Gospel against Parable 0907459447, 0907459455

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GOSPEL AGAINST PARABLE Mark's Language of Mystery

JAMES G. WILLIAMS

ALMOND • 1985

BIBLE AND LITERATURE SERIES, 12

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: Williams, James G., 1936Gospel against Parable. (Bible and literature series, ISSN 0260-4493; 12) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Bible. N.T. Mark--Criticism, interpretation, etc. 1. Title. II. Series BS2685.2. W66 1986 226' .3066 85-18684 ISBN 0-907459-44-7 ISBN 0-907459-45-5 (pbk.)

Copyright

© 1985 JSOT Press

ALMOND is an imprint of JSOT PRESS Department of Biblical Studies The University of Sheffield Sheffield, S10 2TN, England Origination & Editorial: THE ALMOND PRESS Columbia Theological Seminary P.O. Box 520 Decatur, GA 30031, U.S.A.

Printed in Great Britain by Dotesios (Printers) Ltd. Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire

CONTENTS AKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION

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Chapter I LITERARY CHARACTER OF THE GOSPEL OF MARK 23 A. Mark and Oral Tradition 26 B. Mark's Plot 28 C. III What Sense is Mark 'Historical'? Chapter II SECRET OF THE SON 41 A. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God B. The Mystery and the Disciples 55

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Chapter III MARK'S LANGUAGE OF MYSTERY 65 A. Style 66 1. Abruptness, Discontinuity, Enigma 66 2. Parataxis and Rapidity 74 3. Repetition 83 B. The Coming 91 1. The Onrush of the Kingdom 91 2. The Way of the Kingdom 97 3. Participation in God's Future 104 C. The Presence 112 1. Sea and Boat 114 2. Bread in the Wilderness 120 3. The Ultimate Parable of Presence 126 D. Summary and Conclusion 130

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Excursus A: The Question of a Theology of Presence in Mark 139 Excursus B: Reflections on The Oral and the Written Gospel. by Werner Kelber Chapter IV GOSPEL AGAINST PARABLE 155 A. The Parables 156 B. Tension between Gospel and Parable 162 C. Parables as Seminar of the Gospel 179 D. Parable as Mirror of Mystery 188 Addendum ON GOSPEL AS A NEW GENRE NOTES to Introduction 217 to Chapter I 218 to Chapter II 220 to Chapter III 223 to Chapter IV 230 to Addendum 233 ABBREVIATIONS

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WORKS CONSULTED INDEXES Index of Modern Authors Selective Scripture Index

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242 243

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am particularly grateful to Syracuse University for the academic freedom and support that permits its faculty to branch out into new areas of specialization and interdisciplinary study. David Gunn, helpful as always, encouraged me to develop an earlier, shorter essay on Mark into a full monograph. Francis Landy amazed and inspired me by reading an earlier draft of this manuscript and thinking my thoughts both after me and before me. Wendy Love gave of her time and energy beyond the call of duty in preparing the last two drafts and helping us solve a technical computer problem. This book is dedicated to all my teachers. Although there are too many to name them all, I think with special gratitude of the contribution to my life and vocation made by W. J. A. Power, Schubert Ogden, the late Floyd Curl, and the late William Irwin of Perkins School of Theology; and by Sheldon Blank, Matitiahu Tsevat, and the late Samuel Sandmel of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Finally, I wish to thank those Syracuse University colleagues who are, truly, my 'teachers,' and whose friendship is unfailing: A. Leland Jamison (emeritus), Alan Berger, and Amanda Porterfield. James G. Williams Advent 1984 7 _~·~~·3;:·~·~·m·~·i·i§il§·~·W~~,,~~·:·~·;·~·gm·:·~·mwg·m·:rml!

