Abstract
This article argues for the Kingdom of God as a central spatial concept to Mark's Gospel, but one that ought to be understood “without context.” For this, Bruno Latour's critique of “context” and “the social” is employed in order to challenge the usefulness of both biblical models of space and social scientific models for interpretation, and to investigate what is new in the Kingdom's construction as a space. The article engages with Esler and Horrell's 2000 debate in JSNT over social scientific methodologies, with the ultimate goal of moving from an understanding of what is social about the Kingdom as explanans—an explaining element—to explanandum—what needs to be explained.
Keywords
It is high time for the Kingdom of God to come into its own as a spatial concept, and one of the most important spaces to be found in the Synoptic Gospels. Too long has the influence of Gustaf Dalman been felt on the meaning of the terminology of the Kingdom (Brown), and the focus on eschatological elements of the Kingdom have meant that consideration of its significance as a space has been severely limited. Dalman famously stated:
No doubt can be entertained that both in the Old Testament and in Jewish literature … malkût, when applied to God, means always the “kingly rule,” never the “kingdom,” as if it were meant to suggest the territory governed by him [Dalman: 94, emphasis added].
The “kingly rule” definition, here set out within “perhaps the most influential sentence ever written” (O'Neill: 130) in all of New Testament studies, has made its mark on more than a century of scholarship when time-focused studies of the Kingdom held the day. Such studies, of course, also bear the influence of the groundbreaking eschatological interpretations by Chrupcala's bibliography of research on the Kingdom of God designates six entries to the category “Space (local sphere),” in comparison with the forty-seven entries included under the heading “Time” (Chrupcala). The emphasis on time in biblical studies on time over space is highlighted by Halvor Moxnes, who stands as a notable exception to Dalman's “rule” in his consideration of the Kingdom from a spatial-critical perspective (Moxnes). If Moxnes' work constitutes a beginning point, there remains a large amount of ground to make up before spatial interests could be said to rival those focused on time. Other previous views which challenged Dalman (though not from a spatial-critical perspective) include Sverre Aalen, who suggested that kingdom ought to be understood as designating “a realm, a community, something very near to the new concept of ‘house’, and no longer kingship or reign of God” (Aalen: 240) Also, J. C. O'Neill's article in Novum Testamentum suggested that if “rule” was understood to be part of the meaning of the Kingdom of God, that rule was always over a territory.
Recently, Eric Stewart has investigated spatial practices in the Gospel of Mark, and although he concludes that the “kingdom of God exists spatially in the area around Jesus in which the new community gathers” (Stewart: 224), he pays little attention overall to the specific conception of the Kingdom in Mark. Stewart draws on Bruce Malina and others in order to establish models as useful for drawing out “commonsense elements” and avoiding anachronism and ethnocentrism in interpretation. He states,
Without a proper understanding of the text's original social context, then, readers are inclined to apply “commonsense” notions from their own culture to information from another culture [Stewart: 31–32].
This way of working is fairly common to the way scholarship normally proceeds, where Jesus and the Kingdom of God must be understood “in context,” and establishing the parameters of the context is a large part of the overall scholarly endeavor. Mary Ann Beavis' book on Jesus and Utopia is a good recent example of this way of working (Beavis 2006; see also 2004 and 2007). She understands the Kingdom as a utopian ideal, and her subtitle quickly identifies the focus on context in her method: Looking for the Kingdom of God in the Roman World. Indeed, she spends more of the space in the pages of the book looking for the Kingdom of God in the Roman World, identifying a host of intriguing examples from ancient, classical, Hellenistic and Jewish sources (the first 70 pages) than she does investigating what it may have meant for Jesus “in that context” (the final 38 pages; compare Stewart's noteworthy 178 pages discussing theoretical considerations as well as Greek, Roman and Jewish examples, leaving only the remaining 36 pages for a discussion of the spatial in Mark's Gospel). We might ask at the end of it, how many true connections have been established? In this way of working, the context comes first, the “thing you are investigating” second. Though of course any scholar would want to avoid working in an anachronistic and ethnocentric way in investigating ancient spatial conceptions, I want to suggest that the prioritizing of context is in need of critique. This does not mean taking the Kingdom “out of context” (we still need good historically viable results), but it does mean working in a meaningful sense “without context.”
