Mark’s passion narrative– third lecture

1. Mark’s passion narrative– third lecture Brief overview of essays by Robinson and Kelber Mark’s passion narrative

2. 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.

3. 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!

4. 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.

5. Teaching in Jerusalem • 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.)

6. 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.

7. “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?

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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).

11. 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?

12. 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