INTRODUCTION The gospel of Mark is one of the great 'odyssey' texts of Scripture. The Torah is the drama of Israel's emergence from the peoples and her journey to the borders of the promised land as the bearer of God's intention for mankind. This motif is especially prominent in the prophecies of Jeremiah and the Babylonian Isaiah, though not absent in some of the other prophets. Mark draws upon this scriptural heritage of the way, the journey, the passing over into the promised land. He reshapes this motif in combining it with the figure of the suffering servant in the Babylonian Isaiah, as well as elements of some of the Psalms and the apocalyptic tradition. The resulting composition is a unique narrative text. It is a narrative that recounts an exciting, astonishing, and sometimes troubling journey troubling for the disciples who try to comprehend their master, troubling for those who seek an explanation of the narra ti ve's seeming disjunctions, inconsistencies, and lacunae. My own approach is literary and theological. A literary methodology, in my view, will best prepare the way to the theological fields that I wish to work. I am not concerned with the question whether Mark is 'good' literature according to certain canons. That it is canonical literature means for me that it is already worth reading, thinking about and discussing. On the other hand, there are facets of Mark so strik9 ~g·~·~g..~·@i·1·;'~§~·~·i·~·~~~·~a~g~~;m:$§·~·~·2:{·?~·:~~'R'5$~'5'~~

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ingly unorthodox that one may wonder how it got into the canon (see shortly on the apostles). In any case, my study of Mark has persuaded me that it is subtly composed, profound, and full of power. Its apparent incoherence and inconsistency at points and its vernacular Greek are in service of the depth and urgency of its message concerning the kingdom of God. One of the troublesome features of Mark, especially to those who are inclined to ground the narrative's referents in the historical Jesus, is his view of the function of parables. At issue in this regard is primarily chapter 4 of the gospel. There Jesus relates the parable of the sower, which is subsequently identified as the master parable (4:13). Jesus speaks of 'the secret of the kingdom of God' (4:11), which is in all the parables and which by implication is most typically expressed in the sower parable. 'Those outside' - those not within the circle of those 'about him with the twelve' - are given parables in order that they may not understand the mystery of the Kingdom (4: 10, 12). This esotericism concerning the use and meaning of the parables is further supported by the enigmatic saying concerning having and not-having and the parable of the seed growing secretly (4:25, 26-29). It is capped off by the narrator's note that 'privately to his own disciples he explicated everything' (4:34). In a sense, chapter 4 of Mark is a kind of canonical 'hedge' around the parables which implies two conclusions for the reader: (1) Jesus himself is the best guide; we should look to the master parable and Jesus' own interpretation thereof. But in this setting it is Mark, of course, who is the guide to Jesus and his parabolic teaching. (2) Although the disciples, especially the twelve, received private explanations, 10

INTRODUCTION

they clearly had difficulty comprehending the secret of the Kingdom.(so 4:13 and the import of 4:35-41). Apostolic authority is thus decisively checked, if not undercut. This diminishing, if not abolishing, of apostolic authority makes Mark, in principle, a kind of boundary source between certain orthodoxies and certain heterodoxies in the history of Christianity. From another point of view, however, the parable as a genre of language, and certainly as Mark understands it, is particularly apposite to the 'other side,' the transcendent, the mystery, thc unstoried world which the suffering Son of man reveals and of which the narrative seeks continually to be a witness from its abrupt beginning to its dangling conclusion. In this sense the parables are a hedge around the larger narrative, protecting it from being too facilely assimilated into 'world' and conventional meaning. This relationship of parable and gospel narrative is therefore of such significance that I have devoted a chapter to it. It could be read as a distinct study in its own right, although I conceive it as integral to the book as a whole. The title 'Gospel Against Parable' is intended to suggest the richly ambiguous relationships of the two in Mark's narrative. I have in mind three of the possible meanings of the preposition 'against': in conflict with, in contact with, and having as background.

* * * * * * In the course of the study I shall deal with a crucial issue that often sparks a heated debate and unfortunately hard feelings among biblical critics: the heuristic and hermeneutical value of historical approaches as against literary approaches. Until recently most of 11

