Editorial: Introducing this Issue and the Interpretation of Mark’s Gospel

Mark, arguably the least read of the four New Testament Gospels throughout most of the history of Christianity, has been the subject of vigorous discussion and research in the last two centuries. With the emergence of the view that this was the earliest of the Gospels, historical interest in the life and mission of Jesus, apart from dogmatic-theological interpretations, gave this Gospel heightened significance. In more recent scholarship, though, it is especially Mark’s distinctive literary qualities that have drawn interest. In the wake of the pioneering narrative-critical study by Rhoads and Michie (1982), an entire generation of scholarship on Mark’s Gospel pursued synchronic literary analysis of the narrative as a whole. ¹

To be sure, some interpreters continue to employ redaction-critical methods in their analysis of Mark, seeking to chart—and explain—the incorporation and modulation of received traditions in this Gospel. ² Others, however, have questioned whether the method has yielded, or can yield, positive results: because no source document is extant, there is no firm basis for comparing tradition and redaction. Not surprisingly, therefore, the results of redaction-critical analysis vary widely. ³ For the most part, interpretation has centered on readings of the received form of the Gospel, whether narrative-critical, literary-historical, or reader-response approaches. ⁴

Interpretations of Mark’s Gospel have continued to evolve in the last generation or so. Performance criticism has highlighted its qualities as an oral narrative that, in its own day and for some time afterwards, was performed for audiences. ⁵ Increasingly, attention has focused on the ideological dimensions of the Gospel and its interpretation, including sociopolitical readings, sociolinguistic (or cultural studies) interpretation from an African American perspective, postcolonial readings, and feminist and gender analysis. ⁶

The essays gathered in this issue of Interpretation reflect the vigor and dynamism of Markan studies today. A governing image in this Gospel’s presentation of the activity of Jesus is the in-breaking of the basileia tou theou, the reign of God. The lead essay by Suzanne Watts Henderson, “The ‘Good News’ of God’s Coming Reign: Occupation at a Crossroads,” contends that Mark’s witness to the peculiar character of the divine reign presents a “mysterious, paradoxical portrait” that subverts conventional notions of power and asserts solidarity with those who suffer under evil’s (temporary) dominion. The “good news” that Mark tells about God’s coming kingdom issues a robust, counter-cultural call to readers—in the first century and the twenty-first—to “trust that the end of evil’s occupation is at hand.” Mark’s Gospel has less to say about “deliverance from suffering than about God’s power at work, in Christ and community, in the midst of suffering.” The Markan Jesus summons potential followers—and readers—to trust in God’s reign, which means “allegiance to a decidedly ‘un-imperial empire’; it is to collaborate with a sovereign Lord whose power bursts forth wherever personal sacrifice engenders redemption of the world.” The good news Mark conveys “unmasks systems built on fearful self-interest and manifests itself in the vulnerable power of God” on behalf of the suffering.

Brian K. Blount’s essay “Jesus as Teacher: Boundary Breaking in Mark’s Gospel and Today’s Church” works with another central image in Mark’s presentation of Jesus, his role as authoritative teacher. Blount proposes that we view Mark’s understanding of Jesus as teacher through the lens of inclusive politics. The “curriculum” Jesus teaches does not simply deliver information about God’s reign but shapes life in the world. “If we want to teach the Reign of God,” Blount maintains, “we start by finding a way to live the Reign of God, as Jesus lived it.” Christian education thus enacts the Reign of God: following the example of Jesus, “we effectively teach the Reign of God by living the Reign of God,” by performing the Reign of God among people who seek to learn about it. And performing the Reign of God means courageously crossing humanly constructed boundaries, even if enacting Jesus’s teaching in this way will inevitably provoke resistance.

Jaime Clark-Soles addresses “Mark and Disability,” exploring the Gospel of Mark through the lens of disability. Is Mark’s narrative—of Jesus’s healing activity in particular—“good news” for persons with disability? Disability studies draw attention to the ways in which a society disables people who have impairments (i.e., physical and medical conditions) by avoiding the measures that would “ensure that all members of society have equal access” to its benefits. Comparing Mark’s two accounts of the restoring of sight to men who are unable to see (8:22–26; 10:46–52), one finds Bartimaeus emerging as “a strong, robust character,” a paradigm of faith and authentic discipleship. Yet the story also prompts the question: Might he have been just as effective in mission as a man whose sight remained impaired? Does Mark’s Gospel leave readers the impression that “people with physical impairments need to be ministered to,” rather than engaging in a ministry while still being impaired? Analysis of the episode of the Gerasene man plagued by a legion of demons (5:1–20) discloses that, for Mark, Jesus “has disrupted the status quo at a cosmic level.” But it also leads Clark-Soles to raise probing questions: Are we who are temporarily able-bodied inclined to hear this message of “good news” in a way that runs counter to Jesus’s mission—maintaining rather than disrupting the status quo and so attempting to stay on the “right” side of “the powers”? Do healing and justice for such people on the social margins “simply cost too much”?

The essay by Raj Nadella, “The Two Banquets: Mark’s Vision of Anti-Imperial Economics,” examines the depiction of the Roman Empire in the Gospel of Mark, with particular attention to the connection between the empire and economics within first-century Palestine. In Nadella’s postcolonial reading, Mark offers a trenchant critique of Rome’s economic structures, the worldview on which they are based, and the ways in which the empire goes about maintaining them. The essay argues that the kingdom of God as inaugurated by the Markan Jesus “challenges existing structures and models alternative paradigms of economic transactions.” Nadella focuses on two contrasting “banquets” that are juxtaposed in Mark’s narrative: the lavish banquet in Herod Antipas’s palace that resulted in the murder of John the Baptist (6:14–29); and the feeding of a crowd (6:30–44). While Herod’s banquet illustrates the “centripetal movement” of resources from rural Galilee to the seat of Herod’s power, the feeding of a crowd exhibits the “centrifugal movement” of resources outward to the people. As indicated in stories such as these, Mark advocates “alternative paradigms of economic interactions” that counter the imperial economy, which “ensured prosperity at the center even as it perpetuated poverty at the margins.” The Markan Jesus also challenges Rome’s zero-sum worldview that underlies such interactions and structures. Scenes such as the feeding of the crowd and Jesus’s encounter with a Syrophoenician woman who insists that there is ample food for both (Gentile) dogs and (Jewish) children (7:24–30) undermine the belief that they are rivals competing for scarce goods. Drawing insight from India’s colonial history, Nadella proposes that “Mark shows how it might be possible to live with and engage the empire even while opposing its values and worldview.”