a response to robert gundry's review

7/27/2019 A Response to Robert Gundry's Review

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[JSNT26.2 (2003) 151-169]ISSN 0142-064X

A Response to Robert Gundrys Review

ofHearing the Whole Story

Richard A. Horsley

University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA

[email protected]

Thefield of Gospel studies began to splinter shortly after Ifinished graduate

school. Dissatisfactions (for example) with decontextualizing theological

proof-texting, atomizing word-study, and distancing historical-critical

analysis led many to explore various kinds of analysis then emerging in

literary studies. Others explored social-scientific analysis. Nascent feminist

analysis challenged the embedded androcentricism of the patriarchalguild. Disillusioned postmodernists challenged standard assumptions

and categories of interpretation, including the self-delusionary stance of

objectivity. African-American, Hispanic and more recently postcolonial

critics exposed standard assumptions and concepts in the field as pro-

jections of European and European-American (male) interests and perspec-

tive onto a universal screen. Given the excitement of innovative discovery,

however, it seems to have been difficult for the specialists in one or

another of these new criticisms to keep abreast of the developments in

the others. Ironically, many explorers of new approaches continued in the

standard theological conceptual apparatus and the standard theological

construction of history that their own innovations and new perspectives

were undermining.

Simultaneously others were pursuing a more precise historical and

archaeological analysis of the social-political context of Jesus and the

earliest Gospel materials in Roman Palestine. The social and cultural

diversity in second-temple Palestine was found to be such that we can no

longer think in terms of a monolithic Judaism. Rather the historicalrealities included a structural political-economic-religious division be-


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152 Journal for the Study of the New Testament26.2 (2003)

Jerusalem/Judea, and the overarching Roman imperial rule that over-

determined power relations within Palestine and adjacent areas. This more

precise and complicated picture of the historical context of Jesus and earlyGospel materials has recently been further complicated by historical

research on key aspects of culture that undermine other fundamental

assumptions of New Testament studies. For example, not only was Israelite

Palestine, like the rest of the Roman empire, an oral communications

environment in which literacy was confined mainly to scribal circles, but

the Hebrew Scriptures were still undergoing development in multiple

textual traditions.

This proliferation of approaches and widening precision of historicalresearch has led to a balkanization of criticisms and interpretations, and

to partial orientations midst a general disorientation in Gospel studies. We

were trained to think in terms of Judaism and Christianity, yet it is now

clear that what we call Judaism and Christianity had not yet come into

existence at the time Mark was produced. We have been socialized into a

western individualism and the separation of religion from political-

economic life, but it turns out that these are quite inappropriate to ancient

Palestinian society and the Roman empire generally. We were trained tofind Christology and apocalypticism in Mark, yet some now argue that

these are modern Christian constructs that we read into Mark.

We respond to this situation in different ways. One response is to stick

with the assumptions and approach of the field as standardized prior to the

multiplication of criticisms and expansion of historical researchand

accept that our Gospel studies will be an academic ghetto with its own

archaic language. Another is to specialize in one criticism in which we

can find support and confirmation from others who have opted for the

same approach. A third response would be to try to reorient ourselves by

combining some of the suggestive new approaches, the new research, and

the more precise historical analysis, while relinquishing assumptions and

concepts that now seem problematic. This is what I am trying to do in

Hearing the Whole Story (and in Whoever Hears you Hears me, with

Jonathan Draper), however provisionally and inadequately.1Hearing

consists of a set of interrelated and cumulative explorations of how we

1. Richard A. Horsley,Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Marks


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HORSLEYA Response to Robert Gundry 153

might reorient ourselves to the Gospel of Mark as a story in its historical

context.

Robert Gundrys Critical Review ofHearingplaces in stark relief thedramatic differences between sticking with an older theological approach,

narrowly defined, and a search for reorientation by combining new

approaches and research. Evidently uninterested in, even threatened by

the various innovative approaches and historical scholarship I am trying

to combine, he does not really engage with much of anything I am

attempting to explore in the book. We are simply talking past one another

in two different conceptual worlds. Those who have readHearingwill

recognize that Gundry repeatedly misrepresents what I am saying. Hetears phrases and sentences out of their discursive contexts to use as

proof-texts for the windmills that he conjures up in order to attack.

Rather than explaining in each case how I did not construct the windmills

at which he tilts, however, I would like to focus on what we learn from the

new approaches and recent research that might be helpful in attempting to

reorient ourselves for interpretation of Mark and other Gospels. Thus my

response consists not so much of a point-by-point exegetical counter-

argument, but more a defense of the wholly different approach thatHearingrepresents.

