Table Of ContentR[AOING
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I
Bas van lersel
_ I
RfADING
Bas van Iersel
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Translated by
W. H. Bisscheroux
I
THE LITURGICAL PRESS
St. John's Abbey • Collegeville, Minnesota 56321
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"[ADING
All
Copyright © T. & T. Clark Ltd, 1988
Translated from the Dutch edition
Belichting Van Het Bijbelboek: Marcus, © 1986 Katholieke Bijbelstichting,
Box tel.
, Typeset by Bookworm Typesetting, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by
Billing & Sons Ltd, Worcester
Pirst Printed 1988
ISBN 0-8146-1820-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission ofT. & T. Clark Ltd.
Contents
1 Ways of Reading Mark 1
2 Structure and Composition 18
3 Setting the Scene 31
4 A Man of Authority 43
5 Much Wheat from Little Seed 69
4:1-34
6 Greater Signs, Growing Misunderstanding 85
4:35-8:21
7 The Way 122
8:22-10:52
8 Final Trial of Strength 142
11:1-13:2
9 Looking Ahead 158
13:3-37
10 Elimination 171
14:1-15:39
11 Disclosure 198
15:40-16:8
12 An Added Epilogue 213
16:9-20
The Gospel According to Mark 218
Index of Biblical References 253
1
WA YS OF READING MARK
A Book Raised to a Square
This book is somewhat unusual in severa] respects. Firstly
because it is a commentary on another book, the gospel according
to Mark - henceforth simply called Mark - and secondly because
as a commentary it differs in more than one way from other
commentaries. Most books we read - whether they are works of
fiction or non-fiction - are books in their own right and read for
their own sake. Commentaries, on the other hand, are different in
that they are books about books, what might be called books
raised to a square. They follow the text of the first book more or
]ess closely, commenting on 'it word by word, sentence by
sentence, episode by episode, part by part, and are written to help
the reader better grasp and understand the first book, in our case
Mark.
The writer of such a commentary is himself first of all a reader,
be it a better informed and often a more experienced reader than
most. He can therefore be a guide in helping other readers find
their way through the book. The purpose of this commentary is
the same, namely to assist the reader to understand Mark. It is, in
other words, designed to be read alongside Mark and not as a
substitute for Mark. Reading it without reading Mark would
amount to reading a travel guide of a country one never intends to
visit. Such a reader, having reached this point, had better stop
reading at once, wrap the book up and give it to a friend who does
intend to read it alongside Mark. Anyone who decides to
continue should read the complete text of Mark before the third
2 READING MARK
chapter of this book if at all possible. They should certainly read
the section of Mark discussed in each chapter before reading the
commentary.
Differences From Other Commentaries
\
But the present book is also unusual as a commentary in that it
differs rather from what is generally found in current com
mentaries on Mark. To begin with, most of them look very
learned, which they are. Footnotes, discussions with other
experts, and bibliographies in one or more sections, all testify to
their scholarly nature. Such commentaries are normally directed
to a reading public of academic colleagues and other people
familiar with this approach, so their authors need not be afraid to
use technical terms and presuppose specialized knowledge and
skills.
As this comment~ry is intended for the general reader rather
than for experts, the use of technical terms has been kept to the
indispensable minimum. But the fact that it lacks the usual
hallmarks oflearning does not imply the absence of an underlying
method which, I hope, has been consistently applied, although it
is not described here.
Beyond Fragments
The most important difference between this and other recent
commentaries on Mark is that the present book takes its starting
point from the seemingly self-evident notion that Mark, as a
book, constitutes a unified whole whose individual parts cannot
be read separately without violating the book as weB as the part
concerned.
This starting-point is less commonsensical than it seems when
seen in the light of the age-long custom of synagogue and
Christian congregations alike of reading shorter or longer
fragments from the scriptures at each assembly. Certainly with
Mark, but also with Matthew and Luke, this is the obvious thing
WAYS OF READING MARK 3
to do, for the book appears to have been written so that it presents
a connected series of generally short or very short episodes which
are easily distinguishable and even separable. This is because in
content and form these pericopes or episodes are more or less
self-contained. This once inspired a colleague of mine to compare
the book to a string of beads.
