Q. I was a bit surprised that there was not more emphasis on the Son of Man material in Mark, especially since it seems so clearly grounded in Dan. 7.13-14, and all the more so since the Gospel has an apocalyptic tone, and a direct citation of that text at the trial in Mk. 14. What I mean by this is the figure ‘one like a son of man’ is both a human and also yet a divine figure who... Read more
Q. While there are not a lot of major differences I have with your reading of Mark, I am quite unconvinced with the idea that the original ending is found in 16.8, despite the later attempts to add a longer or shorter conclusion. I say this for a lot of reasons: 1). ‘ephobounto gar’ is not a proper ending to anything— a Greek sentence, a paragraph, much less a biography. This doesn’t work at the grammar or syntax level; 2)... Read more
(Spoiler Alert: Don’t read this if you’ve not seen the movie yet) Like various other long running movie series (like Star Wars or James Bond), it has taken a long long time to get to the final episode. Was it worth it? Well yes… and no. The movie begins near the end of WWII, and once again the bad guys in this movie are Nazis, a safe choice in this day and age since they are overwhelmingly, and... Read more
And from my friends in the Lexington Lab Band by way of another southern boy, Bruce Hornsby, how our country should never be— racist! Read more
Q. I wondered about chiasms, which seem to me a visual device, but Mark’s Gospel in the main was not read by early Christians, it was heard by most of them, and it was intended to be an oral and rhetorical text, not a visual one. The reader in Mk. 13 is surely the lector who read it out to the congregation, not the audience, as Rev. 1.1-4 makes clear— noticing the distinction between the one who reads it out... Read more
Q. What do you mean by saying this Gospel has an apocalyptic character or flavor, especially in certain revelatory scenes like the one at the baptism or the Transfiguration? Is this somehow related to Mark’s famous ‘messianic secret’ motif? CCB: “Apocalypticism” is among the most misunderstood phenomena in biblical interpretation. Partly that’s because in everyday English the term often carries very narrow, constrictive connotations: “catastrophic doom” or “the world’s complete annihilation.” Literally, an apocalypse is a revelation: a “pulling... Read more
Q. Much has been made of late about Mark being an ancient biography, especially by Burridge but also by Bond. What are the ways this helps us understand the content of this Gospel, but also what are the limitations of this observation? CCB: In Hellenistic Judaism and Greco-Roman antiquity, biographies (bioi) were selective and stylized, sometimes idealized, presentations of historical subjects that intended to edify their audiences. Ancient biographies were not literary purebreds but mongrels, absorptive of other genres.... Read more
Q. Your mentor was Moody Smith at Duke. He mainly focused on the Gospel of John. What prompted you to choose to do a dissertation on Mark? CCB: It was Moody Smith who spurred me—not by intention, but in fact. In my first year of doctoral study I enrolled in a course he taught on the exegesis of Mark’s Gospel. I was gobsmacked by Mark then and have been ever since. After the spring of 1982 I knew I would... Read more
The measure of the importance of an ancient prophetic site like Klaros can be seen in some of the extra buildings, for instance in what amounted to a hostel for consultants to stay in while visiting the prophets over a period of time….. The name of said building was Katagogeion and it was a bit apart from the temples themselves…. Naturally as well, at a famous site there would be some entertainment— Greek comedies or tragedies by Sophocles or Aristophanes... Read more
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