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the noteworthy methodologies in critical biblical study have been historical in method and goals. The purpose of 'higher criticism: often called 'literary criticism,' was to reconstruct the original events narrated in the biblical texts, recount them in their proper sequence, and develop a history of biblical religion. Form criticism, though contributing much to our understanding of discrete literary forms, was by and large occupied with original life-settings of the forms and their oral history. Redaction criticism has focused on the point of view and theology of biblical works in their final, received stage, but this is now characteristically in order to locate the believing community and religious milieu reflected in the final redaction. These forms of criticism share the impulse to seek the referents of the text outside of the text itself, whether in the attempt to reconstruct its world, to theorize about the persons or persons who have composed and transmitted it, or to determine its audience. On the other hand, literary approaches share a dominant concern to elucidate the relations and patterns within the work itself (Tolbert, 1982, drawing upon Abrams: 2). Now I think it is one of the sad and deleterious facts about contemporary scholarship that so many colleagues see these two fundamental orientations in criticism as mutually exclusive. It is sad because these colleagues sometimes forget the collegiality that is at the heart of the ethos, the way, of a properly humane and humanistic scholarship. It is deleterious because both interpretive approaches have something important to contribute. Although I argue in chapter two of this study that the preferable approach to any text is first to mark out what makes up the form and constitutive elements of the work, I go on to say that once this nec12 n..~~'%re·~·??~~£::wm·:,~,w.-:+;·~·~~·1m'~_·~~

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INTRODUCTION

essary literary or 'synchronic' task is done, the next stage of interpretive analysis and reflection should include taking historical questions into account. In fact, I have elsewhere maintained that knowledge or enlightening theory about historical context is the necessary, though not sufficient condition of literary interpretation (Williams, 1982). Moreover, we are obliged to acknowledge historicity, our own and that of the works and writers we study. Historicity is our innate condition as caring beings who are constantly seeking ourselves in the past (thus we know satisfaction, regret and gUilt) and in the future (thus we know hope and anxiety). This historicity takes many forms; sometimes it is expressed in works that we call historiography, and another important expression is in works of 'literature.' But literature, too, represents historicity, even if it does not directly represent a history that occurs outside of the work. The most important link between historical and literary criticism, the referent that both orientations are concerned to know and elucidate, is historicity as it takes specific forms. Historicity is not necessarily best served in historiography if the historical writing and thinking are the sort that give the priority of truth to empirical events and deduced causes that are sequentially reconstructed. Historicity as I mean it is a human phenomenon in which language, historical and natural influences, and motives are interwoven in the human project of looking to the past and envisioning the future in order to confirm value and identity in the present. To be a historical being is to be human; to understand this historical being is not to look to 'history' in a narrow sense. 13 ~m;'~!!iE~__ m·:§,~·g;,·m·~,;@:·;g'~i'i'~l'~§:'~'i·gm~·~~.m

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Now of course for individuals and communities who understand themselves as Christian, a specific history will perforce provide a locus of meaning which is indispensable - though not sufficient! - for the grounding and clarifying of faith. The Scripture and the total Scripture story, centered in Jesus and the apostles, are of decisive significance in Christian faith. But the search for the Jesus of history or the Jesus known and portrayed in the primitive tradition, as in historically motivated forms of criticism, will not provide a foundation for faith. Nor will the evangelical defense of the gospel text as a reliable historical document (see Lane: 6-7). The attempt to find a foundation for faith in discrete historical events, whether the approach is liberal or conservative, is a positivism which finally founders on two scores: 1) The impossible task of apologizing for the gospel text or any hypothetical strata thereof as a source of detailed historical information in the face of modern canons of historical criticism (see Harvey: ch. 2). 2) The untenable conviction that God's acts in history are demonstrable from derived sense perception in the web of historical and natural events. The untenability of this conviction is theologically the more important of the two reasons, so I shall comment on it briefly. That God acts in history and is present in, with, and under the total range of human and non-human events in the world is, of course, a basic affirmation of Christian faith. At question is how God is present and how we know this 'Face,' as the Hebrew Bible would put the presence of God (pard'm). My intention is not to develop an adequate response to the questions in this study. That is a task for another time if I am given the opportunity to pursue it. I would say only 14 lm·m~.g.~~·~·~~·~·}~~'i"~·i~~

