I am only reviewing chapter 19 which is Mark’s Gospel by Peter G. Bolt. Bolt traces the history of the study of Mark beginning with the
The Early Period
“This history has been characterized as one of long-standing neglect and recent rediscovery” (391). Augustine’s statement contributed to this neglect: “Mark follows [Matthew] closely and looks as if he were his servant and epitomist” (De consensus evangelistarum 1.2[4]).
The Modern Period
Nineteenth-century scholarship established that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and that is was then used by Matthew and Luke. Support for Matthean priority gained support in the last decades of the twentieth century (393). Liberals used the “messianic secret” (William Wrede in 1901) and “form criticism” (K. L. Schmidt in 1964) to discredit Mark as historical.
The Period of Shifting Paradigms
William Lane comments that in the years under his scrutiny (1978-1978), “new and creative approaches” were developed, citing “narrative criticism and structural exegesis” as “viable alternatives to the historical-critical paradigm” (397). This was a shift from studying the Bible as history to studying the Bible as literature (397) primarily from the influence of Norman Perrin (1975-84) and was called the “post-Perring” era of Markan research (397). Mark the evangelist was increasingly regarded as Mark the author of a compelling story (397). The book was no longer a window for historical criticism to look through for the history behind the text but a mirror for the literary critic or narrative criticism “to look at the text as a mirror on whose surface we find a self-contained world’” (397).
The Postmodern Period also called poststructuralism.
This period marked the shift toward the reader as in reader-response criticism and deconstruction (399). This postmodern view of text as generated readings of Mark from a variety of particular stances: ideological readings, feminist readings, Buddhist readings, black readings, and even a reading of Mark from the stance of a recovering alcoholic (400). The reader-centered approaches to narrative can be classified into two broad streams: narrative criticism and reader-response criticism (401).
This version of narrative criticism denies the single meaning of texts as demonstrated by David Rhoads and Donald Michie in Mark as Story: “We have learned that every reading is a reading through a particular lens. There is no ‘objective’ reading and therefore not single ‘legitimate’ reading. Rather, everyone reads from a nationality, social class, and economic level, education, religious affiliation, and so on---and the social location affects how each person interprets a narrative.[1]
Mark and the Greco-Roman World
The trend toward understanding Mark in its Greco-Roman context rightly includes that discussion of its genre. Richard Burridge has mounted a sustained argument that Mark (and the other Gospels) ought to be understood as a form of Greco-Roman bios, or “life” (Loosely, “biography”) (405).
Return to History and Theology
“Mark is a narrative about theologically significant historical events” (409). One of the unfortunate results of redaction criticism was that the Gospel, while purporting to be about Jesus, was treated as if it was about the church.
The shift toward narrative, with its recognition that Jesus is Mark’s central character, as well as the renewed respectability of the view that Mark’s genre is akin to biography, have reasserted the importance of Jesus to the theology of Mark (410). It is no surprise in Mark’s Christology continue to be published (410).
If lack of commentary was the problem in the early years, the current problem probably is oversupply! (411).
[1] D. Rhoads, J. Dewey, and D. Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999).