Mark and Money

To start off, here is one attempt to offer an economic scale for the Greco-Roman world (though this is by nature highly generalized and the data may be open to different interpretations and scholarly estimates):

Scale	Description	Includes	%
ES1	Imperial   elites	imperial   dynasty, Roman senatorial families, a few retainers, local royalty, a few   freedpersons	3
ES2	Regional   or provincial elites	equestrian   families, provincial officials, some retainers, some decurial families, some   freedpersons, some retired military officers
ES3	Municipal   elites	most   decurial families, wealthy men and women who do not hold office, some   freedpersons, some retainers, some veterans, some merchants
ES4	Moderate   surplus	some   merchants, some traders, some freedpersons, some artisans (especially those   who employ others), and military veterans	15
ES5	Stable   near subsistence level (with reasonable hope of remaining above the minimum   level to sustain life)	many   merchants and traders, regular wage earners, artisans, large shop owners,   freedpersons, some farm families	27
ES6	subsistence   level (and often below minimum level to sustain life)	small   farm families, laborers (skilled and unskilled), artisans (esp. those   employed by others), wage earners, most merchants and traders, small   shop/tavern owners	30
ES7	Below   sustenance level	some   farm families, unattached widows, orphans, beggars, disabled, unskilled day   laborers, prisoners	25

Chart taken from http://www.thepaulpage.com/remember-the-poor-paul-poverty-and-the-greco-roman-world/, a review of Bruce Longnecker’s Remember the Poor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) (itself in interaction with Steven Friessen’s article in JSNT 26 [2004])

Of course, unlike Paul’s urban mission, a complicating factor is the  difficulty of determining Mark’s provenance (i.e. Rome or one of the villages of Galilee or Syria-Palestine).  Assuming at least some continuity of the social programme of Jesus and Mark, we must remember that in Jesus’ historical context two cities were built under Herod Antipas in Galilee (Sepphoris, Tiberius) and the increase of commerce & trade may have led to increased peasant labour, debt through heavy taxation and land alienation (landless peasants left with only a hope of becoming day labourers or tenant farmer for a wealthy landlord) and caused the desperate to resort to beggary and banditry (Meyers 1988: 44-52; Horsley 2001: 33-36; Crossley 2005: 400; 2006: chapter 2).  Even if others have argued that Horsley exaggerates the plight of Galilean peasants and that building projects of Herod the Great or Herod Antipas created employment (e.g., Sanders 1993: 445-47), the perception that changes made things more difficult and disrupted traditional patterns of life must be factored in.  Many parables reflect economic realities (day labourers, tenant farmers, absentee landlords, household masters & servants, debt, etc) and the message of the coming of God’s kingdom to overturn the old order (i.e. the first will be last and the last first) could be very attractive in this context.

A concern about wealth occurs across the Synoptic tradition, most famously in the saying that one can’t serve both God and Mammon (Matt 6:24).  But lets focus specifically on Mark.  One objection to the Markan Jesus is his association with “tax collectors and sinners [ἁμαρτωλοί]” (2:15-16).  Objecting to the view that the “sinners” are simply the ‘amme ha-erets (peoples of the land) who did not meet the purity standards of the Pharisees for table fellowship, Sanders argues that the term refers to the notorious wicked who disobeyed Torah (see here for excerpts available online from Jesus and Judaism).  Even more specifically, through a diachronic word study of the term “sinners” Crossley argues that they are to be identified as the oppressive rich (e.g. “if one is excessively rich, he sins” Ps. Sol 5:16) and note the link with ”tax-collectors” (2006: ch. 3 Jesus and the Sinners).   Whatever one makes of Sanders controversial argument that the historical Jesus associated with sinners without calling for their repentance (see for instance Chilton’s critique here), in Mark it is clear that Jesus advocates repentance (Mk 1:15) and sees his reaching out to sinners as a physician reaching out to the sick (2:17).  The most explicit criticism of wealth in Mark is in the story of a young man (later informed he had great possessions in 10:22) who inquires about how to be saved (10:17-31).  First, Jesus repeats the commandments  (*note: how does this square with the ”Mark is Pauline” camp as it assumes the normative authority of Torah?) but adds “do not defraud” which is not in the Decalogue (ἀποστερέω calls to mind LXX Deut 24:14-15; Mal 3:5; Sir 4:1; cf. Crossley cites other Aramaic evidence from the Targums) and implies that wealth is acquired by taking advantage of the poor (e.g. the perception of limited good, charging big interest on loans, defrauding workers of wages, etc) (cf. Horsley 2002: 191; Crossley 2005).  Even though the man affirms he has obeyed these commands, whether rightly or wrongly, Jesus still insists that he sell all his possessions and follow him, a radical demand that he declines which leads to the saying that it is more difficult for the rich to enter than kingdom than a camel through the eye of a needle (a literal needle and camel, not some alleged “needle gate” in Jerusalem!).  Naturally, there is a desire to soften the radical edge of Jesus’ words, and perhaps one out may be the (redactional?) addition of Mark 10:27 that what is impossible with humans is possible for God, but at very least the Markan Jesus sees the desire for wealth as a serious obstacle to embracing Jesus’ upside-down kingdom.

