Here is a post by Larry Hurtado that deals with the state of the discussion about the provenance and community of Mark\u2019s Gospel. <\/p>\n
The Quest for the Mark \u201cCommunity\u201d
\nby larry hurtado<\/p>\n
At this year\u2019s annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (17-20 November, Chicago), the Mark Seminar will have as one of its foci the recurring issue of the historical provenance of the Gospel of Mark. We\u2019ve invited advocates of some difference putative provenances to make a case, specifically showing what difference it makes to the understanding of Mark. Partly in advance preparation for those discussions (I\u2019m on the Steering Committee of the Mark Seminar), I\u2019ve been studying Dwight N. Peterson\u2019s book, The Origins of Mark: The Markan Community in Current Debate (Leiden: Brill, 2000).<\/p>\n
Peterson\u2019s study involves a close and searching assessment of leading examples of three types of efforts to identify the \u201ccommunity\u201d behind Mark (from which and for which it supposedly was written): redaction-critical efforts (Werner Kelber), \u201csociological\u201d efforts (Howard C. Kee), and \u201cpolitical\u201d efforts (Ched Myers). In his final chapter, Peterson also assesses Joel Marcus\u2019 stout effort to locate Mark in a particular type of gentile-Christian \u201ccommunity\u201d near Jewish Palestine. As to overall results, a few comments from his concluding chapter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Markan community has failed to provide even the semblance of a control on readings of the Gospel of Mark. . . . .The reason for this is that virtually every scholar who discovers a Markan community behind the Gospel . . . discovers a different Markan community.\u201d (152)<\/p>\n
NT scholars continue positing a \u201ccommunity\u201d behind Mark and other NT texts because \u201cthat is what we do\u201d, and as historical critics most operate with a sense that the provenance of a text can provide a necessary control on interpretation. (193)<\/p>\n
The Markan \u201ccommunity\u201d is \u201cthe product of highly speculative, viciously circular and ultimately unpersuasive and inconclusive reading.\u201d (196<\/p>\n
Hmm. I think that\u2019s an author making himself rather clear! It is a bit surprising, therefore, that (using the ATLA periodical search) I\u2019ve been able to find only one scholarly review of the book (by C.A. Evans, Review of Biblical Literature 4 [2002], 367-69). I rather think that this will not do, and I\u2019ll be interested to see how advocates of a Markan provenance engage Peterson\u2019s rather strong critique of the whole enterprise.<\/p>\n
Also, as Peterson notes, the issue is wider than Mark. Numerous NT scholars have posited a \u201ccommunity\u201d behind various NT writings. E.g., there is a whole industry devoted to identifying a community behind the Gospel of Matthew, and also behind the Gospel of John. Then, there is an vigorous body of scholars eagerly positing a Q-community, and even proffering an elaborate and multi-stage social history of the community! And all this totally (or pretty much so) on the basis of the individual text in question. Scholarly inferences are one thing, but I do wonder if the whole enterprise has got a bit out of hand.<\/p>\n
In addition to the other works cited by Peterson, there is an instructive essay by Frederik Wisse that, likewise, has been insufficiently noticed: \u201cThe Use of Early Christian Literature As Evidence for Inner Diversity and Conflict,\u201d in Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity, ed. Charles W. Hedrick and Robert Hodgson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986), 177-90. Wisse directed his cautionary attention to the positing of various discrete \u201ccommunities\u201d the various \u201cheterodox\u201d texts of early Christianity, e.g., a \u201cThomas community\u201d (behind Gospel of Thomas), etc, proposing cogently that instead these texts likely circulated among interested individuals, loose networks of like-minded souls, and did not reflect some defined \u201ccommunity\u201d.<\/p>\n
Given the widely-shared (and entirely understandable) desire to link NT texts with particular provenances, it is inconvenient to have such critique and warnings. But that\u2019s no excuse to ignore them. The credibility of the field just might be at stake. And if the result is greater modesty in scholarly claims, that might not be all that bad.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is a post by Larry Hurtado that deals with the state of the discussion about the provenance and community of Mark\u2019s Gospel. The Quest for the Mark \u201cCommunity\u201d by larry hurtado At this year\u2019s annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (17-20 November, Chicago), the Mark Seminar will have as one of its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n