The Case for Mark Composed in Performance

Antoinette Wire, Rhoads

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781608998586, 9781498213097
• eBook ISBN: 9781621892809
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Is it possible to make a case that the Gospel of Mark was not composed by a single man from scattered accounts but in a process of people's telling Jesus' story over several decades? And what can we say about the tellers who were shaping this story for changing audiences? After an introduction showing the groundwork already laid in oral tradition research, the case begins by tracing the Mark we know back to several quite different early manuscripts which continue the flexibility of their oral ancestors. The focus then turns to three aspects of Mark, its language, which is characterized as speech with special phrases and rhythms, its episodes characterized by traditional forms, and its overall story pattern that is common in oral reports of the time. Finally several soundings are taken in Mark to test the thesis of performance composition, two scenarios are projected of possible early tellers of this tradition, and a conclusion summarizes major findings in the case. Mark's writer turns out to be the one who transcribes the tradition, probably adhering closely to it in order to legitimate the new medium of writing.

Part 1

The Written Text of Mark: External Evidence
of Composition in Performance

Initial objections to the thesis that Mark was composed over time in the oral tradition of a community come from the fact that we receive it as a written text translated from the Greek language as part of the Christian New Testament. None of this seems to require or even suggest composition in performance. I have broken down the problem into four parts and will work my way backward, beginning from the book that we hold.

First, Mark is part of the Christian canon. As such, it has a history of nearly two thousand years of veneration and, more lately, of detraction. Every interpretation of it takes place in this context and cannot escape being a claim on whatever reputation it has in the Christian churches and in the wider culture impacted by Christianity. This makes each reinterpretation of Mark suspect as a power play by some group claiming its authority, in the present case perhaps a contemporary group identifying itself with oral tellers of the gospel against established literary methods. In the United States I think particularly of feminist, womanist, and mujerista interpreters; black, Latino, and Asian-American theologians; Christian activists and practicing oral preachers and performers. All of these privilege oral and communal knowledge over literary and theory-oriented research. Meeting this objection is the task of chapter 1.

Second, the Mark we read is the translation of a modern Greek edition of this gospel, which itself stands on a narrow base. Early manuscripts of Mark are particularly few and fragmentary, and full manuscripts survive only from the fourth century when Mark is part of an elegant volume apparently prepared for the Roman emperor. Chapter 2 will ask if we have access to what a first scribe wrote, let alone to a speaking voice that he had heard.

Third, the Mark we know is not a flexible performance tradition but a written document received by readers—even when they read the book aloud to us. How can we understand what we do not have? Should we set aside the question of oral origins as something beyond our reach and accept the simpler thesis of a single author of this written text?

The chance for a simpler approach to an historical problem is significant, but in this case it needs to be resisted because it is based on modern assumptions about written texts. Before printing, each text was a precious and unique manuscript accessible to the few who were trained in reading and writing. Composing was done aloud, either while communicating or shortly before, and the occasional writing was done by dictation. Communication was always by speaking, even when a message had been written and was being read aloud for hearers. In his study of Homer Albert Lord said: “People did not wait until there was writing before they told stories and sang songs. Moreover, when these genres first appeared in writing, their metric base, their poetic and compositional devices, were already fully developed and none of them could have been invented by any one person at any one time. They are too complicated for that.”1 It may be that the simple theories that suit our experience are not adequate and we must settle for more complex proposals. This effort requires attention to historical context, to who composed documents in the Roman East of the first century, how and for whom they did so, as well as who wrote them down, how and for whom they did so. Only then can certain probable hypotheses be proposed about the origins of Mark. A review of this context for the writing and receiving of Mark and the consequent probabilities concerning this document is the task of chapters 3 and 4.

Fourth, Mark is written in Greek, yet the narratives are set in a time and place where the spoken language was Aramaic. So the major characters in Mark are quoted in a language they were not speaking. How then could the Greek Mark be the tradition that was composed orally as it was generated and transmitted in Aramaic-speaking communities? Chapter 5 will take up this problem.

In all, the written text of Mark that we hold in our hands would seem to be many times removed from its pre-canonical functioning, its initial transcription, its probable Aramaic roots, and the performances in which it was composed. Yet we can only begin where we are, with our English Bibles that translate surviving Greek manuscripts. From here we trace our way back through the manuscripts to their writing, to the tradition’s transition into Greek, and toward the gospel’s composing. We find, in fact, that some kind of composing was going on all the way through this process.