Story, Historical Context, Oral Communication

First, Mark and other Gospels should be allowed their own integrity as

pieces of literature. Following the lead of various literary criticisms, many

have recognized that they are stories. Or, more precisely, in the context of

ourfield, the Gospels were stories before they became compendia of

proof-texts for Christian doctrine and repertories of lessons for Sundayservices, and they can again be discovered as stories. Just as it violated the

integrity of stories I told my daughters at bedtime when I fell asleep before

completing them, so too, we do not honor the integrity of the Gospel of

Mark unless we read/hear the whole story.

When we read Mark as a complete story, a whole new world seems to

open up, a world of multiple conflicts and intriguing interwoven plot and

subplots. Each new reading leads to new discoveries in the often puzzling

and repetitive sequence of episodes. Although literary critics disagreeabout Marks precise genre, they agree that the Gospel is a sustained nar-


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complex and richly textured a story full of conflicts is than theology,

which works with refined ideas and symbols abstracted from the flow of

story or history. What I am trying to do in the book is thus much morecomplex than Gundrys caricature as down with this and up with that.

Far from being a series of down with male disciples and up with women,

and so on, the chapters ofHearingexplore the narrative role and effects

of subplots and themes in relation to each other and in the context of the

overall story. The book thus has a fairly complex architecture, correspond-

ing to the complex plot and subplots of the Gospel, with earlier chapters

analyses and conclusions serving as the basis for subsequent chapters.

So Mark is a story. But whose story is it? In New Testament studies wehave been assuming that Mark belongs to and is addressed to us, that is, to

New Testament scholars and to the students, clergy and churches we pre-

sumably serve. Some of our colleagues who come from Africa and Asia,

however, have a different perspective. Like other biblical books, they point

out, Mark functioned as a European imperial text. Authoritative interpre-

tation, moreover, was claimed by established New Testament studies,

which, like other academic fields, was developed in western European

nations during the heyday of their imperial domination of other peoples.This really hit me twelve years ago when two South African students at

Harvard Divinity School, both with theological degrees, were clearly

reading Mark as a European text (brought to their Zulu forebears by Euro-

pean missionaries and taught to them in a European-constructed theological

education). Around mid-term, it finally dawned on them that Mark was

originally a third-world story, a story that belonged rightfully more to

them than to the Europeans who had brought it to them. Thereafter they

understood Mark very differently from before. The story is about, origi-

nated from, and is addressed to a movement in the ancient counterpart of a

third-world people subjected to a western empire. It seems highly inappro-

priate, therefore, to confine ourselves to the world of the text, as do some

literary critics, both because Mark is a historical story and because the

Markan audience would have appropriated the story in full awareness of

the world in which it was produced.

If Marks Gospel was an ancient peoples story then almost certainly it

was not read silently by individuals (bringing into question the approach

of some literary critics), but heard recited aloud by a group. Recent researchis demonstrating ever more extensively that communication in the ancient


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usually in performance.2 Even after texts were written down, they were

still read aloud to groups of people, often performed from memory. We

have been reading Mark as if it were a musical score, but never giving anythought to actually hearing the music. In its originary context, however,

Marks story was like a live musical performance, resonating with com-

munities of listeners. Moreover, it was not just a melody line. It was contra-

puntal, like a complex fugue.

Experts on oral performance suggest that particular episodes and

sentences of a story such as Mark may have varied from performance to

performance, while the overall story remained fairly stable.3 This means,

as in all performances, that the important thing in Mark is not the individualwords or verses, but the overall Gospel story. But that reverses the priorities

according to which biblical scholars such as Gundry and I were trained.

Perhaps this is why he, along with others surely, digs in his heels not only

against recognizing Mark as a story (and one that we do not own), but

also against Mark as an orally performed story, the point of which is to be

heard whole, in all its complexity of interwoven conflicts. If it was a live,

orally performed story then we scholars can no longer control Mark by

determining the acceptable meaning of its words and phrases.If we can no longer control the meaning of Markan fragments, however,

then we can enjoy learning how to hear and appreciate Mark as storyas

an oral performance produced by and heard by ancient third world

people. To do that, however, we will not only have to reorient ourselves,

but retool ourselves. We can look for help from otherfields that have

already begun dealing with communication, and particularly with oral-

derived texts. As orally performed story, the text of Mark is communication

between performer and audience in a determinate contextand no longer

a compendium of stable abstract statements the meaning of which we can

determine once and for all. Sociolinguistics, ethnography of performance,

ethnopoetics and performance theory can all help. John Miles Foleys

recent theorizing regarding the performance of other oral-derived texts is

particularly helpful in focusing on how the performed text does its work,

2. For starters, see W.V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1989); J.P. Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind(London: Routledge,

1997).

