Abstract
Garroway contends that the author of Mark was an out-and-out Paulinist whose narrative blended Paul’s notion of Law-free salvation with extant traditions about the ministry and death of Jesus. By introducing this narrative as “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” thus intimating that Jesus, not Paul, is the true author of the gospel, Mark bolstered the gospel’s credentials. As Garroway demonstrates, part and parcel of this narrative was a thoroughgoing polemic against the family and the disciples of Jesus, precisely those figures who contended with Paul over the legitimacy of the gospel. Moreover, Garroway shows, Mark’s narrative embodies the key claims of the gospel by showing Jesus abrogate the Law and initiate a mission to Gentiles.
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Notes
- 1.
The cases for and against Pauline authorship of Colossians have been described recently by Campbell, Framing Paul, 260–309; and Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 171–82.
- 2.
Gustav Volkmar, Die Religion Jesu und ihre erste Entwickelung nach dem gegenwärtigen Stande der Wissenschaft (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1857). For a recent description of Volkmar’s approach, see Anne Vig Skoven, “Mark as Allegorical Rewriting of Paul: Gustav Volkmar’s Understanding of the Gospel of Mark,” in Mark and Paul: Comparative Essays Part II: For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark, ed. Eve-Marie Becker, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, and Mogens Müller, BZNW 199 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 13–27.
- 3.
Martin Werner, Der Einfluss paulinischer Theologie im Markusevangelium: eine Studie zur neutestamentlichen Theologie, BZNW 1 (Giessen: A. Töpelmann, 1923).
- 4.
Werner, Der Einfluss, 209.
- 5.
While the independence of Mark from Paul predominated in the twentieth century, it is not as though every interpreter advocated either total dependence or none at all. There was a spectrum. As John C. Fenton (“Paul and Mark,” in Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R.H. Lightfoot, ed. Dennis E. Nineham [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957], 89–112) observes: “Some said that the earliest Gospel was written in order to defend the authority of Paul and the Pauline churches against the claims of the Church in Jerusalem (G. Volkmar, A. Loisy). Others would not go as far as this, and, while doubting the existence of a deliberate pro-Pauline motive in the composition of Mark, agreed nevertheless that a Paulinistic point of view could be detected (B. W. Bacon, J. Weiss, C.G. Montefiore). In the centre there was a party which denied even this: they found, in Mark, a type of Christianity independent of Paul; this was Gentile Christianity, the theology of Paul’s predecessors (M. Werner, A.E.J. Rawlinson, F.C. Grant, A.M. Hunter). It was also suggested that Mark’s point of view was the same as Peter’s and reflected Peter’s teaching (C. H. Turner)” (91).
- 6.
Benjamin W. Bacon, Is Mark a Roman Gospel? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919); Benjamin W. Bacon, The Gospel of Mark: Its Composition and Date (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1925); John C. Fenton, “Paul and Mark”; Michael D. Goulder, “Those Outside (Mark 4.10–12),” NovT 33, no. 4 (1991): 289–302; W. R. Telford, The Theology of the Gospel of Mark, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. 164–69; Joel Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” NTS 46, no. 4 (2000): 473–87; David C. Sim, “The Family of Jesus and the Disciples of Jesus in Paul and Mark: Taking Sides in the Early Church’s Factional Dispute,” in Paul and Mark: Comparative Essays Part I: Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity, ed. Oda Wischmeyer, David C. Sim, and Ian J. Elmer, BZNW 198 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 73–97.
- 7.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 474.
- 8.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 474.
- 9.
Telford, Theology of the Gospel of Mark, 169.
- 10.
Wischmeyer, Sim, and Elmer (eds.), Paul and Mark.
- 11.
Becker, Engberg-Pedersen, and Müller (eds.), Mark and Paul.
- 12.
Becker, Engberg-Pedersen, and Müller (eds.), Mark and Paul, 10.
- 13.
Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 212 n. 49.
- 14.
Michael D. Goulder, “A Pauline in a Jacobite Church,” in The Four Gospels 1992, ed. F. van Segbroeck, C. M. Tuckett, J. Verheyden, G. van Belle, and F. S. Frans Neirynck, Bibliotecha Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 100 (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 859–75, cited here at 860 n. 7.
