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Mark’s passion narrative– third lecture
•Brief overview of essays by Robinson and Kelber
•Mark’s passion narrative
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Robinson, “Gospels as narratives”• Much of essay is speculative, but interestingly so. • Tends to see a negative element in the scripting of the
gospel. • The heart of the matter is his contrast of Mark with an
itinerant, radical sort of movement, centered on sayings – and possibly open to appearances of the resurrected Jesus.
• Such appearances would leave a corresponding openness to new sayings (i.e., resurrected Jesus would continue teaching).
• Sees Mark as reticent about sayings, resurrection appearances.
• Mark’s scripted character aim to close the tradition of a “living Jesus” who continues to appear, teach.
• Sees this textual limiting as continuing in Matthew and Luke, who correspondingly “tame” Q by swallowing it up.
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Kelber, “Narrative and Disclosure• Sees Mark as writing a “disorienting-reorienting narrative which
forestalls closure.” • Emphasizes the insider/outsider dichotomy seen in the parable of
sower (“hina” in Gk. = “so that”).• Esoteric secrecy inheres in sayings gospels. • Parables, on other hand, foster an open-endedness toward
signification, interpretation. • Wisdom entrusted to insiders anticipates its eventual openness. • The secrecy about his identity that Jesus enjoins in fact exerts
pressure toward proclamation. • “Nothing hidden, except to be revealed; nothing secret, but that it
come to light” (4:22). • But “the more the narrative struggles to overcome secrecy and to
make disclosure, the more it reveils itself in parabolic mystery.” • Readers are challenged to become “new insiders.” • How are readers to understand the mysteries of Jesus’ sonship to
God in view of his confession of being forsaken by God? • The caution of his last paragraph!
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Kelber, “Narrative as interpretation and interpretation of narrative”
• Narrative is such a universal part of our experience that we tend to take it for granted, including gospel narrative.
• Sees the parable as the oral genre going back to Jesus that gives rise to narrative: “parable joins proclamation.”
• Follows Robinson in seeing distinction between the portrayal of risen Christ, speaking openly, and the earthly Jesus, speaking in parables.
• Mark, ironically, “redescribed” the element of parable in his technique of “parabolic reversal” to subvert conventional expectations of transmission of narrative to place burden on hearers/readers.
• Mark’s narrative partakes of “parable understanding” – need for interpretation, understanding.
• Manuscript culture doesn’t see texts as fully complete, closed. • Scribal hermeneutics was based in the involvement of the reader,
on “reader response.”• “Narrative as interpretation”: if narrative was born in act of
interpreting, then readers must be continuing in the same activity.
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• Interestingly, it’s Jesus’ cleverness that emerges here.
• He parries the question about his authority by his question about John’s authority: 11: 27ff.
• The parable of the vineyard: 12:1-12.• The response to the question about taxes to
Caesar.• Response to the Saducees over resurrection of
dead. • Response to question of the “greatest
commandment.”• The issue of Davidic messiahship. This is
important to Matthew and Luke. But Mark has Jesus rejecting the necessity: 12: 35-37.
• (In Mark Jesus is emphatically a Galilean – no connection with Judea, Bethlehem, Jerusalem.)
Teaching in Jerusalem
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Mark’s passion narrative• Mark’s final three chapters may be the single
most influential narrative in our tradition, and perhaps the most powerful.
• Mark’s is the original and source for others – he writes the story first.
• And this connected narrative is the end point toward which all of the gospel has been driving – a culmination of the paradoxical messiahship Jesus has described.
• Note that the gospel properly ends at 16:8 – with the empty tomb.
• Look at the textual note on p. 58. • Verses 9-20 appear to have been added in
response to Matthew, Luke, and John.
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“In remembrance of her . . .” but -- • Passion narrative begins at ch. 14.• A woman anoints Jesus with 300 denarii worth
of ointment (that’s 300 days salary for a laborer!).
• Jesus’ interpretation of the act: “she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.”
• But it’s also a messianic anointing, like Samuel’s secret anointing of Saul (1 Sam. 9-10).
• Here messiahship is again linked to death; the one will mean the other.
• Jesus promises remembrance of the woman. • But what has happened?
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The passover meal – “last supper”• Mysteriousness of discovery of the messianic
donkey repeated in discovery of the upstairs room.
• Celebration linked with betrayal: 14: 17-21.• Bread of passover and final cup of wine linked
with his death – and remembrance. • Prophecy from Zechariah points to desertion,
denial.• Peter’s vow at v. 31.• The inability of the inner circle of disciples to
stay awake. See J’s admonition at 13: 35-37. • “All of them deserted him and fled.” v. 50
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Peter, messiahship, denial• Peter follows at a distance.• High priest puts the question about messiahship.
And only this does Jesus answer. • Messiahship is judged worthy of humiliation,
death. • And the gentile question, Pilate’s, is actually a
statement. And Jesus responds affirmatively. • And sandwiched between these is Peter’s
threefold denial. • The central insider makes himself an outsider at
the most significant moment when J’s identity is proclaimed.
• Romans mock kingship, chief priests messiahship.
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Abandonment, death• Darkness of eclipse.• Jesus’ final words, given in Aramaic and Greek.
Despair? Shock? • (Luke will take these words away – simply too
shocking. Only Mark – and Matthew following him – will allow these words.)
• How to understand these them? • The “sour wine” may echo psalm 69:21.• And paradoxically, the gentile centurion, a
complete outsider, speaks the words before spoken by God. Third time spoken in Mark’s gospel (except by those possessed by demons).
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The tomb and the ending of the narrative
• Same three women who witnessed death come to the tomb.
• And hear the message of the mysterious young man. • And are told to tell Peter and disciples about “going
ahead” to Galilee. • But they say nothing to anyone. • The end!• The last word, “gar” (“for”), “postpositive conjunction,”
suggests incompletion. • The message does not get through.• Was it wrong to remain in Jerusalem?• Where does leave the reader?• And what does it mean in terms of the larger story?
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The ending, or is it a non-ending?
• Narrative ends, or doesn’t end, mysteriously.• No sense of narrative resolution.• Narrative instead handed over to the reader.• Who must now understand what the women and
the disciples did not. • Is the reader, in a sense, caught inside a
parable?• The whole gospel a kind of parable, in the
Markan sense, that must be opened?• A question mark -- ? Mark