Stewart's discussion draws on and takes us back to the earlier debate started by Philip Esler's review of David Horrell's The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence in the Journal of Theological Studies (Esler 1998) and continued in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament (2000). Esler questioned Horrell's critique of model use in biblical studies and argued that models are essential in order to bring “new ideas to bear on ancient data” and for breaking free “from our taken-for-granted notions of social reality” (Esler 1998: 257). Horrell replies that models should not be “a guide to research” (Horrell: 90), and “a model-based approach can lead to historically and culturally variable evidence being interpreted through the lens of a generalised model of social behaviour” (Horrell: 84). Using generalized models can lead to a situation where social models are prioritized to the extent that they even seem to have their own existence “aside from, or distinct from … instantiation in human action” (Horrell: 96). Horrell critiques this, and puts forward the notion that we need “a more critical social theory” that has sound philosophical underpinnings and does not reify “social structure’”(Horrell: 95–96).
Largely in agreement with Horell's position, I want to put forward that what is at stake here is that all of these—models, theories, and context—have their own inherent difficulties when they are employed to help “explain” what is going on in ancient texts, to bring it un-anachronistically and without ethnocentrism to the modern interpreter. The implied premise of Esler's view, and that of others, is that the data contained in texts are insufficient to explain what is going on within them, that we need to insert “social meaning” or “social reality” in order to investigate them properly. I want to suggest that this puts matters the wrong way around and makes assumptions about the power of establishing context, whether through a spatial model or through historical investigation of comparative texts (e.g. Dalman's use of the Old Testament and Jewish literature), or both. If a spatial conception such as the Kingdom merely “fits in” to a wider social picture, how could it ever be seen as active rather than passive? As J. Z. Smith once suggested, perhaps we should ask the question again, “What if place were an active product of intellection rather than its passive receptacle?” (Smith: 26). Whilst I would not disagree that the Kingdom of God should be investigated in relation to contemporary geographical conceptions and cognate terminology, I suggest that the emphasis must be on connections first, and not on the a priori establishment of a vast and uncontrollable context.
Critiquing a “Social” Meaning for the Kingdom
The work of sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour in critique of the ways that social scientists employ context and ‘the social’ may prove helpful to investigating a concept like the Kingdom of God in a manner “without context,” or without a reliance on context. Latour argues that, within the social sciences, “the social” can be used as a kind of shorthand to explain what is going on in a particular situation; “social factors” explain events, or “social forces” have caused certain actions or practices (Latour: 12). This type of “shorthand” is reflected in some of Esler's discussion, where he makes reference to “social convention” or a “cultural script” which is given, and which we need to access in order to interpret the ancient world (Esler 2000: 111). In contrast to this way of working, Latour's point is not that people do not share views and ways of doing things in common, but that we need to grant individuals and groups their own ability to articulate what it is they think they share in common. Society is not what explains things; rather it is what needs to be explained. It is not the solution, but the puzzle (Latour: 5). Rather than looking to social forces, we should ask: if people share particular thoughts, beliefs and ways of doing things, how is that accomplished? We should be able to trace associations and connections, instead of using “the social” as a way to explain a certain state of affairs. This is what Latour is getting at when he speaks about replacing the “shorthand” of the social with the “longhand” of associations.
The word social cannot replace anything, cannot express anything better, cannot be substituted—in any form or guise—for anything else. It is not the common measure of all things, like a credit card widely accepted everywhere. It is only a movement that can be seized indirectly when there is a slight change in one older association mutating into a slightly newer or different one. Far from a stable and sure thing, it is no more than an occasional spark generated by the shift, the shock, the slight displacement of other non-social phenomena [Latour: 36].
Does this mean we have to take seriously the real and sometimes small differences between the many ways in which people “achieve the social”? I am afraid so [Latour: 37].
If we take seriously this critique of how “the social” is used, it allows us to approach the Kingdom for its connecting elements and specific associations, not for its meaning derived from a Lefebvrean ideal of a space “produced” and given its meaning by a certain (Jewish) “society.” We should be wary of trying to establish a stable “social” meaning for the Kingdom of God that translates into a “social script” for all to sign up to. Rather, we should carefully examine the connections that are made in the use of this terminology by New Testament authors, where new associations are being made as the Kingdom comes into view.