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INTRODUCTION

f or the time being that God's being and doing is not a matter of simple, literal, one-to-one inference from what happens in the world. For one thing, 'God' does not mean merely a being separate from other beings. God is not simply an entity which could be identified as one in contrast to others, though of course greater, stronger, wiser, etc. If God were a being in that sense he would not be truly transcendent, for there would then be a totality more inclusive than God. For another thing, the ubiquitous religious claims that revelation or special illumination is needed to know the divine already indicate that another 'dimension' than the ordinary or historical is the object of faith. Closely related to that consideration, both ontologically and theologically, is the fact that the language of symbol and metaphor is necessary to religion and revelation. Symbol and metaphor suggest by definition a complex and problematic relationship of the knower, known and unknown. And finally, to return to the subject that lies immediately before us, the mystery of the kingdom of God in the form of the suffering Son of man should give us pause to reflect on what we can know from history in any conventional sense. Is it not the prophet of the suffering servant of the Lord who cries out, 'Surely you are God the Self -concealed I 0 God of Israel, Savior' (Isa. 45:15)? Is it not the case that in the prophetic faith to sing of the servant of Yahweh is to speak more truly of history? The issue of historical versus literary approaches leads to another matter of concern, which I would state more for the literary critic than the historian. It is important to underscore that texts have referents, even if the referents are oblique. Of course, the whole issue of referents requires much further discussion, 15 iim:m2~'_}:~{~D~'~"lli'i'~

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background, provenance, and problematics can be taken up. Five pertinent historical factors were indicated in the discussion of the function of the suffering servant for Mark, pp. 53-54. They are: a) The ignominious death of Jesus. b) The ancient Jewish tradition rooted in Scripture, reinterpreted and transmitted by the Pharisees, and influenced by apocalyptic. This tradition includes sacrifice as a key motif and ritual act. c) The question why the Son of God must be portrayed as human. d) Lack of widespread Christian success in proselytizing among the Palestinian Jews, especially in Judea. e) Questions about apostolic leadership, especially as centered in Jerusalem. (3) Then one looks again at the work's literary character, this time relating the latter to the possible historical situation with its problems and questions. It is possible that the narrative germs and structural ideas discussed by Kermode served as media to deal with some or all the problems of Mark's historical heritage and immediate circumstances. The biblical heritage of atoning sacrifice, the suffering servant of Isaiah, the psalms of lament, and the theme of the Lord's promise to lead his people (to the promised land, back to the homeland) would have formed a wonderful web of associations for affirming the divine meaning of Jesus' cruel death. But the literary character of Mark renders risky any attempt to identify specific people and conflicts. That the plot of Mark speaks against certain institutional leaders, past or present, there is no doubt. Perhaps, concomitantly, there were contemporary pseudoprophets whose self-apotheosizing prophecies Mark wished to counteract. But how far can we go with this? Why could the polemical picture of apostles and J erusalem Pharisees not be a cipher for church leaders in

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Rome? That is, if there is a specific historical object of the polemic, why could the identification of the enemy not be concealed to the outsider, to the one who lacks requisite knowledge? If one goes as far as Kelber, for example, who hypothesizes that the scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem stand for the main officials of the Jerusalem church, then don't other possible identifications open up? To mention a modern instance, Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, is a drama with obvious relevance as a critical commentary on the 'witch hunt' for communists by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his supporters. The historical setting in the play is the Salem witch trials of the 17th century. We can imagine the problems faced by a hypothetical historical critic 2,000 years from now who has the text of the play but nothing but bits of information about the 20th century U.S.A. (much less about the political climate of the early 1950s in the U.S.!). It behooves us to know as much as possible about the tradition transmitting the text, how, why and when it was composed, and the problema tics out of which it was written. This knowledge will, in turn, make a crucial difference in interpretation. But we should not allow the value of the text to be sucked down into the morass of arguments over dates, life-settings, chronology, and historical causes. The religious value of the text is the primary concern of the theologian and the believer, and it is a properly central subject for anyone seeking knowledge in humanistic studies. Beginning with the text in its literary integrity best serves both the theological critic and the humanistic scholar. To turn back, in conclusion, to our topic of the blindness and deafness of the disciples to the mystery

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of God's way and order, Mark's characterization of the disciples doubtless bears some relation to some historical problem. The relation mayor may not be a close one with a correspondingly specific message concerning the apostles or the successors of the apostles. But given the paucity of our historical knowledge and the certainty that Mark was authored by an interpreter of the gospel who shaped his sources into a distinctive plot, the ironic inability of the disciples to fathom the musterion of the Kingdom is best left to stand as an image· a broken one, indeed· of discipleship. The narrated plot and the story with which it environs itself demand betrayal, denial, and desertion. There is really good news here: even those closest to the master misunderstand and go astray, but still they are promised that he will be raised up and go before them into Galilee. If one cannot perfectly comprehend the mystery of this ministry - well, neither did Peter, James, John and Andrew.