3. The canonical text of Mark is almost certainly not the original, nor perhaps


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resonating with the audience by metonymically referencing the cultural

tradition shared by performer and audience.4

The recognition that a performed story communicates only in a socialcontext and by resonating with its audience by referencing shared cultural

tradition leads to an extremely important convergence of approaches.

Instead of perpetuating the fragmentation of approaches in the field,

appreciation of Mark as performed story requires us to combine them.

Understanding the social context of the story requires a combination of

historical, sociological and social-historical investigation with literary

analysis. Discerning how the performed message communicates requires a

combination of literary analysis with as thorough a knowledge as possibleof the cultural tradition that it references. It is clear from the names, themes

and allusions of Marks story that the audience shared the Israelite cultural

tradition as well as nascent Jesus tradition. The investigations in the subse-

quent chapters of the bookflow from this recognition, explore its implica-

tions, and attempt such a convergence of approaches, in however provi-

sional a fashion.

What is the Story all About? Interwoven Plot and Subplots withHistorical Verisimilitude

Two implications of taking Mark seriously as a story performed among

communities of a movement among people subjected to imperial rule are

immediately obvious. The modern western assumptions of a private indi-

vidual reader and of religion as somehow separate from political-economic

life are simply inappropriate to Mark. It is the combination of those two

modern western assumptions that fostered and underwrote the reading of

Mark as addressed to individual Christians regarding their discipleship,so prominent in recent literary criticisms as well as dominant in Christian

theological readings for at least the last half-century. Gundry agrees, that

Mark isnt primarily about discipleship (p. 145). Yet his defensiveness

about individual discipleship vividly illustrates the distinctive modern

western individualism that has blocked discernment of Marks focus on

community life and political-economic affairs that are inseparable from,

indeed part and parcel of, living under the will/kingdom of God.

4. John Miles Foley, Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington: Indiana


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One reason that interpreters thought that Mark was about individual

discipleship, of course, is that the twelve disciples are so prominent in the

story. Indeed, their escalating conflict with Jesus comprises the principalsubplot in Marks story. Jesus calls, appoints and commissions them as

representatives of Israel who share in his mission of renewal. But the

twelve increasingly misunderstand what is happening, voice different

values, andfinally deny and abandon Jesus at his arrest and trial. To answer

why, we need to see the relation of the text to its historical context. Marks

critical portrayal of the very disciples Jesus had commissioned as the repre-

sentatives of Israel-in-renewal must represent criticism by the Markan

branch of the Jesus movement of Peter and the twelve, who (according toActs and Paul) were acting as heads of the wider movement from their

base in Jerusalem. As we see in Pauls letters, such criticism was not

unprecedented.

Once we recognize that Mark is a political as well as a religious story, it

may be possible to hear the complete story on its own terms. In under-

standing a story of multiple conflicts, it is important to discern what is the

dominant plot and what are the interrelated subsidiary plots. Gundry

(p. 132) sees and states quite fairly my central thesis, that Mark focuses onJesus as a Moses- and Elijah-like prophet leading a renewal of Israel in its

village communities over against its Jerusalem and Roman rulers, who

stand under Gods judgment. Gundry does not get it, however, with

regard to the politics embedded in Israelite tradition that is represented in

particular episodes in the story, such as Jesus Jeremiah-like prophetic

demonstration enacting Gods condemnation of the Temple. He simply

reverts to standard Christian theological labels, such as Jesus cleansing

of the temple,5 attempting to depoliticize the Gospel and reduce it to its

religious dimension. The story and its episodes, however, stubbornly

resist such reduction. They present a dramatic, escalating, political conflict,

particularly once Jesus marches into Jerusalem. His prophetic demon-

stration and prophetic condemnations of the Temple and high-priestly

rulers would have resulted in arrest and imprisonment or execution under

any client regime and imperial overlord. The crucifixion of Jesus, which

later became the central symbol of the Christian faith, was in Marks story

the Roman method of execution reserved for leaders of insurrection

against the imperial order.


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Equally important to the discernment of the dominant plot as the renewal

of Israel against its Jerusalem and Roman rulers, however, is the procedural

combination of literary and historical approaches and the results it pro-duces in study of Marks story. When read and checked against the

historical dynamics that it portrays as a historical story, the Gospel of Mark

displays a remarkable historical verisimilitude. The dominant plot/

conflict in Mark between Jesus and the rulers fits a broad general pattern

of political-economic-religious division and conflict that erupted periodi-

cally into popular resistance and rebellion and Herodian suppression and

Roman reconquest, as portrayed in Josephus and Judean scribal literature.6

A more complete and complex combination of approaches and lines ofinvestigation, I believe, is necessary for us to become more deeply engaged

in Marks story. Specifically, we can attempt to bring investigation/ knowl-

edge of cultural tradition (whose importance is indicated in performance

theory) together with more precise investigation/knowledge of the his-

torical situation and analysis of narrative and performance. Only such a

complex combination enables us to appreciate (for example) the multiple

dimensions of the dominant conflict/plot in Marks Gospel.

