JETS 52/1 (March 2009)
Mark: A Commentary. By Adela Yarbro Collins.
Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007, xlvi + 894 pp., $80.00.
Adela Yarbro Collins,
Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at the Yale
University Divinity School, has written a notable commentary on Mark’s Gospel
that is characterized by depth of thought and extensive research. The 125-page
introduction covers a number of significant topics: authorship, place of writing,
date, genre, Mark’s interpretation of Jesus, the Synoptic problem, the audience
and purpose for Mark’s Gospel, the history of interpretation, and the text of
Mark. With regard to authorship, Yarbro Collins takes seriously the title “The
Gospel according to Mark” as part of the early evidence. Even if the author did
not give the work a title, whoever originally copied and circulated it to other
communities likely gave it one that mentioned Mark (p. 2). Yarbro Collins is
open to the testimony of 1 Peter and Papias concerning an association between Peter
and Mark (pp. 3–4, 101). She is also willing to accept the possibility that
Paul’s letter to Philemon and the letter to the Colossians serve as witnesses
to a relationship between Paul and a Christian Jew named Mark. He may be the
same Mark mentioned in Acts and the same person who wrote the second Gospel
(pp. 5–6). On the basis of evidence from Mark 13, Yarbro Collins regards the
date for the writing of Mark to be before ad 70, although likely in the late 60s, after certain leaders in the Jewish
revolt against Rome took on messianic pretensions (p. 14; cf. p. 603). Although
she notes that external evidence points to Rome as the place of writing, Yarbro
Collins argues that much of the internal evidence points to somewhere in one of
the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. She leans toward Antioch as a
possible location for the writing of Mark’s Gospel, but she recognizes that the
evidence is not sufficient to make a definite decision (pp. 7–10, 101–2). Mark,
no doubt, had more than one purpose in mind when he wrote his Gospel. Yarbro
Collins mentions two. First, Mark intended to reassert and redefine the
messiahship of Jesus in light of the presence of messianic pretenders in the
Jewish war that began in ad 66. Second, Mark
wanted to present the suffering of persecution as a crucial aspect of
discipleship in imitation of Christ (pp.
101–2).
Yarbro Collins’s discussion of
the circumstances surrounding the writing of Mark’s Gospel stands somewhat
awkwardly next to her comparison of Mark’s Gospel to the books of Moses at the
beginning of her commentary. Yarbro Collins states, “Like the books of Moses,
Mark is the product of a long process of tradition involving many authors and editors”
(p. 1). This statement reads more like an affirmation of a basic principle
behind form criticism than as a serious comparison between Mark and the books
of Moses. I have my doubts that Yarbro Collins intends to communicate that the
Pentateuch was written 35–40 years after the death of Moses by an associate of
Joshua (cf. her summary of the Deuteronomistic history on p. 38). Yet if the
Pentateuch were written under such circumstances, would it be fair to
characterize it as the product of a long process of tradition involving many
authors and editors? The same type of question arises when Yarbro Collins
describes the relationship between Mark’s Gospel and the history of early
Christian tradition (p. 94). According to this description, after Jesus’ death
some of his followers experienced him as risen from the dead. Out of these experiences
arose a Jewish messianic movement that grew into the early Christian church.
Those who proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah shaped the traditions about him,
created new stories, and updated old traditions in light of their ever-changing
circumstances. Mark then apparently received these traditions after an
extensive process and shaped them into a continuous story of the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus. Yet in light of Mark’s early involvement in the
Christian movement and his possible association with the first leaders of that
movement (not to mention Mark’s own role and skill as a writer), is it
realistic to portray Mark as a passive recipient and channel of a long process
of uncontrolled tradition?
Yarbro Collins’s section on
the genre of Mark’s Gospel is a significant scholarly contribution (pp. 15–43).
The question of genre is important, as Yarbro Collins points out, because any
interpretation of Mark’s Gospel relies to some extent on an “understanding of
what kind of text it is and thus what its purpose is” (p. 17). Yarbro Collins
explores the basic options for the genre of Mark: Mark as a “gospel” (that is,
a new and unique genre), Mark as “biography,” and Mark as “history.” Although
she recognizes the insights of others who take Mark as a unique genre or as a
biography, she leans decidedly in the direction of Mark as history. For Yarbro
Collins, Mark is an eschatological historical monograph (pp. 18, 42–43). “The
author of Mark’s Gospel has taken the model of biblical sacred history and
transformed it” (p. 1). The transformation comes in part through the influence
of an eschatological and apocalyptic perspective in Mark’s view of history, with
its tendency toward periodization and its notion of a fixed divine plan.
Another part of the transformation comes from the influence of Hellenistic
historiographical and biographical traditions, including the emphasis on
memorable deeds and the increasing focus on individuals, sometimes on a single
person.