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MARK'S LANGUAGE OF MYSTERY I have already mentioned that Mark shapes the generative narrative functions in his own way, and the same could be said of the use he makes of the Scripture as 'seminar.' In this part of the book we turn to Mark's own work as narrative theologian. As a narrative theologian, Mark's style is one that leaves much unspoken, and even that which is expressed is frequently put in the form of allusion. Moreover, the silences of the narrative are not simply what is not expressed; they often reside in deliberate gaps, in outright inerferences with the text. Now this way of shaping the narrative is inseparably bound up with the twofold content of Mark's narrative theology, the divine presence in the suffering Son of man and the coming of the Son of man in the consummation of the kingdom of God. The former is the mystery of the divine presence, the latter the mystery of the divine rule. The Presence is perceived against the backdrop of silence and discontinuity, the Kingdom is discerned through allusion and narrative openness. Therefore, the discussion of Mark's language of mystery will be under three headings: literary style, the coming of the Kingdom, and the divine presence.

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A. Style There are many aspects of Mark's style that could be discussed. As already indicated, the reader of Mark encounters silences, allusions, and gaps. The silences include an abruptness that does not establish context and puzzles that are not solved. Against the silences there works a characteristic rapidity that rushes on, except for a few significant pauses, without stopping to give the reader time to establish connections. Around the silences and gaps of the narrative onrush are positioned a number of repetitions. Do these repetitions fill in something that the reader needs to know, or do they simply intensify the enigmatic character of the work? 1. Abruptness, Discontinuity, Enigma Abruptness, discontinuity and seeming incoherence at points, like other aspects of Mark's style to be considered, have been viewed as deficiencies in the use of the Greek language and lack of attention to common authorial concerns. To the contrary, I see these aspects as part of the pattern of a powerful style /1/. Mark, unlike Matthew and Luke, does not extend himself at all to spell out order and continuity in the salvation history. He tells his readers nothing initially about Jesus' origins. The opening words are not even a full sentence: '(The) beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, (the) Son of God.' The two definite articles in parenthesis are not in the Greek. Here is an abruptness not only with respect to information omitted (where is he from? what led up to his advent? etc.), but in the grammar of the sentence itself. The

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quick and brief narration of the Baptist's appearance and preaching tells us a little more, for he is sketched as a predecessor of Jesus who declares him to be one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. John does indeed serve to indicate a larger story, that of God's promises to come in the future as announced through the prophets. But just when the gospel seems to be expanding its context and decreasing the distance between reader and text, the narrative moves away from us again. When Jesus is baptized by John a heavenly voice says to Jesus, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased' (Mk. 1:11). We do not know whether others present are supposed to have heard this voice. Given what we already know about the gospel of Mark, it is a fair conclusion that this is a private experience. As we follow the narrative we are conscious that if we were actors in it we would be outsiders /2/. Subsequently we find that those in the story who in normal circumstances would be close to him are not. The family of Jesus is peremptorily if not rudely rejected. When Jesus is told his mother and brothers are asking for him, he turns to those gathered about him: 'Behold my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother' (3:34-35). Now we expect those gathered about him (a 'crowd,' 3:32) to come to a fuller knowledge of him and his mission. But no, the parable of the sower occasions an esoteric teaching session with a smaller group, 'those about him with the twelve.' From this point on the gospel of Mark takes on the features of riddle. This group asked about the parables. He replies that 'for those outside everything is in parables.' Why? 'So that they may indeed see but not discern, and indeed hear