I think that an economic critique is also the best way to understand the action of overturning the tables of the money changers and calls the Temple a bandit’s den (11:15-17).  I eventually will write posts in more detail on the criteria of authenticity for this incident in the lifetime of the historical Jesus or the diverse explanations offered for this scene within Mark’s literary context in the commentaries (e.g. resentment at the innovation of introducing animals & traders into the temple precints which ought to be sacred grounds, a rejection of the sacrificial system with replacement theology [Jesus pronounces clean, offers forgiveness, the eucharist replaces the cult, etc], protesting the temple as exclusionary of Gentiles [the Court of the Gentiles, "a house of prayer for all nations"], a protest of the temple as the seat of revolutionary violence [λῃστής for bandits or zealots in Josephus], forshadowing the Temple’s destruction]).   E.P. Sanders deconstructs many of these explanations at least for understanding Jesus in his Jewish context, noting that the cult was commanded in Torah and it was actually a convenience to sell unblemished animals (imagine the costs of bringing animals from long distances for worshippers throughout the diaspora, let alone the potential that these animals be ruled unacceptable for sacrifice if they were not unblemished, and the buying/selling of animals and exchange of coinage was necessary for sacrifice to continue) (1985: 61-69).  Sanders judges that Jesus intended it as a symbolic act of the eschatological destruction & restoration of the Temple, which Mark misunderstood by supplying the quotation at 11:17, and concludes,  “He [Jesus] did not wish to purify the temple, either of dishonest trading or of trading in contrast to ‘pure’ worship.  Nor was he opposed to the temple sacrifices which God commanded Israel.  He intended, rather, to indicate that the end was at hand and the temple would be destroyed, so that the new and perfect temple might arise” (1985: 75).  However, Craig Evans (1989) provides a plausible context for Jesus (like Jeremiah before him) to condemn the immense wealth of the Temple and the economic exploitation sanctioned by the priesthood (e.g., m. Ker. 1:7 complains of the excessive cost of sacrificial doves, which was the poor offering).  Note also the later critique of scribes who devour widows house’s (12:40), followed by the story of a poor widow who has her last two coins taken away from her (12:41-44) and then the prophesied destruction of the temple stone by stone (13:1-2) (cf. Horsley 2002: 216-17).  Again, this fits into the larger story of Mark where Jesus stands in opposition to the powerful Judaean elites backed by Roman imperial authority and promises a dramatic reversal in the imminent future for the losers of society.

• Crossley, James.  “The Damned Rich (Mark 10:17-31).”  Expository Times 2005 (116): 397-401.
• Crossley, James.  Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE).  Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. 
• Evans, Craig., “Jesus’ Action in the Temple: Cleansing or Portent of Destruction?” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51 (1989): 237-70.
• Horsley, Richard.  Hearing the Whole Story:  The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
• Sanders, E.P.  Jesus and Judaism.  London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.
• Sanders, E.P. “Jesus in Historical Context.”  Theology Today 50  (1993): 429-48

Guest Post on Mark on Jesus and Rome

The following reflects the views of guest poster Michael Sandford, a 3rd year PhD student researching the historical Jesus at the University of Sheffield.  For other posts he has written at the Sheffield Biblical Studies Blog, see here and here and the abstract for his BNTC presentation here.