The main objection against
viewing Mark as history has been that a work of history should be concerned
with an accurate account of historical information but Mark was concerned with
proclamation and his Gospel is full of miraculous events. Yarbro Collins responds
by urging caution against the attempt to force modern ideals of historiography on
ancient writers and readers. Ancient historical writing could include
miraculous events, both direct interventions by deities in human affairs and a
more implicit role for divine agency in determining the outcome of earthly
events. Ancient history writing did not limit itself only to empirically
verifiable data and also found it necessary to use
a certain degree of invention
to fill in the gaps of the narrative. Therefore the presence of miracles should
not disqualify the Gospel of Mark as a work of history (p. 41). Indeed, Yarbro
Collins expresses a fair amount of scepticism in her commentary toward the
historicity of Mark’s account, but that perspective does not keep her from
understanding
Mark’s Gospel as a work of
history.
Regarding Mark’s own attitude
toward the miraculous, Yarbro Collins hesitates. According to Yarbro Collins,
Mark may have believed that the mighty deeds of Jesus were actual historical
events, or he may have viewed them as figurative expressions of are somehow
detachable from Mark’s core message about Jesus’ role and power. Yet Mark’s
Gospel is so thoroughly miraculous, from the initial statement on the
fulfillment of prophecy to the final resurrection scene, that removing the
miracles significantly distorts Mark’s presentation of Jesus, both with regard
to his messianic role and his
Spirit-empowered life. In
another place, Yarbro Collins is on more stable ground when she states that the
story of Mark’s Gospel is told by “one who believes it and in order to persuade
others” (p. 1).
The actual commentary on
Mark’s Gospel fills up nearly 700 oversized pages. Each section of the
commentary begins with a translation of the passage along with extensive text-critical
notes, often followed by an explanation of the literary context of the passage and
its place within the narrative unit. Yarbro Collins normally moves on to a
description of the form and tradition history of the passage before working
through the text verse by verse. The most distinctive contribution of the
commentary is the extent to which Yarbro Collins identifies and quotes literary
parallels to Mark’s text from other ancient writings. She draws on a wide range
of contemporary Jewish, Greek, and Roman works in order to shed light on Mark’s
Gospel. A few examples may help to convey the breadth of Yarbro Collins’s
research. According to Mark 1:5, those who were baptized by John were
confessing their sins. In her comments on the verse, Yarbro Collins offers an overview
of material on the subject of confession, pointing out ancient Assyrian,
Babylonian, Hittite, and Egyptian practices, inscriptions from Lydia and
Phrygia, a quote from Menander about confession among the worshipers of Isis,
inscriptions related to the cult of Aklepios, and texts from Quman (pp.
142–45). Jesus’ parable concerning the sowing of seeds (Mark 4:1–9) draws out
comparisons to texts from Aristotle, 4 Ezra, Hosea, the Similitudes of Enoch,
one of the Thanksgiving Hymns from Qumran, Plato, Seneca, The Law (a work attributed to Hippocrates), Diogenes Laertius in a statement concerning
the Stoics, 1 Clement, Irenaeus, and the book of Colossians (pp. 242–46).
The passage concerning the
rich man (Mark 10:17–31) is illustrated through references and quotations from Psalms of Solomon, 1 Enoch, the Sibylline Oracles, Philo, the Berakot tractate of the Mishnah, the Damascus Document, OT texts such as Lev 6:1–7 and
Mal 3:5, Sirach, Epictetus, Diogenes Laertuis, and 4 Ezra (pp. 475–83). Not
every passage in Mark calls for such extensive literary parallels, but it would
be difficult to find a passage for which Yarbro Collins does not provide some
quotations from ancient sources. In an isolated quotation from a modern source,
even the Rolling Stones make an unexpected appearance to lend their support to
Jesus’ teaching on faith (p. 535)!
Yarbro Collins does not
typically argue that the collected parallels had a direct influence on Mark’s
thinking or on the way in which his work was received by the original audience.
More often, the collection of material serves as a general background to Mark’s
Gospel, with Yarbro Collins noting similarities and differences as a way of
sorting out the most likely meaning of Mark’s text. However, there are
exceptions to this general observation, since at times Yarbro Collins proposes
some influence from parallel ideas on either Mark or his audience. Some of the
more notable of these exceptions appear in Yarbro Collins’s discussions of
Jesus’ miracle of walking on the water (see esp. pp. 332– 30), Jesus’ teaching
about his death as a ransom in place of the many (see esp. pp. 502, 504), the
centurion’s confession of Jesus as God’s son (see esp. pp. 767–68), and, at
least tentatively, Mark’s account of the resurrection and empty tomb (see esp.
pp. 791–94).
Different commentaries on
Mark’s Gospel have different strengths. The main strength of Yarbro Collins’s
commentary is clearly in its extensive description of the general literary
background to Mark’s Gospel. My initial concern with Yarbro Collins’s approach
was that the noise of so many parallel voices would drown out the distinctive message of Mark. However, Yarbro Collins
manages to look carefully not only at other ancient documents but also at the
text of Mark itself. In the end, my concern was replaced with an appreciation
for the years of research that must have gone into this work. Yarbro Collins’s
commentary will remain an important resource for studying parallels to Mark’s
Gospel from ancient Jewish, Greek, and Roman literature for years to come.
Joel F. Williams
Columbia International University, Columbia, SC
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten