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- Clifton Black, Mark\u2019s Gospel. History, Theology, Interpretation, <\/em>(Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2023), pp. 556, $46.00 hardcopy.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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The blurbs for this book are stellar, and do not involve the usual hyperbole.\u00a0 This is probably the best monograph all around I\u2019ve ever read on the Gospel of Mark, and worth every penny it costs.\u00a0 What we have in this book is the collected essays over various decades of Clifton Black on this earliest of Gospels.\u00a0 Unlike some collections of essays, which are about as exciting as a potted plant, this collection is far more than Cliff Notes, about the Gospel that this author sees as a cliffhanger (which he believes ends at 16.8, from which conclusion I demur).\u00a0 No, this is a collection of essays from a person who has spent the better part of his academic career starting with his dissertation in the 1980s at Duke, on Mark\u2019s Gospel. He has spent no little time and no little energy in the Markan vineyard, and in this volume you see page after page of the fruit of doing so.\u00a0 Indeed, I would say Clift makes a case for more scholars spending their careers in this very fashion, doing one thing very well with one source\u2014 provided the document is what Kasemann said about John\u2019s Gospel\u2014 \u2018it\u2019s shallow enough for a baby to wade in, but also deep enough for an elephant to drown.\u2019 You can explore it at any depth, and get a rich return, without exhausting the content. \u00a0It\u2019s turns out, Mark may be the shortest Gospel, but it is not less rich or profound, or frankly disturbing and befuddling, than the other canonical Gospels.<\/p>\n
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One of the things that contributes to making this an excellent read, is that Cliff is a very gifted writer, whose eloquence shows up on page after page, along with good and challenging insights. He has a gift for apt analogies or metaphors or zingers, and the book is full of great quotes as well\u2014\u2018Accepting the foolproof, will prove you a fool\u2019 (p.79),\u00a0 or consider his quote of Edna St. Vincent Milay \u201cA person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. \u2026If it\u2019s a good book, nothing can harm him. If it\u2019s a bad book, nothing can help him.\u201d (p.76). \u00a0\u00a0This for certain is a very good book, and I shall be requiring it in my Mark courses.<\/p>\n
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In this collection of essays, basically the whole Gospel is covered in one way or another, and at the end of the book, Clift walks through the Gospel providing fodder for preachers, particularly those who preach the lectionary, helping them to see how Mark can be a word on target today, even though it partakes of the character of an ancient Jewish apocalyptic biography of someone who changed the world\u2014 Jesus.\u00a0 \u00a0At the other bookend of this book, namely the very first chapter Clift provides an excellent summary of the structure and content of the Gospel. The essays that follow are more focused on specific.things for instance scholarly work on the redaction of this Gospel, the contribution of Donald Juel to that enterprise, a survey of recent scholarship on Mark, a conspectus on Mark\u2019s Theology, followed by a chapter on Mark as a historian of the Kingdom, a chapter on how suffering functions in Mark\u2019s Gospel, and its possible pedagogical value, then a fascinating argument, looking at Mark as the photographic negative of John\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 There is in addition a treatment of Mark\u2019s creation theology, and a detailed look at the longest speech in Mark\u2014 the Olivet discourse in Mark 13.<\/p>\n
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Reading this book is like going to a Thanksgiving feast and discovering there is way more good food than one can consume at a single sitting.\u00a0 This book needs to be carefully digested, over a considerable period of time. This is not the fast-food treatment of Mark\u2019s greatest hits. \u00a0And I would be remiss if I did not point out that Clift makes clear how Mark\u2019s Gospel both comforts the afflicted, but also will afflict the comfortable.\u00a0 Be prepared to buckle your seat belt up tight, because if you really engage with the earliest Gospel you will find it both enlightening and confusing, both reassuring and disturbing, both what you expected and also what you never imagined was in this Gospel.\u00a0 It is probably no accident that the early church fathers dealt with it the least of the four canonical Gospels\u2014they were so far removed from Jewish apocalyptic thinking that they hardly knew what to make of it\u2014 especially when at no point are the disciples in this Gospel said to have had real or adequate faith in Jesus.\u00a0 They appear to be more like the DUH-sciples than the learned followers. They constantly don\u2019t get what Jesus is saying and doing, and in the end the Twelve in particular deny, betray and abandon Jesus.<\/p>\n
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I have known Clift Black for a very long time. We were both born in High Point, N.C. both were ordained Methodist ministers in the Western N.C. Conference, both attended or even taught at Duke for a while, and both eventually became scholars at academic institutions after having done, and continuing to do, some pastoral work. \u00a0And both are professors of NT and Biblical Theology.\u00a0 Perhaps there are other medium to small towns in America which have spawned two ordained clergy who became NT scholars, but I don\u2019t know of any.<\/p>\n
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I am very thankful that Clift has left us this sparkling legacy of his long study of Mark\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 Cliff has long been a \u2018marked\u2019 man, and it has done him and all of us who care about the Gospel a world of good.\u00a0 I can hardly praise this volume high enough.\u00a0 Well done good and faithful servant, and thanks for putting all these essays in one volume where they can be easily accessed.<\/p>\n
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Here are some easy links to Clifton\u2019s excellent books including the one just reviewed.<\/p>\n
Mark\u2019s Gospel: History, Theology, Interpretation<\/em>\u00a0(Eerdmans, 2023)<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Marks-Gospel-History-Theology-Interpretation\/dp\/0802879187\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2H4L9W9XEXIM9&keywords=mark%27s+gospel+clifton+black&qid=1686708374&s=books&sprefix=Mark%27s+Gospel%2Cstripbooks%2C114&sr=1-1<\/a><\/p>\n
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Mark, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries\u00a0<\/em>(Abingdon, 2011)<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Abingdon-New-Testament-Commentaries-Mark-ebook\/dp\/B008226LI8?ref_=ast_author_dp<\/a><\/p>\n
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Mark: Images of an Apostolic Interpreter<\/em>\u00a0(Fortress, 2001)<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Mark-Apostolic-Interpreter-Personalities-Testament\/dp\/0800631684\/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=igQTi&content-id=amzn1.sym.ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_p=ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_r=147-2930043-4786643&pd_rd_wg=3MZWr&pd_rd_r=a8738bcc-a603-4871-8202-50eac66505dd&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk<\/a><\/p>\n
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The Disciples according to Mark<\/em>, 2nd<\/sup>\u00a0ed. (Eerdmans, 2012)<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Disciples-according-Mark-Redaction-Supplement\/dp\/0802827985\/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Disciples+according+to+Mark&qid=1686709105&s=books&sr=1-1<\/a><\/p>\n
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The Rhetoric of the Gospel<\/em>, 2nd<\/sup>\u00a0ed. (Westminster John Knox, 2013)<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rhetoric-Gospel-Second-Theological-Artistry\/dp\/066423822X\/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=igQTi&content-id=amzn1.sym.ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_p=ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_r=147-2930043-4786643&pd_rd_wg=3MZWr&pd_rd_r=a8738bcc-a603-4871-8202-50eac66505dd&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk<\/a><\/p>\n
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A Three-Dimensional Jesus<\/em>\u00a0(Westminster John Knox, 2023)<\/p>\n