In addition to Jesus confrontation with the Jerusalem rulers and theirrepresentatives, he opposes and is opposed by demonic forces in the first

half of the story and by the Roman rulers toward the end.7 The more I

analyzed the complex main plot in Mark, the more I sensed a connection.

From comparative analysis of literature it seems likely that there is some

relationship between key symbols or cues in the narrative and the historical

political-religious situation from which a story arises and which it

addresses. The most obvious clue in Marks story is the name of the demon

who had taken control of the demoniac but was then cast into the troop

of swine who charged into the Sea. A legion was a division of the

Roman army that had come from across the sea to conquer the peoples of

Galilee, Judea and surrounding areas in Syria, and remained stationed at

6. Gundry is apparently as uninterested in recent historical studies of the political-

economic-religious structure of Judean and Galilean society as he is in Mark as

narrative. He thus does not understand, for example (p. 139), that the scribes and

Pharisees both in Mark and Josephus were closely linked with the Temple and high

priesthood, evidently as some of its staff (retainers).

7. Gundrys misrepresentation that I make the Roman rulers join the Jerusalem


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key points such as Caesarea and a military colony on the border of

Galilee.

One of the reasons we had not discerned the relationship betweennarrative symbols and motifs, derived from cultural tradition, and the his-

torical situation, I believe, is that our knowledge of ancient Judean/ Israelite

culture consists of synthetic abstract concepts constructed by scholars by

extracting motifs and themes from ancient Judean literature, in this case

apocalypticism. That literature itself, however, consists of visionary

narratives, psalms, prophetic pronouncements and woes, and testimonies.

The form of our knowledge does not fit the forms of ancient Judean litera-

ture. An approach more appropriate to the literature and history we seek tounderstand would be to look for the narrative work or function of symbols,

motifs and episodes in Marks story (in comparison with the narrative

function of the same or similar terms in other literature) and attempt to

discern how they may be related to factors in the historical situation.

To take a somewhat general illustration, the demonology constructed

by a subject people to comprehend its sense of being under the control of

alien forces was not simply spiritual. It was a spiritual explanation for,

and form of dealing with, political-social-personal subjugation and controlby those alien forces. That is precisely what sets up the Markan episodes

that announce that Jesus was not just casting out the alien forces from

individuals, represented as a victory (similar to Gods vanquishing of

enemy forces in the Dead Sea Scrolls), but in those very exorcisms was

manifesting Gods victorious struggle against the controlling political as

well as spiritual forces. This reorientation and multidimensional approach

in effect simply by-passes the synthetic scholarly constructs such as

apocalypticism and the anachronistic separation of the spiritual from the

political that were blocking access to what Marks story is articulating.

It may not be surprising that Gundry and others are baffled at what I am

exploring with regard to another key aspect of the dominant plot in Mark:

Jesus conflict with the Pharisees. In this connection recent cultural research

and recent historical research have together undermined some of the most

basic standard assumptions and concepts of Gospel studies, but there has

been insufficient time for the implications to sink in.8

8. Also in this case, I am a bit ahead of myself. A long-planned book aimed at

reorienting ourselves to the historical situation and issues of Jesus and the Pharisees


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Jesus conflict with the Pharisees illustrates in nuce how dramatically

research of the last generation has changed our picture of ancient Judean

and Galilean society and culture. It is only recently becoming clear thatthree different textual traditions of the Torah, still undergoing development,

coexisted in the same community at Qumran.9 This indicates that the

Hebrew Scriptures were not yet stabilized in written form. The discovery/

existence of alternative books of Torah (e.g. Temple Scroll and 4QMMT)

and alternative accounts of Israelite history (e.g. Jubilees, the Genesis

Apocryphon, Pseudo-Philos Biblical Antiquities), provide additional

evidence that several different versions of Israelite cultural tradition

competed for authority, even in scribal circles. Although they possessedwritten scrolls, moreover, Pharisees and Qumranites recited their traditions,

including scripture, orally.10 Even scriptural texts were held in the

memory of their cultivators as much as they were inscribed on scrolls.

Matters become even more challenging, however, with regard to Q and

Mark. In such texts we have to come to grips with the additional factor of

material originating and being shaped in non-literate popular circles, and

the regional differences between Galilee and Jerusalem/Judea. In trying to

understand oral tradition Hermann Gunkel and Rudolf Bultmann tooksome cues from study of popular culture and its relation to elite culture.

