Mark-traditions in conflict

By Theodore J Weeden and Theodore J. Weeden

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080060041X
• ISBN13: 9780800600419
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Length: 182 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Best controversy about MARK since the Marcan Hypothesis

If you follow the Quest of the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer and the Jesus Seminar, then you will enjoy this brilliant analysis of the internal text of the Gospel of Mark.Nineteenth century Protestant theologians, aided by the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, demonstrated that the Gospel of MARK is the earliest Gospel we possess. LUKE is a modification of MARK, and MATTHEW is a modification of LUKE, while JOHN roughly uses MARK's model to produce a work of art sixty years later.Theodore J. Weeden continues this line of thought and analyzes MARK in great detail with "redaction criticism" (a theory that each Gospel is the result of several changes by several authors whose individual outlines can be identified even today). Weeden's historical, textual and literary analysis of the Gospel of MARK shows its internal stitches. Before the final redactor gave us the copy we have today, he had in his hands *two* sources for the Gospel of MARK. Each source had its own community, and each community was in competition with the other.Briefly put, the two communities may be called the Divine Man community and the Suffering Servant community. The Divine Man community held to a Preterist doctrine that the arrival of Jesus was the main event of salvation. The Suffering Servant community held to an Eschatological doctrine that the future coming of Jesus will be the main event of salvation. The first part of MARK is about the Galilean Jesus, the Divine Man. The second part of MARK is about the Jerusalem Jesus, the Suffering Servant. When these two contradictory traditions were merged together by the genius of the final redactor of MARK, the Gospel as we know it today was born.Weeden seeks to show that the final redactor was an Eschatologist who attempted to modify the earlier, Divine Man tradition, bending it into an Eschatological shape. Weeden's theory is not an attack on the Gospel, but is a scientific approach to the Gospel with the aim of finding the real and historical Jesus (very likely the Galilean Jesus).I highly recommend this scholarly book. Five stars.

On the right track, but with the wrong train...

The author recognizes the Gospel of Mark for what it is and has been for nearly two millennia - not just a "gospel" but a clever if crude polemic against the influence of the Jerusalem (Petrine) community of the early Christian Church, which interpreted the life and death of Jesus as a continuation of Jewish salvation history. Some of the book's specific arguments and interpretations are unnecessary (particularly the redaction critical claims), unconvincing (the exorcisism in Mark 9:38-40), incorrect (e.g., the "young man" present at the handing over at 14:51 and again at the empty tomb in 16:5 is not an angel; the post-crucifixion report of Jesus going to Galilee at 16:7 is figurative, not literal) and incomplete (anti-Gnostic rhetoric also abounds throughout Mark's narrative, an area still ripe for socio-rhetorical scholarship). Nonetheless, the recognition of the first half of the gospel as parody in reaction to nascent Christian theologies removes the cover of orthodox bias masquerading as "The Messianic Secret" interpretation of Mark that has obscured the value of its true meaning for decades.