The Origin of Mark
Biblical research during the last few decades has proceeded from
the hypothesis that for the most part these episodes had originally
been handed on in the community as individual miniature stories
or sayings before they were put together in Mark and the other
gospels. This has led to a method of inquiry which in its emphasis
on the origin and development of the text distinguishes between
what already existed in the tradition and the way this was
subsequently collected, revised and edited by the author or rather
the editor, as he is characteristically called in this type of
investigation. The pre-existing material can be classified
according to form, origin and function, while research into the
way the editor dealt with it enables scholars to find out why and
for whom he wrote his book. In this way separate layers of
different origin and date are revealed in the text.
Although certain assumptions of this method have been
criticized lately, there is no denying that it has greatly enriched
our understanding of the processes that were at work in the
making of the gospels. This is why most commentaries that do
not comment upon Mark sentence by sentence, deal with the text
episode by episode and analyze it in accordance with the above
method. There are, however, several reasons why the same
approach cannot be used in reading Mark. Firstly, it is simply
imp ~ssible for anyone reading the text to be simultaneously
aware of all the separate layers present in it. Secondly, the
concentration on each individual unit and the close attention to
detail required by this method make it very difficult not to lose
track of the main argument of the book and fail to really read
Mark as an integrated whole. Thirdly and most importantly,
4 HEADING MARK
there are no indications whatever in the text itself to warrant such
a kind of reading.
Mark as a Single Coherent Narrative
L<\aving aside the above hypothesis about the origin and
formation of the gospel, this commentary proceeds from another
and more obvious fact, namely, that Mark has been transmitted as
a book which forms such a unity that it can only be understood by
someone who reads it in its entirety and tries to apprehend it as a
meaningful whole. We should add to this the equally important
consideration that the book has the character of a narrative and
should be read accordingly. This is why ample use is made in the
following pages of the insights of structural linguistics, especially
into the nature of narrative structures and the way they function
in communication.
Our starting-point implies that the writer of Mark is regarded
as an author in the strictest sense and not only as a collector or
editor of what had been said or written by others before him. On
the other hand, if the hypothesis that most sub-stories had existed
independently before they were incorporated into the book is
correct, its unity cannot be expected to be greater than that of a
mosaic, for it is extremely unlikely that the elements fitted so
neatly into the story the author had in mind that the seams do not
show. But scholars and readers who wish to explore the unity of
Mark are, unlike those investigating its origin and formation
history, not intent on highlighting tensions of that kind, as they
tend to hinder rather than help the understanding of the book as a
whole.
To say that Mark has a narrative character iwplies that the
author assumes a specific role in his book and thereby requires his
readers to adopt a role similar to his own. These two corres
ponding roles are called "the narrator" and "the narratee", terms
specially coined to differentiate them from the roles existing
between writers and readers of treatises, apostolic circular letters,
poems or apocalyptic visions. In the role of narratee the reader
becomes directly involved in what the narrative reveals about the
WAYS OF READING MARK 5
various characters and their actions but only indirectly in what the
narrator wants to say with his story.
The characters in Mark are chiefly Jesus, his followers, the
crowd, his adversaries, those who want to be healed and ,
exercising power over some of them, the demons. These
characters and the things happening to them exist in the world of
the story which is structured by the places where the story is
enacted and the time within which it unfolds. These are the
elements of the story that are of great importance in the analysis of
Mark, so they will be considered first in the discussion of each
part.
Story and History
It does of course make a difference to the narrator as well as to his
narratees what the relation is between the world of the story on
the one hand and the situation and actual events of the real world
on the other. In the case of science fiction things may be very far
removed from reality, provided that the reader can recognize
what the writer invents. In the case of a fictional story set in places
and a time similar to those known by his intended readers, the
writer is far less free to deal with these circumstances as he pleases
than he is with the actions of his characters. In addition to this, a
writer of a historical novel or play must observe definite limits
when dealing with his characters. Yet such an author also usually
wants to communicate more with his work than the mere
narrative.
Thus, in his version of the myth of Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
expresses among other things the conviction that man cannot
escape his fate, however hard he tries. And in Igor Stravinsky's
opera-oratorio version of the myth, composed to a text ofJ ean
Cocteau, the same conviction is considerably reinforced through
the application of new means. The only person using French in
the opera is the speaker acting as narrator, while all the voice parts
are in a stiff, primitive sort of Latin, written by Jean Danielou.
Like Oedipus Rex, Mark is about a well-known historical
figure. This fact, together with the use made of source materials