We are now in a position to benefit from much more sophisticated and

subtle studies of popular culture in other agrarian societies. I find most

helpful James C. Scotts study of how the little tradition cultivated in the

villages stands over against the great tradition of the ruling elite. These

parallel traditions often have common roots and interact regularly, yet still

express conflicting interests.11

The episodes of conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees in Mark can

be readily understood in terms of Jesus being rooted in and defending the

Galilean little tradition over against the scribes and Pharisees, who

represent the great tradition. This reading, rooted in the more precise

9. Eugene C. Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origin of the Bible (Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).

10. Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),

chs. 13. Gundry (pp. 146-47) apparently does not catch the implications of the

controversy episode in Mk 7.1-23: that the Pharisees as well as Jesus and Galilean and

other peasants cultivated oral tradition!


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reconstruction of the historical situation from which the Markan material

originated, cuts through the long misguided debate about Jesus and the

Law, which is rooted in and perpetuates Christian anti-Judaism. The issuein Marks Gospel is not Jesus versus the Law; Jesus rather defends the

basic covenantal law against what he sees as alternative traditions that in

effect undermine it.

The combination of historical and cultural knowledge with narrative

analysis is necessary also to appreciate the importance and significance of

the women in Marks story. They are integral to the plotting of the renewal

of Israel in the narrative, and their subplot is interwoven with that of the

twelve disciples conflict with Jesus in important ways. Gundry rightlysenses the contrast in my book as I attempt to come to grips with the juxta-

position in Mark story. Marks plotting of these two subplots, however, is

far more complex than Gundrys simplistic Down with, Up with12

Investigations into cultural norms and the social relations between men

and women in family and village life, including how those may have dif-

fered from parallel relations among elite families (for whom most of the

limited sources give evidence), should enable modern interpreters to hear

Markan episodes about women more sensitively in historical social-cultural contexts. As with the episodes about the disciples conflict with

Jesus, those focused on women must be heard as components of a subplot

and the latter as closely interwoven with the dominant plot of the overall

story.13

Contrary to Gundrys insistence on the flat, univocal meaning of

language in Mark, however, episodes in the womens subplot cannot be

understood without allowing them the full range of meaning, even in

extra-textual ways. Like those in the main plot, the episodes in the womens

subplot resonate with the hearers (including modern hearers!) through

more vivid or more subtle references to (popular) Israelite cultural tradition.

12. Again Gundry seriously misrepresents my attempt to discern what is happening

in the series of womens actions in the story. In fact, not only do I not find egalitarian

roles, I even caution about such concepts. I deeply regret that my passing comment in

an introductory summary of Marks plot (p. 2) that women appear as paradigms of

faithfulunderstandingmayhaveledGundrytocounterwithseveral pages of discussionof women as paradigms of faithless ignorance (his emphasis). Such an unfortunate

characterization cannot go unchallenged.


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In a story that represents Jesus as carrying out Moses- and Elijah-like

actions of societal renewal and appointing twelvefigures as representatives

of Israel undergoing renewal, there can be no question about whether thewoman hemorrhaging for twelve years and the twelve-year-old woman are

representative of Israel. Through faithful response to the powers operating

in and through Jesus, the hemorrhaging of the woman, and by implication

of Israel in general, is stopped. And just as Jesus restores life to the woman

who is almost dead just as she reaches potential child-bearing age, so he is

restoring life to the people who are dying, so that they can bring new life

into Israel. As the twelve begin to misunderstand Jesus mission, these

women appear in the story as representative figures of Israel undergoingrenewal in Jesus mission, providing reinforcement to the movement of

the main plot. More subtly, perhaps, the woman who pours ointment on

Jesus head is, in allusion to Samuels or Ahijahs or Elishas anointing of

popular messiahs, symbolically anointing Jesus. The Markan narrative has

Jesus defend her action against the disciples criticism as a key event of

the Gospel that is to be proclaimed and, uneasy about the role of messiah

(see below), has him connect the anointing with his burial (as a crucified

martyr-messiah?). Again an episode presenting a highly signifi

cantwomans action advances the movement of the main plot.

It has to be striking, similarly, that after James and John have utterly

misunderstood that leadership in the renewal of Israel means service in,

not rule over, the movement, and soon after the twelve deny and abandon

Jesus, the three key women from among the many who followed him in

Galilee appear as the only followers to witness the crucifixion and the empty

tomb, and to hear that he has indeed gone before them back to Galilee.

Women appear to be the paradigms of faithful ministry in Marks story.

