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July 19, 2007
Gospel of Mark - Part 2
This entry on the gospel of Mark summarizes a course I audited at Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) in Indianapolis in the Spring semester of 2000. It was taught by Prof. Ron Allen, who did an excellent job. The course was in seminar format, with only 8 students, all of whom (but me) were near completion of their masters degrees.
Obvously you can read this blog entry by itself, but if you want to learn about the gospel of Mark the first thing to do is read it yourself, without prior influences affecting your perceptions, and noting your observations. This is something I tried to demonstrate in my November 30, 2006 entry, the Gospel of Mark - Part 1. If you're serious about studying the text it would be useful to you to compare your observations with mine.
1. Background ideas widely known in the markan community
The first thing we did in the course was take a quiz on the content to insure everyone had read the text carefully. Then Prof. Allen discussed some essentail background information. The community for / to whom the gospel was written was Christian but ethnically Jewish. We can tell that from all the references and allusions the writer assumed his readers were familiar with. What we call the Old Testament constituted a significant portion of what that community was familiar with, and we students were pretty familiar with it as well. But the markan community was also conversant with Jewish religious writing since the last books of the Old Testament. We students were not familiar with that.
In the 4th Century BC, when the last books of the Old Testament were being written, there were three general traditions within Judaism. To oversimplify, the priestly tradition was concerned with holiness both in worship and life. The wisdom tradition, reflected in the books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, held that people could learn of God from the natural world and human experience. The prophetic tradition, reflected in so many books in the second half of the Old Testament, was evolving. There was the beginning of a movement called apocalypticism, and early examples are found in Isaiah 56-66, Zechariah 9-14 and Daniel 7-12.
From the 4th Century to the time of Christ and the time Mark was written, there were no more additions to the Old Testament canon, but there was still a flood of thinking and writing, as these traditions evolved. The priestly and wisdom traditions merged, with a continuing concern for proper conduct. Jewish apocalyptic theology became fully developed.
What is this body of ideas called apocalyptic? Most of Old Testament prophecy addressed current (at the time of writing) issues of the nation and people of Israel - reproof for bad practices, encouragement to honor and follow God, dealing with the complex diplomacy of the period, and toward the end, dealing with exile in Babylon and return to Jerusalem. But some of the prophecy looked to the future and predicted great days for Israel. The kingdom of David would be restored and glory would return to Jerusalem.
The heirs of the prophetic tradition had a problem. The glorious future was not happening. Israel was conquered and occupied by Rome. Earlier it had been dominated by Greeks, Alexander and regimes established by his generals. What about God's promises? Would they ever be fulfilled, and how?
Not only was Israel insignificant and impotent, but in general, in most every way, evil was in the ascent. Where was God? In essence the Jews faced the problem of evil; why do bad things happen to good people, and why do the evil prosper? If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? If God is all powerful, why doesn't he do something? These questions have been with us for millennia and they are pressing questions even today. The issue is important enough that there is a whole branch of theology devoted to it, called theodacy.
The apocalyptic response to the problem was to affirm that is God all-powerful, all-knowing, that God is good, and he will act. The day is coming when God will come with power, reverse the terribly wrong condition of the world, vanquish evil, and rule over all. In essence apocalypticists addressed the probelm of evil with time; times are bad now but in the future God's will ultimately triumphs.
They described a history of the world from God's perspective. There are three main stages in history. In the beginning mankind lived in eden, a paradise. After eden there is a time when satan rules, deceiving mankind and causing all manner of evil and misery. Then a dramatic change will come, evil will be punished / banished and to God's people it will be like eden again. At the time of Christ everyone understood they were in the period of satanic power.
The transition points are key. The apocalypticists understood Genesis 2-3 as a story of deception by satan which led to the fall, when Adam and Eve turned the authority they received from God over to satan. As originally understood these early chapters of Genesis did not include satan as an actor. To Jews prior to the apocalyptic movement, the snake was a snake.
The transition from "this present evil age" to the new eden, where God and God's will totally permeate the earth and all life, was expected to be a cataclysmic, earth-shattering event which would change everything. God's agent would come, with great military and spiritual power, and destroy God's enemies, both human and spiritual. Ideas about the details of God's agent varied, but all were drawn from the Old Testament. Perhaps he would be a king of the lineage of David, perhaps he would be a divine agent sent from heaven, perhaps he would be a national religious and political leader like Moses... but all agreed he would exercise enormous power and everything would change as a result of his triumph over God's enemies.
All agreed that evil people would get their just deserts. For that reason Jews who bought into the apocalyptic worldview wanted to, in the present parlance, get right with God. The appearance of John, a genuine prophet and the first one in centuries, prophesying the coming of "the day of the Lord" made lots of people repent, get baptized, and become more careful about their conduct.
