Reading the Gospel of Mark as a Novel

Geert Van Oyen, Keylock, Leslie Robert Keylock

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625644381
  9781498222198
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630876531
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The world is flooded with novels about secret messages or hidden texts. They all pretend to reveal the ultimate truth of Jesus. In this book, Geert Van Oyen goes back to the oldest gospel and explores its story as a challenging and revolutionary message for any reader. By employing a narrative critical approach Van Oyen demonstrates how the narrator accompanies readers in their quest for the identity of the protagonist Jesus. Along the way readers will discover that faith in Jesus is not a matter of theoretical truth but of practical experience. Who can remain indifferent when they hear the paradox at the heart of the gospel: "Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all"?

SECOND PART

Mark’s Gospel

4

How Does the Evangelist Narrate?

Introduction

“All right, have you read the last Harry Potter? What is it about? Can you tell me the story?” We admit in general that in reading, most people seek to know the contents: What happens, what’s it about? Indeed, it could go the same way for the Gospel. However, it is not a concern at present to recount what is in the Gospel or to make a synthesis of the content. We indeed have the feeling that everything is on the same level of importance and that we would have to take up each of the episodes one after the other. A synthesis could not, for example, allow us to omit Jesus’ baptism or the fact that he forgave sins or that he fed five thousand people or again that he predicted the destruction of the temple or . . . As the gospel story is composed of a series of anecdotes, it gives the impression of not having a continuous narrative line. And things become even more complex when we begin to ask theological questions as, for example, why Jesus is the Son of God. Perhaps many people would answer that, in Mark, it is not so obvious that Jesus is the Son of God. We could expect a bit more clarity and explicit language on the part of the evangelist. It is not really surprising that Mark has been considered for many centuries a poor writer.

Is that really the case? Has our first evangelist not succeeded in sharing with his public a passionate story? Or is this negative judgment essentially the act of exegetes having always neglected to consider the text of Mark as a narrative? Scholars have often divided the narration into numerous small passages so that it became difficult to have an experience of reading the whole book. Moreover, they focused on the historical context of each episode. By making a play on words we could say, “Too much history, not enough story.” Nevertheless, to inquire about the way the author communicates with his readers presupposes that we consider the Gospel in its whole as a narrative. An atomization or a division into short passages turns our attention away from the process of reading to questions about details in the separate parts. Happily, the ideas of certain literary theories in the secular sector have gained ground in the study of the Bible. And we must say that over the course of the last three decades attention has generally come to the Gospel of Mark.

From a methodological viewpoint, we mention a slide from a diachronic method of reading toward a synchronic method. The first emphasizes the “strata” of which the text is composed in order to draw near to the historical core as close as possible. It is as if we were clearing away the text by successive slices (dia-chronic). In the second, we consider the narrative elaboration of a text by interpreting the events as part of the text as it is presented (syn-chronic). An important part of these new methods is that they give us the right to say anything about the text only after an exhaustive reading. That’s why we will dedicate the following chapters to the narrative line concerning Jesus (chaps. 5 and 6) and the disciples (chap. 7). But it is another aspect of this narrative reading that I wish to treat before beginning the “what” of the text. It concerns the language and style of the text. In literary analysis, it is the part of the study that we call “rhetorical” or the “how” of the writing of the text. It is then no longer so much a question of the plot (What happened, when, where, and with whom?) but of the way in which the evangelist has fashioned the events narrated.

The commentary on the way the author communicates implicitly or explicitly with his readers by using certain rhetorical elements or by introducing stylistic characteristics is an open door to whomever. It is a form of literary criticism. The objective of this commentary is to prove that the evangelist is a good narrator and that he does everything in his power to direct his readers’ attention to the narration. Concerned to direct to a large diversified public, I deem this analysis to be the most needed because it broaches the text at the literary level. There is very little need, if any at all, for either preliminary scholarly knowledge or faith in the gospel. The analysis does not have as an objective to convince people of the truth of a text, but to open their eyes to the qualities of the narrator. It reveals passionate aspects of the text that permit every individual to better see that the text possesses in itself the force to influence readers. But at this stage, it is absolutely not required that they agree or disagree with the contents of the gospel. In the end, the readers will have to determine whether they want to go deeper in their study of the text and how.

The “How” of a Narrative

Authors hoping to convince readers will use certain literary elements, rhetorical or narratological, in their style to capture and keep their readers’ attention and finally to lead them to have an opinion. In the best of cases, these readers will assume the narrator’s vision. Good narrators know that they have to build up tension and trigger with the readers emotions or feelings of approval, doubt or sympathy. It is even more necessary that the readers feel themselves challenged by the text if this text is meant to convince people of certain ideas or even to influence their attitude or their behavior. In brief, if authors expect to succeed in spreading their message, it will be necessary to win over the public’s favor. Recent ideas about the narrative character of the Gospels have demonstrated that the way in which a Gospel has been constructed determines the content given in the narrative as well. In other words, form and content are a pair. This is an important fact. In fact, many of these literary conceptions are rooted in the art and the rules of ancient rhetoric. But for long centuries, the gospel texts have been carefully armored against all rhetorical analysis. Perhaps because we have conferred on them a too sacred character and/or we wished not to open them up to the literary—and therefore human—view of their origins. But things have changed and before concretely considering the content of the Gospel, I propose to examine the literary form that Mark has given to his Gospel with the goal of influencing the process of reading.