Broader Cultural Patterns in Narrative and Tradition

One aspect of the way I approach Israelite cultural tradition, the forms I

find in that culture, and the way in which I hear Marks story referencing

those forms may be new and, I would guess, baffling to Gundry and others

who continue to focus primarily on words and statements taken out of

narrative and historical-cultural context. The strength and principal agenda

of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century biblical studies was its narrowphilological focus on word study and close exegetical analysis of text-


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But they had little sense of the wider contours and patterns of meaning in

that forest, let alone where that forest and its meaning patterns fit in the

broader landscape of ancient history. Yet patterns of culture broader thanwhat can be articulated in a Bible verse or pericope are presupposed, em-

bedded and expressed in our texts, if we only had eyes to see. In at least

two cases such broader cultural patterns play key roles in Marks story.

Some broader cultural patterns are resilient and persistent. The Com-

munity Rule, along with the Damascus Rule, discovered at Qumran pro-

vided evidence that at least one Judean group that opposed the incumbent

high-priestly rulers in the Temple organized their alternative society as a

covenant community reinforced by periodic ceremonies of covenant re-newal. Behind that by several centuries, as George Mendenhall and others

demonstrated by comparison with ancient Hittite suzereignty treaties, we

can identify the same cultural pattern in the Mosaic covenant as a determi-

native structure of social policy in early Israel, in texts such as Exodus,

Deuteronomy and Joshua.14

It seems fairly clear, when we look, that a covenantal pattern similar to

what appears in the Qumran Community Rule appears also in the longest

speech in Q and in the Matthean Sermon on the Mount (Whoever Hearsyou,Hearsme, ch. 9). Similarly, I argue, we can discern a Mosaic covenant

pattern in the series of dialogues in Mk 10.1-45, in the middle of which

the covenant commandments are explicitly cited. Indeed, the renewal of

Mosaic covenant runs as a principal theme through Marks Gospel, climax-

ing in the Last Supper, which is a ceremony of covenant renewal parallel

to the covenant ceremony on Sinai (Exod. 24). It may well be difficult for

Gospel scholars to discern the broader pattern of Mosaic covenant in

Mark, Q and other texts. Besides being focused narrowly on text-fragments,

ourfield is grounded in the standard Christian scheme that Judaism was

obsessed with the Law (which includes the covenant), while Christianity

brought the Gospel(s). If, on the other hand, we reorient ourselves to the

revisionary historical and cultural research of the last several decades,

then we might see that Marks Gospel, like Matthews, tells of a renewal

14. The survey could continue. The English Calvinists who founded such

settlements as Plimouth Plantation, Boston and Dedham (in Massachusetts) used such

texts as Exod. 20 and the Sermon on the Mount as models for their covenantal charters

of civil government (as well as of their church congregations). Then in 1787, advocates


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of Israel, including the Mosaic covenantand not of a new covenant much

less a new religion called Christianity.

The most prominent way in which broader cultural patterns underlie,inform and find expression in Marks Gospel is surely in regard to what I

call the popular prophetic and messianic scripts. Recent cultural research

has pulled the rug out from under the standard Christian theological con-

structs of Jewish expectations of the Messiah together with the

associated construction of christological titles from motifs, titles and

verses taken out of literary contextagain requiring some critical historical

reorientation for Gospel interpreters. Critical analyses of Judean literature

begun in the 1960s and climaxing in the 1970s and 1980s concluded notonly that there was no standard Jewish expectation of The Messiah, but

also that there were no standard Judean messianic titles or titles of other

redemptive agents just waiting to be applied to Jesus.15 In addition to this

de-construction of the Messiah and messianic titles among the elite

that produced literature, however, there was constructive research demon-

strating that many cases of the two distinctively Israelite types of concrete

popular movements mentioned in Josephus must have been informed by

popular cultural memories, of Moses and other prophets and of David andother messiahs, respectively. If we want to explore how Mark is rooted in

first-century Israelite (Judean and Galilean) culture, then we must appre-

ciate how Marks narrative is informed by and references precisely such

patterns of Israelite popular culture.16

15. See, e.g., James Charlesworth (ed.), The Messiah (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,

1992); Jacob Neusner et al. (eds.), Judaisms and their Messiahs (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1987). Theological interpreters such as Gundry cancertainlycontinue to use text-fragments from Mark as proof-texts for the christologicaltitles and synthetic Christology they wish to legitimate scripturally. But they cannot

claim that those titles were current in the first century CE such that the Gospel of Mark

could have deployed them.

