tradition which has been shaped by putative eyewitnesses as well as those who retold the tradition for their own purposes and in their own circumstances. That is already clear from the different versions of the same stories of and about Jesus in the canonical gospels. First of all we do not have any eyewitness reports;[25] furthermore, the retelling of the Jesus tradition was done in different circumstances for different purposes. This is, for instance, confirmed by the 'same' version of the 'same' parable in different contexts in the different gospels. Retelling of the 'same' event or word of a specific person involves creativity.[14] Bart Ehrman argues that an understanding of how memory—especially memory in oral cultures— works is crucial to understanding the production of the Gospel of Mark.[26]

References
  1. Vorster 1993, p. 385.
  2. Vorster 1993, pp. 385–386.
  3. Vorster 1993, pp. 385-6.
  4. Brodie, Thomas L. (2012). "epilogue: Bart D. Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'". Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. Sheffield Phoenix Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-1-907534-58-4. Since around 1970 an alternative explanation of the New Testament and related texts has been emerging. Researchers are recognizing precise ways in which New Testament texts are explained as depending not on oral tradition but on older literature, especially older scripture.
  5. Vorster, Willem S. (1993). "The Production of the Gospel of Mark : An essay on intertextuality". HTS Teologiese Studies. 49 (3): 385–396 (391). doi:10.4102/hts.v49i3.2499. Allusions to and quotations from the Old Testament are usually absorbed into Mark’s story in such a manner that, except for a few cases where he specifically mentions the origin of the quotation, the allusions and quotations form part of the story stuff. They are so embedded into the story that, if it were not for the references in the margins and a knowledge of the Old Testament, the reader would not have noticed that Mark uses an allusion or a quotation (see Mk 15:24).
  6. MacDonald, Dennis R. (2000). The Homeric epics and the Gospel of Mark. Yale University Press. pp. 6, 96. ISBN 978-0-300-08012-4. [Per Seneca] Skilled authors were bees that took the best nectar from many blossoms to produce textual honey. [...] Like the proverbial bee of ancient rhetoric, Mark harvested nectar from several blossoms — some Jewish and some Greek — and transformed them into gospel honey.
  7. Lataster, Raphael (2019). Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. BRILL. p. 257. ISBN 9789004408784. "New Testament scholar Bartosz Adamczewski, who is sceptical over claims made about oral traditions, and sees Mark’s Jesus as deriving from Paul’s writings, Paul’s life, the Septuagint, Josephus’ writings, and various Pagan (and fictional) texts, to the extent that “Mark should therefore be regarded as a strictly theological-ethopoeic work, rather than a biographic one” [Adamczewski (2014)]."
  8. Vorster 1993, p. 386.
  9. Vorster 1993, p. 390.
  10. Vorster 1993, p. 394.
  11. Vorster 1993, p. 391.
  12. Vorster 1993, p. 390-1.
  13. Vorster, Willem S. (1999) [1981]. "The function of the use of the Old Testament in Mark". In Botha, J. Eugene (ed.). Speaking of Jesus: Essays on Biblical Language, Gospel Narrative, and the Historical Jesus. BRILL. p. 153. ISBN 90-04-10779-7.
  14. Vorster 1993, p. 392.
  15. Vorster 1993, p. 393.
  16. Hatina, Thomas (2002). In Search of a Context: The Function of Scripture in Mark's Narrative. A&C Black. pp. 16–17. ISBN 978-0-8264-6067-7.
  17. Price, Robert M. (2005). "New Testament narrative as Old Testament midrash". In Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery-Peck (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Midrash: Biblical Interpretation in Formative Judaism. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-14166-9.
  18. Boyarin, Daniel (2012). The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. New Press/ORIM. p. 105. ISBN 978-1-59558-711-4. [In the Gospel of Mark] we see its background in the Jewish mode of biblical interpretation, midrash. Once again, to remind readers, midrash is a way of multiply contextualizing verses with other verses and passages in the [Hebrew] Bible, in order to determine their meaning.
  19. Spong, John Shelby (1996). Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes. Harper Collins. p. xi. ISBN 9780060675349.
  20. Alexander, Philip S. (1984). "Midrash and the Gospels". In Tuckett, Christopher Mark (ed.). Synoptic Studies: The Ampleforth Conferences of 1982 and 1983. Sheffield, Eng.: JSOT Press. pp. 11–12. ISBN 9780905774800.
  21. Vorster 1993, pp. 391–392.
  22. Krause, Deborah (1997). "The One who Comes Unbinding the Blessing of Judah: Mark 11.1-10 as a Midrash on Genesis 49.11, Zechariah 9.9, and Psalm 118.25-26". In Craig A. Evans; James A. Sanders (ed.). Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel: Investigations and Proposals. A&C Black. p. 143, n. 9. ISBN 978-1-85075-679-8. J.D. Crossan and H.C. Kee have shown that instances of Scripture citation heretofore understood as examples of Mark's ignorance or editorial sloppiness, are in truth combinations and alterations of Scripture texts that cohere with Mark's redactional schema (Crossan, ‘Redaction and Citation’, pp. 33-50; Kee, ‘The Function of Scripture Quotations’, pp. 165-88).
  23. Crossan, John Dominic (1972). Redaction and Citation in Mark 11:9-10 and 11:17. Chicago Society of Biblical Research.
  24. Kee, Howard C. (1975). “The Function of Scriptural Quotations in Mark 11–16,” in Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift für Werner Georg Kümmel zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. W. G. Kümmel, E. Gräßer, and E. E. Ellis; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht)
  25. Ehrman, Bart D. (20 March 2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. pp. 43, 46, 49, 72. ISBN 978-0-06-208994-6.
  26. Ehrman, Bart D. (2016). Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior. HarperOne. ISBN 9780062285232.

Sources

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License statement: The production of the Gospel of Mark: An essay on intertextuality, Willem S. Vorster, HTS Teologiese Studies. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

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Post 1999:

  • Adamczewski, Bartosz (2014). The Gospel of Mark: A Hypertextual Commentary. Peter Lang Edition. ISBN 9783631647158.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Brodie, Thomas L. (2012). Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-907534-58-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • MacDonald, Dennis R. (2000). The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08012-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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