1. Lord, The Singer Resumes the Tale, 1.

1

Mark Found in the Christian Canon

Canon as Cultural Treasure

In considering Mark as part of an authoritative canon, a first response to the charge of a power play must be a concession that, yes, the thesis of Mark’s oral composition reflects particular contemporary interests. If Mark were read today as a long-term product of several tellers and many listeners in communities gathered to risk the commitment it demands, it might challenge people now to an active communal response rather than to individual meditation on the meanings of an author. Because the listeners who favored such tellers would have represented a wider range of the society than the very few who learned to write, the tellers might be young or old, female or male, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, literate or not, and what they said and how they said it could appeal more broadly in that day and perhaps also in this. In addition, the open-ended quality of a traditioning process in which all performers tell the given story to convict their hearers would press contemporary interpreters of the written text to tell it more effectively in today’s new, and yet also analogous, contexts. The single author thesis is of course also a reading strategy that reflects particular contemporary interests, and whether the scholar is sensitive or oblivious to this dynamic is not the determining factor.

Though no reading of the past is innocent, some approaches are more adequate to the ancient evidence and our contemporary needs than are others. This means that it is crucial that the field be kept open for different proposals to be considered on their merits. As new perspectives are brought to bear, research is stimulated and what has been assumed in a generation or a culture may appear as the emperor without clothes. For this to happen, there must be not only broad review of previous research and close reading of primary sources but also attempts to state the case for new frameworks of understanding. The case for Mark composed in performance has been gaining ground through the recent work of many, including Haverly, Botha and Dewey, Draper, Horsley and Dunn, and represents a disruptive and positive contribution to understanding Mark today.1

I am pointing here toward an understanding of canon as a cultural treasure chest in which old gems are preserved by being recut to shine with new facets. This is bound to meet objections on all sides. First I address objections from the religious side, then objections from critical theory.

Objections from Religion

Those who see the canon as the rule of faith will object to the flexibility of oral tradition. What is to prevent Mark from changing into something not at all itself? And how do cultures like ours with multiple canons—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, and the Great Books of Western Civilization among them—manage to maintain their distinctive character? Do they not move toward a melding of traditions that violates the very function of a canon to let people know who they are and how they act?

The concern that a flexible tradition will lose its character comes from the assumption that truth is unchanging. If this is the case, any flexibility threatens truth, which must maintain its original form at all costs. In a print-based culture, we imagine that exact verbal transmission will supply this permanence, especially when a tradition is walled in as a canon. Yet it is common knowledge that Jesus was not an author and the tradition about him was carried orally, at least for some years. Therefore much attention is given to eye-witnesses who are reliable, confirm each other, and produce written records at an early stage.2 Though we do not have these original documents, we have so many later copies that we think we can figure out where errors arose and reconstruct the original sayings and actions of Jesus.

None of this historical work is insignificant, yet it cannot be said to have secured the tradition in its original and inviolate truth. The danger is not that the oral story of Jesus was lost in the way a message whispered around a circle of people is garbled beyond recognition. These tellers were not repeating sounds hardly heard but were retelling a story that the listeners could affirm or correct. The danger in telling a story with one original truth is that it could take the hearers so little into account that they do not hear it addressing them and do not take it seriously—and soon it is lost. An effective oral tradition is retold to engage the hearers. Or, once written, it is interpreted to engage its readers. This engagement cannot dispense with the continuity of the tradition, but it allows sufficient flexibility for it to be heard in a new setting or a new generation. Historical analysis of the tradition is itself an important effort to engage the modern era with the biblical texts. But it does not need to project an inviolable origin that cannot be historical and that threatens to calcify the tradition.

Jan Assmann distinguishes two kinds of tradition: the stream of tradition that sustains the known world through repeated but flexible story and ritual, and the tradition once written and dammed up canonically that represents the permanence of transcendent authority and requires interpretation in order to impact daily life in new times.3 New interpretation of a canon is no threat to its people. Rather, interpretation is the way the dammed up stream of tradition aerates itself to keep the lake fresh and life-giving within its canonical bounds. These interpretations earn long-term impact when they do justice both to the text they interpret and to the age in which they speak, to the tradition at stake and to the people seeking to live by it. We do see interpreters who bend the text to their power, as well as texts that serve death and not life, witness American slaveholders preaching the New Testament epistles. But there were and are counter-witnesses as heard in the African-American slave songs and narratives4 and as heard in the early baptismal confession: “Neither slave nor free . . . for all are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). The challenge to the historian is to hear the full conflict in the text and among the interpreters and to expose the interests being expressed.

Because it is not finally the text or the present context but the living tradition where these two meet that has what Assmann calls the formative and normative effect, i...

Table of contents

• (Start) The Case for Mark Composed in Performance
• Series Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Written Text of Mark
• Part 2: Language, Scenes, and Story Patterns
• Part 3: Soundings in Mark
• Part 4: Conclusion
• Bibliography