16. With regard to Gundrys insistence on finding Christology and christological

titles in Mark, once we recognize that Mark is a story, we can no longer take words,

phrases, or sentences as having an inherent meaning in themselves. Meaning in stories,

moreover,dependsnotonlyonnarrativecontextbutonnarrativesequence.A sub-sequent episode or step in the narrative may change the perspective on and apparent

meaning and function of an earlier episode. If titles and sentences are to be abstracted

from the story, perhaps it is appropriate for a skilled exegetical surgeon to perform the


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Imperial Situation, Anti-imperial Story

It is puzzling that Gundry takes the book as a postcolonial critique of

Marks story. My combination of approaches inHearingdoes not include

(or even mention) postcolonial criticism. From the little I have read, post-

colonial is a very wide umbrella. In other recent publications I have been

critical of some postcolonial criticism for its focus on the cultural dimen-

sion without recognizing how powerful neo-imperial forces can utilize

cultural criticism and multiculturalism to their own advantage as yet one

more mode of control.17

Postcolonial criticism is important for a field such as New Testament

studies because it calls western intellectuals to become more self-critical

of their own construction of controlling knowledge. Like most academic

fields of study, New Testament studies developed mainly in Germany and

Britain during the heyday of western imperialism. On the other hand, with

regard to the imperial universalist pretensions of western Christianity and

its theology, biblical studies has, in its historical criticism, and more

recently in its expansion into feminist and other liberationist criticism and

cultural criticism, effected a certain decolonization.18 InHearingI didnot intend to write a postcolonial critique of Marks story, much less to

treat that story asa postcolonial critique... It would be very satisfying,

however, if the book contributes in some small way to further decoloni-

zation in Gospel studies.

The term postcolonial, however, does not fit the historical situation or

the story of Marks Gospel. Recently conquered, Roman-ruled Palestine

looks more like an ancient counterpart to twentieth-century Viet Nam or

taken as a narrative, a complete story. Peters objection is not a cancer that must be cut

outinordertoisolatethepuretissueofChristology.It is rather that point in the complexnarrative fabric where the principal subplot of the disciples as increasingly mis-

understanding Jesus mission intersects with messianic script, about which Mark

expresses considerable doubt and ambiguity in the course of his narrative.

17. Richard A. Horsley, Submerged Biblical Histories and Imperial Biblical

Studies,inR.S.Sugirtharajah(ed.),TheBibleandPostcolonialism(Sheffield:SheffieldAcademic Press, 1998), esp. pp. 152-55; and idem, Subverting Disciplines: The

Possibilities and Limitations of Postcolonial Theory for New Testament Studies, in

Fernando F. Segovia (ed.), Toward a New Heaven and a New Earth: Essays in Honour


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Iran under French and British and then United States rule, with a mix of

client rulers and imperial governors over peoples still living in traditional

indigenous cultures and not strongly westernized or hybridized. As Ihave attempted to explain for decades, Jesus movements and their stories,

like other resistance and renewal movements, arose in an imperialsituation.

The Gospel of Mark, moreover, is not simply an anti-imperial critique. It

is an anti-imperial story of an anti-imperial movement.

And this brings us back to taking the Gospel whole, particularly dis-

cerning that the main plot involves a conflict, between Jesus renewal of

Israel in village communities, on the one side, and the Roman imperial

rulers and their client rulers in Jerusalem, on the other. The two sides gotogether, inseparably. This is the context for understanding what Gundry

oversimplifies, but partly gets in his objection that my hearing of the

story entails Up with Economics. What he does not get, perhaps because

I did not focus on it directly, is how economics is integrally tied up with

politics and religion in the Gospel(s).

The principal purpose of ancient empires was to control greater economic

resources by controlling the additional lands and peoples that produced

them. The Romans conquered peoples and then laid them under tribute.As the legend that Luke includes in his birth narrative has it, a decree went

out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered

forcing displaced peasants (such as a carpenter) to return to their places

of origin, where they had not been able to make a living, to again farm the

land in order to pay tribute to the Romans (as we know from Egyptian

papyri).

As that legend also illustrates, however, the peasant producers of the

tribute, who also had to pay the taxes for Herod and the tithes and offerings

for the Temple and priesthood, were economically marginal at best. Jesus

prayer for the Kingdom of God focuses on the general situation of peasant

families in such an imperial situation: Bring your kingdom: give us sub-

sistence bread and cancel our debts as we have herewith cancelled the debts

of our debtors. Under multiple demands from multiple layers of rulers,

peasant families almost always had to worry about where the next meal

was coming from. Those demands led to indebtedness, which led to mal-

nutrition, disease and despair, and to resentment and yearning for relief

and deliverance. Jesus charge against the scribes and Pharisees whoencourage peasants to devote property or produce to God, that is, to the


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they had to feed their own family members, according to the traditional

Mosaic covenantal principles such as Honor your father and mother.

Peasants were not stupid. They knew only too well from their own hungerand indebtedness that its the economythat is, it was the Roman tribu-

tary economy that kept them in hunger and debt.