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but not understand; lest they repent and be forgiven' (Mk. 4:1O-12).In other words, the secret of the Kingdom is to be concealed from the crowd, but a group of faithful insiders will share it. Right, but we find out immediately that these insiders don't comprehend the parable of the sower, which Jesus implies is the master parable (4:13). So it goes with the disciples. They go from incomprehension to incomprehension. When Jesus comes walking by them on the water as they are struggling against the wind, they are frightened out of their wits: But immediately he spoke with them and said to them,'Take courage, it is I (ego eimi); fear not.' And he climbed up in the boat with them, and the wind ceased, and they were astonished beyond measure, for they did not understand about the loaves - but their hearts were hardened (6:50-52). 'They did not understand about the loaves': would you, would I, would any reader, find the meaning clear? The reference to the loaves is related to another moment in the narrative, the feeding of the four thousand. In another episode of private instruction, which by implication is about his 'bread' as against the 'leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod' (8: 15), he asks the disciples whether their hearts are hardened. 'When I broke five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you gather?' They say to him, 'Twelve.' 'And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did 68 ~:~~~"1'lfD~··u§m~'~~;·~~

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you collect?' And they say, 'Seven.' And he said to them,'no you not yet understand?' (8: 19-21). It may be that the significant thing here is the bread

fragments picked up by the disciples, the numbers being a diversion to the 'outsider.' It is somewhat like the tactic of the riddling joke of incredible size and number, which involves an unbelievable situation. But the unbelievable situation is a sleight of hand to pull the hearer's attention away from the 'obvious' answer. For example, How do you get three rhinoceroses into your house? Answer: Through the door. Or: Why is the elephant standing on the marshmallow? Answer: So he won't fall into the hot chocolate /3/. Likewise in the Questions about the fragments of bread gathered one could easily be led to think that the key element has to do with the number, whether the astonishing feeding of so many people, the great Quantity of baskets full of leftover bread, or the numbers twelve and seven. Here I show myself to be an outsider to the extent that I cannot say for sure that one or all of the possibilities are right or wrong. And that is the main point about Mark's style. It leads the reader and interpreter along a path that seems obscure - at least until the disclosure in the transfiguration. As for the meaning of Jesus' Question in 8:21, as I piece together the puzzle from a reading of the totality of Mark, I am inclined to say that the broken bread is the key metaphor. The disciples are to understand that the divine power and mystery in Jesus' ministry has its center in the broken loaf, which for the one eso means the broken body of the Son of man ('... He took bread, blessed, broke and gave to them, and he said, "Take, this is my body'" [14:22]).

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At the climactic point marking the end of the first half of the narrative, Peter acknowledges Jesus as the Christ in gentile territory at Caesarea Philippi (8:27-30). Peter's answer, 'You are the Christ,' is not adequate for Mark. When Jesus immediately begins to teach Peter and the others that the Son of man must suffer and die, saying it plainly, Peter starts to rebuke him. Jesus rebukes Peter in turn: 'Get behind me, Satan! For you do not take the part of God, but of men.' (8:30-33). What transpires in 8:27-33 implies that even the title of messiah is incorrect if it is understood to preclude the suffering and death of God's chosen one. The second half of Mark continues the parade of incidents showing the disciples' inability to comprehend the secret of the Kingdom; moreover, they are ineffective in the mission which their master gives them (9:14-29), and they are hungry for power, fame and authority (9:33-37; 10:35-45). However, at least the reader is now given to understand, in substance, what Jesus is about. The reader is allowed to be in on the transfigura tion (9:2-8), which prefigures the parousia. He or she hears Jesus' affirmation of identity before the high priest (14:62), and is allowed to enter the tomb with the three women and hear the young man robed in white say, 'He has risen, he is not here' (16:6). But 'his disciples and Peter' do not go into the tomb with the reader, they do not hear. And even as the narra ti ve ends, they have not yet heard and so not seen their lord again. Will they see and hear? But if we readers find Mark 9-16 somewhat clearer than the first eight chapters, we are left with more than a few hints of the unfilled gaps just as we encountered abruptness, discontinuity and enigma in chs.