It is worth considering a disciplined approach to biblical texts that does not treat context, or “the social,” as its own dimension for us to access. Latour opens up for us the possibility of working in a different way, of tracing the associations of “actor-networks.” It is worth quoting Latour at length:
An actor-network is traced whenever, in the course of a study, the decision is made to replace actors of whatever size by local and connected sites instead of ranking them into micro and macro. The two parts are essential, hence the hyphen. The first part (the actor) reveals the narrow space in which all of the grandiose ingredients of the world begin to be hatched; the second part (the network) may explain through which vehicles, which traces, which trails, which types of information, the world is being brought inside those places and then, after having been transformed there, are being pumped back out of its narrow walls. This is why the hyphenated “network” is not there as a surreptitious presence of the Context, but remains what connects actors together. Instead of being, like Context, another dimension giving volume to a too narrow and flat description, it allows the relations to remain flat and to pay in full the bill for the transaction costs [Latour: 179–80.]
If we are interested in what is “social” about the Kingdom of God, in how it was comprehensible to people at the time it was articulated, then we need to pay close attention to the nuances and—to put things more spatially—the architecture of the Kingdom. What traces and trails of meaning were brought to our texts, and how were they transformed, but also transported there? How is Daniel's text used, but transformed into something new? Latour talks about enlivening the texts and archives of the past through historical enquiry (Latour: 81), and in this way, something of the social may be discovered.
If the social is something that circulates in a certain way, and not a world beyond to be accessed by the disinterested gaze of some ultra-lucid scientist, then it may be passed along by many devices adapted to the task—including texts … [Latour: 127].
Our New Testament texts, which were circulating already by the end of the first century, constitute valuable data, and this is where we might make a case for considering the Gospel of Mark in particular for an investigation of the Kingdom, rather than beginning with the “social world” in which the conception of the Kingdom might be set.
Mark's Gospel provides for us a significant place of transformation for the space of the Kingdom of God, precisely because it can be understood as a kind of birthplace for the Kingdom of God, the beginning of its construction (assuming Mark as our earliest gospel source; cf. Mack's analysis of early Q traditions relating to the Kingdom). Paul may make mention of the Kingdom of God chronologically prior (the Kingdom of God is mentioned, but not treated extensively, and can be found in only three of Paul's undisputed letters: Romans 14:17; 1 Corinthians 4.20, 6.9–10, 15.24, 50; Galatians 5.21; see also 1 Thessalonians 2.12), but Mark is the first to set it within the time-and-space story of Jesus. Like the figure of Jesus himself, for whom Mark offers no account of his birth or childhood, here the Kingdom of God appears fully formed on the scene of the Gospel in chapter 1, verses 14–15. At Jesus' first appearance in the Gospel, he proclaims the good news concerning God, that “the Kingdom of God has come near” (1:15). If we want to understand the Kingdom as “social,” but not social in the sense of a set of meanings lurking in the foggy mist of “culture” and “context,” then the author of the Gospel of Mark is a key spokesperson: someone who gives us crucial information concerning the connections and controversies that surround the Kingdom. To think about the Kingdom in this way, we need to change our understanding of Mark as an author, and value his articulation of the Kingdom above our own as analysts and interpreters.
C. Clifton Black, in consideration of the author of the Gospel of Mark as the first historian of God's kingdom, rightly questions some of the practices of historical work that effectively treats the text as valuable only (or at least primarily) for its potential to provide information about the surrounding social world. Rather than picking apart Mark's texts to feed the wider insatiable “context” of the time, Black argues for an approach that consciously raises Mark to the status of dialogue partner and subject in his own right (Black: 71). This has the potential to lead to the “realigning [of] the historian's relationship to Mark as one of a colleague consulting a specialist, instead of a pathologist carving a cadaver” (Black: 76).
Mark's Gospel is more than a mine of data from which later historians may quarry their own reconstructions of Jesus. To think that is to regard that gospel only as an object for our disposition, whether academic or religious or some admixture of both. To the contrary, Mark is a subject, whose own historical and theological integrity makes of him a fully equal partner in conversation and debate with our own subjective biases as historians [Black: 71].