- 15.
Bacon, Gospel of Mark, 247.
- 16.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 473–87.
- 17.
Notwithstanding the admirable case for deeming Mark 1:1–3 a later addition made in J. K. Elliott (“Mark 1.1–3—A Later Addition to the Gospel?” NTS 46, no. 4 [2000]: 584–88), most interpreters consider it original; among others, Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 143–49; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), 130–32.
- 18.
For perhaps the most strenuous case for the polemical nature of Mark’s treatment of the disciples, see Theodore J. Weeden, Mark: Traditions in Conflict (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1971), esp. 23–51. See also Bacon, Is Mark a Roman Gospel, 75–80; Johannes Schreiber, “Die Christologie des Markusevangeliums,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 58 (1961): 154–83; Joseph B. Tyson, “The Blindness of the Disciples in Mark,” JBL 80, no. 3 (1961): 261–68; Etienne Trocmé, The Formation of the Gospel According to Mark, trans. Pamela Gaughan (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1963), 120–37. Sim, “Family of Jesus and the Disciples of Jesus,” 73–97.
- 19.
As Joel Marcus (Mark 8–16, AB 27A [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009], 613) observes: “We shall never understand this passage rightly … if we do not realize how natural Peter’s reaction is. Modern Christians, cushioned by two thousand years of church teaching find the idea of a suffering Messiah unremarkable, but ‘from the beginning it was not so’ (cf. Matt 19:8). Intrinsic to the OT/Jewish idea of the Messiah was the notion of triumph, not suffering and death.” On Jewish views of the messiah in the first century, see further Matthew V. Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and more recently The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
- 20.
John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1998), 350.
- 21.
Bacon, Is Mark a Roman Gospel?, 76.
- 22.
Telford, Theology of the Gospel of Mark, 143; Sim, “The Family of Jesus and the Disciples of Jesus,” 93.
- 23.
Sim, “Family of Jesus and the Disciples of Jesus,” 94.
- 24.
Collins, Mark, 797, citing Homer’s Illiad as the obvious example.
- 25.
Telford, Theology of the Gospel of Mark, 150.
- 26.
As Weeden (Mark, 24) observes, the polemical interpretation has never dominated. Nineteenth-century commentators tended to view the portrayal of the disciples as the result of nothing more than accurate historical reminiscences. In the wake of William Wrede’s trailblazing Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, 3rd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1963), it became more common to see the disciples’ inadequacies as in some way, as Weeden (Mark, 24) puts it, “a by-product of the evangelist’s overarching theological motif, the messianic secret …. The evangelist’s purpose has been viewed not as an attempt to berate the disciples but rather as an attempt to point up and clarify better the phenomenon of the Christ-event.”
- 27.
See, for example, Ernest Best, “The Role of the Disciples in Mark,” NTS 23, no. 4 (1977): 377–401; Ernest Best, Mark: The Gospel as Story, SNTW (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1983), 44–50.
- 28.
See, for example, Robert C. Tannehill, “The Disciples in Mark: The Function of a Narrative Role,” JR 57, no. 4 (1977): 386–405.
- 29.
Sim, “Family of Jesus and the Disciples of Jesus,” 93.
- 30.
Michael J. Cook, Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2008), 152–53. See also David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1982), 129–34; C. Clifton Black, The Disciples According to Mark: Markan Redaction in Current Debate, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 34–67; Jack D. Kingsbury, Conflict in Mark: Jesus, Authorities, Disciples (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1989), 24–27; Joel F. Williams, Other Followers of Jesus: Minor Characters as Major Figures in Mark’s Gospel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 22–34. Telford, Theology of the Gospel of Mark, 134.
- 31.
Bacon (“Is Mark a Roman Gospel,” 75) says that “the depreciatory attitude of [Mark] toward the Galilean Apostles, especially Peter, and toward the kindred of the Lord” would be “almost unaccountable in the East.”
- 32.
Willi Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist: Studies on the Redaction History of the Gospel, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Nashville: Abingdon, 1969 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956]), 119–37.
- 33.
Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist, 122–23.