Mike’s two entries below raise for me the issue of how Mark chose to represent the historical Jesus’ relationship with the Roman Empire. I would suggest that Mark was heavily influenced by Jewish nationalism, and that this leads to his presentation of Jesus as what some people describe as ‘anti-imperialist’. I think there is little evidence, however, that Jesus saw himself this way.

It is certainly possible that Mark may have intended the Legion episode to be suggestive of the destruction of the Roman dominion that many Jewish people were hoping for and to deny at least the possibility that Mark was expressing some negative feeling towards Rome requires one to put out of their head the hugely significant fact that, probably less than a decade after Mark wrote this, the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in the Jewish revolt. Also, as John Dominic Crossan has argued, there is much evidence that the ‘Son of God’ title was frequently used in relation to Caesar, and so for this title to be given to Jesus was likely to cause a stir. He argues that giving such a title to a Jewish peasant ‘was a case of either low lampoon or high treason’. Surely at least some of Mark’s audience would have made a connection here. In a time of escalating Jewish nationalism and increased hostility towards Rome – just a few years before the largest revolt that the Roman Empire ever saw – Mark’s comments were suggestive to say the least. Mark was not afraid to throw some fairly unambiguous jibes at Rome.

Jesus, on the other hand, seems rather more careful about what he will say on the subject; Jesus could have refused to pay taxes to Rome, like the Fourth Philosophy (Josephus, Ant 28.1), but he explicitly tolerated it (Mk 12:17). Jesus was not an insurrectionist. Maybe he would have been a bit more popular in his lifetime like, say, Mark’s ‘Barabbas’ was supposed to be, if he was a little more anti-Rome? But far from it, he was understood to have said that he, himself, would destroy the temple (Mk 14:58), because, according to Mark, he did indeed say something or other about it being thrown down (Mk 13:2). While Jesus speaks of the ‘Kingdom of God’, which could perhaps also seem quite provocative in the context of Jewish nationalism, this Kingdom for Jesus was associated with sinlessness (9:47), childlikeness (10:14-15), and renunciation of wealth (10:23-34), and was described in mysterious parables (4:11-32); it did not seem to have anything to do with Jewish political autonomy.

Doron Mendels argues that the historical Jesus cannot be understood unless he is seen in the context of Jewish nationalism. To me it seems that Mark’s memory of Jesus may have been influenced by this nationalism. Besides the ‘Legion’ episode and ‘Son of God’ title, Mark (along with the other evangelists) notes that the Roman sign above his head proclaimed him to be the ‘King of the Jews’ (Mk 15:26). With these things in mind, I would argue that Mark was happy to present Jesus as something of a national hero.  All of the gospels suggest that Jesus was martyred by the imperial forces, and I think that Mark’s way of dealing with this fact is telling. Mark tries to explain this traumatic event by appealing to the Hebrew Scriptures, Psalm 22 in particular. I think that R.S. Sugirtharajah’s concept of heritagist readings might help us to understand what Mark was doing:

This mode of interpretation [heritagist reading] is an attempt by the colonized to find conceptual analogies in their high culture and textual traditions and philosophies, and also in their oral and visual art forms. It is an attempt to retrieve cultural memory from the amnesia caused by colonialism. This retrieval takes place sometimes in the form of reinterpretation of stories, myths, and legends as a remembered history of a region, class, caste, gender, or race, sometimes as intertextual interpolation of quotations, allusions, and references.

For Mark, describing Jesus’ execution as an almost exact representation of Psalm 22 dignifies and helps to explain Jesus’ execution in a way that turns it from a story of imperial domination into something much more hopeful.  But Mark, and later Matthew, Luke and John go much further than this in trying to make something of the Jesus tragedy. The resurrection that they report suggests that the crucifixion, symbolic of Roman domination, apparently did not really defeat Jesus. For Mark and the other evangelists, even if the Romans did destroy the temple, there is some hope to be found because the Messiah miraculously undermined their attempts to kill him.  It is easy to see, therefore, how Jesus might be interpreted as an anti-imperial prophet. In Mark’s story, I would argue that he did function in this way. But did Jesus see himself like this? There seems to be evidence to the contrary, but not much evidence in favour of such an argument.

