Review in: Theology Today 2000 57: 280
Review door: Brian K. BlountGevonden op: http://ttj.sagepub.com/content/57/2/280.full.pdf+html
The Theology of the Gospel of Mark
By W R. TelfordCambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
275 pp. $59.95.
According
to W. R. Telford, the Gospel of
Mark represents a transitional phase in early Christian literature. The
evangelist’s effort foreshadows the triumph of Pauline gentile Christianity
over the Jesus movement’s earlier Jewish manifestations. Operating according to
the tenets of a research methodology
that he calls “form and redaction criticism, tempered by the insights of
literary criticism,” he attempts to separate Mark’s theological agenda from the
traditional Jewish material about Jesus that came to him. The Jewish Christian
traditions were driven by an apocalyptic eschatology that saw Jesus as a Son of David kind of Messiah who
would, also as Son of Man, appear at the end time and establish God’s kingdom.
In fact, in the traditions, Jesus was primarily identified as the proclaimer of that future kingdom.
In Mark, however, Jesus becomes the “Proclaimed One” in whose person and
ministry that once future oriented kingdom is already present. The
secret of the kingdom about which Mark is so concerned, then, is this: Jesus is
the Son of God in a Hellenistic
rather than a Jewish sense. His person,
his ministry, his miracles are the epiphany of God’s kingdom power in
the present. And he represents that power with the express purpose of saving
humankind. Mark has qualified the presentation of Jesus as an eschatological figure by overlaying the Son of Man’s triumphant
messianism with the divine necessity of his redemptive suffering and death. In
other words, Mark has so thoroughly edited the traditions that he has shifted
the emphasis from a Jewish
apocalyptic eschatology to an epiphany christology and a cross soteriology. Just how Hellenistic is Mark’s Son of God
Jesus? Jesus appears “to the Markan reader as one who no longer has Jewish roots, as one no longer to be seen
through Jewish eyes, as one no longer to be accorded a Jewish identity.”
No
wonder, then, that Telford sees Mark’s reformulation as anti-Semitic. Mark’s negative presentation of the Jewish
leaders no longer represents an intra-Jewish clash of key Jewish players. It
becomes instead an apology for a Hellenized
Jesus whose christological identity and purpose operates against the Jewish
leaders and people who refused to acknowledge it. It is also not surprising
that Mark now looks like the precursor to Paul that Telford believes him to be.
Agreeing with Martin Kiihler’s view of the Gospel as a passion narrative with an extended introduction, he sees the only
real payoff of Jesus’ life coming at the end of it. His ministry hides the
secret of his sonship until that crucial moment on the cross when the purpose
of that sonship is revealed as the
expiation of human sin. “It is this soteriological emphasis, then, this
theology of the cross, the salviJc death of Jesus (Mk 10.45 and Rom.
3.23-5; 5.8-9, 18-19) and the universality of salvation engendered by it (Mk
13.10; 14:9 and Rom. 15.14-21), which bring Mark and Paul into the same
theological orbit.”
Telford’s
book, on the whole, is a very
useful discussion tool for both the lay person and the academic. It is
well-written and presents a great
deal of helpful information about Markan theology and the history of its
theological interpretation. One of the book’s
greatest assets is that Telford conscientiously presents views that
differ from his own. While I disagree with many of the conclusions he reached,
I find it helpful that he did provide the key alternative arguments. In that
regard, it is a rich and very
readable source of information for anyone wanting to learn more about the key
issues in Markan theology and the scholars who have stood on either side of
them.
A major problem with the book is one that
shadows every redactioncritical examination of Mark’s Gospel. Since there is no
extant manuscript against which to gauge the alleged “edits” that Mark has
made, researchers such as Telford must hypothesize from the language in Mark’s
text, as well as from other hypothetical sources such as Q, to “determine” how Mark’s redaction
actually works. It is, of course, this redactional “evidence” that allows
Telford to build the somewhat dubious conclusion that Mark’s transformations of
the Jesus traditions present us with a realized eschatology whose christology
is singularly Hellenistic and whose soteriology is inescapably, one might even
say, inevitably, Pauline.
BRIAN K. BLOUNT
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ
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