By treating Mark as an expert witness rather than a mine of data, we can begin to see more of the new connections that flourish in his account. We begin to value his contribution more than our own, and instead of trying to decide where to place Mark in relation to a wider context, we start to allow Mark, to “unfold [his] differing cosmos, no matter how counter-intuitive [it] appears” (Latour: 23). We do not need to “explain” the Kingdom or make it tidy and coherent (Law), but it might be a worthwhile task to try and see how it holds together. This is an important point, and it takes us right to the heart of a critique that challenges some of biblical scholarship's “socio-historical” ways of working, where many scholars prefer to defer to the social world of Jesus or the Gospels when it comes to determining meaning for a concept such as the Kingdom. Such a way of working can easily miss or ignore the importance of the particular and specific data we have with regard to the Kingdom of God, and instead fill in what is deemed to be missing with the (modern) author's own evaluation of “shared concepts.” If the gospel metaphors of the Kingdom appear to us strange and vague, all the more reason to try and understand them, to see what information they hold. As Bruno Latour argues in relation to the information obtained by “actors” in social enquiry:
The mistake we must learn to avoid is listening distractedly to these convoluted productions and to ignore the queerest, baroque, and most idiosyncratic terms offered by the actors, following only those that have currency in the rear-world of the social [Latour: 47].
Saying that “the Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground” (Mark 4:26), or that “whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15) may sound enigmatic and unclear in its meaning to some interpreters; yet surely this constitutes interesting data about the Kingdom. Such statements are, in fact, its “explanation,” whether or not they satisfy the modern scholar's assumptions about meaning. If we take Latour's critique seriously, the Kingdom of God can be understood as having a performative definition (Latour: 34–35). That is, it is not something you can point to and say “there it is” like a chair or a table (cf. Luke 17:21; G Thomas 3!), but it is actually “made by the various ways and manners in which [it is] said to exist” (Latour: 34). It is not determined by meanings lurking in the “social world” around it. If we consult Mark on the meaning of the Kingdom, we might get quite a different picture than if we consult the author of the book of Daniel, or the Assumption of Moses, and indeed it may be possible to read Mark without going “through” the Pseudepigrapha and Qumran documents (Deines: 465–66).
The “Poorly Explained” Kingdom
Seeming to work against the critical approach outlined here, we find a curious, but persistent, notion within scholarship on the Kingdom: the idea that the Kingdom has been poorly explained within the teachings of Jesus. Like the dominant “kingly rule” definition, this notion has a pedigree that goes back more than a century. Johannes Weiss, in his study, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, took the view that Jesus had not defined what he meant by the Kingdom and therefore he “adopted this concept primarily and predominantly in the sense in which it was understood by his contemporaries and without correcting it” (Weiss: 102). Not dissimilarly, for Albert Schweitzer, the Kingdom had not been adequately explained by Jesus; therefore he must have employed the common view of the time (Schweitzer: 90–101). More recently, Maurice Casey's Jesus of Nazareth utilizes this same premise in his evaluation of the Kingdom of God. Casey makes the following statement:
Since this term [the Kingdom of God] permeates the teaching of Jesus, and since it is so much commoner in his teaching than in other surviving Jewish texts, it is remarkable that Jesus never explains what he means by the kingdom/kingship of God [Casey: 212].
Indeed, this would be remarkable if it could be established that Jesus did not explain the Kingdom. Certainly, Casey is correct that the Kingdom of God is “much commoner” in Jesus' teaching than in contemporary Jewish texts. In the Synoptic Gospels alone, we find 105 references to the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven. In comparison, the closest parallel in the Hebrew Bible malkût Y
Perhaps the real problem is that some scholars are simply not satisfied with the ways that the Kingdom is described and defined within the Gospels. When they investigate contemporary Jewish examples, they prefer the meanings and explanations they discover there to anything found in Mark, Matthew or Luke. They develop the suspicion that the “explanation” is missing or lacking. If one wants to understand a concept such as the Kingdom of God as part of the message of Jesus, this seems an unusual way to conduct the investigation, as it privileges the view of the interpreter over the data or information found in the actual text.
Casey further states, following a discussion of contemporary understandings of the Kingdom in Daniel:
All these points were so widespread that, because Jesus shared them, he could use the term ‘kingdom’, or ‘kingship’ (malkuth) without explaining what he meant. We must accordingly infer that Jesus shared normal Jewish concepts of what the kingdom/kingship of God was, of its permanent validity and future establishment [Casey: 218].
Here, the “shared concepts” are given priority, and determine meaning. Even Moxnes, though more nuanced in his evaluation, underscores the sense of a lack of explanation, referring to the Kingdom as a code: “I use the term code, because it is rarely explained, but instead used to interpret the rule of God in spatial dimensions” (Moxnes: 157).
Statements such as these actually show a devaluing of what is represented in texts such as the Gospels. If we have more references to the Kingdom in the Gospels than anywhere else, this strongly suggests that the Kingdom has been explained within them. With Mark as a subject, and his text providing a time-and-place starting point, the Kingdom of God does not decode some pre-existing “social” reality; rather it creates a new world (Dewsbury: 158). The issue for contemporary scholars must be more to do with distaste for that description, a feeling that it has not been done to their satisfaction.
Articles such Duling's entry on “Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary assure us of the wider relevance of the fact that God is referred to as King in the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the Psalms, as well as in Second Temple literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls. To a large extent, there is no cause to counter this; surely, this constitutes important data from the ancient world in relation to the meaning of the Kingdom of God, which does not appear in the Gospels as a specific phrase de novo with no prior connections. However, it is precisely the connections we need to work to trace, rather than assuming their existence under the heading of social meaning or convention. Due caution is needed to avoid the assumption that this type of data hands us a “social script”: a clearly defined, shared social meaning of the Kingdom. We need to actively look for the small shifts and the new associations. For instance, the Synoptic Gospels avoid referring directly to God as king, even though they do speak of the Kingdom of God. The mere fact that we are able to identify references to the “Kingdom of Y
We should not expect first-century interpretation to shy away from “new” connections and to always stay close to particular textual referents, even where these can be identified. If Mark speaks of “drinking new” in the Kingdom of God (Mark 14:25), why should we expect to find all of the clues to the meaning of the Kingdom in Nestle-Aland's margins? If Mark and Daniel both speak about the basileia in connection with mysterion, should we not do more than recognize the influence of Daniel, and strongly point out that Mark's Kingdom is no built statue made of materials from bronze to clay; it is organic, revealed in the imagery of seeds and growth? The mystery is conveyed in parables, not dreams; it is revealed to a group of gathered disciples, not a foreign king. If we attempt to consider connections and transformation in understanding the Kingdom of God rather than letting it grab hold of and appropriate any definition that may have some claim to being contemporary, this will allow us to see something of the new associations of the Kingdom. As geographer Doreen Massey says about the openness of space, and its potential to surprise us in its (new) associations:
Not only history but also space is open. In this interactional space there are always connections yet to be made, juxtapositions yet to flower into interaction (or not, for not all potential connections have to be established), relations which may or may not be accomplished…. However, these are not the relations of a coherent, closed system within which, as they say, everything is (already) related to everything else. Space can never be that completed simultaneity in which all interconnections have been established, and in which everywhere is already linked with everywhere else. A space, then, which is neither a container for always-already constituted identities nor a completed closure of holism. This is a space of loose ends and missing links. For the future to be open, space must be open too [Massey: 11–12].
Any new spatial articulation must have this quality of openness, of potential and of connections made and not made. It may be that even now, despite the weight of scholarly attention, the Kingdom of God has the potential to surprise us in its associations.
Behold, What Kind of Text, What Kind of Built Kingdom!
The openness of space highlighted by Massey brings the focus of the discussion back to the spatial aspect of the Kingdom to conclude. If, as we have argued, the meaning of the Kingdom of God should not be investigated in a way that prioritizes models from the “social world” of the author, or meanings transported from other texts without transformation, how then, we might ask in conclusion, can the Kingdom be understood as a meaningful space? We need a clear way of working closely and exegetically with the text, which will allow us to unfold the spatial focus of the Kingdom without allowing the “social” to creep back in.
Clearly the Kingdom cannot be understood as a space in precisely the same way as a “bricks and mortar” structure such as Herod's rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. It is better thought of along the lines of theorist Yi-Fu Tuan's definition of a certain kind of mythical space that is “the spatial component of a world view, a conception of localized values within which people carry on their practical activities” (Tuan: 86). Yet, even whilst recognizing the potential importance of mythical spaces to spatial practice and orientation, in Tuan's work we still find the idea that we can somehow access a space like the Kingdom though a better understanding of a particular “worldview.” To put things another way, Henri Lefebvre's oft-repeated, and Marxist-influenced exclamation, “social space is a social product” does not hold. “Society” does not “produce” spaces any more than it produces anything else. That is, if we take Latour's critique seriously, society itself is not a “realm” in which we can place everything else, as if calling something “social’”explains any aspect of it. The Kingdom of God as a mythical space is not a reflection of some social situation which we can access. Rather, it is a new set of associations, which offers us an opportunity to explore and trace its connections.
If we focus on the Kingdom as we find it in a key text such as Mark's Gospel, it may be possible to take a more “architectural” approach to consideration of its meaning. An essay by Albena Yaneva's essay (informed by Latour) reveals something of how we might change our approach to the Kingdom.
Far removed from the Mediterranean Basin of the first century
I do not provide a historical backdrop meant to contextualize Koolhaas' projects for the Whitney extension. I rely on a very selective rendering of the Whitney history, the one that designing architects gained access to, used in their interpretations and mobilized in the tentative design venture of extending the Whitney Museum. Only by following their work and the experiences of designing architects, can knowledge about the Whitney building's complex trajectory be gained, and can its own resistance to extension be understood [Yaneva: 29].
Thus, rather than looking to a particular context or social groups, the approach is to consider the building and how it gathers controversies, spokespersons, human and non-human actors, new texts, new designs, etc. One can investigate the “repetition of design moves” rather than trying to set the plans within a particular historical period in design history. Again, from Yaneva:
None of the extension projects turned out to be simply architectural in nature: they were also cultural, political and social. The Whitney example shows us that not the time and the context, but the building makes the controversies. The settlement of the design controversies cannot be explained by external social, cultural and political factors. The OMA [Office of Metropolitan Architecture] designers were not able to deduce Whitney's architectural career from the contexts of the 1960s or the 1980s [Yaneva: 25].
Further, “to redesign the Whitney, every architect was led to reopen the ‘black box’ of its first design, break it apart and identify all the components, actors and meanings that took part in it and recollect it again” (Yaneva: 23). This approach offers us a more imaginative way to think about what ancient authors were doing as they made use of an existing text (such as Daniel) and constructed new texts (and new textual spaces). At the end of the day, it may offer a more limited approach to the context-building methods we are familiar with, but I believe one that is worthy of consideration in relation to biblical texts. Yaneva speaks of what the Whitney building does in a very active way, and refers to it as a “building-in-motion.” If we consider the Kingdom of God itself as a conceptual, mythical “space-in-motion” (Wenell), this allows us to consider Mark's use of Daniel in terms of opening up a previous set of architectural plans and repeating certain design moves, but also making significant changes. We can take seriously Luke and Matthew's subtle changes (and significantly Matthew's preference for the Kingdom of Heaven). We can make a more concentrated attempt to see what is occurring in the “black box” of Mark's text in relation to the Kingdom's construction. Unlike the belief evidenced in Stewart's work that somehow the Greek, Roman and Jewish geographical models (which cannot be limited so precisely as in Yaneva to particular decades!) will reveal Markan spatial practice, here we have the opportunity to explore the implications of the insight that it is not the time or the place, but the Kingdom that makes the controversies. This gives the Kingdom a much more active role as a space that “does something.” It gathers controversies, solutions, and spokespersons (such as Mark, Matthew and Luke).
