Here as promised is part two of a series on the
background of the Gospel of Mark – because the story behind this Gospel is far
too rich and detailed for me to possibly cover in my sermon series. A week and
a half ago I posted part
one which took a deeper look at the identity of the author of this Gospel –
today we’re going to take a look at the genre of the text and see what
implications it may have for our study.
The first thing we need to do however is unpack the
importance of genre when reading a biblical text. Genre is the classification
of the type of document that a given text comprises – it is the difference
between a love letter and a foreclosure letter; between an email and a sermon;
between a Victorian novel and a recipe book. To understand a document’s genre
is to understand a whole host of information that goes unstated about the text
but is at the same time indispensible to grasping the meaning of the text. Or to
put it another way:
"Genre, as many students of the subject have observed, functions much like a code of behavior established between the author and his reader. When we agree to attend a formal dinner, we tacitly accept the assumption that we will don the appropriate attire; the host in turn feels an obligation to serve a fairly elaborate meal and to accompany it with wine rather than, say, offering pizza and beer. Similarly, when we begin to read a detective novel, we agree to a willing suspension of disbelief."(Heather Dubrow, Genre. Taylor & Francis, 1982)
Genre is the reason we must read Daniel differently than Isaiah
and Genesis differently than 1 John. Each Biblical text has a genre that we
must understand if we are to interpret in good faith the message that the
original author wanted us to hear. Part of discovering the genre of a text is
knowing with confidence who the author is – and since we looked at that issue
in the last post in this series we are going to move forward with the
reasonable conclusion that John Mark of the book of Acts is the author of this
Gospel.
Just identifying the document as a Gospel is in itself a
genre label. Gospel has in itself evolved into a literary genre all its own –
encompassing not only the four canonical gospels of the New Testament but many
other extra-canonical (meaning that they
weren’t found worthy of being included in the Holy Scriptures) gospels that
tell the story of Jesus from other vantage points with varying historical and
theological deficiencies.
However if we are to believe that the author of this
gospel is John Mark then we have a peculiar problem with just labelling this
text a gospel and calling it a day – because the genre of gospel evolved out of
a proliferation of similar texts that began to line up with common themes, form
and style – eventually it could be argued that people wrote gospels – but what
of the earliest documents in this genre? If Mark truly is not only the first
canonical gospel – but one of the first (if not THE first) gospel(s) period –
then it couldn’t have been written in the genre of Gospel – it would have to
have been written in another genre altogether as the genre of gospel didn’t yet
exist.
So following along this line of reasoning – what sort of
genre is the Gospel of Mark? What are the implicit expectations that the author
has upon the reader in the contract of genre? What does John Mark expect us to
know and take for granted when we read his book?
Well some have proposed that Mark is written as a Greek drama;
that the story of Jesus is presented in a 2 act play that brings him from
crisis to resolution and tells the world of his saving work through theatre. There
is a certain air of plausibility to this suggestion as the prologue of the
Gospel (remember what I was saying in the first sermon about the wilderness
theme) bears many of the telltale signs of the prologue to a Greek play. The
problem here becomes identifying the sub-genre of drama; is this comedy or a
tragedy? The narrative arc of the story fits neither category particularly
well. So while drama is plausible it’s not overly likely a fitting genre for
our text.
Another suggestion has been the genre of historical
monograph. A historical monograph is a study of a particular historical event
in encyclopaedic detail. It would be like writing a book on the Cold War and
detailing the events that transpired from the end of WWII to the fall of the
Soviet Union. Some have made the argument that Mark’s Gospel is just such a
document chronicling the ministry, death and resurrection of one Jesus Christ –
the Son of God. The weakness of this hypothesis is that the Gospel of Mark is
missing many of the telltale signs of an ancient historical monograph –
explanations of the culture and times, detailed analysis of the connection to
the political and cultural realities surrounding the events, and stories from
differing vantage points to round out the picture. The beginning of the good
news about Jesus the Messiah is a story that is singularly focused on Jesus to
the out and out exclusion of many of the other facets that a historical
monograph would examine which leaves us with door number three...
Mark as ancient bios
The genre of ancient biography fits Mark better than any
other contemporary genre. It shares many of the characteristic of an historical
monograph while remaining narrowly focused on the life of one individual. It
also allows for the dramatic narrative that makes the gospel seem so much like
a drama and, most importantly, comports well stylistically with many ancient
biographies of the same era. The labelling of Mark as ancient biography also
has some important implications then for how we read, study and understand his
message.
Firstly – Mark is a story about Jesus. Not about a
movement, about a period of history, not about the beginnings of the church or
about the disciples/apostles; Mark is a story about Jesus. In understanding
this we need to resist the urge to make the story about other people. While it
is interesting to focus on the 12 disciples, or the women, or Peter in
particular through the way the stories are told (and good reasons why Mark is a
good place to go for information on these people) we must never lose sight that
every word in this document is meant to draw us back to the story of Jesus.
Secondly – Mark wants the story to speak for itself. Mark
is not known for lengthy exposition or editorial explanations; the text is
written to let the words and actions speak for themselves. We need to then pay
attention to what Jesus is doing at all times because it is in his every little
word and action that the true story of the gospel unfolds.
And thirdly – the Gospel of Mark is the story about a
real man who walked the earth. That may seem like a silly thing to point out to
a Christian audience but the genre of Ancient biography doesn’t allow for
mythologizing or stories of legend to be mixed in with the account. This genre
is for the stories of real people which mean that unbelievable and miraculous
events should not be downplayed or explained away as hyperbole. When Mark talks
about the feeding of the 5,000 or the 4,000 or Jesus walking on water he means
to convey a literal and accurate account. He is not being poetic in his portrayal
of Jesus or taking license with events to craft a grand narrative – he’s
telling the raw story of Jesus – just as it really happened.
This is the importance of genre in general and
specifically as it pertains to the Gospel of Mark. I hope to see you at church
this Sunday as we continue our series by looking at the account of the Misunderstood Messiah.
Until then,
Chris
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