•  John Dominic Crossan, ‘Roman Imperial Theology’ in In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance (ed. Richard A. Horsley; Edinburgh: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), p.59-73
• Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), p.ix
• R.S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p.55

SBL Recap

My highlights of the annual SBL conference at San Francisco:

• It was a new experience to not only present twice but have an official respondent for each.  I enjoyed the session on Jewish-Christian relations and overall the respondent agreed with my central thesis on ethnic reasoning in the epistle of Barnabas with good critical questions.  The second paper was in an intimidatingly large room as I guess many are interesting in testing out the arguments for a second century date for Luke-Acts (this was the first of a three-year plan to test the second century hypothesis).  Although it still seems quite plausible to me that the portrait of John Mark may be influenced by traditions linking a Mark with Paul (Phlm 23; Col 4:10) or a Mark with Peter (1 Pet 5:13; Papias - his tradition passed down from “the elders” [i.e. elder John] since turn of the century), I recognize the strength of Dr. Loveday Alexander’s objection against a direct literary relationship with Papias is that the two may perhaps reflect familiar rhetorical topoi from preface conventions.  Had a good chance to have nice discussions/feedback afterwards from Loveday Alexander, Margaret Mitchell, Heikki Leppä and others and Richard Pervo signed a copy of Dating Acts for me so that was cool.
• Always fun to meet fellow bloggers at these conferences.  Some I knew beforehand (James Crossley is my supervisor, Tyler Williams my undergrad professor, Jim Linville a fellow UofA alumni, others such as James McGrath, Jim West, Chris Tilling, Ken Brown, etc. I have gotten to interact with at past conferences) while others I had an opportunity to meet for the first time (Joel Watts, Deane Galbraith, Bob Cargill, Christian Brady, Michael Halcombe, Brian LePort).
• I was really bad at catching sessions besides my own.  For instance, despite good intentions I missed all the Mark sessions but I want to note that Joel Watts has covered many of them on his blog here, here, here, here (the least I can do is share the links since Joel generously paid for my expensive drink at the biblioblogger get-together; readers who objected to my pre-70 date for Mark will also be happy to know Joel took me to task as I learned he sees the final redaction of Mark ca 75 CE in interaction with Josephus’ Wars).  I did manage to catch both secularism and biblical studies sessions (including hearing Burton Mack for the first time) and, while I consider myself a Christian believer, I agree it is important not to ever confuse the secular study of biblical (and other Jewish, Christian or Greco-Roman) texts as cultural artifacts of different groups in specific historical & social contexts that we at least attempt to study as honestly and methodologically rigorous as possible and the theological task of attempting to discern how a certain collection texts may be “relevant” within contemporary communities of faith.
• After all responsibilities were completed and nothing was left to do, I might have celebrated a little too much at the Sheffield reception…
• Also caught some of the tourist attractions in San Francisco including a bus tour over the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz (I learned that no escape attempt was ever successful as far as we know, but they didn’t take account of Sean Connery in The Rock ).

The Priene Inscription and Mark 1:1

Priene Calendar Inscription, ca 9 BCE:

It seemed good to the Greeks of Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius  of Menophilus Azanitus: “Since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus,  whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a  savior [σωτῆρα], both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and  arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance [ἐπιφανεῖς] (excelled  even our anticipations), surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving  to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birthday of the  god Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings for the world that came by  reason of him [ἦρξεν δὲ τῶι κόσμωι τῶν δι’ αὐτὸν εὐανγελίων ἡ γενέθλιος ἡμέρα τοῦ θεοῦ],” which Asia resolved in Smyrna.