On their side, the Roman imperial rulers also knew that its the economy

that supplied the resources for the legions, their own lavish lifestyle, and

the bread and circuses by which the Roman populace was induced to

support the empire. Nor did they hesitate to use their overwhelming military

power to enforce their demand for the tribute. They viewed failure of sub-

ject peoples to render unto Caesar as tantamount to rebellion, and sent inthe legions to slaughter, burn and crucify, in order to systematically terror-

ize subject peoples into timely payment.19

Again, peasants were not stupid. They knew only too well that they could

not successfully revolt. Yet over the centuries they had developed many

subtle and hidden forms of resistance, such as hiding some of their crops

from the tax collectors. And they had developed their own sense of moral

economy, as James C. Scott has established from a wide variety of evi-

dence from many different peasantries, from medieval Europe to contem-porary Southeast Asia.20 In the covenant code in Exod. 2123 and

derivative later covenantal teaching such as Deuteronomy and Lev. 25, we

can see that Israelite peoples had also developed mechanisms (such as

leaving grain in the fields for gleaners, lending without interest, sabbatical

release of debts and debt-slaves, and redemption of the land) to keep each

component family within a village community economically viable. From

comparative studies of such peasantries it has become clear that precisely

when villagers are facing subsistence crises, with hunger and increasing

debts and potential loss of ancestral land, they are particularly receptive to

prophetic leaders and collective action, that is, likely to form movements.

Mark presents the story of just such a movement. Jesus steps into a

script familiar to his followers from their memories of Moses and Elijah,

tapping into their memories of originary sea-crossings and healings and

feedings in the wilderness (Mk 49), and appealing to their memories of

and previous commitment to the Mosaic covenantal principles of subsist-

ence for all, wealth for none, in a spirit of mutual care and service (Mk

19. Susan P. Mattern,Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate


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10). Marks Jesus is unusually bold and brazen in marching up into

Jerusalem to pronounce Gods judgment against the Temple and high

priesthood. And, while he was at it, in response to the question meant toentrap him, he reinforced the peoples covenantal conviction (the first

commandment!) that, since everything belonged to God, their exclusive

Lord and King, they did not really owe that tribute to Caesar (Mk 12.13-

17). Not surprisingly, he was arrested and crucified.

But communities of a movement committed to the mutuality of subsist-

ence for all had staying power in the face of oppressive economic demands

on their resources in a situation of overwhelming imperial power to enforce

them. The paradigmatic service of the prophet in martyrdom and the divinepowers of healing and renewal that he mediated surely helped empower

the mutuality and solidarity of those communities, partly through their

periodic hearing of Marks story.

This, of course, is far more than the economy. Or perhaps more to the

point, concern for economic subsistence and resistance to the economic

oppression of the imperial system are integral aspects and implications of

the healings and exorcisms, the covenantal teachings and prophetic pro-

nouncements of Gods judgment, and the prophetic script and Kingdomof God program that Jesus enacts, all of which are interwoven in Marks

story. The Kingdom of God in Mark is not separate from, but encompasses

political-economy. In embracing the whole of life, the Kingdom of God

offers and brings a wholeness that is broken apart if we read the Gospel

according to the modern western separation of religion from political-

economic life.

It seems highly questionable, finally, that the term postcolonial applies

to the context in which we are holding this discussion any more than it

does to the historical situation of Marks story. Postcolonial criticism/

theory was formulated, mainly in cultural studies, before the contours of

globalization emerged so clearly. It began to appear to many observers in

the late 1990s that global capitalism had, in effect, established itself as the

new empire, dominant virtually throughout the world, with the American

military as its enforcer. The aggressive American response to the terrorist

attacks on 9-11 suggests that the empire of global capital now seems to

have a rival. The new Rome has long been a central image in the American

sense of manifest destiny. The government of the worlds sole super-power is now deploying its overwhelming power unilaterally, against the


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resources by global capital and/or American powerposes dramatically

the question not simply of hermeneutics, but of the relation between

American (and European) interpreters and the Gospel they are interpreting.Interpreters of the Judeo-Christian biblical and other cultural heritage

have regularly sought a balance between transmission and criticism of that

heritage. The prophetic side of biblical theology and preaching has also

attempted to allow the biblical text to stand over against its interpreters.

Taking the Gospel of Mark as a text belonging to modern western inter-

preters and Christians that we use as a repertory of proof-texts for Chris-

tology and individual discipleship seems to make it difficult to allow the

text to stand over against the interpreters. Taking the Gospel as a storybelonging to ancient people subjected to western empire and a story of an

anti-imperial movement might generate some provocative tension between

Marks story and interpreters situated in the neo-imperial metropolis.


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a response to robert gundry's review

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