- 34.
Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist, 125.
- 35.
David E. Aune, “The Meaning of Εὐαγγέλιον in the Inscriptiones of the Canonical Gospels,” in Jesus, Gospel Traditions and Paul in the Context of Jewish and Greco-Roman Antiquity: Collected Essays II, WUNT 303 (Tübingen: Mohr, 2013), 6.
- 36.
Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historical Biblical Christ, trans. Carl E. Braaten (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1964) 80 n. 11.
- 37.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 479.
- 38.
See, for example, Michael F. Bird, “Mark: Interpreter of Peter and Disciple of Paul,” in Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts and Convergences, ed. Michael F. Bird and Joel Willitts, LNTS (London: T & T Clark, 2011), 40–41.
- 39.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 484.
- 40.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 484.
- 41.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 479. See also C. Clifton Black, “Christ Crucified in Paul and in Mark: Reflections on an Intracanonical Conversation,” in Theology and Ethics in Paul and His Interpreters: Essays in Honor of Victor Paul Furnish, ed. Eugene H. Lovering and Jerry L. Sumney (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 201–02.
- 42.
Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” 484.
- 43.
The extent to which the resemblance is “striking” is admittedly debatable. Collins (Mark, 503), for example, acknowledges the resemblance but concludes that “given the variation in terms, it is unlikely that Mark is dependent on Paul in v. 45. It is more likely that they drew independently upon similar earlier traditions.” Likewise, see James G. Crossley, The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 49. Given the absence of an earlier tradition and the fact that the terms have the same root and identical meanings, I think it is more likely that Mark is taking up Pauline language about the cross. So, Bacon, Gospel of Mark, 242–71; Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), 445–46.
- 44.
Bird, “Mark: Interpreter of Peter and Disciple of Paul,” 39 n. 30.
- 45.
Tyson, “Blindness of the Disciples in Mark,” 263.
- 46.
See the similar view taken by James G. Crossley, “Mark, Paul and the Question of Influences,” in Paul and the Gospels, ed. Michael F. Bird and Joel Willitts, 16–18.
- 47.
Tyson, “Blindness of the Disciples in Mark,” 264.
- 48.
Kelly R. Iverson, Gentiles in the Gospel of Mark: “Even the Dogs Under the Table Eat the Children’s Crumbs” (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 123.
- 49.
Werner H. Kelber, The Kingdom in Mark: A New Place and a New Time (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1974), 58–59.
- 50.
Collins (Mark, 267) correctly observes that “the Gentile character of Gerasa in particular and the Decapolis in general should not be overemphasized.” That said, Mark appears to have gone out of his way to emphasize that in this case Gerasa represents Gentile milieu. Of all the animals Mark might have chosen to absorb the demons, after all, he chose the quintessentially non-Jewish one.
- 51.
Eric K. Wefald, “The Separate Gentile Mission in Mark: A Narrative Explanation of Markan Geography, the Two Feeding Accounts and Exorcisms,” JSNT 60 (1996): 3–26.
- 52.
Iverson, Gentiles in the Gospel of Mark, 37.
- 53.
On the correspondence between the narrative roles played by John the Baptist, see Iverson (Gentiles in the Gospel of Mark, 37), who notes that “both are depicted in similar spatial, physical, and ministerial terms. John the Baptist is modestly clothed (garments made of camel’s hair along with a leather belt, 1.6), situated in the wilderness (1.4), and prepares the way for Jesus by preaching a baptism of repentance (kerusso, 1.4, 7). The Gerasene demoniac is unclothed (5.15), dwells in a remote ‘wilderness-like’ location (among the tombs, 5.2, 3, 5), and after being healed begins to proclaim how much the Lord had done for him (kerusso, 5.20).”
- 54.