(H.T. http://ntresources.com/blog/?p=428 for translation/bibliographic info, see also  http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~fkflinn/Priene%20Inscription.html and http://www.textexcavation.com/augustus.html)

ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ θεοῦ = The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ [Son of God] (Mark 1:1) (the words “Son of God” are in square brackets in UBS4 and NA27 because they are textually uncertain [see below])

Mark 1:1 seems to directly counter the “good news” of Roman imperial propaganda and “gospel” (εὐαγγέλιον) is found 6 other times in Mark (7 if one takes into account the longer ending) while absent in Q, Luke and John (it is used 4 times in Matthew), but there are some critical issues that need to be discussed.  First, there are textual issues (see Mark 1:1 in this textual commentary).  There is also some grammatical issues as it stands:  verse 1 has a subject without a predicate and no “verb to be” to connect to verse 2 and verses 2-3 a subordinate clause without a main clause.  A few scholars thus argue 1:1 in its entirety is a later scribal addition (Horsley 2001, 250; Croy 2001; Elliot 2000 argues that 1:1-3 as a whole is an addition due to its “unique or non-Markan features”).   But Gundry critiques Horsley that there is no external support and that the omission of 1:1 would leave the καθὼς (as)-clause of 1:2 standing alone when in 7 other instances it always depends on something preceding (4:33; 9:13; 11:6; 14:16, 21; 15:8; 16:7) (2003, 133); the argument that the beginning was lost and Croy’s theory that 1:2 was originally attached to a now lost beginning (he argues 1:1 as a scribal marker that his copy of the gospel begins here) or Elliot’s that different scribes inserted 1:1 as a title, Isaiah 40:3 to introduce the Baptist and the composite scriptural proof text in 1:2-3 from Matt 11:10/Lk 7:27 (without deleting the initial reference to “Isaiah the prophet”) also suffer from the lack of textual evidence (unlike the longer endings after 16:8).  There is no evidence that 1:1 is not original, but the major divide in manuscript and patristic witnesses is between the shorter version (omitting υἱοῦ θεοῦ) and the longer version above, so “Son of God” may either be a pious addition or an accidental omission due to the phenomenon of homoioteleuton (note all the genitive endings and especially the issues when one takes into account the abbreviated nomina sacra = ΙΥΧΥΥΥΘΥ).  There are good arguments pro and con for the originality of “Son of God” (see the disagreement of Wasserman 2011 and Head 1991), but my leaning is that the external evidence and the larger themes in Mark’s narrative (“son” as a very important title for Mark and noted at critical junctures in the narrative [twice by God] - the baptism, the transfiguration and the cross) largely supports the longer version.

The second issue is what influenced the use of the noun εὐαγγέλιον – was it adapted from the verb in Deutero-Isaiah (e.g. Isa 52:7) (e.g., Betz 1991) or influenced by the imperial cult (e.g. Stanton 2004)?  On the one hand, there is influence of Deutero-Isaiah on Mark as well as Paul (Rom 10:15) but there is a question of how the verb (בשר [bsr] or the LXX εὐαγγελίζομαι) led to the noun in the singular (the plural form of the noun is only found in 2 Sam 4:10).  Alternatively, there is a good case for the impact of the imperial cult (cf. Kim 1998 compile inscriptional evidence of Caesar Augustus ["the revered one"] as huios theou or divi filius [son of god] and Evans 2000 marshals a strong case for Mark rivaling imperial propaganda) and Stanton (2004, 24-35) presents a plausible case that the term was adopted by Greek-speaking Jewish Christ followers in Antioch (or Jerusalem) sometime in 37-40 CE (when the potential Caligula crisis made imperial claims particularly felt in the region), but again the noun in the singular neuter is relatively rare as one may note the more conventional plural εὐαγγέλια in the inscription above (see further Steve Mason’s article for relevant texts and for the argument that the term in distinctively Pauline nomenclature which he renders as “The Announcement”).  So I want to turn the attention over to readers and ask whether you think the background is in Isaiah or in the imperial cult, or do we have to choose between the two as Mark may have seen the announcement of the victory of the god of Israel (in the context of Deutero-Isaiah a political announcement of the return from exile) as a direct challenge to imperial claims that the gods had chosen Rome to rule and usher in a lasting age of peace? 

