Jesus' Uncanny 'Family Scene'

Abstract

Mk 3.20-35 intercalates two stories about the possession of Jesus. Jesus' family ('those about him') seek to take control of him, thinking him to be insane, while 'scribes from Jerusalem' accuse him of possession by the devil. I read this double story in light of Tzvetan Todorov's theory of the fantastic, Sigmund Freud's essay, 'The "Uncanny"', and Jacques Derrida's essay on 'Freud and the Scene of Writing'. Jesus' 'family scene' is an uncanny one because it is defined by an undecidability between two realities, two contradictory accounts of who Jesus is. It cannot be resolved either theologically or psychoanalytically. The burden of deci sion concerning the story's meaning (and Jesus's identity) is left to the reader's ideology.

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