Some commentators rely on redaction criticism to account for this diverted course, alleging that Mark manipulated a source in which the walking on water (on the way to Bethsaida) and the healing of a blind man in Bethsaida were juxtaposed. When Mark detached the healing story and projected it two chapters forward, it is said, he failed to eliminate the reference to Bethsaida as the intended destination in the first story. That may be so, but as Wefald (“Separate Gentile Mission in Mark,” 3–24) reminds us, Mark does not narrate transitions between Jewish and Gentile territory haphazardly. If Mark says that Jesus instructs his disciples to head toward Bethsaida, readers have every right to assume that Jesus instructs his disciples to head toward Bethsaida. Accordingly, there must be a narrative explanation for their failure to reach that destination. Either they were blown off course, as some interpreters have suggested, or they disregarded their orders. Since the wind ceases when Jesus gets into the boat, it appears their diversion was intentional. Given their initial reluctance to depart for Bethsaida (Mark 6:45) and Mark’s subsequent diagnosis of hardheartedness (Mark 6:52), a reasonable proposal is that they return to the western side of the sea because they fail to appreciate the purpose and necessity of a mission to the Gentiles on the other side. This proposal will appear even more reasonable when the diagnosis of hardheartedness is repeated and amplified prior to their eventual arrival in Bethsaida two chapters later. See, for example, Paul J. Achtemeier, “Toward the Isolation of Pre-Markan Miracle Catenae,” JBL 89, no. 3 (1970): 265–91. Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel according to Saint Mark, BNTC 2 (London: A & C Black; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 171. Collins , Mark, 326–27.
- 55.
Yair Furstenberg, “Defilement Penetrating the Body: A New Understanding of Contamination in Mark 7.15 ,” NTS 54 (2008): 176–200.
- 56.
Literally, “purifying all foods.” James G. Crossley (“Mark 7.1–23: Revisiting the Question of ‘All Foods Clean’,” in Torah in the New Testament: Papers Delivered at the Manchester-Lausanne Seminar of June 2008, LNTS 401, ed. Michael Tait and Peter Oakes [London: T & T Clark, 2009], 8–20) suggests a restrictive reading of Mark 7:19, in which the author means to say that Jesus is “declaring all foods [permitted by the Torah] clean.” In my view, this reading fails to account for Mark’s shift in concern from ritual to moral purity.
- 57.
Not to mention Paul’s entire argument in Romans, 9–11.
- 58.
On peirastic irony, see Jerry Camery-Hoggatt, Irony in Mark’s Gospel: Text and Subtext, SNTSMS 72 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 150; Iverson, Gentiles in the Gospel of Mark, 52–53.
- 59.
By prefacing the announcement of her healing with the rationale, “because you have said this” (Mark 7:29), Jesus further indicates that his initial refusal was a test. “Because you have said this” might be understood as “because you have passed the test.” So Marcus, Mark 1–8, 468.
- 60.
On the similar structure of the miracles, see Iverson, Gentiles in the Gospel of Mark, 69.
- 61.
On the significance of the numbers in these passages, see Iverson, Gentiles in the Gospel of Mark, 74; Marcus, Mark 1–8, 411, 497; John Painter, Mark’s Gospel, New Testament Readings (London: Routledge, 1997), 118.
- 62.
Hippocrates, De Fracturis 23:14, in LCL 149 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 148; De Articulis 15:10, in LCL 149 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 242; De Aere Aquis et Locis 9:38, in LCL 147 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), 96.
- 63.
The only exceptions are Job 17:7 (LXX): “My eyes have become hardened by wrath” and a fragment from the obscure historian Nymphis (Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum, vol.3, ed. Carl Müller [Paris, 1849], 16:10), who describes fattened flesh that has become numb.
- 64.
Is it possible that Mark has borrowed this language not from Paul but from the image of Pharaoh’s hardened heart in Exodus or from prophetic denunciations of the hardened heart in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Jeremiah? That is unlikely, in my view, seeing as pōrōsis and pōroō are never used in those biblical contexts. Were Mark drawing from the Septuagint, he almost certainly would have used sklērunō (Ex. 4:21; 7:3; Ps. 94:8; Is. 63:17). While Jeremiah (e.g., Jer. 3:17), Deuteronomy 29:18, and Psalm 81:13 speak of a “hardened heart” using the Hebrew šěrirût lēb, the Septuagint never renders this expression with a verb of hardening.
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Garroway, J.D. (2018). Mark: Disciple of Paul, Defender of the Gospel. In: The Beginning of the Gospel. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89996-1_5
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