• Betz, Otto.  “Jesus Gospel of the Kingdom.”  Pages 53-74 in The Gospel and the Gospels.  Edited by Peter Stuhlmacher.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.
• Croy, N. Claton.  ”Where the Gospel text begins: A non-theological interpretation of Mk 1:1.” Novum Testamentum 43 (2001) 106-12.
• Elliot, J.K.  “Mark 1:1-3 - A Later Addition to the Gospel?”  New Testament Studies 46 (2000): 584-8.
•  Evans, Craig. “Mark’s Incipit and the Priene Calendar Inscription: From Jewish Gospel to Greco-Roman Gospel.” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 1 (2000): 67-81.
• Gundry, Robert.  “Richard A. Horsley’s Hearing the Whole Story A Critical Review of its Postcolonial Slant.”  Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26 (2003)
• Horsley, Richard.  Hearing the Whole Story:  The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
• Head, Peter M.  “A Text-Critical Study of Mark 1.1: ‘The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ’,” New Testament Studies 37 (1991): 621-29.
• Johnson, Earl S.  “Mark 15.39 and the So-Called Confession of the Roman Centurion.”  Biblica 81.3  (2000): 406-413.
• Kim, Tae Hun.  “The Anarthrous Υιος Θεου in Mark 15,39 and the Roman Imperial Cult”. Biblica 79.2 (1998): 222-241.
• Stanton, Graham.  Jesus and Gospel.  Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Wasserman, Tommy.  “The Son of God was in the Beginning (Mark 1:1).“  Journal of Theological Studies 62 (2011): 20-50 (his handout and audio presentation is here)

My Name is Legion

The Gerasene Demoniac (Mk 5:1-20) is the most dramatic exorcism account in the gospels.   I am going to leave aside the text critical problems surrounding Garasenes/Gadarenes/Gergesenes and some of the other historical issues (Gerasa is about 55/34 miles from the lake and Gadara about 8 km/5 miles away) for the moment and concentrate on the meaning of the story.   The Jewish worldview is evident as the demonic realm is represented by ritually unclean places (the tombs), animals (pigs) and persons (the demoniac appears to be a Gentile - note how he addresses Jesus as “Son of the Most High God” [cf. Gen 14:18-20; Num 24:16; Deut 32:8; Ps 82:6; Isa 14:14; Dan 3:26; 4:32, 34]).  There may also be a political edge to the story (see esp Meyers 1988, 191-97; Horsley 2001, 141-47).  Both Meyers and Horsley build on the observations of Frantz Fanon that the colonized displace their anger from real political forces that invade and oppress them to malevolent spirits and thus the actions of the demoniac is a public symbolic act reflecting the collective anxiety over Roman imperialism.  Second, a “legion” (λεγιών) calls to mind a Roman military unit (can be up to 6000 soldiers, though only 2000 pigs drown) as does a ”herd” (ἀγέλη) who “charge” into the sea.  The drowning of the pigs has scriptural echoes of  the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in the Sea in the Exodus story.  Finally, though much more debateable some see a specific referent behind the story such as Vespasian’s reconquest of northern Palestine by sending Lucius Annius to Gerasa with a calvary and a number of foot soldiers (War 4.9.1) (Meyers 1988, 191) or the Tenth Legion (symbol was the boar’s head) who besieged Jerusalem (War 5.71-97) and may have sacrificed a pig to the Roman standards in the temple (cf. War 7.17; 6.316) and in 71 attacked the fortresses of Machaerus and Masada, both with cliffs over the Dead Sea (Incigneri 2003, 191-94; note this doesn’t fully explain why the story has “Gerasa” but Incigneri notes on pp. 193-4 n. 137 that this feature may be because Simon ben Gioras came from Gerasa [War 4.503] and had been defeated & executed as part of the Roman Triumph).