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1-8. For one thing, the ending is not·a satisfying conclusion to the story. Does the literary fact Norman Petersen has pointed out, that the narrated plot marks out a larger story of prophecy and fulfillment which envisions a true denouement, require an insider's training of the professional sort that few in any audience of Mark would ever have had? One could hold the hypothesis that there were certain circles or congregations where the well-initiated believer, though not a scholar, could penetrate the narrative maze into the meaning of the suffering Son of man. That may well be, although I wonder whether it assumes a kind of esotericism for which we have no evidence prior to the first definite indications of gnostic Christianity, which by any dating on present evidence would not be before 125 A.D. In any event, even if there was a gnostic Christianity at an earlier time (and the gospel of John is certainly quasi-gnostic), the gospel of Mark does not represent the same kind of esotericism as the gnostic texts. The only conclusion I find convincing is that the author intends the audience to be prevented from overconfidence in its ability to fathom the gospel story. (At least that is the effect of the narrative as we have it.) Many might be thrown off-balance by Mark's picture of the apostles and others close to Jesus. But as though that were not enough, the author offers broken pieces that the reader cannot quite fit into the total picture. For instance, the 'young man' of 14:5152 and 16:5-7, which has attracted Kermode's attention. Kermode muses that perhaps in 14:51-52 'the secret gospel is showing through, a radiance of some kind, merely glimpsed by the outsider' (59). The two-verse episode is certainly puzzling. Upon being seized by a 71 Imm§ijj§:ii§~;'~ma§§i§~~~·;f~

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JAMES G. WILLIAMS:

GOSPEL AGAINST PARABLE

motley group from the chief priests and scribes, Jesus is deserted by Peter and the others with him in Gethsemane. As he is led away under guard a young man follows him who is clothed in nothing but a linen cloth. The guard seized him, 'but abandoning the linen cloth he ran away naked.' Now there are all sorts of theories about this little passage, and the puzzlement is a symptom of the apparent lack of continuity and coherence we are given in the narrative. Who is the young man? (Some have said, since ancient times, that he is the evangelist Mark.) Even if one supposed the incident to be historical, why mention it - unless the naked stripling is someone known to initiates? (Thus the Mark theory as one possibility.) Another proposal is that it is a symbolic scene. Fleeing away naked is intended to remind of 'that day' of judgment on Israel according to Amos' prophecy (Am. 2:16). Is the young man a narrative realization of desertion, as Kermode holds (Kermode: 63)? The point .is, we cannot be quite sure of his function or whether he means anything at all. To be sure, that he means nothing is improbable because the neaniskos in the tomb offers a point of comparison for polar contrasts that are striking. The youth loses his 'linen cloth' (sindon) as he flees naked, Jesus body is wrapped in a sindon for burial (15:46). The first youth abandons Jesus, the second was with him in his resurrection, or at least participates in the divine side of the resurrection story. (See Kermode: 61.) My question would be, is it the same neaniskos? And if so, why? Do the two appearances of a youth imply that desertion has become accompaniment, that having been 'let down' in the human world the Son of man is 'raised up' in God's world? Another example is the cursing of the fig tree, 72 ~~)~~~~~;mm~·~·1·§m·5·~~·~

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CHAPTER III:

MARK'S LANGUAGE OF MYSTERY

11:12-14. This passage has been a crux for many exegetes, who by and large assume that Mark rather crudely lumps together prior traditions. Thus, when Jesus is presented as cursing a fig tree that had no figs, 'for it was not the season for figs,' they postulate that the fault lies with Mark. He misunderstood an older tale or misapplied a freely circulating 'parable' ascribed to Jesus (see Mk. 13:28). Matthew smoothed it out a bit by omitting the offensive clause quoted above, for how could Jesus blame the fig tree for not producing before its time (kairos, usually translated season)? In this case we can be more certain about the interpretation. Kelber has shown from the standpoint of redaction criticism that the cursing of the fig tree in 11: 12-14 and the withering of the tree noted in 11 :2021 enframe the cleansing of the temple in 11:15-19. The two are related. Although the clause Ito gar kairos ouk en sukon interrupts the cogency of the plot, 'in it may well lie the clue of the whole' (Kelber, 1974: 99). This clause is one of the gar ('for') clauses serving to invite the audience 'to understand the context in the light of something outside the data explicitly presented to us' /4/. The fig tree, a sign of life and blessing (I K. 4:25; Mic. 4:4; Zech. 3: 10), becomes a sign of the death of the present order of things as seen from the standpoint of God's visitation. The Kingdom may be near, but its kairos has not come; so the life (the leaves) of the Kingdom cannot appear, above all not in the most religious of places which, precisely due to its sacred history, has become the most idolatrous of sanctuaries - the Jerusalem temple. (Kelber, 1974: 99-102) The temple, when seen in relation to God's sovereignty and rule, is really cursed. The fig tree motif is then reprised toward the end

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