A spokesperson such as Mark might take us closer to the controversy/ies of the Kingdom's construction. He is no mere parrot of contemporary understandings of the Kingdom, going along merely “meaning what everyone else meant”; rather he is a significant architect and designer, setting out his plans for the orienting space of the Kingdom of God. Clearly, there were controversies—the meaning of the parables of Jesus (Mark 4:11), the relationship between death (and life) and the Kingdom (Mark 9:1, 47–48), an understanding of the great commands and proximity to the Kingdom (Mark 12:32–34). Mark settles these controversies in a particular moment by acting as a spokesperson for the Kingdom, by representing in text his view of the Kingdom's impact on the world and on lived life within it. As Latour says, “controversies provide the analyst with an essential resource to render the social connections traceable” (Latour: 30). We can imagine Paul and others prior to Mark debating and discussing the meaning and boundaries of the Kingdom of God (cf. Mack). Mark, in writing his text, settles these controversies through representation in text; yet the moment of representation is only fleeting, a stutter in the present tense of experience (Dewsbury: 150–51). Matthew and Luke would take up the construction of the Kingdom again and modify Mark's understanding in their own particular ways, settling the controversies in the way they see fit. For a starting point, it will not do to try and answer “big, big questions” (Crossley: 175) about how this all came about, but it might be possible to think more seriously about design, innovation and repetition.
We must strive for an understanding of the Kingdom which does not develop into, or out of, what Michel Foucault termed a total history—one that tries to find “the significance common to all the phenomena of a period” (Foucault: 9), but one that considers, in the mode of general history, “what may be the effects of shifts, different temporalities and various rehandlings” (Foucault: 10). In this way, we may embark on an investigation of the Kingdom of God in history in a way that deploys something like Foucault's “space of a dispersion” (ibid.), unbounded by “rules” and overarching logic. Thus, it may be possible to avoid the situation in which we “limit in advance the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations” (Latour: 12) of the Kingdom of God. This may assist us in the task of
ensuring that the concepts deployed have not so much an a priori character—having decided in advance what is “going on” in any particular situation in any given time and place—as the character of “hovering” responsively above the empirical details revealed [Philo: 212].
As the Kingdom comes into being for us, it undergoes a process of becoming, which is unlikely to be tidy and contained “in social context.” Rather,
Becoming necessarily entails deformation, reformation, performation, and transformation, which involve gaps and gasps, stutters and cuts, misfires and stoppages, unintended outcomes, unprecedented transferences, and jagged changes. These breaks are not simply ungoverned transversal communications within and between assemblages that bring novel forces into play and so also new formations. They are also a function of the very way events occur, which is not rule governed, or where the rule does not apply [Thrift & Dewsbury: 418].
Our desire for the meaning of the Kingdom to “follow the rules” of its social world may actually hold back the possibility of an interesting analysis of what is actually going on in our texts. In its fluid and enigmatic movement, the Kingdom eludes our attempts at fixing it in a logical manner. After all, we are all believers, whether it be in “the social” as a category, in our own judgements as historians, or in gods and demons populating respective kingdoms (Day: 733–34).
The search for the context in which to set the Kingdom has in many ways no limitations. One could spend a lifetime in research trying to uncover a truer picture of first-century Judaism in which to set the Kingdom, and perhaps not find anything more specific to conclude than that “he basileia tou theou was very much at home among the many utopian/eutopian traditions of antiquity” (Beavis 2006: 103). Or, from a spatial perspective on Mark's achievement, that it “falls very much in line with the human geography of Greek, Roman, and Jewish geographical traditions” (Stewart: 218). What do such evaluations tell us exactly? Though not questioning the importance of gaining as much historical perspective and knowledge as possible, are there any actual connections being established in such work? Do the traditions creating the “home” and falling “in line” with the Kingdom of the Gospels actually make a difference to what we find in the texts? The familiar method of establishing “context” in biblical scholarship suggests very strongly that we believe context holds the power to tell us what an author such as Mark meant. The God of First Century Context and the “force of social convention” (Esler 2000: 110) hold sway quite powerfully in Kingdom scholarship. Perhaps it is time to reconsider our relationship to ancient spokespersons such as Mark.
Ultimately, we need to move from an understanding of the social as explanans—an explaining element—to explanandum—what needs to be explained. Going back to the debates about models, perhaps we could take Horrell's insistence (informed by Giddens) on not reifying social structure even further to say that we should eliminate even a “virtual” existence for the social (Horrell: 95–96) if it keeps us from the practical task of “collecting the collective” (Latour: 232). If the social it is already present, even in a virtual existence, the practical means to compose it will no longer be traceable (Latour: 163). For the Kingdom of God, a focus on tracing its associations in a more architectural way opens up the opportunity for this mythical space to be explored for its connections—critically, philosophically, and without Context.