It was generally understood that up to the final cataclysm, evil would increase. The powers not of God could sense the future. They would do all they could to forestall it, and to make the most of the time they had left. Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes and the like were signs that the end of this age was drawing near. Meanwhile in "this world", "the old age", "the old creation" things got worse and worse. An analogy of birth pangs, of travail, was made to describe the difficulty of transitioning from the old age to the new.
There were various motifs to describe the joy of the new age to come, drawing upon celebrations found in Jewish life, such as a great banquet where everyone eats their fill of the finest foods, or the wedding celebration, where the two families are joyful and everyone has a great party.
There was a sense that in the age to come many aspects of life in eden would return, where people were close to God, naturally did His will, and were in a state of blessing. So while they looked to the future, apocaltyptic Jews also looked back to an idealized past.
A final point about Jewish apocalyptic thinking is, notwithstanding the spiritual dimension, it was understood as a political and military event occuring in this world. God's people, the Jews, were expected to triumph over satan's representatives, which had to be understood to include Romans and anybody else who oppressed or opposed Israel.
2. Christianity and apocalyptic theology
Christians accepted Jewish apocalyptic theory, with one major modification. The second transition, from the old, evil age dominated by satan to the new age where God would reign fully, without challenge, would not come as an abrupt change, but rather as an extended period of transition. The new age would be inaugurated but would grow slowly, in competition with the old regime of satan's rule, and only after a significant period of transition would the cataclysmic change event occur in which God's will was pervasively triumphant. The markan community, the early church, and we as well live in this transition period.
The church coined a term, the kingdom of God (which could also be translated reign, rule, or dominion of God) to describe not only the ultimate rule of God over the whole world but also those who chose to give their allegiance to God during the transition period. It is possible the phrase "kingdom of God" occured once or twice in the intertestamental liturature, but it didn't catch on until Jesus used it. When Jesus used the term, it was immediately understandable to his listeners because it fit so well with the widely known and widely accepted Jewish apocalyptic theology. Jesus' biggest communication challenge came in showing disciples and others how the kingdom of God differed from Jewish expectations.
From the Christian perspective, not only would the kingdom start small and without political or military power, but during the whole transition phase, the primary battle field would be in people's hearts, the conduct of their lives, and their ultimate allegiance. The conflict of the two kingdoms, of God and of satan, is primarily spiritual rather than political or military.
3. Chapter 13
Context is critical. This is true not only when you're reading a chapter or short passage from the Bible, but when you're studying a whole book. In my previous blog entry, Gospel of Mark - Part 1, I observed that chapter 13 interrupted the flow of the narrative. While the rest of the gospel described Jesus establishing the kingdom of God during his earthly ministry, chapter 13 talked of the future after Jesus' death and resurrection. It seemed to describe that point in time immediately before the final cataclysm ending the transition period and beginning the new age.
Prof. Allen understood this anamalous chapter to be addressed to the markan community, living some 4 decades after Christ, which was under stress and needing encouragement. Chapter 13 was the first section of the gospel of Mark he lectured on, so that we could understand the circumstances and perspective of the target audience of the book. Prof. Allen said the chapter provides "the clearest window into the social setting" of the community for whom Mark wrote the gospel.
That community was under stress for two reasons. The best estimate is that the gospel was written around 70 AD which was the time of a Jewish rebellion against Rome. Roman legions crushed the rebellion and devastate Jerusalem, including the temple. So the Jewish Christians to whom Mark wrote were living in a war zone, with tremendous danger, privation and hardship. In addition they were subject to persection by the Jewish establishment as heretics. They were dragged before authorities and interrogated, beaten, and discriminated against. The pressure to return to the regular Jewish practices even tore apart families.
You can tell all this from reading the chapter if you know a bit of history. Verses 1-3 refer to the temple being torn down, verse 14 likely refers to Roman defiling the most holy area of the temple, and verses 14-18 seem to refer to the sack of Jerusalem. Verses 9-13 tell of persecution and stress on families.
Under these circumstances of such great stress, apocalyptic thinking came naturally. These Jewish Christians thought the world was ending, and their understanding of Christian apocalyptic theology led them to think Jesus' second coming was at hand. Jesus cautions his followers not to be led astray because many will come claiming to be the messiah, but they will be false. The timing of the second coming is not known because all these awful problems are "but the beginning of the birth pangs" (v 8). The true second coming will be recognizable and is described in verses 24-27.
An interesting point comes up in verse 6. False messiahs will come saying "I am he." "I am" in Hebrew is God's name or very closely related to God's name (see Exodus 3:13-15). In the four gospels from time to time Jesus says "I am" and people told me Jesus was testifying to his own divinity. Prof. Allen said "I am he" was a claim of messiahship, rather than divinity. I cannot trace the reasoning through translations from Aramaic, which Jesus (and these false messiahs) probably spoke to the Greek text of the gospel, but from the context Prof. Allen must be right. You would not expect a whole group of fake messiahs, many of which may not even have been Christian, making claims that the divine name was their name.
Posted by rob at July 19, 2007 11:28 AM
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Posted by: Anonymous at July 19, 2007 11:28 AM