Not all scholars embrace this political reading.  In his review of Horsley, Gundry argues “legion” simply means numerous (“for we are many” in v. 9) (2003, 137) and Boring cites a parallel from Horace who spoke of a “cohort of fever demons” (Odes 1.3.30) (2006, 151), but both overlook the other military imagery and Exodus imagery as well as the comparative analogy of colonial Algeria cited by Horsley.  Boring thinks that the real implications of the story is that Jesus drives unclean spirits out of Gentile territory so that Israel is no longer exclusively “holy land” (2006, 152).   However, Daniel Cohen has strong arguments against a pro-Gentile reading:  he points out that there had always been a Jewish presence in the Decapolis at least since most of them were conquered by Alexander Yannai (103-76 BCE) though the “significant indigenous Jewish population that was marginalized by a colonial Greco-Gentile population with the support of Roman imperial power” (2010, 153-56) and his Jewish reading is that Jesus intends to rid the world of foreign imperialism and restore the land to Jewish sovereignty while Gentiles are still permitted to live in Eretz Israel (2010, 159).  Cohen also protests the over-interpretation of Mk 5:19-20 as a commision to a mission field when Jesus simply tells the healed man to go home (οἶκος) and tell his close family & friends what the “Lord” (i.e. god of Israel) had done for him, which he subsequently disobeys by breaking the theme of secrecy and telling everybody how much Jesus has done for him (2010, 160-68; I am not entirely convinced by Cohen that Mark sees the Gentile mission as “illegitimate” [p. 168] as there are other hints in the gospel from the asides about Jewish customs to the Syrophoenician woman, the two feeding narratives or eschatological predictions of a mission to the nations [13:10; 14:9] that Mark writes for a mixed audience, but I agree with Cohen that this story is not primarily about the Gentile mission).  Finally, Joel Marcus allows that the pre-Markan story may have been a satire of the Roman milatary presence (e.g. the legion, the wild boar emblem on a Roman legion stationed in Palestine [cf. 1 Enoch 89:12]), but argues that it is unclear if the evangelist shared such anti-Roman sentiment or was more focussed on the battle against Satan  (2000, 351-52), but it seems to me that in the ancient worldview earthly/heavenly realities were intertwined and human political conflicts had a heavenly counterpart (e.g. the chief prince Michael as defender of Israel against the princes of Persia or Greece in Dan 10).   Walter Wink writes that for Jews or Christians, “The spirit [Satan] they perceived existed right at the heart of the empire, but their worldview equipped them to discern that spirit only by intuiting it and then projecting it out, in visionary form, as a spiritual being residing in heaven and representing Rome in the heavenly council (1992, 7).  Thus, if we get rid of the anachronistic “separation of church and state”, the story of “Legion” fits in with the broader message of Mark with its announcement of the imminent coming of God’s kingdom or empire and of the Son of Man in power as a direct challenge to the current political order and the unseen spiritual forces thought to rule through it.

• Boring, M. Eugene.  Mark.  The NT Library; Louisville & London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.
• Cohen, Daniel.  “The Geransene Demoniac:  A Jewish Approach to Liberation before 70 CE.”  Pages 152-173 in Judaism, Jewish Identities and the Gospel Tradition:  Essays in Honour of Maurice Casey.  Edited by James G. Crossley; London and Oakville: Equinox, 2010.
• Gundry, Robert.  “Richard A. Horsley’s Hearing the Whole Story A Critical Review of its Postcolonial Slant.”  Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26 (2003)
• Horsley, Richard.  Hearing the Whole Story:  The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
• Incigneri, Brian.  The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2003)
• Marcus, Joel.  Mark 1-8.  Anchor Bible; New York: Doubleday, 2000.
• Meyers, Ched.  Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus.  New York: Orbis Books, 1988.
• Wink, Walter.  Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

SBL in the blogs

Well, SBL is almost upon us, so in the midst of all the sessions, browsing the book stalls, attempting to network, enjoying various receptions and touring San Francisco, one thing to look forward is the bibliobloggers dinner (also announced here, here, here).  I had the opportunity to meet many  at New Orleans a few years ago and London last July so I look forward to it (other bloggers have noted where to get the best coffee or the new dining attire laws).  There has also been discussion about the low rates of female presenters at SBL and abysmally low rate at ETS (here, here, here, here) and I agree with Deane’s analysis about underlying issues with patriarchal structures and values within some conservative versions of Christianity.  So the solution does not seem to me to just to lament the lack of representation among biblical scholars, church leadership or in the “biblioblogosphere”, but to ask ourselves how we can use our scholarship and blogs to take a clear stand on full egalitarianism regardless of gender, ethnicity, culture or orientation and work to change the ethos of these academic societies.  Okay, next week I will actually start posting on the series I announced last week (I hope).