The Anonymous Narrator

Scholars have invested a lot of energy in their desire to identify the author of the Gospel according to Mark. Moreover, for each of the books of the Bible this question of authorship has largely maintained the attention for many centuries, the underlying idea being that if we could identify the “home port” and the identity of the author, we could reach a correct evaluation of the trustworthiness of the text. In this sense, it was important for the interpretation of the Gospels that we could place the evangelists as close as possible to Jesus. As scholars agreed in concluding that Mark could not have known Jesus, they sought a connection through the means of Peter. An important figure and an eyewitness, Peter would thus be the “missing link,” allowing us to guarantee the credibility of the Gospel. Still today there remain scholars who follow this path and for whom the message of this Gospel passes or breaks on the basis of their vision of the status of the author Mark as an historical person. They are, however, only a minority.

Narrative exegesis reverses things. It begins with the idea, shared today by the majority of scholars, that the author of the gospel is an anonymous Christian who wrote this text around the year 70 of the first century CE. And if he had wanted to make historical accuracy a theme of his writings, he would undoubtedly have treated it in a more explicit way. He has not done this. Does that weaken the credibility of his book? On the contrary, in disappearing into anonymity, he specifically acquires authority since, in this way, the message is no longer dependent on the specific vision of an individual author located in such-and-such a year in such-and-such a place. As an author he relies on the stage-effects. He does not write in the first person, thus the narrative itself occupies the forefront of the scene. Our whole attention can be concentrated on the events concerning the principal character, Jesus.

The Reliable “Omniscient” Narrator

The establishment of a relation between the narrator and reader is absolutely indispensable, so that the reader is put on the right road that the narrator is presented as a person worthy of trust. If ever the readers risk having doubts about the serious character of the narrator, there is little chance they will take his message seriously. Here, without the narrator unveiling his identity, he succeeds in passing for an author invested with authority. In order to do this, the fact of creating himself as an omniscient narrator has been of a determining weight. Thus he directs the setting of his story. At the simplest level, we can already say that what is proposed to the readers as a collection of facts is in reality a composition cleverly elaborated by the narrator. He puts on the stage people that he causes to come in contact with Jesus. By comparing the narrator to a cameraman, we see that he takes the liberty of moving his camera from one place to another. He gives close ups and from time to time a panoramic view. He it is, too, who succeeds in directly creating a tension by arousing situations of conflict between Jesus and the holders of power. He is the one who decides to make the disciples fluctuate between trust in Jesus and lack of understanding of him. He it is who decides to begin with the baptism of Jesus and end with the empty tomb. He does not in the slightest way mention the history concerning Jesus’ birth, no more than there are appearances of Jesus after the resurrection.

Readers scarcely stop to think of the fact that all this is interpretation. The narrative passes as authentic and believable. As readers travel in thought, so to speak, in the omniscience of the narrator, the feeling comes to them of mastering the narrative themselves and thus to accept that what is told is true. No one knows as much about all these events as the author and . . . the readers.

The author’s omniscience is particularly evident when he is reading and expressing the interior thoughts of people. Thus it is that he tells that the Pharisees plot among themselves to get rid of Jesus. He is equally present when some disciples discuss among themselves about their place in the Kingdom of God. He again knows perfectly when Jesus brings to light the thoughts of people he meets: he detects their faith, their hostility, their questioning, and their feelings. This last part, that Jesus possesses a great deal of intelligence about the people around him is important. It creates the idea that the narrator and Jesus think in the very same way. The narrator evolves, so to speak, in parallel with the thoughts and acts of Jesus. In the eyes of the reader, the narrator shares the quasi-totality of the norms and ideas of Jesus. The narrator and Jesus constitute a unanimous duo.

Omniscience Again: Space . . .

From the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea among exegetes increases that the geographical data and the chronological evolution in Mark are created by the author himself. Recent studies confirm it and try equally to discover the deeper significance of these structures. There is therefore a geographical division contrasting two large blocks, Galilee and Jerusalem, that is not simply a geographical fact. It is also a contrast between two conceptions of the religious life. Through this geographical contrast, the narrator confronts his reader with two fundamentally different approaches to the religious life. It is not by chance that Galilee is exactly the location where the good news, the gospel, is proclaimed. The narrative stresses in several places the fact that Jesus came from Galilee, which is also the place where he works. And the last words of the young man in the white robe in the empty tomb encourage the women to return to Galilee to meet the resurrected Lord there. Galilee symbolically represents a religion accessible to the common person. Jerusalem is the region that shows itself hostile to Jesus. The city of Jerusalem is not only the symbol of the religious center; it is also the place where the heart of official Judaism actually rules. It is this city in which the political and religious hierarchies share the power that becomes the strongest opposition to Jesus. It is there that the end of Jesus’ life occurs. At each step that Jesus takes toward Jerusalem, the tension of a very serious threat raises a notch. The reader is irresistibly affected by it. Jesus keeps to his own way of coming into God’s presence, which is different from the official practices current at the time.

There’s another aspect of this spatial perspective that should guide the reader. I...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• First Part: Reading the Bible Today
• Second Part: Mark’s Gospel