Upcoming SBL presentations

Eventually I will get around to typing up something on the politics of Mark’s gospel, at least before the world ends in 2012.  But the Sheffield blog has posted the upcoming SBL presentations so I want to call attention to my sessions (dates/times on Sheffield blog):

A Contested Covenant: Construction [typo: Constructing]  a Christian Ethnic Identity in the Epistle of Barnabas (25 min)

There was no abstract conception of religion in antiquity, but religious beliefs and practices were closely intertwined with ethnicity in the Greco-Roman period.  Building on the groundbreaking studies of Denise Kimber Buell, I investigate the use of ethnic reasoning in Christian identity formation with the epistle of Barnabas as a specific case study.  In contrast to some scholars who insist on a sharp “parting of the ways” between Christianity and Judaism in the late first or early second century, the author of Barnabas seems to directly respond to a concern that the socially-constructed boundaries between the two communities remained quite fluid and permeable at the ground level.  Barnabas utilizes ethnic reasoning to create a distinct Christian ethnic identity and to manufacture sharp differences between Christian and Jewish social praxis.  In order to promote the idea of a homogenous Christian ethnic identity with pure origins, Barnabas re-appropriates the legacy of Israel while representing the Ioudaios (“Jew” or “Judean”) as an adversarial foil.

The Flawed Evangelist (John) Mark: Reading Luke-Acts in Light of Papias (25 min)
Due to the popularity of the name Marcus in the Greco-Roman period, there is no necessary identity between John Mark in Acts and the various figures named Mark who appear in the Pauline corpus (Phlm 24; Col 4:10; 2 Tim 4:11), the first epistle of Peter (1 Pet 5:13) or the fragments of Papias (H.E. 3.39.15).  However, in line with recent scholarly efforts to re-date the book of Acts to the first quarter of the second century (Richard Pervo, Joseph Tyson, Dennis MacDonald), this paper will propose that the author of Luke-Acts was not only aware of Mark’s connection with Paul and Barnabas from the Pauline epistles, but, more importantly, was familiar with the developing association of Mark with Peter and the second Gospel found in Papias’s five-volume Exposition of the Logia of the Lord (ca. 110 CE).  If the author of Luke-Acts was ambivalent towards Mark’s Gospel as well as the tradition regarding the evangelist Mark that is represented by Papias, this could provide a plausible explanation for the ambivalent portrait of John Mark in the narrative of Acts.  John Mark is depicted in a privileged position as a younger contemporary of both Peter and Paul (Acts 12:12, 25), yet also as a deeply flawed character who fades into obscurity (13:13; 15:27-29).  In a similar way, Mark’s Gospel is among Luke’s many predecessors that attempted to compile an account of the matters passed on from the earliest witnesses, but it is also judged by the author to be a flawed work that must be supplanted by a more “orderly” account (Luke 1:1-4).

Okay, the first one has nothing to do with Mark but brings me back to my MA thesis on how some second century Christian leaders used “ethnic reasoning” (see Denise Kimber Buell, Caroline Hodge, Judith Lieu, Love Sechrest) to try to forge a distinct “Christian” identity for their own communities that is differentiated sharply from the Jewish people (e.g. claims in the adversus ioudaios literature to be a new or third race, a holy people/nation, true Israel, Abraham’s descendants, etc).  If you are interested in reading on this further, I published an article specifically on Barnabas at Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses.

I recognize that the second presentation may have some skeptical eyebrows raised.  I am treating this more as a thought experiment to see how far I can run with it:  if there is any plausibility to arguments for a second century date of Luke-Acts (ca 115 CE or later based on knowledge of Paul’s letters, Josephus, affinities w/ church fathers), is it just a coincidence that Acts has a character named John Mark that is associated with Paul & Barnabas on the one hand (cf. Philemon, Colossians) and Peter on the other  (cf. 1 Peter; Papias et al) or could the author of Luke-Acts be aware of and critically interacting with the developing traditions on the “evangelist” Mark (see here for further discussions on the evolving picture of [John?] Mark).

I am a little nervous as a student to give two papers at the big conference before a bunch of smarter senior scholars, but I have gone sky diving and bungee jumping so it cannot be any scarier than that, can it???